Category Archives: Poem

Peeky-Kitty

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Peeky-Kitty

Peeky-Kitty’s surveying all
from his nest up on the wall.
He hears the car before it enters,
then sees his mistress as she centers,
trying to avoid the case
that serves as Peeky-Kitty’s base.

Balanced there upon the shelf,
he does not deign to stir himself.
He only opens one green eye,
raising his head only nose-high
over the corner of his bed,
for he has already been fed.

Though he’s been waiting, hour on hour
here in his padded leafy bower,
his lady’s home now, finally,
and since he has no need to pee,
he’ll close his eyes and sink back, curled,
content that all’s well in his world.

This is often the sight that greets me through my windshield when I drive into my garage. In this case, Pasiano had balanced the bed of the kitties up on the  top of the storage cupboards to make room for three big garbage bags full of mother-in-law tongue plants my neighbors had weeded out of their garden and contributed to me to put down in the lot and along my front wall. At other times, they owe their lofty perch to the fact that Yolanda has swept and swabbed the tile floor and put their bed up there so it won’t get wet.

May/December Marriage

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May/December Marriage

She rises up from her repose,
kohls her eyes, contours her nose,
puts on the diamond and the gold
for which her liberty was sold.

Dons her linen, silk and fur.
Puts on fresh perfume to obscure
with bergamot and rose and myrrh
those memories now but a blur.

This will be her life hereafter:
less spontaneity and laughter.
All her beauty and her charms
cradled in an old man’s arms.

Prompt words today are repose, gold, laughter, fresh and blur. Image by Bibek Thakuri on Unsplash, used with permission.

Coronavirus and the Corner Bar

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Coronavirus and the Corner Bar

He scrubbed the bar with cleanser and moved apart the chairs
with six feet in between them and just a few in pairs.
He sterilized the counter with that gelatinous goo
that had become ubiquitous, as he was told to do.

He laid off all his servers and bartended well-masked,
ready to do with diligence whatever he was asked.
Yet his barstools sat neglected, for no one came to play
and his profit margin  was shrinking every day.

His savings were depleted by rent and overhead
 as all his favorite regulars stayed at home in bed.
When he looked at the percentages, he knew he had to act.
In one month he’d be ruined—bankrupted, in fact.

He took a bottle of the gin he’d used to such acclaim,
forgot vermouth and olives, taking careful aim,
to spill it down the counter where it ran down to the rug,
then upset a candle and departed with a shrug.

Carefully he locked the door, got in his car and left.
Basically broken-hearted, feeling gutted and bereft.
He saw flames in his rear-view mirror, his problems rectified
as he took the only out, committing barmecide.

 

Prompts for today are cleanser, basic, barmecide, acclaim and percentage. Photo by Jack Prichett on Unsplash, used with permission.

P.S.  If you wondered, as I did, what “barmecide” really means, as an adjective it means illusory or imaginary and therefore disappointing. As a noun, it means a person who offers benefits that are illusory or disappointing. Nope, I just couldn’t inflict that upon you.

 

More Fire on the Mountain

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Above are photos taken yesterday morning (May 3.) What looks like a bank of clouds is actually smoke from a fire that has been raging for five days on the slopes of Mount Garcia, the extinct volcano across the lake from me.


The grainy shot above (taken with my phone, so not the best photo) was taken at about 1 a.m. this morning, May 4th, from my rooftop terrace. If you want to get a better view of the fire, have a look at the time-lapse video for the past 24 hours on this site: http://www.ajijicweather.com/lakecam.

When Forgottenman suggested I write about the fire, I reminded him that I actually had written about fires on Mount Garcia many years ago, and he further suggested I reblog that blog, so, always willing to please, below is a link. The Maria Phoenix restaurant I mention, which became a favorite of mine after this first visit, has since been sold to new owners, but still, as regular as clockwork, Señor Garcia (as locals fondly call the mountain) continues to wear his yearly sombrero of smoke. Here is the link to my poem about the fires eight years ago:
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2013/04/18/dining-alone-at-the-maria-bonita-restaurant-bar-day-18-of-napowrimo/

Sparse Reward

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Sparse Reward

One aspect of my mall visit makes me want to bawl.
I don’t glimpse a single thing I want to buy at all!

Prompt words today are glimpse,  aspect, bawmalll and mall.

