Category Archives: Poem

Yin, Yang and the Sea: Sunday Swirl Wordle 528

 

This boy hand casting his line seemed to be either saluting or cursing the ocean.

Yin, Yang and the Sea

The sea strikes turquoise dissonance, then shhhsh’s it away,
releasing all the tension pent up by the day.
It speaks an easy language as it rolls along the bay,
but as often as it visits, we know it will not stay.

One by one, the waves roll in, devoid of parity.
They cannot seem to achieve any regularity.
With macho strokes of fury, they claw at rocks and beach,
gouging out in anger all that they can reach,
then turning female, lap the sand with gentle licks of tongue,
smoothing all the sand back that formerly it flung. 

The sea spreads riches on the beach, then takes them back again.
Theme after theme played out here in a continual spin.
Smoothing and then rippling, blue deepening to black,
all the sea might take away, one day it will bring back.

For the Sunday Swirl Wordle 528, the prompts are: turquoise, dissonance, tension, easy, one, female, shh, with, stay, themes, release, speaks

 

Helpers Needed to Organize Studio and Garage!!!

I’m sure you want to see all this clutter close up. To do so, click on photos and arrows!! Does anyone need a never-used reverse osmosis system?

Helpers Needed to Organize Studio and Garage!!!

Rummage, rummage, mutter, mutter,
being buried by my clutter.
Do you know some agile sorters
who can straighten out my quarters?
I need helpers on the ball
who can divide and sort it all.
And before I ossify,
I’ll sit here and just bossify!!!

 

I really do have an organization scheme for my art studio, but this couple of years of frenetic activity there during Covid and to get ready for my November show have made me pull things out of storage–and once things are put back into their accustomed space, I somehow need to find more space there . And, need to get the lamps rewired and out of there!

My garage looks organized, but I have teaching files in there from 1971-1981 (when I quit teaching) and my Dad’s ranch records and tax returns from the 1950’s through 1974, when he passed away. Also, every letter anyone has ever sent me and every note passed to me in high school, along with class notes from college classes. How can I throw them away? What if the minute I do, I need them? All  of those fruit crates need to be broken down into slats to wait for Covid to ease so I can use them in art projects with the kids.  Too much, too many. I know.

 

Prompt words today are clutter, recommend, agile, ossify and ball.

In the Mirror


In the Mirror

Her rag doll image
rejects the girls room twitters,
counts to five and says hello
to the new girl she sees 
in the mirror who doesn’t care.

 

The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a Wayra poem. The elements of the Wayra are:
1. a pentastich, a poem in 5 lines.
2. syllabic, 5-7-7-6-8
3. unrhymed.
A further request is to use onomatopoeia.

Since I’m addicted to writing to prompts, I am randomly choosing prompt words for myself as well: by letting my eyes fall randomly on words on this page or my desktop. Here are the prompt words: twitter, count, image, hello, rag, rejects.

Eternal Is

Sacred Heart

Eternal is a mist that doesn’t lift.
It is a wish, a sigh, a dream, a promise made,
a promise kept. A goal for some, for others
a dark cloud that will not lift.
Yesterday, today, tomorrow,

what we make of this life
makes eternity.
We can blame it on no other.
Gods do not make eternity
but only furnish directions
often misinterpreted
or lost to time.
Look within
to find it,
for it is neither there
nor there.

 

For: Tuesday Writing Prompt: Eternal 7: 06

and https://godoggocafe.com/2021/11/16/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-16-2021/

Two Poems of Silence for WQWWC 94

 In answer to Martha’s “Silence” prompt, I am including links to two poems I’ve dedicated to silence. See the link to her post at the end. Don’t miss it!

The Silence of the Iambs

Our Mother, Cloaked in Silence (Daily Post and dVerse Poets Rhyme Royal)

Be sure to click on Marsha’s incredible post (As silent as a falling leaf”, thoughtful as a man with a dream,”  by clicking on her link here: WQWWC 49

Image by Kristina Flour on Unsplash.

