Empty Datebook
Another lonely Saturday. The singles are all vexed—
a world of restless wallflowers, feeling they’re surely hexed.
If I may be candid, Corona’s not at fault.
You’re not some precious treasure, sealed up in a vault.
If we did our homework, we’d know the truth of it.
You didn’t have that many dates before the virus hit!
Prompts today are Saturday, Candid, Lonely, Vex and Homework.
Kissing Lessons
How you structure your kisses is boringly normal.
Your lips are too tight and your stance is too formal.
Your lips are all dry and your beard like a cactus.
If you’d like to get anywhere, you’d better practice.
In girl’s locker room buzz, I’ve heard it expressed
you’re least likely to see any female undressed.
You’ve been tagged a poor lover—unexpressive and rigid.
If you were a woman, they’d label you frigid.
The shower wall validates you’re a cold fish,
but perhaps I could help you with this if you wish.
A night on the town with a few margaritas,
watching the tango moves of senoritas.
Then a few shooters and you will be ready
to learn how to render your “kissee” unsteady.
Untense your lip muscles. Relax each shoulder.
As you relax more, your kiss will grow bolder.
Look into her eyes when you are not kissing.
Give her time to regret what she has been missing.
If your kiss seems successful, go up one more rung
and carefully dare to try out some tongue.
No slurping and sucking. She isn’t a sucker.
Try to instill some class in your pucker.
Be soft and be hard, alternating the two,
and you won’t need me to tell you how to woo!
Prompts for today are normal, express, tagged, validate and structure.
Yoga and Chocolate Chip Cookies in a Time of Shelter in Place
I stands alone at stiff attention, cooking to release her tension.
S does curls to contradict her tendency toward getting thicker.
O shows effects of chocolate chips on her tummy and her hips.
L just sits there in her hut trying to compress her butt.
A Hands on knees, head on floor, “A” vows that she will binge no more.
T spreads her wings but cannot fly. “Eating in Place” the reason why.
I folds her wings tight by her side.
O eats more cookies, growing wide.
N sits on butt in yoga pose.
Each hand on floor behind her goes,
feet raised up, point to the sky,
resisting the effects of pie
on tummy, waist and hips and thigh.
For NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 23, the prompt was: “to write a poem about a particular letter of the alphabet, or perhaps, the letters that form a short word. Think about the shape of the letter(s), and use that as the take-off point for your poem.”
The Letter “C”
Here’s to the letter “C” that marks what is in the middle.
Somewhere between “A” and “F,” it has been known to fiddle.
While “A” studies most diligently, “C” is bound to shirk.
It has a certain phobia regarding too much work.
It’s head and shoulders above “F” and far better than “D.”
Nobody ever flunked a course by maintaining a “C.”
And yet it calls no sound its own. It’s either “K” or “S.”
At birthday time, we’re given kake and winning brings suksess.
We’re stopped dead in our trases. When we’re kissed, it’s a karess.
Why “C” has no sound of its own, not one of us kan guess.
When the sirkus komes to town, it’s happened onse or twise
that the krokodiles eskape. It isn’t very nise.
Townfolks run and skurry—skared as they kan be,
for katastrophes kan happen when krokodiles run free.
It isn’t too konvenient, as you kan klearly see
to be a kurly letter the likes of letter “C”
that’s firmly in the middle, with no sound of its own.
Does “C” dream of being “S” when it’s fully grown?
For NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 23, the prompt was:
“to write a poem about a particular letter of the alphabet, or perhaps, the letters that form a short word. Think about the shape of the letter(s), and use that as the take-off point for your poem. ”
While I’m thinking of a new letter poem, I’m publishing this reblog of one I wrote that meets the prompt two years ago. As you ponder “C,” I’ll be Pondering the Possibilities of the Perfect other alPhabetic subject–maybe “P.”
Morrie
He displays such fierce bravado, barking at the man
who dares to try approach me. He’ll bite him if he can.
If he does not get his nuance, perhaps he’ll get his grasping.
If he can’t heed the exposed teeth, perhaps he’ll get their clasping.
If that human could but read the globes of Morrie’s widening eyes,
he’d need no communication in any other guise
from this dog that has decided he is his only rival
for his mistress’s affection. Every time, there’s a revival
of his barking and his lunging should this man dare approach me.
It’s as though he fears he’s coming with intentions to come poach me.
With everybody else, he is a charmer through-and-through.
He cannot wait to make a friend of anyone who’s new.
His emotions are a crazy-quilt of trying hard to please—
of greeting you with ball in mouth and jumping at your knees.
He cannot wait for you to sit to jump up on your lap
and insists on long ear rubbings before he takes a nap.
He’s every visitor’s best friend. Greets strangers on the beach,
and will bring a ball to anyone he finds who’s within reach.
Never will he wear out when chasing after balls.
He goes to bed when I demand and answers all my calls.
But why he feels my gardener of nineteen years duration
is a threat to me, and such a threatening aberration
that he flies to my defense whenever he is near,
is a mystery that I’ve not solved, and never will, I fear.
Prompt words today are bravado, globe, quilt, nuance and grasping.
Cyber Catastrophes
Irritated with your friend
and caring not whom you offend,
after you’ve had a bit to drink,
decide to tell her what you think?
Computer keyboard there in sight,
so you decide it’s time to write
an email, filled with words that rend.
You reel them off and click on “send.”
I cannot stress strongly enough
how much you’ll rue your rude rebuff.
It takes long years to make a friend
but one cruel quip for trust to end.
It’s hard to choke back how we feel,
but arguments on even keel
work better than a sharp retort
after you have had a snort.
So this is the advice I’d give.
It’s easier to just forgive
Than to retract one angry word
after it is seen or heard.
