The neighbor’s goulash party was a yearly hit,
but as the new guy on the block, he’d never been to it.
And though he was a clothes horse—stylish, svelt and cool,
he wasn’t very good at spelling, as a rule.
So when he was invited for a goulash blast,
he didn’t know the party was for a mere repast.
Now here he was, dressed in his sheet, feeling pretty foolish
when no other party-goers showed up looking ghoulish.
The prompt today was ghoulish.
image from internet
Sharing Mr. Teddy
Caught in baby’s neck creases, clinging to Grandpa’s cuff,
escaped from Mr. Teddy are these little bits of fluff.
These airborne little clumps of fuzz go anywhere they please.
They catch in Daddy’s nose hairs, causing him to sneeze.
They wind up in the pancakes–an artistic swirl of blue.
A few of them are tracked outside under Billy’s shoe.
When he climbs onto the school bus, they go along with him,
and everywhere that Mommy goes, to grocery store or gym,
a piece of Teddy comes along to be left behind
somewhere in the wide wide world, but he doesn’t mind.
He has so many fluffy parts that he can share a few.
And when you come to visit, you can take some home with you!!
The prompt today was fluff.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week directs us to post a photo of something beginning with the letter “J” that contains at least six letters. Believe it or not, it took me a good ten minutes to come up with such a word! I was about to resort to the dictionary when I spied this photo on my desktop. I had used it just a few days ago, but earlier, when I went to put it away, my eyes fell on the purse and I started to wonder what I would have carried in a purse when I was three years old. It seemed like a good subject for a poem, so I left the photo there to remind me to try to do so after I did Cee’s “Fun Foto” post. It didn’t occur to me for a long time, that since my name is Judith and it was a photo of me, that I could do both at the same time.
Church Purse
What does a three-year-old put in a purse she takes to church?
Held primly on her lap as legs swing freely from their perch.
Feet dangling from the pew above the varnished floorboards where
fifty years of townsfolk have walked enroute to prayer.
Small straw purse grasped tightly in two nail-bitten fists,
too little for a lipstick or store receipts or lists.
If perhaps the sermon stretches on too long,
what can she find inside this purse that she has brought along?
Black plastic strap she’s twisted securely ‘round a finger—
once she has unwound it, how long will the marks linger
pressed into her chubby flesh, like four little rings
she surveys as she unsnaps her purse to view her “things?”
A single piece of Juicy Fruit in case she gets a cough.
A snap bead and a single bud that happened to fall off
the rosebush of that big house as she ran ahead to linger
on their way to church and squeezed it with her finger
(and perhaps her thumbnail) until it finally snapped.
She’d peel off its petals later as she napped.
She knew she shouldn’t do this. They’d told her this before,
but her parents walked so slowly, and those naps were such a bore.
God may have seen even the smallest sparrow fall,
but were single rosebuds seen by him at all?
That lady they belonged to was so bossy and so haughty
that she provoked the saintliest children to be naughty!
A single plastic wrapped-up toy she worries to and fro
from her last night’s Cracker Jacks bought before the show.
She softly rustles cellophane between her restless fingers,
then sniffs them to determine if the caramel smell still lingers.
Mama gently elbows her to say she should desist––
fluttering her hand a bit, loosely from the wrist.
She looks for things much quieter in her little purse.
Her snap pistol is noisier. This marble would be worse,
dropped upon the church floor where it would roll away.
If she caused such a ruckus, what would the preacher say?
Something at the bottom feels so round and sticky.
Probably a Lifesaver gone all soft and icky.
A little lace-edged hanky that Grandma tatted for her.
She said that she would show her how, but she’s sure it would bore her.
A folded piece of paper. Crayons––one blue, one red.
If the sermon goes too long, she can color instead.
Mama will not mind and neither will her Dad.
Sister will be embarrassed, but she cares not a tad.
Later on her Daddy’s eyes will start to close,
but she’s sure her mom will nudge him before he starts to doze.
That’s why she is sitting right there in the middle
to correct his snoozes and her daughter’s every fiddle.
Sister is so perfect she needs no reprimand,
so she sits on the outside, removed from Mama’s hand.
After the sermon’s over, the collection plate
passes here before her, certain of its fate.
She’ll unsnap the little purse and reach down far inside it
to try to find the quarter where she chose to hide it
stuck in her silly putty in a little ball.
Now she wonders whether she can remove it all.
The people farther down the pew look in her direction
to try to see the cause of the collection plate’s deflection,
so her quarter is surrendered to join the coins and bills
piled there around it in green and silver hills.
