One is Company, Two’s a Crowd
I have no need for company. I’ll make it on my own.
Most anything that two can do, I can do alone.
I am no Santa Claus who needs assistance of an elf.
All tasks that need doing, I can do myself.
I never interrupt my sleep by calling on the phone.
I never argue with the choices I have made alone.
The company I give myself is by far the best.
As my best friend, I have to say I outshine all the rest!
The prompt for SOCS is “Company.”
Upon the Violent Death of a Friend
Bar every window.
Avoid the Dark.
The dart is coming.
You’re on the mark.
Chain up your gateways.
Bar the door.
Whatever evil finds you,
there is always more.
In your life’s highway,
avoid the skids.
Don’t talk to strangers.
Lock up your kids.
Darkness advances
by ticks and tocks.
Take no chances.
Recheck the locks.
Don’t take airplanes
or cars or ships.
Keep what’s private
behind your lips.
Buy a gun and
keep it cocked.
If you knew who’s watching,
you would be shocked.
Lock your bedroom
when you retire.
Life’s a minefield.
Don’t trip the wire.
Wrap your kids in
cotton wool.
Don’t dare send them
out to school.
Mind the playgrounds.
Avoid the street.
Television
is more discreet.
Train your dogs to
attack and kill
whoever enters
against your will.
Limit friends to
a very few.
New ones just might
target you.
Build your walls up
both high and wide.
Then just fester
alone, inside.
The. Thursday Inspiration 304 prompt is Evil.
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 for RDP Wednesday is Shuttle
Hidden Treasure
We are the ones that dwell within,
and what we keep hidden from each other
forms the mystery that keeps us coming back for more.
Like the relish that enhances the main course.
Like the dessert at the end of the meal,
not the real nourishment, but rather
a reward for putting up with the day-to-day
ragtag repetitions, irritations, boredoms
of knowing each other so well.
The loyalties, down to the heart honesties,
those passions held in common, those trials shared
are the meals we feed each other day-by-day.
But what person does not need, as well,
the thrill of the unopened package,
the darkness hidden under the stairs?
“Where we’re going, we don’t need eyes to see” – Sam Neill, Event Horizon (1997)
“We are the ones that dwell within” – The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
“Thrill me” – Night of the Creeps (1986) These are the three lines I chose for dVerse Poets
Above are the three sentences I chose for the dVerse Poets promt. Let’ see which won out.
Halloween Tales
Halloween love stories are not so very thrillin,’
for it’s not romantic to hook up with a villain.
Monsters, ogres, ghosts and goblins don’t excel at lovin’.
Nor do witches have much use for it within their coven.
And so you’ll find that Halloween tells a different story
still filled with thrills that are more gruesome and more gory.
Prompts for the Three Things Challenge are: Monster, Ogre and Villain
Click on photos below to increase size.
The hurricanes that cause devastation on the coast merely whip our palms, turn off electricity and knock down tree limbs, but more often, the wind is our friend. It swells our sails, keeps flags, balloons and birds aloft and furnishes the electricity that it sometimes, in its excesses, switches off again.
Hurricane or breeze,
the wind does what it pleases—
both our friend and foe.
Rebecca’s Poetry Challenge, we are to write a Haibun on the subject of wind.
Tick-Tock
Back when there was magic,
before the world was broken,
in my childhood’s comfy nest,
the major language spoken
is remembered as a ghost of words
blown in on a breeze.
Life was one great treasure,
set out for us to seize.
The last war newly over,
the news of the time
seemed to tell of happenings
peaceful and benign.
No need for bomb shelters
or ICE or interventions.
My childhood passed most peacefully,
mainly free of tensions.
Time seemed to drag on slowly
from birthday to Halloween.
There seemed to be a hundred years
between toddler and teen.
But now that I am 78, life whizzes by as though
it’s making up for all those years when it passed by so slow.
And peace that in my innocence I thought would always last
has become just a memory of an idyllic past.
for The Sunday Whirl 729 the prompt words are: magic back broken nest seems drag news breeze life ghost need tell
78
Skinny arms,
too thin to fill the skin out.
Tiny empty rivers,
terminally dry.
When did they
carve their courses
through these arms
once anxious
to lose baby fat,
now
nostalgic
for their lost
opposites?
After reading this poem, Forgottenman sent me the below poem, which he wrote years ago. It is such a perfect answer to my above poem that I have to share it with you here. It is my favorite of many things he has written in the past.
She Calls Herself a Spinster
She calls herself a spinster with a sly and sultry smile.
At seventy-eight, she knows so well the art of luring guile.
A silken string strewn on his face from her outstretched bony hand
is not seen by the younger man she knows that she will land.
This young man is manly, which must lead to his demise.
A spinster spider knows too much and casts her come-on lies.
She twirls him round and round and round and round again once more.
He’s dizzy now and lustful. She has him to his core.
He’s bound up in her silken web, her web of love’s deceit.
Her sweet perfume, her purring tongue, the web of his defeat.
At his last gasp engulfed in thread, he knows that he’s been had.
But he would not trade in his fate. His last breaths are not sad.
She’s energized, another score! And she dabs on more perfume.
The darkness that she penetrates, it leads to weak men’s doom.
She calls herself a spinster with a sly and sultry smile.
At seventy-nine, she knows so well the art of luring guile.
Spider
If it’s April, it must be:
Hello, NaPoWriMo
Good morning, NaPoWriMo, and good night.
Whether I have written or will write,
you tend to fill my day with obligation
for rhymed and metered concentration.
Social engagements––a thing of the past.
No time for conversation and repast
except for sandwiches and coffee quickly quaffed
in glow not candlelight (but just as soft)
that shines from my computer screen
from morn till night, with no relief between
as I strain for yet another rhyme.
For this is how I spend my time,
NaPoWriMo! With fourteen days to go,
it is impossible to just say, “No.”
No matter how I yearn to just resume my life––
to end these rhymes with which my days are rife––
I have to finish what I started
lest I be branded fickle-hearted.
I read somewhere that half the poets who first committed
to write a poem a day have by now quitted
the task they took an oath to do;
but still a few
plod on with me. We’ll never meet,
though we walk down the same blank path with metered feet.
Perhaps one day we’ll meet in poetry heaven or hell
knowing we did this task completely if not well!
In conclusion, I have heard
That in Hawaii, there’s one word
that means both hello and good bye.
It means love, affection, adios and hi!
That word, “Aloha,” covers all from dark to light;
and so, Aloha, NaPoWriMo, and good night!
For dVerse Poets, the prompt is “Make up your own name for a micro season.”
Firm Ground
Between all of you and me,
I’ve no experience with scree.
Given the type of ground to walk on,
scree’s the surface I would balk on.
Other folks may be adventurous.
My choice is usually ventureless!
The RDP prompt is “scree.” (Image borrowed from the RDP prompt site.)
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 