Category Archives: Poem

Junkyard

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Junkyard

It is a graveyard for lost toys
abandoned by their girls and boys—
objects of fun once ordinary,
spurned by children who are wary
of things on which to soar and slide,
of toys that draw a kid outside.

Once solely meant for entertainment,
they’re now fenced in for their containment
away from children set aside,
away from things to climb or ride
with other kids bare-faced, unmasked.
Now all are differently tasked.

Now housebound children stare at screens
or sit leafing through magazines.
Monkey bars, it is official,
turned into things more beneficial:
fences, barricades or bars
marking parking spots for cars.

But teeter-totters, slides and swings—
a community of cast-off things—
lie here abandoned in a place
that’s never seen a child’s face.
It is a junkyard overgrown
of pleasures that now go unknown.

The raucous crew for which they’re cast
has become a memory of the past.
Hordes of kids on jungle gyms
pursuing their communal whims
are things that they barely remember.
Leaf piles jumped on in September

neatly raked up in their heaps
are safe from children’s messy leaps.
Every child kept in their room,
the world outside would seal their doom.
So, junkyards filled with these diversions
are museums for today’s aversions.

One by one, the kids grow older
never getting one bit bolder.
Contained inside their separate lives,
Single cells replace their hives.
While hidden from this lonely crew
are all the things we used to do.

Remember when the school bell rang?
Kit and caboodle, the whole gang
would rush to see who got the swings.
What nostalgia their memory brings.
I remember them so well,
but especially the carousel.

Prompts for today are carousel, kit, ordinary, solely and community.

 

 

Fixer-Upper

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Fixer-Upper

I am a fixer-upper. My joints are caving in.
My parts are getting even with a long life lived in sin.
Way too many hamburgers, fries and Hershey bars.
Too little time spent jogging — too much time spent in cars.
The fact I’ve been degraded, I admit is not disputable,
for since my early teens my shape has been too often mutable.

I tried to stage a victory over this decline
sometime in my thirties, but somewhere down the line
my resolve grew weaker and I gave up on pilates.
It was too degrading competing with the hotties 
who clinched their little derrieres and flexed their perfect arms.
I simply could not stand the comparison of charms.

I’ll never flip this body. I can’t touch neck to heel.
How can I execute “down dog” when I can barely kneel?
In spite of diligent efforts now and then throughout my life,
with starts and futile endings my biography is rife,
I came up with excuses, I “hee”d and “haw”ed and “hem”med.
Then finally had to admit, this property is condemned!

 

Prompts today are fixer-upper, diligent, victory, mutable and degraded. Photo by Basil Anas on Unsplash, used with permission.

Country Boy

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Country Boy
Hair wild as a hedgehog, my kid brother Benny
spins over the landscape just like a lost penny.
Brown as a gingersnap baked by the sun,
he cannot be stopped ‘til he wants to be done.
No iced tea can lure him, for he’d rather sip
from a cold rushing river and then take a dip,
roll in the tall grass until he is dry,
then turn on his back to look up at the sky
at eagles and swallows and dragonfly wings
and flop over again to watch earthier things.
No hearthstone can rival the lure of outside.
He will jump on his pony and take a long ride
to fill up his day with natural pleasures,
stuffing his saddlebag with priceless treasures––
arrowheads, fossils and bottles whose glass
has turned purple from years in the sun and the grass.
Who can explain a country boy’s mind?
Such pleasures cannot be explained or defined.
Just leave him alone, for there’ll be time enough
to smooth all those edges the world may call rough.
For now, he’s a nature boy, unique and wild,
giving birth to the man that will grow from the child.

 

Christine Goodnough sent me the above prompt words and since I’m incapable of turning down a challenge, this was the result. The poem didn’t start out being about my dad but somewhere in the middle, I realized perhaps it was. This is a photo of him at age 13 on the homestead that he grew up on. He moved into town when he married my mom, but farmed and ranched the homestead plus land he later acquired until he sold the ranch after I graduated from high school.

 

 

 

All That Glitters

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All That Glitters

Be mindful of your wishes lest fate should smite thee down.
What you think might bring a smile sometimes brings a frown.

Nowhere is it written happiness can be bought.
Too often excess riches are a trap wherein we’re caught.

Sometimes pristine palaces can turn into a cage
for those who sell contentment for a daily wage.

If fairy stories are the tales on which your hopes you gauge,
remember that their characters are prisoners of the page.

Those in ivory towers far above the earth
may not smell the flowers or recognize their dearth.

It’s one thing to be hungry, ill-provided for and flustered,
but once you have enough and your daily needs are mustered,

if you want to win the game of life, be sure to share the ball.
Just relax. Enjoy your life. You do not need it all.

Prompt words today are mindful, smite, pristine, fluster and nowhere.
Image by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash, used with permission.

Cherry Summers

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Cherry Summers

They sit on the steps of our low front porch,
cherry-stained fingers dropping pits 
onto the grass or sidewalk.
“They is good but they is sowie,”
exclaims our tiny neighbor, looking up
at my dad, who sits with her and her brothers,
his mouth, too, full of sour cherries
pulled from the trees in our back yard.

My sister and I spend summer afternoons
picking off stems and squeezing
the fruit to expel the pits,
juice running down our arms
to drip off elbows and pool on the 
table, attracting ants.

Bowlful after bowlful is removed from the table
by my mom to make into pies to freeze.
This task of summer is rewarded all winter long
by the crisp thin crust and tapioca-thickened 
ooze of sugared cherry gel surrounding 
the  fruit sweetened by some chemistry
of my mother’s hand.

