Category Archives: Judy Dykstra-Brown poems

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Relax, it’s only henna! I get a Mayan tattoo on my lower leg every time I go to the beach. It fulfills all my contradictory impulses.

Change of Mind

Tattooed pierced and branded, or to be marked for life
with patterns carved into the skin with a sterile knife?
I cannot help but tell you that I find it very strange–
this trend to decorate ourselves by means that we can’t change.

When I was in my twenties, I bought a gorgeous hat
of pink and blue with colored plumes that swayed this way and that.
But what if I had had it sewn forever to my head,
so when I desired a wedding veil, I had feathers instead?

What if those chandelier earrings I found so cool in my teens
were implanted so I couldn’t take them off by any means?
So when I trekked across the jungles, weaving through the trees,
those earrings caught upon the vines and brought me to my knees?

My hair would be a helmet, and my eyes would look so queer
if worn like I did at twenty with eyeliner ear to ear.
So I cannot help but think this child with corks stretching her lobes
might regret them in her forties as she dons her judge’s robes.

Or the youngsters with the tongue studs, one day when they are men
might regret it as the shots they drink leak out onto their chin.
I’m so glad those mini skirts I wore—a poor choice even then––
are not still sewn upon my hips now that I am more Zen.

Thank God those darker outlined colors that made our lips less thin
and those psychedelic tie-dyes are not printed in our skin.
For although our taste was laughable, at least we can repent–
for the choices that we made in youth were not permanent.

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And, that hat mentioned in the poem? It really existed and still does, although no, I have not worn it in over 40 years. Here it is, a side view!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Tattoo….You?.” Do you have a tattoo? If so, what’s the story behind your ink? If you don’t have a tattoo, what might you consider getting emblazoned on you skin?

Not Much Choice!

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                                                            Not Much Choice!

The prompt today is  Finite Creatures: At what age did you realize you were not immortal? How did you react to that discovery?

I wrote “I’ll Have to Go” to this exact prompt last November.  To see that poem, go HERE.

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Re”tire”ment

When I was younger, my mind turned on a dime.
I did what I had to do in very little time.
But now that I am older, things don’t go so fast.
I’m not “spur-of-the-momentish” as I was in the past.

I don’t throw big parties as I did in former days,
for dealing with the details just puts me in a haze.
I can’t do many things at once without getting confused.
Now I simply write my blog while once I danced and boozed!

At first I felt ashamed of how my life is slowing down,
hating that I do not seek the company of town.
But then I noted patterns in nature around me
and saw that this is simply how our lives are meant to be.

Each thing in its season and each thing in its time
is how our lives are ordered—to accept this is sublime.
Why do I need to live my youth and middle age again?
Why not just accept that this is how my life has been

and go on to the next stage without sadness or regret—
going on to see just how much better life can get?
Yes, it is the pits to get arthritic, slow and hazy;
but we are compensated by excuses to be lazy!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Heat is On.” Do you thrive under pressure or crumble at the thought of it? Does your best stuff surface as the deadline approaches or do you need to iterate, day after day to achieve something you’re proud of? Tell us how you work best.

Foreign Tongues

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I wrote this poem that answers this prompt so long ago that few who are now following me have ever read it.  If you have read it, perhaps you have forgotten it, as I had..

Foreign Tongues

When I was a child, I thought as a child.
In short, I didn’t think.
My faulty reasonings were piled
like dishes in a sink.

While other children responded to
“What do you want to be?”
with “Cowboy! Teacher!” (right on cue),
these answers weren’t me.

When it came to having career talks,
I fear I was a purist.
My answer was less orthodox.
My aim? To be a tourist!!

I thought tourists then to be
a sort of gypsy pack.
Jobless, they were wild and free,
their luggage on their back.

Or in their cars, packed front and back,
traveling evermore––
a footloose, wandering, feckless pack
unsettled to the core.

I saw them passing on the road
just one block south of where
my family hunched in their abode
year after passing year.

I had to wait for 19 years
to earn my traveling shoes––
to assuage my parents’ groundless fears,
abate their travel blues.

I took off on a sailing ship
to visit foreign lands.
When foreign words evaded lip,
I merely used my hands!

Back home, the English seemed to me
common––sorta dowdy.
Instead of “Moshi, moshi”
I had to murmur, “Howdy.”

As soon as school was over,
I hopped upon a plane.
I’d pass my life a rover.
Inertia was inane!

I packed up my regalia
with neither tear nor sob
to head out to Australia
for my first teaching job.

I thought that English I would teach.
It was our common tongue.
Enunciation would I preach.
Oh Lord, I was so young!

My first day there, I heard the word
“Did-ja-‘ave-a guh-die-mite?”*
I found it all to be absurd.
They were joking. Right?

“Don’t come the raw prahn on my, mite”**
was next to meet my ear.
What foreign language did they cite?
It puzzled me, I fear.

I rode, I walked, I sailed the seas
and ended up in Bali.
Said my “Terimakasih’s”
And then, “Selamat Pagi.”

My move to Africa was one
that some folks found quixotic,
but “amasaganalu”
was a word I found exotic.

