“Half a Heart” detail of mixed media wall sculpture by jdb (Wood, moss, shells and assorted dried beach scrub.)
Half a Love Story
Lately, when it comes to kissing
something seems to have gone missing;
for if the kissing rules are heeded,
it’s clear two pairs of lips are needed.
I have the half that’s labeled “me.”
I only lack the one called “he.”
So when it comes to birds and bees,
I must rely on memories!
The one-word prompt today was “Incomplete.”
In addition to being a fine writer, Denise Brown is an accomplished drummer and vocalist who plays several gigs weekly around La Manzanilla–most frequently at Palapa Joe’s. More information about her playing schedule is given after the poem.
La Manzanilla Tourist
…visitors are slightly different
How can you tell a tourist is aqui
Camera in hand bumping into me
Asking poor Lydia for plain white bread
Always looking up never ahead
Laying on the beach in all shades of red
Swimming in water most of us dread
How can you tell a tourist at the bar
Three margaritas goes way too far
You can’t drink like that in the heat of the day
They don’t like what they hear when they hear what I say
Come morning they rise looking so ghastly
Straight to the bano stepping so fastly
And out of the bathroom appearing quite ghostly
They say it’s the street food. I say it’s probably tequila (mostly.)
How can you tell a tourist is aqui
Just look around it’s no mystery.
Denise will play a final gig with Dave and Sally next Thursday, Feb. 25. She also plays there with the Lounge Lizards on Fridays and will play with Bindu Gross at artis gallery at an event that begins at 4pm on Feb 24.
Denise Brown
My Karma Ran Over My Dogma
This picture was taken two sunsets ago from the porch of the beach house I’ve rented in La Manzanilla, Mexico. Not a bit of color editing has been done.
She felt the small disk glance off the steering wheel and land on her lap as they jolted over the rutted dirt road. She picked it off her leg before it was jostled off and onto the gray carpet covered with dirt, gravel and slips of paper containing quickly-scribbled lines of inspiration for future poems. Quickly, she glanced at the words printed on its front. “My karma ran over my dogma.” What did it mean, this button she now stabbed back into the sun flap over the steering wheel of her dusty van?
She had thought it hilarious when she saw it pinned to the poetry sweater of the stranger at the reading at the L.A. coffee shop almost twenty years ago, and now here she was, driving eleven young men, one young woman and a puppet theater complete with sound system and fifty 3/4 scale puppets to a tiny village on the other side of the largest lake in Mexico.
This simple button had led her to this and now the man who wore it for every poetry reading they’d attended for 15 years was fulfilling his karma on another plane while she fulfilled her own in the life she’d planned out for him on this one. So had this entire adventure of living in Mexico simply not been part of his karma, or was karma such an intricate tapestry that it was impossible to untangle yours from that of those near and dear and even strangers met in passing?
Surely, the unbelievable interplay of serendipity was more than coincidence. Some force that is called karma by some, fate or synchronicity by others, and God, Allah or The Great Spirit by others, may be what determined who walked into your life; but it was up to you to decide whom you let walk away, whom you let stay, or whom you refused to let go.
“The school is here, Judy,” said Eduardo, as he pointed to a dull gray building much-enlivened by a huge mural no doubt painted by the students themselves. She pulled up in front of the school and Isidro, Jose Luis, Mario, Roberto and the other young men who formed the membership of the loosely-jointed cultural council of her own small pueblo started to assist the husband and wife team who constituted the entire backup cast of the puppet theater to unload their equipment. When their own truck had broken down enroute on the other side of the lake, villagers had told them to call the leader of this young band of artists, poets and dancers, and inevitably, she had been the one they called. How many times had she proven to be their backup player when plans, money or a vehicle had been needed to further their plans for the cultural enrichment of their small town?
Here in this life she had fashioned to be free of the regulation of a job, applications, shows, schedules, boards of directors, groups, clubs and all of the “have to’s” of her former life, she had not resisted the charms of synchronicity and so had allowed herself to be pulled into the slow current of life in Mexico that, although it was not free of obligation–to family, friends, community–was nonetheless contingent on another sort of energy not so dependent upon schedules or clocks or calendars. Here things happened because they happened and you were drawn into them because you were present or known or because you had been willing to be drawn in in the past and so were known to be someone open to chance and willing to play along in this great jigsaw puzzle known as Mexico.
