Category Archives: Daily Prompt

Street Animals

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Street Animals

In a house, I like a presence
not my own
and I like contributing
to some other creature’s pleasure.
I prefer cats, but dogs prefer me.

These animals
are drawn into my life
as though by a magnet,
but it is yet to be determined
which is the magnet–
them or me.

Nonetheless, here we are.
They bark their language of in and out.
I motion my language of sit before being fed.

The cats do not enter since the second dog moved in.
One sits on the front wall to be fed and ventures no closer.
The other moved to  dogless neighbors.
I am a resting place in their karma.
They come and go at will.

While the dogs, compliant prisoners,
escape through some careless open door when they can,
in minutes, they come home again
to walls and gates and high scalable domes
where they can watch that world
they have been saved from.

WordPress Prompt:Menagerie–Do you have animals in your life? If yes, what do they mean to you? If no, why have you opted not to?

 https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/menagerie/

Speaking in Signs

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Speaking in Signs

Fingers skewed into exclamations,
thumbs jerking questions,
thrusting forearms moving hands to interrupt–
signs are the ballet of languages.

Graceful syllables fall
from the ovals of fingernails.
Joints flex with exaggeration.

No division of dialect or prejudice of accent–
all voices are imagined the same.
What  parts of the mind unknown by tongue,
might express themselves in gesture?

Surely these graceful movements
of words expressed in images and signs
create a language that weds all art–
the music and dance and mime of hands
sculpting  poetry.


The Prompt: Take That, Rosetta–If you could wake up tomorrow and be fluent in any language you don’t currently speak, which would it be?

For other answers to this prompt, go here:
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/daily-post-take-that-rosetta/

Power Failure

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Sapphics are quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee.

As luck would have it, my power–restored after a 32 hour off-and-on outage–clicked off completely just after I received this prompt and so there was little else that entered my mind to write this poem about. A very difficult form, by the way, and not a stellar accomplishment in terms of theme, but at least I did the assignment. But, on the positive side, the electricity has been on for one hour now without faltering and I see  my internet is now streaming boldly in.

Actually, now that there is electricity again, this day is turning out to be all that it was cracked up to be, and this poem luckily also fits in with the WordPress daily prompt, as well, so here it is!

Power Failure

Would that I had power to run my life with–
turn on my computer or cook my breakfast–
charge my phone or open my own garage door.
It’s not happening!

One day stretches after another, without
help for one imprisoned within her casa.
Fridge that drips from every hinge and juncture.
Loos unflushed by any means but by bucket
hauled from swimming pool.

Other folks do not have to light these candles,
locate flashlights all in some hidden drawer,
fish out ice cubes quickly from freezer section,
hoard computer time.

Yes, I do love Mexico more or less–
more for weather mild and the constant sunlight.
Less for lights that flicker and fail at night and
do not light again.

Oh that ladder placed in the kitchen aisle,
found in darkness, when perchance stumbled over.
Glass in hand dropped, shattering to each corner.
Perils multiply.

Now I shuffle through the dark house to locate
matches, candles, dustpan and broom to sweep up
further dangers, accidents bound to happen.
All things difficult.

Here I sit just thirty-six hours in darkness.
Help will come in one hour or perhaps thirty.
Beeps from starving phones sound from every chamber.
Growling stomach groans out a matching rhythm.
Help comes haltingly.

Hours since the outage are forty-two now,
Lights flood on and do not dim shortly after.
Please, dear God, let this be the end of darkness.
Wifi? Wunderbar!!!!

The NaPoWriMo Prompt: compose a poem in Sapphics.

For the Ragtag Prompt, STELLAR

Fealty

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Fealty

When I’m having a fine day
and good fortune comes my way:
that hundredth view, retablo sales,
party talk of special tales,
lottery winnings, publications,
plans for future great vacations,
cute things that my dogs may do,
films especially fun to view,
pounds lost, friends gained, birds I see,
a new fantastic recipe,
or, if perchance I’m feeling yucky,
first person whom I call is Duckie!
And though I know he won’t agree
in granting this last wish to me,
because of all the joy he gives me,
I sure do hope that he outlives me!