It is the only quarter blanketed in blue.
It is a nice addition, this unexpected hue.
Sister looks disgusted, but her parents do not see,
That quarter cannot be traced back to her now, luckily.
Church will soon be ended with a prayer and song,
and when the music starts up, she will gladly sing along.
She still dreads church but she gives thanks, for it could be worse.
She could be forced to live through it without her Sunday purse!
Identification
When Freud talked about the ego, super-ego and the id—
all the different parts of us within which humans hid,
(all the things that made you “you” and things that made me “me”)
he thought that he’d identified all that there could be.
But if he were living, he would add a chapter or two
to say that id, ego and super-ego wouldn’t do.
There’s a punctuation omission I fear he failed to see.
It is that vital part of us that’s labeled the i.d.!
It used to be that I possessed my own identity
and showing up was proof enough that I was really me,
but now “me” is not me enough, and I find it hard
to face that I am only me when carrying a card.
The prompt word today is identity.
The Sporting Life
I’ve never had much interest in sports played with a ball.
Of games with pucks or shuttlecocks, I have no need at all.
Gym workouts, laps and chin-ups do nothing for me.
I simply have no talent for touching chin to knee.
The body part I work out with is of a different kind.
I like the sort of games requiring exercise of mind.
Dominoes or Mastermind, Bridge or Chess or Scrabble
are aspects of the sporting life discounted by the rabble.
Yet if you want to hold my interest, team sport is absurd.
Just woo me with a domino, a die, a card, a word.
Lay your mind upon the table, dear, I’ll trump it with an ace.
The contact I like in a sport is merely face-to-face.
The prompt word today was interest.
The Guardian: A judicial review this week will decide whether it was right for Sport England to have ruled that the card game is not a sport. … “Europe has said [sport has] to be physical, but the International Olympic Committee is prepared to include mind sports. … The IOC, for instance, recognises chess and bridge as sports – the respective federations have applied for them both to be included in the 2020 Olympics;
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/shortcuts/2015/sep/22/a-bridge-too-far-card-game-considered-a-sport
This Prompt is Irrelevant
Each morning I rise early and make a cup of tea.
I feed the cats, then feed the dogs and sometimes I feed me.
Then I check out the The Daily Post to see what I can see,
propped up in bed, my laptop perched upon my knee.
Today I’m waging protest, in all sincerity,
because the prompt word given us is such an oddity.
Just how much more irrelevant could a prompt word be?
I’m sure it is unanimous, and you must agree.
Yet how can we complain of it? They give it to us free!!!
The prompt today is irrelevant, but I’ll write about it anyway. Ha!
“Diet”ribe
I have given up on oatmeal, overdosed on kale.
All these faddish food taboos have gone beyond the pale.
I do not count my calories, my glutens or my carbs.
The benefits for doing so are outweighed by the barbs.
I’m not turned on by Atkins. I can’t abide a fast.
I tried microbiotic, but the microbes didn’t last.
It’s become an epic battle when the girls go out to brunch.
It’s easier brokering world peace that where to go for lunch.
Before we take a mouthful, we must peruse all the ads
and compare what’s on the menu to the latest diet fads.
Then, once we find the perfect place and make the reservation,
Serafina calls me up to share her trepidation.
She’s started a new diet––something fabulously new––
and much as she hates to stir the pot, this restaurant won’t do.
We can’t go out for hamburgers. Laura’s a vegetarian.
She can’t abide the scent of flesh. She finds it most barbarian.
Of course, she will eat foodstuffs that are certified agrarian,
but salad’sout because my other friend is a fruitarian.
I asked them all to my house, bought exotic fruits and plums,
thinking a fruity salad would offend the fewest gums;
but a new friend cannot eat raw fruit. She finds it unhygienic,
and my artist friend will not eat foods she finds unphotogenic.
She balked at the rambutan and when she tried to swallow it,
choked and had to chug down a carafe of wine to follow it.
Molly is insisting on a diet ketogenic,
while Lucy won’t eat any vegetation that is scenic.
We’re reduced to no more dining out. Potlucks will have to do
with every guest providing whatever they can chew.
Me? I’ll bring a pizza. Pepperoni. Extra cheese.
And everyone can envy me as they eat what they please!
