Category Archives: Judy Dykstra-Brown poems

How the Mighty Will One Day Fall

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I would pay a pretty tuppence
to see his highness get his comeuppance.
His smug assurance, his galling preening.
He’s like a babe in need of weaning,
sucking at the teat of fame.
What other mortal needs his name
written on towers around the world?
He’s Ozymandius, stone lip curled
in cruel splendor, sure in his power
reasserted on every tower.
But remember, as he counts each coup,
how all the mighty have fallen, too.
False knights wear armor prone to tarnish.
His Midas touch will lose its varnish.
We’ll laud the day when he’ll be dumped—
That day when he’ll be over-trumped!

 

The prompt today was mighty.

Vestiges

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Vestiges

Crumbs are what’s left when day is done––
Proof you may have missed the fun.
While some were celebrating lives,
you were busy in your hives:
every drudge and every jerk
fussing over busy work.

Yes, do your job and do it well,
but when you hear the ending bell,
close your desk drawers, leave your toils.
When work is over, enjoy the spoils.
Life, in short, is what you make it.
Savor your cake. Don’t simply bake it.

 

The prompt today is crumb.  Love this one! What in the world will come of it?

Foreshadowing

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Foreshadowing

Why does the loveliest flower have the sharpest thorn
so you had to pay the tariff of young flesh pierced and torn
by the most splendid ornament that you had ever worn
as he clasped you to the music of the saxophone and horn?
It’s been true each day you’ve lived, was true when you were born,
and your father brought fresh roses—your bedside to adorn.
And it will go on being true on that future morn
when roses will be carried by those saddened and forlorn
as they place your ashes where you’ve asked that they be borne:
back to that same rose bush that so long ago was shorn
of the roses that you carried when your wedding vows were sworn.

 

 

The prompt today is thorny.

Painting Outside the Lines

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Painting Outside the Lines

Our lives are made, by end of day
with rules we choose to disobey—
those pathways we choose to walk down
to find a different part of town.
Strange roads to new territory
that make the ending of our story
one unplanned, our life replotted.
All carefully scribed plans now blotted
out, with new ones wildly scribbled
in new colors brash and ribald—
breaking rules carefully set
for new patterns you won’t regret,
making our lives messier,
more “maybe” and less “yessier.”
Every rigid rule undone
might simply make our lives more fun.

 

The prompt today was disobey.

Odd Little Saturday Morning Poem

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Odd Little Saturday Morning Poem

I lie in bed, flat on my back, head raised by pillows,
computer raised to eye level
by a wadded comforter over bent knees.
I listen to raised voices in the village down below,
the staccato of an inadequately mufflered car revving up,
a hammer falling on wood, birds in the coco  palms.
A pianissimo chorus of dogs spread
over the surrounding hills swells to a frenzied crescendo,
then falls silent but will swell again.

I have dropped obligations
like clothes shed for a lover.
My Saturday morning pool aerobics and Zumba,
I slipped out of years ago.
Group luncheons hang from doorknobs and chair backs.
Committee meetings lie sloppily abandoned in the hall.

I have retired from the running of the world
to run my own small universe on paper.
Saturday morning is my brainstorm session
with “Me,” “Myself” and “I.”
“I” suggested feeding the dogs,
but they are quiet now, so
“Me” suggested we let them lie.
“Myself” laid out some words to dry
in the heat of the fire of our communal
inspiration, laying them smoothly on the page,
rumpling up others in her fist to send them sailing
to join the crumpled singles event invitations in the corner.

This slow Saturday morning dressing of pages
and stripping them bare
is a sort of ceremony celebrating seizing time
and making it my own.
Pages  fill up with passion, angst, anger,
irritation, joy, laughter, camaraderie.
There is more than one word for each.

Imagine such control over your world–
not having to live the world of any other.
If you could have any life you wish?
Imagine a Saturday morning  building it.

The prompt today was crescendo. This is a reprint of a poem written a few years ago.

Seeking Acclaim

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Acclaim

Those who seek to elevate
their fame with words too profligate
often find that others balk
at such narcissistic talk.

One heard tooting his own horn
is often lonely and forlorn.
When it comes to charity,
many have reached parity
who do not need to try to flout it,
let alone to shout about it.

Others have performed great acts
without broadcasting the facts
of honors won or feats achieved,
and one who boasts is oft believed
to be exaggerating––or,
is simply thought to be a bore

So, even though you’re justly proud,
please don’t voice that fact out loud.
If your act is worth a plaudit,
best leave it to another to laud it!

 

The prompt word is elevate. (Rerun of a poem written three years ago.)

Multiplication Fable

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Multiplication Fable

We were to memorize if able
the whole multiplication table.
I learned the ones to sixes fine,
yet still have trouble with seven through nine.
So when the cents approach a dime,
I always have an awful time.

It was during chicken pox
(when I, attired in gloves and sox
was simply trying to score an itch)
that my math skills developed a hitch.
As others mastered seven through nine,
I was there at home, supine.

Six times seven’s forty-two.
that’s the last sum I easily do.
Six times eight is forty eight–
determined after some debate.
But six times nine or nine times six
always leaves me in a fix.

Sixty-three, perhaps, or more.
Could it instead be sixty-four?
At nine times eight I’m surely lost.
Those sums I should have had embossed
upon my wrist in a tattoo.
These long delays just will not do.

I breathe a sigh when once again
the multiplier ends up as ten.
Ten is easy, so I strut
as I just add a zero, but
as I stumble through its next-of-kin,
I approximate, then write it in.

 

The prompt today was memorize.

Enamoured

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This poem was written making use of only the letters of the word enamoured, which was the prompt word for today.

 

Enamoured

Mere man, mere dame,
a mean red moon.
A dream remade,
a mar, a dune.
Marooned and moored
and no end near.
Me enamoré. 
Me arrear.

(In Spanish, a”mar” is a sea or ocean, but “a mar” can also mean to love. “Me enamoreé“means “I fell in love.” “Me Arrear” can mean either “I got caught,” “drive me” or “Grab me.”  It also carries the connotation for me that the object of her affection’s love might be in arrears. “En arrear” can have that meaning in Spanish as well. Since I used the British spelling of the title word to increase my choices, I guess you could say this poem is trilingual. Comes in handy when limited in the consonants and vowels one can use.

Rhyming Violation

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The prompt word today is rhyme.

 

Rhyming Violation

There is a reason and a rhyme
to the word they chose this time.
For though I am not in my prime
and don’t play tennis, do not climb
or stoop too low to conquer grime,
In any terrain, any clime,
my mind spins like a twirling dime.
If over-rhyming were a crime,
I’d probably be doing time.

 

(If you are a glutton for punishment, yes, you can click on these to enlarge them.)

 

44 Words of Bliss

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bliss

in darkness
under tossing palms
clouds obscuring stars
the small dog newly well
running to find the ball

bliss not a thing hand-delivered
for years now
I need to go find it like
a green ball buried in the shadows
of succulent obscuring vines

For dVerse poets–a quadrille (44 word poem) on the topic of bliss.