Those summer days were lengthened
by the absence of the tolling school bell across the street
and by  a sun that lingered into night, 
bedtimes stretching out because of the impossibility
of going to bed before dark.

“Ollie ollie oxen free,” echoed from
games of hide-and-seek that ranged
from the playground across the street
into our backyard where cherry trees
that offered shade in the heat,
offered shelter from detection at night.

The aroma of cherry pie, fresh from the oven,
whetted more than mere appetites
during all those nights when,
snow piled on the windowsills,
we bit into
the sweet memories
of summer

 

 

For dVerse Poets
Image by Joanna Kasinska on Unsplash, used with permission.

The Assistant

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The Assistant

When they gush over him, it drives me berserk.
He gathers the praise while I do all the work.

He blissfully gathers the laurels they strew
not once giving credit where credit is due.

When they think of his death, they find the thought numbing.
They think with his end no more genius is coming.

Imagine the shock that will light up their eyes
when the ideas keep coming, much to their surprise,

and they finally learn that the ideas were mine.
When his sun finally sets will be my turn to shine!

 

Prompts today are bliss, berserk, gush, laurels and death.

Opposites Attract.

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Opposites Attract

They had a transitory friendship.  In class, it was effusive,
but once out of the classroom it tended toward abusive.
Teachers provided discipline that they lacked otherwise.
They needed supervision to deal with the surprise
they felt when their thoughts differed—to control their yin and yang.
Somehow, self-moderation simply was not their “thang.”
Differences enrich us. They expand our point of view.
They teach us how to listen while buffering the “you.”
Show our differences and likenesses with the ultimate end
of taking an acquaintance and making them a friend.

 

Prompts for today are friend, transitory, effusive and classroom.

Note Attached to a Skirt at Mia’s Recycled Clothing Shop

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Note Attached to a Skirt at Mia’s Recycled Clothing Shop

I’ve made a decision to downsize my clothes.
I’ve thrown out my slips and old panty hose
that have lain there dormant for thirty-five years,
my decision to jettison long in arrears.
Then I threw out old fashions that I knew were dated.
With memories they were all so permeated—
of travel and weddings and high school dances,
that I couldn’t avail myself of the past chances
to donate to charities or to my friends
or delegate them to more permanent ends
such as landfills and garbage trucks. It seemed too crass
to dispose of such wonderful memories en masse.

Yet now I’ve decided to lighten my load
and get rid of excess that fills my abode.
I only hope that one day I’ll detect
the trickle-down theory gone into effect:
some stranger, perhaps, that I pass by chance
who knows not why she’s met with an extra-warm glance
as she strolls down the street looking happy and gay
in the gypsy skirt chosen for my wedding day
thirty-five years ago, now finally freed
from my closet to go on and finally lead
a life of its own and to soak up some new
happiness. Will it perhaps be from you?

Prompts for today are downsize, permeate, trickle, avail and decision.

Contronyms and Clarity

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Contronyms and Clarity

The word “cleave” is an enigma—first itself and then its opposite,
for it can mean “to cling to” but it also means “divide or split”.
What’s with the English language, with words meant to confuse?
Why bother to define a word that seems meant to abuse
our reason and ability to know what a word means?
Has our whole lexicology reverted to our teens
where “bad” is “good” and “sick” is “amazing, awesome, cool?”
What’s with these double meanings that make me feel a fool?

Do you believe the world of words has somehow let you down?
You imagine you’re a scholar, but turn out to be a clown?
That “hold up” means “support” but also “impede” is mendacious.
What next? Will “roomy” come to mean both “cramped” as well as “spacious?”
A rock is something solid—the opposite of jerking.
So why does “rocking out” involve this gyrating and twerking?

Someone “left” remains  but one departed also “left.”
What happens in a language where there is not a cleft
between what a word means and its opposite as well?
Have we run out of ways to enumerate and spell?
Are there not sufficient different words to go around?
Must we ascribe to opposites the same spelling and sound?

Though it’s anything but spartan, must our language play the fool
and accept a meaning for a word that clearly breaks the rule
that a word must stand for something clearly understood?
That a word can mean its opposite ultimately would
turn “black” to “white” and “white” to “black”, turn “happiness” to “sadness,”
and once given this opening, our world would turn to madness.

If “yes” meant “no,” how many brides would be sadly wed
when they meant to marry another man instead?
If “up” meant “up” but also “down,” how would folks reach their floor?
And imagine the concussions if “solid wall” meant “door.”
So, so much for contronyms. Let us cease to spout them.
It’s clear enough to me the world is better off without them!

Prompts for the day are opening, spartan, mendacious, cleave and let you down.

Dressed to Kill the Blues

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Dressed to Kill the Blues

If you’re feeling washed out like your blossoming’s through,
feeling less than capricious and aged and blue,
why not ransack your closet to find something gaudy,
colorful, crazy, a little bit bawdy?

Don’t nurse a depression that you can dress up.
Why be a sad dog when you could be a pup?
Wilder clothes make you happy. Put joie in your vivre.
Tight clothes and stilettos—a  trick up your sleeve.

That impulse to give up is something to hide.
Folks will respond to what they see outside.
So when life deals the doldrums, why give in and mess it up?
You will feel better if only you  dress it up.

Prompts for the day are washed out, nurse, capricious, ransack and  blossoming.

 

Lest you think this is how my friends and I always dress, I’ll reveal that this was a Poor Taste party I threw one New Years Eve. Friends were to come dressed in the worst possible taste and to bring a dish that was tacky but delicious. It was a fun party!!!!