Category Archives: poems

Confessions of a Line-Crasher.

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Confessions of a Line-Crasher 

Patience is not my forte. I put it on a shelf
and withdraw my impatience. It better suits myself.
I do not enjoy waiting for my turn in a store,
and bank lines make me want to barrel for the door.
I will not take a number when going out to dine.
I do not get my jollies from standing in a line.
Pharmacies and waiting rooms are simply not for me.
Let alone the airport queues when I’ve a need to pee.
If patience is a virtue, I fear I’ve flunked the test,
I think it is my birthright to go before the rest!!!

 

The prompt today was patience.

Lest the Love Affair End Too Soon

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Lest the Love Affair End Too Soon

He’s so suave, my boyfriend Jesse—
trimmed and polished and so dressy—
that no one would ever guess he
lives in rooms so doggone messy.
Ties draped over backs of chairs,
spare shoes tumbling down the stairs,
underwear in places where
you wouldn’t think to find a pair
of  crumpled socks or BVDs.
Things piled wherever he might please.

Pizza boxes you’re sure to see
on the divan or Smart TV.
Pockets emptied where he wishes—
piles of coins in dirty dishes.
He’s smooth and debonair, for sure.
I cannot question his allure.
Ladies fawn on him,  and flirts
flutter eyelids, swish their skirts.
He’s charming and I don’t dispute
that he is terminally cute.

All those praises, I’d repeat,
but I would never say he’s neat!!!
So if you must, if you’ve the whim,
make a pass. Make off with him.
Hold hands in front of movie screens,
make love in cabs or limousines.
Meet him any place he chooses—
ski weekends, romantic cruises.
Go to Vail, Paris or Rome.
Just don’t let him take you home!

 

The prompt today is messy.

The Gatherers

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The Gatherers

We gather a new world
every time
as we collect marks
in  black lines
on white paper,
and we have the power
of each world
that we pull around us.

I might have called this poem
“Utter Sovereignty,”
but I did not, for rulers are
sad folks, and lonely.

We are the gatherers and so
we draw to us what we need
and are never alone.
There is nothing we lack for
in this storehouse where
the shelves hold words,
the air is heavy with ideas
and the walls are covered
by imagination.

We gather words to set them free again.
This is the pattern of the world
that no one has ever broken.

Everything flying apart,
every moment of the day,
and all of us
gathering
it back together
again.

 

 

This is a rewrite of a poem written four years ago.  The prompt word today is imagination.

Can’t Resist

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Vendor Bender

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Rapidly, the handmade Mexican handicrafts sold by beach vendors are being replaced by cheaply-made Chinese duplicates. I refuse to be a party to this destruction of native craftsmen and artists, so this year for the first time, I have not bought. Today, however, when this hawker walked by my porch, barely bothering to pitch his wares, I called out to him. I’d been to the Michoacan village that was devoted to creating the craft he was selling, and what can I say? I bought two–one for me, and one for my friend Marjorie Pauline, who actually only had to borrow 200 pesos. What was it that made me break my resolve?

Vendor Bender

What bought I on the beach today, What could I not resist?
What souvenir of  painted clay, what bauble for my wrist?
Though I have sworn no more to buy, why have I changed my mind?
Have I found a memento of a more novel kind?

The vendor started to walk by. I had to yell “How much?”
And within a minute, he had me in his clutch.
The price was right and  he possessed the perfect pitch to sell.
He serenaded me and oh,  he did it very well.

It mattered not that I had two others of its kind
waiting for me in my home, for  it was such a find!
I bought one, and my friend did, too. She knew not how to play it.
But I was complicit.  I did nothing to allay it.

I have no yachts or penthouses.  I have no fancy cars.
But although I rarely play, I now have three guitars!!!

 

Strums
The guitar vendor serenading us.
Marjorie Pauline with her mini guitar treasure. She doesn’t know how to play!

Click on photos to enlarge.

You can read about the remarkable village where these guitars are made HERE.

Mnemonic Phonics

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Mnemonic Phonics

Babies use clues amniotic
to deal with stimuli chaotic,
but later, memory gets thick.
In short,  it’s anything but quick.

Age slows us down and trims our wick,
fogs our recall,  slows our pick.
So I resort to many a trick
to give my mind a little kick.

This loss of memory’s demonic
and leads to fits most histrionic,
so I depend on clues mnemonic
for memory that’s supersonic:

(Can you guess what the below mnemonic devices help me to remember?)

Neither leisured foreigner
seized or forfeited the weird heights.

Every good boy does fine.
Good boys do fine always.

My very excellent mother just spewed up nine plums.

How about you?  What mnemonic devices do you use?

 

The prompt word is mnemonic.

Morning Ritual

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Morning Ritual

One pill, two pills, three pills four.
Five and six complete the score.
Then one rolls off onto the floor,
but knees are stiff and back is sore,
reclaiming it a painful chore,
so you just open up the drawer
and select one capsule more.
Swallowing pills is such a bore.
Can you remember what each is for?

 

Behaving French

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Version 3

Behaving French

Today I find it suitable
to practice my inscrutable.
It’s part of my act femme fatale
that men can’t fathom me at all.

They’re wiles my mother taught to me
back when I was only three,
and I admit it’s served me well
putting bon vivants through hell.

When situations new astound me,
I wrap my femme fatale around me.
I use it everywhere I go,
’cause it’s the only French I know!

The prompt today is inscrutable.

Happy Ending

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Happy Ending

He was a follower, a grunt
who married a lass dominant.
She led, he followed in their dance.
He wore an apron, she the pants.
It was a perfect unity
if folks had only let them be;
but, alas, the other blokes
had to make the usual jokes.

They called him pussy-whipped and meek—
berated him as timid, weak—
and so, simply to please his mates,
to end their jeering cruel debates,
he went against his true love’s wishes
and refused to do the dishes.

The facts, there’s no need to imbue.
Both words and dinner plates, they flew.
He could not match her swift invective
of ways in which he was defective,
and so he simply stood and waited
until her fury was abated,
then asked this cyclone he had wed
if she would like to go to bed.

Their skirmish ended in romance.
He shed his apron, she her pants.
A worn-out lover well-behooves
a meeker husband in his moves,
and nothing like a little tiff
to make a timid fellow stiff.
Now that her angst had flared and passed,
he got to be on top, at last.

The prompt today is dominant.

Listless

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Listless

I don’t have any strategy, I don’t have any plan—
no recipes for muffins, no plots to meet a man.
My life is so unstructured that I have nary a list.
With no clearcut tomorrow, my future’s in a mist.
If I were only twenty, I guess they’d call me fickle.
To be so directionless would land me in a pickle.
At seventy I’ve joined the list of lives that are expired.
I’m finally giving up and saying I’m fully retired!
My alarm clock’s in the cupboard––abandoned. I don’t need it.
I gifted this year’s calendar to someone who will heed it.
No meetings on my calendar. No notes upon my fridge.
I don’t attend aerobics. I gave up playing bridge.
How do I fill my life out now that I’ve come unwired?
Now that it’s gone unplotted and its furnace gone unfired?
I’m letting every day I meet just unwind and unravel.
Letting fate determine what pathway I will travel.
My compass needle disengaged, I’m floundering in “free—”
All things now determined by serendipity.

The prompt today is strategy.