The Prompt: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious–You get some incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/supercalifragilisticexpialidocious/

(Who is Duckie? He often comments here as okcforgottenman. I wrote another poem about him here and talk about him here.)

High Noon With Emily Dickinson

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The Prompt: High Noon–At noon today, take a pause in what you’re doing or thinking about. Make a note of it, and write a post about it later.

As it happens, I couldn’t sleep last night and so didn’t actually fall asleep until 5:30 this morning.  Therefore, high noon found me signing on to the NaPoWriMo site to get my day’s assignment. So, at high noon, that’s what I was doing.  The results you may find HERE.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/high-noon/

IMHO

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 The Prompt: IMHO–Link to an item in the news you’ve been thinking about lately, and write the op-ed you’d like to see published on the topic.

IMHO

I gave up reading the news years ago. I just got too depressed when I did so. Certainly, stories filter through and then I hear the pertinent details or look them up online, but gone for me are days spent listening to and watching repetition after repetition of the same facts, many later found to be untrue or exaggerated.

So, this prompt is one that sent me out into the news Internet, looking for a story. The first one that came up was of the French pilot who it seems deliberately sent his plane careening into the Alps, killing everyone on board. Then I found a story about Korean twins, separated at birth, who never even knew of each other’s existence but who found each other over Facebook. Then a story about a woman who transforms abandoned Bratz dolls that look like hookers back into dolls that look like little girls.

Then back to President Obama’s Iran negotiations, a small girl born with two heads, The Voice finals in Australia, a letter of thanks gone viral, written by the mother of an autistic child to a businessman who had put away his papers and played with his seatmate for the 2 ½ hour flight. I flipped through dozens of other stories on the way: about the royal family, dogs, cats, a cow furnished with prosthetic legs and saved from slaughter. This hodgepodge was heartwarming, heartshattering, overwhelming, and two hours later, I had still not chosen a news report to write an op ed piece on.

I guess, instead, I will write it on how the internet seems to be substituting for our lives. This flood of information furnishes the vicarious existence once limited to The Soaps: The Edge of Night, Another World, General Hospital. I still remember the day Joan Lenzi came running into our room in college, tears streaming, shouting “Laura died, Laura died!” My heart flipped over in dread as my mind searched madly for a mutual friend named Laura, only to discover, once Joan had collected herself a bit, that a character on our favorite Soap had just departed our after-lunch afternoon.

No more skipping Astronomy to experience the next vicarious thrill. Without Laura, who was Luke? With no further excuses to skip, I dropped Astronomy, insuring the necessity to attend summer school to catch up.

Now it is harder to avoid excuses. When one internet heroine or villain passes from sight, there are ten thousand others to take their place. Facebook, YouTube, WordPress, OkCupid, Match.Com, Christian Singles, Pinterest, Blogster—ad infinitum. There is so much to fill our lives and furnish excuses for what we don’t want to do that it is no longer really necessary for us to assemble a life around ourselves at all. So long as we can somehow manage to feed, clothe and house ourselves, the rest is available online.

When I suffered a debilitating migraine lately, the first to know it were internet friends. My Skype near-romance phoned my oldest friend, now rarely communicated to other than through Skype or online Scrabble games. She talked me down from a near-panic attack and I eventually fell asleep. The next morning I wrote about it (Here) and had a flood of sympathetic comments from blogging friends. Another friend who lives in the town where I live Facebooked me the name of a medication that might forestall future headaches. No neighbor arrived on my doorstep with chicken soup or offered to feed the dogs, but cyber friends gathered round, giving me that warm feeling formerly reserved for a down comforter.

I had to look up IMHO before I wrote my response to this prompt. It’s a term often used in the past by my Skype near-romance. But every time, I forget this initial-speak. It’s as though life has been shortened enough. Emails have become Tweets and emoticons have replaced phrases of opinion, affection, disgust or frustration. Hyperlinks replace restatements and hashtags replace the social organizations where we used to gather for coffee or a coke and a good old-fashioned in-person gab session.