The Rocky Road to Maturity


The Rocky Road to Maturity

A state of ataraxia is simply not the norm
when a particular condition has taken you by storm.
It makes you feel ungainly and your customary grace
seems to gather syllables and turn into disgrace.

Moodiness and hormones and pimples and the rest
of the ills that mark this state don’t put you at your best,
and there’s a bigger problem once you survive your pubescence,
for it is just a prelude to the state of adolescence!

 

Word prompts today are customary, ungainly, prelude, ataraxia (tranquility) and particular.

Categories of Terror

 

Categories of Terror

Footsteps behind you in a midnight park
or the sentence of standing center stage.
A shadow, darker, moving through shadows,
that one voice, remembered, calling your name.

Echoes that follow you through the years.

Only one terror worse.
Alone in the whole wide world.
No more morality or fame or love or blame.
Now, what is the purpose of your being?

For dVerse Poets: Epiphany

 

 

 

A Cautionary Tale

Please click on photos to enlarge and read the tale.


A Cautionary Tale

As you paddle down life’s dreams, 
beware of hazards in its streams.
Currents quicken and their speed
may your expertise exceed.

Beware of whirlpools or of bogs,
floating hazards: moss and logs.
All the pretty scenery—
the mountains, flowers, greenery,

might distract you from the task,
so this one promise I must ask.
Agog with all of life’s sweet treasures,
please mind the thorns within its pleasures.

Prompt words today are paddle, hazard, quicken, agog and speed.

I’ve shown these photos before, but they fit in so well with the theme of this new poem that I just had to use them again.

Last Leaf

\

Last Leaf

I’m losing all my scruples, in fact, it’s true. I sold
my gram’s old cornucopia, so lovely and so old.
If this is a measurement of how I’ve come to scorn
all those family heirlooms to which I have been born,
I guess I must admit you’re right.  Something inside of me
has made me forsake memories of the family tree.

Too many leaves have fallen. That tree is stripped and bare,
and those family treasures all show such signs of wear
that seeing them depresses me, thinking of all the hands
that they have been passed  down from, and all the foreign lands
they have been transported through to make their way to me—
the single stubborn leaf that clings persistently

to the branch they all were part of before their final fall,
so now I am the final remnant of them all.
That’s why I’m selling all the things that bind me to their line,
refining my possessions down to what’s just mine,
shedding off my past in a selling spree frenetic,
thinking if I rid myself of all those ties genetic,

that perhaps the past that draws me will lose its hold on me
and that giving up what joins us will finally set me free.
Then I’ll flutter here forever, almost weightless on my branch,
hopeful that this freedom of possessions is a chance
to become immortal, unencumbered by the vast
downward force of  gravity that pulls me from the past.

Today’s prompts are scruple, sold, measurement, cornucopia. I‘ve been waking up earlier and earlier with the result being that some of the prompts are not yet posted, so one of these prompts is a prompt I missed earlier in the week for the same reason and another prompt seems to have stopped posting, so  I am minus one prompt. if anyone reading this knows of a different prompt site, I’m looking for another one. Ones I’ve been using are Ragtag Daily Prompt, Fandango’s One-Word Challenge, The Daily Spur, Word of the Day Challenge and Your Daily Word.

Marriage of Mind

Marriage of Mind

You weave between the spaces that the world has left—
The filler to my emptiness, the warp to all my weft.
I’m made stronger by your presence. You always have my back—
solving all my puzzles and lessening the flak
of the world’s abuses in between its pleasures.
You share its grief just as you’ve helped me celebrate its treasures.
We weave a pretty story, devoid of plan or theme.
We play the game together without joining any team.
Our story is unwritten. It’s not epic or historical.
The union that I talk about is merely metaphorical.

Prompt words today are team, weft, flak, historical and abuse.