She had planned it all out. Her husband, sixteen years older than she, was wearing out fast, she could see. They would move to Mexico to live simply so he could retire. They found the town, bought the house, sold most of their worldly goods and packed their van. It was only then that they’d received the results for his final checkup before they hit the road. Cancer. He’d lived three weeks. She dealt with what needed to be dealt with and hit the road for Mexico. Who knows, from day to day, whether we are part of someone else’s karma or whether they are part of ours?
The Prompt: Karma Chameleon–Reincarnation: do you believe in it?
Blog-out
Dark genius sits there pondering and staring at the screen.
His features in reflected light glow a sickly green.
He works his cyber screwdriver slightly to the right.
His only tool––the keyboard––is his weapon in this fight
…………………………………………………………as every blog on WordPress skews slightly all at once.
He’ll show his third grade teacher for calling him a dunce!
He tugs a little here and there, adjusting cyber screws.
And just for fun, he adds a few zeroes to my views.
He knows that I am watching and he senses my excitement.
He chuckles that my false success has been at his incitement.
Then he shuts down the internet––Facebook, WordPress, Twitter.
and my seconds of great happiness turn just as quickly bitter.
Bloggers the world over are turned back onto themselves.
Photos trapped in media files or stacking up on shelves.
No place to reach out for a friend for shut-ins who, once freed
to roam a universe of blogs now sit in dire need
of someone just to talk to. To realize they are there.
They sit staring at their screens, though all of them are bare.
Week after week we wait for our deliverance from this blight.
We miss the internet all day, and even more at night.
I’m thinking about former friends, now lost across the miles,
tripping over poetry surrounding me in piles,
thirsting after comments about every brand new thought.
Having no fast outlet, my brain feels like it’s caught.
Bound up in old creations that have no place to go,
with no easy outlet, the thoughts are coming slow.
Jammed up creativity is worse than constipation,
for writing with no readers is just mental masturbation.
It’s true that I have friends to call and writers’ groups as well.
But they have not the patience to hear all I have to tell.
A blog gives me an avenue to fill out a whole world
with thoughts that for a lifetime, I’ve kept inside, tightly furled.
For those of us who always have felt slightly alone,
the Interweb has seemed a placed created to atone.
In the darkened hours when others are asleep,
we live that midnight life we’ve kept within us, buried deep.
History moves ever onward despite glacier, war or flood.
We see it trailed behind us in footprints etched in blood.
So we’ll survive the cyber war when it comes to pass
by spending more time with our friends, calmly smoking grass
or sharing drinks at Starbucks, devoid of texts or apps,
but we’ll miss our midnight family filling in the gaps.
The prompt: Life after Blogs– Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/life-after-blogs/
Okay, I must add a comment here, where everyone can see it. See that fifth line in the first stanza, where the line is skewed over to the right? WordPress doesn’t let you do that. Every time I put spaces in to make that happen, they erased them. So, as usual, I prevailed upon my tech expert/volunteer co-blog-administrator okcforgottenman to find a solution. As you can see above, he found one and I’m not surprised. What I am surprised about is his solution, that was nothing short of genius! His solution was to put in a line of periods in front of the line until it was out where I wanted it and then to CHANGE THE COLOR OF JUST THOSE PERIODS TO WHITE!!!! Tell me that isn’t genius.
Kicking the Bucket
I do not like the bucket list, in fact I just abhor it
even though I know the masses tend to just adore it.
Anything where many rush to jump onto a wagon,
makes my skin crawl and alerts my impulse to start gaggin’.
I like originality in labeling my wants.
I do not even like to visit trendy restaurants.
And so to ask me to record my bucket list for you,
let alone prioritize, choosing one or two
to brag about as though the label “bucket list” is clever,
makes me want to find a guillotine and pull the lever!
I have no list of what I want to do before I go.
I only have the wish to still maintain the status quo
by staying healthy and alert and doing every day
precisely what I want to as I make my way
toward the final hour and toward my final minute.
I simply want to live my life with me securely in it!