In my humble opinion, everything is finally short enough. If we become any smaller, we are going to implode. Computers now fit in the palm of one’s hand and I’ve heard of technology where one day they will be implanted into our eyeballs and transmitted to our brains. At that point, what do we become other than human robots? Perhaps it is all a plot by the machines of the world to be the next step of our evolution. Perhaps what the most far-out science fiction writer once imagined has become our world. In my humble opinion, we have gone far enough. We are able to know too much by doing too little. Experience too much by doing nothing at all. The time has come where observing life is more interesting than making it happen. Time to stop!!! But that is just “my humble opinion,” expressed as a full statement—railing out against this too-short world.

Note: Once more, my NaPoWriMo and Daily Prompt subjects seems to have intersected, so to read my other short post today, go HERE.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/imho/

Tagline Deprived

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Tagline Deprived

Rockefeller, Stanislavsky, Jones or White or Brown–
some names smack of commonness, others of renown.
We are born with surnames, then get given names and pet names.
Whether born or given, it is sure that we will get names.

Folks who do not like their names choose names that are more regal,
then change themselves to suit the names once they have become legal.
Mark Twain is a pen name, and Saki, too, was one.
And Chloe Wofford took the name of Toni Morrison!

Writers need names for their pens and actors for the screen.
Afterwards, the names their parents gave are rarely seen.
Allen Konigsberg  shifted his first name to his last,
assumed the name of Woody, and the man became a blast!

Jennifer Anastassakis is difficult  to say,
but Aniston is simple to recall from day-to-day.
Some call others names  that are pejorative or racial,
or names based on peculiarities of form or facial.

Whether we are large or small, hirsute or merely bald–
all these factors might affect what nickname we’ll be called.
“Gordo, Freckles, Skinny, Baldy, Curly, “Hey there, Chubs!”
The ones called by these names find little humor in these dubs.

Crooks and other felons assume pseudonyms because
It hides their identity while hiding from the fuzz.
But in this modern age, the name game is more specialized.
Great-grandmothers and grandfathers would be so surprised

at all the different names we need for social media.
It’s gotten so we need a name encyclopedia
to help us figure out the names for new identities
what’s more, to help us out with all the lingo, if you please.

I do not know.  What is this hashtag? What’s a tagline, too?
When I read this prompt, I swear I knew not what to do.
And so I wrote this lengthy poem of pseudonym and name,
only to look up “tagline” and find, much to my shame,

it has nil to do with hashtags or name tags or of title,
screen names, pen names, pet names or of this whole name recital!
It’s just a simple phrase of who I am and how I cope.
If I had done a little research, I would not be such a dope.
I could have looked it up in Google or in other online books.
Instead, I fear I’ve earned this tag:  “She writes before she looks!”

The Prompt: Tagline–Often our blogs have taglines.  But what if humans did, too?  What would your tagline be? (Would that I had researched this topic before writing.)

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/tagline/

My Brilliant Career: How I Found My Proper Place in Film and TV

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My Brilliant Career: How I Found My Proper Place in Film and TV

I got bitten by the film bug when I lived in L.A.
and did some sort of movie work most every single day.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, I always had a class.
The U.C.L.A. campus is where they came to pass.
I studied film production and took screenwriting, too;
but my class in documentaries was where I scored a coup.
We made a documentary.  In fact, I helped with two,
but I knew by the end of them I hadn’t found my place.
I simply didn’t have the balls to run the movie race.

Then I studied acting at an actor’s studio.
I really did the best at this, but still, it was “no go.”
When it came to trying out for parts, I didn’t have the nerve.
Once again my movie plans took another swerve.
I worked as an apprentice at a Hollywood agency.
There were so many candidates, yet they selected me.
They had me reading novels and sitting in on sessions;
and this was more exciting than my former classroom lessons.
I met some famous actors and tried to be real cool,
and writing out readers reports was easier than school,
but still I knew that in my heart it just wasn’t for me.
After all this time, I didn’t know who I should be.