If you can’t say something nice,
best you take this sage advice.
Before you go and leap on it,
grab a pillow and sleep on it.
For day 22 of NaPoWriMo 2020, we are to create a poem that reflects a well-known idiom. Mine is one my mother used to frequently say, “If you can’t say something nice, it’s best to say nothing at all.”
Leavings
Do I walk the long kilometers of beach
to look for the next shell
or stand stable, like that woman
casting and recasting her hook,
patiently waiting to pull her world in to her?
I’m gathering things
that I’ll collect into stories–
pinning them down to use like words.
Nothing wrong in finding meaning
through a piece of driftwood, a stone or shell.
Objects are only things
we cast our minds against
like images against a screen—
a shadow glimpsed crossing a window shade.
My shadow cast in front of me
is such a different thing
from one I cast behind.
In the first, I am constantly hurrying
to catch up to what I’ll never catch up to.
In the other, I am leaving behind
what I can only keep by walking away from it.
I take this place along with me in clear images–
not as they were, but as my mind has cast them;
so every picture taken of the same moment is different,
each of us seeing it through our unique lens.
We cast these things in bronze or silver-gelatin,
stone, clay or poetry.
A grandma holds out pictures of her children
and her grandchildren. See? Her life’s work.
And then this and this, without further effort on her part.
I share stories of children I don’t know
who gently unwind fishing line from a struggling gull,
of a minefield of jellyfish found on the beach
or other treasures nestled in a pile of kelp.
I find my world in both these findings and departings—
the leaving each morning to go in search of them
the part I find most exhilarating,
perhaps teaching this woman
of the death-themed night-terrors
not to worry,
that leaving is just a new adventure.
People forget and let me slip away
when I would have held on, given any encouragement,
yet fingers, letting go,
flex for that next discovered treasure.
Life is all of us letting go constantly—
taking that next step away from and to.
A white shell. I have left it there
turned over to the brown side,
so someone else can discover it, too.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to take a walk and collect objects to turn into a poem.
Solitary Wanderings While Listening to Kottke on Echo
I’m feeling rather whimsical in spite of guidelines given.
Somehow I can’t remain in the direction I’ve been driven.
I have to hitchhike elsewhere to somewhere I have chosen.
When I go where I’m told to go, I wind up slightly frozen.
I’m sensitive to music. Leo Kottke’s playing now.
Alexa found him for me, though I do not know quite how.
I needed background music that would not completely bore me,
so I gave her directions to play some Leo for me.
Then, feeling sort of friendly, and a little low,
when I asked her favorite music, thinking that she would not know,
she said, “Same as most people, it depends on how I’m feeling.”
With “Sweet Emotions” playing, her comment sent me reeling.
Since even cyber entities seem to have emotions,
I need to be more sensitive in my directive notions.
The afternoon is waning and my thoughts are prone to wander.
I wonder what they thought of as they rambled over yonder?
I guess I’ll never know as I am onto the next thought.
That’s why I never do these poems exactly as I ought!!
Prompt words today are whimsical, guidelines, sensitive, music.
A Requiem for Film Cameras
I’m sure not a single person’s debating
the merits of digital shots over waiting
a week to see whether the shots that you took
would be found to have merit or found to be crook,
but what is it digital cameras have not
that came with each new role of film that you bought?
Those nifty film canisters everyone got
that were handy for bobby pins, just right for pot,
that held your spare change and were toys for the cat?
Digital cameras have nothing like that!
They held rolls of stamps back when folks still wrote letters,
put sponges in others and they were stamp wetters.
The uses of film canisters knew no bonds.
We’d roll them down sidewalks and float them in ponds.
They’d serve as small coffins for dead flies we’d bury
and kept safe our lost teeth until the tooth fairy
whisked them away in trade for a coin.
(Different rates for each one she’d purloin.)
A dime for an eye tooth and quarters for molars.
They formed doll house tables and substitute rollers
for sisters to use in their ratted up hair.
Who could ever discover them there?
But now that film cameras are all passé,
children, I’m sure, have become more blasé.
They need Barbie Doll suites with push sofas and chairs,
hot curling wands to curl up their hairs,
Technical toys that move on their own,
tooth fairy pouches, intricately sewn.
But what do they use to roll down the bannister
now that technology’s banned the film cannister?
For NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 17 We are to write a poem about an obsolete bit of technology.
Illustration by King Lip on Unsplash, Used with permission
Love’s Allusions
I fear that my Adonis became an Achille’s heel.
His charms were an illusion. He wasn’t the real deal.
His bombastic bearing was one I could not bear.
I plumbed his deepest psyche and found it wasn’t there.
His attempts to woo and win me were perfectly rehearsed,
We were Samson and Delilah, but the ending was reversed!
I was the one who lost my head. Thank god it was not literal,
for when he sought to wield his sword, his target was just clitoral.
My romantic Odysseys give precious little peace.
At times I’ve felt like Jason, seeking the Golden Fleece.
A female Don Quixote, with endless optimism,
If I’d met Dr. Jekyll, I’d have overlooked the schism.
I’ve felt passion ignited via heroes from the telly,
but then found out that my Clark Kent turned into Machiavelli!
My Bat Man became a vampire, which was most disillusioning.
So at least for the present, I swear off romantic fusioning!
I have a feeling that the prompt was meant to be about the illusions of life, but perhaps not, and since the prompt said “life’s allusions,” I took them literally and tried to fit in as many allusions from legend and literature as possible. The allusions are presented in boldface. The theme, however, dealt with my romantic illusions and the rest of today’s prompt words were fit in as well. Prompts for today were: life’s allusions, bombastic, precious, ignite and present.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 