After two years, I went home.
Wyoming was the next
place that I agreed to roam,
though I was sorely vexed.

For though the words were all the same
I’d learned at my mom’s knee––
(I’m sure that I was all to blame)
they all seemed Greek to me!

California was where I hung
my hat for many-a-year.
There Español was half the tongue
that fell upon my ear.

I liked its cadence, liked its ring.
The words ran fluid and
their foreignness was just my thing
in this bilingual land.

So Mexico is where I’m bound.
I’ve reasons numbering cien.
The main one is, I like the sound
of “Que le via bien.”

 * The American accent version is “Did you have a good day, mate?”

**  “Don’t come the raw prawn on me, Mate!”  This strange retort is similar in meaning to: “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes.” Many Australians have told me they’ve never heard this phrase, but I swear I did–more than once.

The Prompt: Futures Past: As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? How close or far are you from that vision?

Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Houses

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These are all pictures I took on an Amazon River trip in Peru a few years ago.

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Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Houses

Ocean Koan

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I woke up early this morning and while I was waiting for the prompt, a dolphin swam into my consciousness and prompted this tale.  While you are waiting for me to write a poem about the sense of smell, (today’s prompt), please be content with this one written about another sense:

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Ocean Koan

Ocean Koan

The dolphins ride in on the music,
but why did they come here?
Did they seek to lend their harmonies
to a music new and queer?
Did they soar in on its melody,
come  in on a riff,
drawn by its dissonant whistle—
a mere beckoning whiff?

Whatever the dolphins are hearing,
whatever they’re trying to reach,
we don’t understand their language
as they lie stranded on our beach.
Perhaps we divert them with towers
that speak in a tongue their own,
and though it’s not our intention,
our messages form a koan

that they are driven to answer
as we’re drawn to outer space,
pulled to find our others
in an alien clime and place.
We believe we are harmless and loving,
at peace with their watered dreams;
when in truth we are drying their world up—
ripping it at the seams.

We send out the signals to pull them
to where they should not be,
like fairytales told to children
that draw them to our knee—
We turn our backs to the seaward window,
seal our ears to their keening tones
as the dolphins swimming landward
pave our beaches with their bones.

 

I am not an expert on sonar or other communication technology.  If you want to hear more on the subject, go here:  http://www.earthportals.com/beachedwhales.html

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/smell-you-later/

Honestly!

Though I always tell it if I can,
of the brutal truth, I’m not a fan.
(It’s the brutal part that bothers me,
and not the actual honesty.)
In fact, let’s institute a pact
to exercise the utmost tact.
When telling others just what “is,”
be gentle, be they Sir or Ms;
for though it’s not right to be truthless,
there’s no excuse for being ruthless.

The Prompt: Truth or Dare—Is it possible to be too honest, or is honesty always the best policy?

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The Window

opens onto an empty lot.
Guamuchil trees and wild castor beans
rise from its slope to lift toward
where I sit above, hands engaged
in taking me away to a place
far beyond ideas.
It is that destination dreams only point us to–
that place where, perhaps, I’ll float
after the feared moment
when I’ll leave this world for good.

I dread it so, that zone,
and yet if what my fingers have just told is right,
it’s where I choose to go again and again,
escaping to that little house
down in my garden
where I keep my tools and paint
and ten thousand small objects
all of which have a particular place they want to be fastened.

I am just here to help them go where they want to go.
Where they have, perhaps, been created to go–
taking me with them to the zone,

all of us
headed toward
the inevitable.

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“The little house” is my studio, here seen from the garden. The earlier view was of the wild lot next door, seen from the window of my studio.

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A message from the zone. Click to enlarge, then hover over objects and click again to see more detail..

The Prompt: Tell us about your favorite way to get lost in a simple activity — running, chopping vegetables, folding laundry, whatever. What’s it like when you’re in  “The Zone?”

Linger

It is those times
over dinner
when we have lifted a glass
or two–

those times
without husbands, who are home
watching a game
or out with gun and skeet–

those times
with long-ago college schemes
or scandals
remembered–

when, although no longer hungry,
we nonetheless order a dessert
with three forks
as an excuse to linger.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Linger.” 

Bogged Down in Blog

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Bogged Down in Blog

It’s hard to write while traveling–
your half-knit thoughts unravelling
as they call you in to talk
or have a meal or take a walk.

You sleep in other people’s houses,
wrinkles in your unpacked blouses,
possessions jumbled in your cases,
move at unfamiliar paces.

You live a life that’s not your own–
daily walking, driven, flown
while trying to remember faces,
confused by all these different places.

In the past I adored going–
miles passing, airwaves flowing.
I loved to move like a rolling log,
but that was when I didn’t blog!!!

Now I find I’m scurrying.
Wake up already hurrying.
I’m confused and frankly dumb,
forgetting where I’m coming from

as well as where I’m going to.
I’ve lost a sock and lost one shoe.
Still, I find time to write each day,
here in some room, hidden away.

This daily writing’s an addiction
that makes real life a dereliction!
I short my hosts to do my writing.
I’ve given up my life for citing!


The Prompt: State of Your Year–How is this year shaping up so far? Write a post about your biggest challenges and achievements thus far.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/