I’d been in California for three years by then;
and although I hadn’t found my place, still I had the yen.
But I’d run out of money. It was time to find employment
that would involve a paycheck and not just my enjoyment!
I’d heard of a position where I thought that I could cope
as publicity assistant for none other than Bob Hope!
So I wound up in production: typing, phoning, organizing.
The  people in my Rolodex were frankly quite surprising.
I set up radio interviews with the famous Bob.
To read the National Enquirer was required in this job!
I went to filmings of the shows, sent out his Christmas gifts,
ran back and forth to N.B.C. and soothed some office rifts.

But all-in-all though it was fun to be there on the fringe,
to be completely honest, I was not a vital hinge.
And so when I was married, we decided to move north.
I left my life in filmdom and boldly sallied forth,
moving up to Santa Cruz to live by doing art–
never really finishing what I had tried to start.
I had adventures plenty and saw much of the scene
and I enjoy remembering everywhere I’ve been;
but all-in-all, the truth is that there’s one place I’m most groovy.
When it comes to all the skills that have to go into a movie,
the only place that doesn’t make me sort of tense
Is center row and half way back, in the audience!

The Prompt: The Show Must Go On–If you were involved in making a film, would you want to be the director, producer or lead actor?  You cannot be the writer.

Important note to all readers:  I’ve had four followers report that all my comments to them are going into their spam folder.  Would you please check your spam folders today and see if this is so and also check them tomorrow and tell me if this is still the case?

Also, my yesterday’s post would not link to the WordPress Daily Post Site, so if you haven’t read it and would like to, you can reach it through my blog.  Thanks, Judy

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/the-show-must-go-on/

Boy Toys

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Boy Toys

If I were a kid again,
I’d ask for an electric train,
erector sets and building blocks,
a cane to take along on walks
for fending off mean dogs and snakes,
a little oven that really bakes,
decoder rings and magic sets,
ant farms and bug-collecting nets,
a chart for looking up the stars,
paraffin and jelly jars.

The main thing that I’d want, you see,
are more forms of activity:
canvas, paints and wood or clay
to help me pass the time of day.
Instead, adventure came in books–
days spent in armchairs or in nooks
and crannies of our lawn or house,
curled up like a little mouse,
reading of the far-off places,
imaginary deeds and faces.

But I would rather have been doing–
drawing, cutting, building, gluing.
Instead I spent my days in dreams,
filling up my mind with schemes
of what I’d do when I was older–
taller, smarter, braver, bolder.
When we are young, if no one shows us,
takes the trouble to expose us
to the world of creativity,
we may never really see

all the ways that there might be
to set imagination free.
It was plain that an erector set
was not a toy I’d ever get.
With “Hello boys,” written on the front,
the message was both clear and blunt.
Girls did not ask for toys like this.
I had no inkling of what I’d miss.
Creativity was slow to dawn.
For years, I simply played the pawn,

doing what others asked of me,
waiting until I was free
to find a path I’d never seen
caught up in the small town machine.
When I was freed into the world,
a whole new universe unfurled
undivided into  girls or boys.
I finally learned to choose the toys
I really wanted: saws and pliers,
sheets of silver, silver wires,

drill presses and dapping blocks,
glues and solder guns and caulks.
I finally have the toys I want–
not toys to look at or to flaunt,
but toys to make things with and do
–things that help me build anew
each day into whate’er I wish:
a paper lamp, a silver fish.
My story boxes tell the story
of all those years in purgatory

before I learned what else there was
to make my life take off and buzz
with focus and activity–
to fill my days and set me free.
Somehow I just got off the track
before I made my own way back,
but If I did it over again,
I’d ask for that electric train.
Around the track, I’d watch it curl–
a perfect pastime for a girl!!!

The Prompt: Gimmee–Was there a special gift or toy you wanted as a child but never received? If so, what was it?If  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/gimme/
TWIST   Twist

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/what-a-twist/

Now, Voyager

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                                                          209a3984-32bf-375b-99f0-3a7c774a75b0      Now, Voyager

I love transformation movies: ugly ducklings turned beautiful, wallflowers who become the belle of the ball, villains turned saviors, shady ladies turned good girls, wild horses tamed.  If you can name one famous example of each from the movies, you win the prize, but for me the top entry in the first category would have to be Bette Davis in “Now Voyager.”