This was originally just written as a fast silly poem to forgottenman to explain why I hadn’t yet gone in swimming. He insisted I blog it which meant taking photos, but alas, no camera was to be found. Phone not charged. So, I used my Kindle, but couldn’t get photos mailed to myself so I emailed the pretty bad photos to him..but couldn’t reduce them enough to get them back by email. A good 45 frustrating minutes later, I went down to the studio, thinking I’d left my camera there, but alas, no camera. I did, however find my other computer that needed to be up in my house to download some things he was sending me. I also found and killed a scorpion in the hall on my way out of the house. Back to the house to look once more in every room for my camera. Emptied my purse. No camera. Decided to go out to the garage to look in the car, I opened the front door and all 4 kittens flooded into the house. I’d forgotten to shut the gate between the front garden and the kitten domain! They immediately spread to the four corners of the house after each first going immediately to inspect the dead scorpion, which I then quickly disposed of. Finally corralled three and confined them in their sleeping room, but Kukla wasn’t to be found. Went out to garage. No camera in the car. On a hunch, I opened the back door and there it was on the floor of the backseat. It must have fallen out of my purse. Came back in, checked kittens, went out to take more photos in the back yard–of the subject of this poem–came back and heard Kukla crying, sealed in my bedroom. Let her out, tried to put her in with her peers and she ran off. She’s now purring on my lap as I type this. Photos now in the blog. Tried to put this explanation at the end but WP won’t cooperate and let me put anything below the last photo, so here we are, giving this long boring explanation when what you really want to get to is the:
Murder at Midnight
Went out to dip my toe in water,
thinking that perhaps I oughter
swim if it was not too hot
or if I found that it was not
cool enough, I’d blog some more;
but just a few feet from my door,
I found two obstacles depressing,
both of them, it’s true, more pressing
than my pool aerobics were.
The first, a snag of chewed-up fur
that turned out to be a dead rat.
The second was leaf cutter ants––
determined in their chained advance.
Thousands of them in a line,
carrying leaves on which they’d dine
later in their snug abode
outside my walls, across the road.
Unless I made a quick advance,
my trees and flowers would have no chance.
“I must be strong, I can’t demur.
I must play the murderer,”
I thought as I sprinkled a line
of poison pellets on which they’d dine.
Thus did I join my canine friends
in bringing creatures to their ends.
Fate may forgive our murdering ways,
but it won’t end our murdering phase.
(Photos may be enlarged by clicking on first photo.)
Offender #2 (and, ironically, as I type this, a hitchhiking leaf cutter ant just bit me on the neck! Murder number three. I hope. I took a swat but can’t find him. He may yet exact another revenge.
Peculiar Little Habits
Peculiar little habits and peculiar little ways
help us pass away the hours and wile away the days.
When you enter in the door, close it exactly twice
to be sure the catch secures as solid as a vice.
Always check the doorknobs before you go to bed
to be sure the deadbolt is completely dead.
Security is something that can’t be left to chance.
You must man the battlements and take a vigilant stance.
Do not invite strangers to wander through your home.
Give foreign folks and foreign thoughts no further place to roam.
Seal your borders. Block people who
may be a different color from you.
Be sure that you have set a ban
on each thing unAmerican.
Burn our silks. Wipe out baklava.
While you’re at it, ban our Java.
Set up a refreshment jury
to vote on food like Indian curry.
Wienerschnitzel’s got to go.
Ban sushi. Nix gado gado.
Chocolate should be exorcised.
Ban music that’s unauthorized.
Raga, salsa and jungle beat
are rhythms we should not repeat.
America for Americans
is how we have arranged our plans.
Blood tests mandatory for sure
to make sure our blood is pure.
Send all the dark skins we have banned
to places not so tightly planned:
Prince Edward Island or Mexico
are places they’ll be forced to go—
places less pristine and picky
content to take folks slightly icky,
not perfect folks like you and me,
immaculate in our ancestry.
With endearing little habits, peculiar little ways,
we’ll wile away our hours and wile away our days
waiting for those foreign folks on whom we need to pounce,
doling out our safety by the pound, not by the ounce.
Picking fights with neighbors, casting insults at Korea,
twittering and ranting in a verbal diarrhea.
As it is above, so has it become below—
Trying to regress from what was once the status quo.
Truth becoming what we make it, in spite of evidence—
reinventing science by divine providence
Though we cannot lock out hurricanes or fires caused by our blindness,
we have power to lock out sanity, ecology and kindness.
We’ll check our country’s doorknobs before we go to bed
and insure that all the deadbolts are completely dead.
The prompt word today is peculiar.
jdbphoto
After the Honeymoon
The bride’s exhausted. The groom is numb.
I think that they have overcome.
The prompt today is overcome.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 