Reincarnation
Two things of value that are fleeting––
life and love both set hearts beating.
Both sadly lost by types of cheating:
one by libido overheating,
the other just by unwise eating.
Once over, though, both bear repeating.
The prompt today is “temporary.”
Small Fry
We were small fry in a grown up world,
our dresses starched, our hair tight-curled
on a candlestick by mothers
who scrubbed the faces of small brothers
with fingers they had spit upon
to purge the dirt they’d lit upon.
We had no choice in any of this.
Nor in the neighbor lady’s kiss.
Sour and moldy though she might smell,
we pretended we loved it well.
So went the life in days gone by
so long as you were just small fry.
Now children pose for selfies and diss
the thought of an old lady’s kiss.
They refuse to run through traces.
Don’t allow spit-scrubbed-at faces.
Skirts go unstarched, hair goes uncurled
now that children rule the world!
Fry is the WP prompt today.
Regional Differences
They joked about their names. His name was Johnnie, she was Frankie.
It’s true that she was beautiful, he handsome, tall and lanky.
He was a genteel southern boy, while she was born a yankee.
Every time she looked at him, her heart went a bit wanky,
but the slowness of his courtship rites was making her most cranky.
For though she appeared shy, at heart she was a trifle skanky.
As he contemplated holding hands, she dreamed of hanky panky!
The prompt word today is cranky.
Remember when the Saturday Evening Post had a feature entitled “The Perfect Squelch” that featured a different perfect comeback every issue? Well, then, you must be as old as I am.
Spare Tire
My blind date worked out most sublimely.
First of all, it was most timely,
for my ex had told me he
would be there with another she.
I waltzed in regally well-armed
with date both handsome, rich and charmed.
His tux immaculate, his dental
work just out-shined by his mental
acumen. He quoted Proust!
So when my ex came up to roost
on a chair next to the mirror where
I was perusing my form and hair
and said we made a lovely pair;
I answered, “Him? He’s just a spare.”
He poked my middle, then tweaked my nose.
“Well then, when your spare tire blows,
they’ll come in handy, all those guys.
Or, you could simply exercise.”
“Timely” is the prompt word today.
Work WeekMonday
The day’s become unravelled. The night’s begun to fall,
yet I’ve not accomplished anything. I’ve done nothing at all
except cooking a curry and writing several drafts
of poems still uncompleted–they’re bobbing here like rafts
afloat upon my consciousness but have nowhere to go.
The words all came so quickly, but their gelling has come slow.
They want to group together in concrete communities,
but instead they’re fluttering like moths and landing where they please.
Tuesday
I’m a syllable collector, a hoarder of each word
without a purpose for them. It’s come to be absurd.
Verbs are piled up on shelves, adjectives under foot.
The gerunds hang like spiderwebs. I have no place to put
The adverbs and the articles. They leak out of my head.
When I nudge them into lumpy piles, they hide beneath the bed.
I’m going to have a housecleaning of consonants and vowels.
Collect them up in buckets and wipe them up with towels.
Wednesday
I’ll sort out all the lovely words. The ones I like, I’ll hoard,
then pile the others in tidy stacks and tie them up in cord.
I’ll keep the good ones by my desk to sort through when they’re needed.
Bad words go in the basement, unsorted and unheeded.
Then I’ll have a yard sale of unused words like “pickle”
and sell them in unsorted lots—a handful for a nickel.
Then perhaps I can make room for words more orderly
that come to me in sentences that make more sense to me.
Thursday
My muse is hyperactive, I need to tame her down.
Instead of resting close to me, she runs all over town
collecting words at random— funky words like “phat”—
so when I really need her, I don’t know where she’s at.
Then when I am sleeping, she unloads word after word
until there’s no room left for them. It has become absurd.
They’re piling up around me. They’ve reached my nose and ear.
I cannot swim my way through them. I’m smothering, I fear.
Friday
That’s why I’m calling poets, every novelist or bard
to have a drive-by of my house and stop here at my yard.
Bring a bucket and a rake. Take all the words you please,
for now they’re raining down like leaves falling from my trees.
Just gather them in armloads. I won’t find it queer.
Better bring a wheelbarrow if you cannot park near.
You do not need to pay for them. Today they’re yours for free.
If you don’t help I fear that words will be the end of me!
Saturday
YARD SALE
Take what you wish. Please do not disturb occupant.
P.S. If you’d like to take any words or phrases or lines from this poem to prompt your own poem, please do. But please, please send your poem as a comment here–or send a link.
The prompt today was unravel. The link to NaPoWriMo Day 11 is HERE.
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The prompt word today was purple.
Take Ordinary Caution
As pallbearer for my friend Larry,
I heard these deaths were ordinary
and if a fellow wished to parry
his own demise, he should be wary
of our town apothecary.
For each he saves, there’s one they bury.
That is why I’m sorta wary,
and why I find his sign so scary
and ironically cautionary
when I read it’s “Cash and Carry.”
The prompt word today was ordinary.
Back Seat Driver
You are a lovely woman, Kate—
enough to cause my breath to bate,
enough to stun and addlepate—
but if we stop to ruminate
each time we reach another gate,
it is my fear that we’ll be late.
Why not let me cogitate
when forward progress to abate?
If necessary, I vow to wait
as we wage a long debate
on whether to go left or straight
as we approach the interstate,
but each time you excoriate,
criticise or agitate
for route changes, I rue my fate
the day I set up this blind date!!!
From: Your very competent driver, Nate
The prompt today was ruminate.
Mame
Compose a ballad for Auntie Mame,
famous of body and of name,
and make the music slow and sad
as we revere the moves she had;
for all those parts she chose to wiggle
eventually began to jiggle.
Those shocking movements that won her fame
were finally ones she had to tame,
and all the fellows who once came
to see her at her sexy game
seem to have vanished, to have flown
once her parts moved on their own.
No matter that she lived by art—
how wide her fame, how big her heart—
once revered parts began to swing,
I fear her peeping Toms took wing.
What wives saw as depravity,
I fear she lost to gravity.
Yet years that held her in their sway
could not take her spirit away.
In some assisted living facility,
she still displays agility.
Her movements, true, may be much slower
and certain displayed parts much lower.
Her scarves are larger and tightly wrapped
where once they fluttered and they flapped,
but still admirers hoot and holler
and grace her g string with a dollar.
So sing her praises far and wide.
She’s still the tart she was inside.
The prompt was jiggle.
Are you possibly aware
from your vantage over there,
so well-shod and so well-clad,
that you are overdressed a tad?
In fact, it would be hard for you
no matter what garment or shoe
you might have chosen to wear instead.
I fear that you have been misled.
You’d still be overdressed, you see—
you’re in a nudist colony!
The prompt today was “aware.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 