I’ve always been surprised that they haven’t done a remake of the film, but on the other hand, I don’t think they could probably equal the romantic pathos of the dowdy, overweight, aging and submissive spinster Bette Davis, living with her dominating mother, her one rebellion–cigarettes sneaked on the sly.  As her mother slips the noose of control ever tighter, Bette is “saved” by a nervous breakdown and a visiting psychiatrist who persuades her mother that she must be sent to a “rest farm” where the transformation takes place.

The resultant makeover, sea voyage, love affair and. . . but wait . . .  I’ll tell no more, for if you haven’t already seen the film, it is a must-see and I don’t want to issue further spoilers.  As a matter of fact, if you have seen it, we should both probably see it again.  The last time I saw it was in VHS form ordered from Amazon twelve years ago and yes, I still do have a VHS player hidden away somewhere in the highest reaches of my house.

At any rate, I have been diverted by the film review when my real intention was to talk about the title and plot itself and the significance it has in my own life; for I, too, seek a transformation.  Just once I would like to be that stunningly glamorous, thin mysterious stranger who turns all heads.  Yes, superficial, but I’ve always thought it would be fun to experience being that woman who could have any man in the place.

For too many years, books and movies seemed more real than the world around me.  My boring existence in a small town could not be all there was to life.  Surely, if it were, then all those exciting books and movies would never have been written, for where would they have come from except from the patterns of other places and other lives that contained more possibilities than a small dusty town in the middle of South Dakota prairie?

Yes, I did eventually voyage off into life and I found places more exciting–more in line with my own interests.  And although I had love affairs, married the man of my dreams, had careers I felt adequate at, traveled to exotic climes and never had trouble making friends, at age 67, I have still never been the femme fatale of my childish and teenage and middle-age dreams. I have made starts and even accomplished some of the goals.  I’ve lost weight, found the perfect haircut, bought more stylish clothes.  I’ve gone to clubs and danced unabashedly, joined internet introduction clubs, gone to singles parties. But still, at my best, there is some quality lacking in my makeup–some ineffable clue that I am available, sensual, smart and fun to be with.  What is it?  My entire life I have wondered why, with a few notable exceptions, I will invariably be the last woman at the table asked to dance. For years I believed it was because of my weight and at present that may be so, but even at my skinniest, there was some signal I sent out that made me unapproachable or unappealing or uncharismatic to most men, and as old and wise and introspective and analytical as I have become in my middle-to-old age, I do not know what it is.

Have you ever known someone who is doing something wrong and who just can’t get it right?  Everyone knows what it is but no one tells them, for fear of hurting their feelings.  And so they go on in life, never quite getting what they want and not having a clue why that is.  Why don’t we just tell each other?  It would be so much simpler.  But, the truth is that we probably would not listen even if our friends told us.  We would find excuses. We would not believe them, no matter how many people told us the same thing, because there seems to be some radar causing us to become who we are–strengths, talents and faults all combined.

A complete stranger sitting next to me at a banquet once said to me, “You don’t need that!” when I reached for the dessert held out to me by the waiter.  I was astonished, insulted, irate.  I wanted to take two desserts and put the bastard in his place! But the truth was, maybe he was that one person in my life who decided to tell me the truth.

Today when I got up to let the dogs out and give them their morning meal, I saw the dusty blistered card of diet pills on the kitchen island.  I broke one off and swallowed it with a long drink of water.  Perhaps I’ll start again that journey towards sylphdom.  I’ll lose dress sizes, get a facelift to deal with the resultant sags and wrinkles, fit into sexier clothes, go back on OkCupid, meet another stranger grown familiar through words over the internet.  Maybe it’s still not too late to be an object of desire. Or, perhaps I’ll just write about it.

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/642826/Now-Voyager-Movie-Clip-I-Met-A-Doctor-In-Rio.html

The Prompt:Silver Screen–Take a quote from your favorite movie — there’s the title of your post. Now, write!  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/silver-screen/

Strangely enough, this post also ended up answering today’s prompt so I’m posting it there as well: But No Cigar–Tell us about a time things came this close to working out… but didn’t. What happened next? Would you like the chance to try again, or are you happy with how things eventually worked out? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/but-no-cigar/