Sound of mind and active, engaged with other folks
without becoming fodder for younger people’s jokes.
Not the fogie sitting safely in her lair
bibbed and drugged and senile in the pen of elder care.
I want to end my time on earth devoid of tear or sigh
sitting at a table drinking rum and eating pie!!!
The Prompt: What is the eleventh item on your bucket list?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/kick-it/
After Vespers
I arrived home with much ado,
removed a small stone from my shoe,
took off my girdle, straightened my hat,
smoothed my gloves and kissed the cat!
I believe in proper things––
all the joys good breeding brings.
I do not spit, smoke weed or curse.
I carry breath mints in my purse.
I go to church. I tithe and pray.
I brush my teeth three times a day.
But when I went to watch TV,
I found a strange sight greeting me,
for there sitting upon my couch,
next to my little cat treat pouch,
were two small beings––a her and he––
the lady perched on the fellow’s knee.
They both looked up with cool aplomb
as though they hadn’t dropped a bomb
appearing with no invitation.
What’s more, to my great perturbation,
balanced on the lady’s knee
was the chocolate cake I’d meant for me!!!
She took a bite and gave him one,
then turned to me when she was done,
addressing me, though we’d not met.
(I mean, just how rude could one get?)
And what she said in a haughty tone,
perched upon her human throne?
“I’m afraid this cake is rather dry.
I wonder, have you any pie?”
I’ll tell you no more of this story,
for after that, things just got gory.
My opening words would seem most pale
compared to the ending of my tale.
Suffice it then for me to say
the uninvited didn’t stay.
Afterwards, my gloves came off.
I cleared my throat and gave a cough.
I scraped the cake crumbs in the sink,
mixed myself a little drink,
closed the drapes, unplugged the phone
and stretched out on my couch––alone.
As I settled down to Downton Abbey,
I was feeling way less crabby.
Real glad I hid the pie, y’all,
because I sat and ate it all!!!
The Prompt: Unexpected Guests. You walk into your home to find a couple you don’t know sitting in your living room, eating a slice of cake. Tell us what happens next. What a hilarious prompt! I loved writing this one.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/unexpected-guests/
So, Who’s Laughing?
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Too Soon?” Can anything be funny, or are some things off limits?
I think some things are definitely off-limits. Child molestation, child abuse and animal abuse, for instance. Racial jokes, jokes about physical infirmity and weight, jokes about appearance, starvation, torture, atrocities against women–none are on my list of what should be joked about.
Some types of humor that would be totally unacceptable to me, however, seem to gain acceptance according to the person who tells the joke. If you are telling it about yourself and a group you belong to, jokes that would not be acceptable told by someone else, suddenly win acceptance. But I can think of no situation where a joke about child molestation, child abuse or animal abuse would be in the least bit acceptable!
The Year I Gave Up Childish Things
At the age of sixty-eight,
I’ve no wish to equivocate.
Is there a time when childhood ends?
When we give up playful friends?
Cease to lie in grass and dream?
Drink our coffee without cream?
Always do what’s reasonable
in order to avoid life’s trouble?
Say no to candy and dessert?
Cease to giggle, joke and flirt?
If so, I can’t remember mine.
Perhaps when I am sixty-nine!
The prompt: Write about a defining moment in your life when you were forced to grow up in an instant (or a series of instants).https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/when-childhood-ends/
The Old and Unrested
The old and unrested return to their beds,
propping their pillows under their heads.
Pulling their blankets up to their ears,
they let up on the gas and go into low gears.
Setting their brandies or porters or gins
on their bedside tables, they settle their chins
upon their chests and watch some TV
on laptops that sit where their boobs used to be.
Life is confusing when you are too near it,
especially ’cause it is so damn hard to hear it.
Then when you’re alone, it’s entirely too loud.
These neighborhood noises should not be allowed!
They turn up the volume to drown out the noise
of the car alarms, weed eaters and screaming boys.
They lie all morning, secure in their beds.
Life is much easier lived in their heads!
Before the protests start to roll in, I have to say that this is meant in fun. I was feeling contrary In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Young and the Rested:” When was the last time you felt truly rejuvenated and energized? What made you feel that way?
No. I never ever drink gin in the morning. Hardly ever.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 