The Custodian’s Lament

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The Custodian’s Lament

I’m deluged by duty and lack an excuse.
A note from my mother won’t stop this abuse.
My boss has turned into that proverbial bully
who insists that I carry my job tasks out fully.
He says sweep the corridor, empty the trash.
It’s a menial method for earning my cash.
Wish I’d paid more attention in school back when
my teachers insisted that I take my pen
and answer those questions in English and math,
and started my life out on some other path.
Now I’m pushing a mop instead of  a pen,
thinking too late of what might have been!

 

Prompts for today are excuse, corridor, proverbial, deluge and duty. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash, used with permission.

Marriage Vows

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Marriage Vows

Sure of their joyful union, they’ll never rue the day
that they exchanged their vows on that blissful day in May,
but read their bitter interviews gathered five years hence,
accusing and denying, angry, bitter, tense.
Those whom God hath brought together let no human flout.
Every couple means their vows when given, there’s no doubt,
but kids and bills and taxes and a pretty new assistant
can create a need to grow increasingly more distant.
Hard to keep compliant to a former vow
when fate intervenes with that ever-changing now.

 

Prompts for today are union, sure, joyful, may and interview.

NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 30

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How to Find a Poem

Only a fool waits for a poem to come to him.
You have to call for it like a proper blind date,
knocking on its door
and seeing beauty in whatever opens it.

Take it dancing.
Twirl it around the floor,
letting words fly off in all directions.

Leave what flutters off alone.
Someone else will pick it up
and dance with it.
No word is a wallflower,
although some are chosen more frequently to dance.
Those are the words to avoid.
 
Do not always choose the prettiest words.
In the dance of the poem,
the ugliest of words acquire a charm.

Do not insist that you yourself lead.
Let the poem, instead, draw you
off the dance floor,
out the door
and down the path
to deep woods
where all the wild words live.

Gather them in bouquets
or weave them into chains
to crown your head––
that head of the poet
who follows where the poems go
and collects them by armfuls to share with the world.

 

The last NaPoWriMo prompt for the year 2021 is to write a poem in the form of a series of directions describing how a person should get to a particular place.

 

The Window-Peeker Parses the School Marm

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The Window-Peeker Parses the School Marm

Though you’re unaware that you’re in my view,
as you sit parsing sentences, I’m parsing you.
And though you may find my excuse to be spurious,
I’m not lascivious. I’m only curious.

I peer through your window to discover a clue
if tight-lipped and buttoned-up is the real you.
I peek through a bush after climbing your fence.
Do you underline verbs and determine their tense?

No bushes or flower vines hamper my vision
to soften the view or to curb my derision.
Your life is as clear and empty and sparse
as the students you aim for and lines that you parse.

Every inch covered from your toes to your chin,
terry cloth robe. No booze and no men.
No bright colored pictures to cover your wall.
Not one detail to alter your image at all.

You sit at a desk looking tired and grim,
pallid and stringy and scrawny of limb—
essays piled to left and to right,
your strict narrow lips revealed in the light.

Everything minimum, like you have taught.
Strip sentences bare. Make them sparse, clear and taut.
Then you push back your chair, straight-backed and hard-seated
and seem to sigh. Is your patience defeated?

As you move to the window, a surge of past fear.
Have you sensed an old student is hovering near?
As you come to view the moon’s budding crescent,
I slip over the fence and become evanescent.

 

On day 29 of NaPoWriMo, they urged us to peek into a window and tell what we see.
Meanwhile, the prompts from five other sites were: curious, hamper, evanescent, parse and minimum.

Mean Woman Blues at the Corner Bar: NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 28

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The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to write a poem that is a series of questions. Mine are all song titles save for one famous line from literature.

Mean Woman Blues at the Corner Bar

Him: What’s up Pussycat? Are you lonesome tonight?
Her: Can you mend a broken heart?
Him: Do-ya do-ya do-ya do-ya wanna dance?
Her: Who are you?
Him: Hello, Hello. Bad, bad Leroy Brown. What’s your name?
Her: Hello. Mary Lou!
Him: Ever dance with the Devil in the pale moonlight?
Her:  Who let the dogs out?
Him: If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?
Her: What’s going on? Hang on, Sloopy!
Him: Wouldn’t it be nice?
Her:  (Looking down,) Is this a dagger which I see before me?
Him: Can’t you see, can’t you see?
Her: Is that all there is?
Him: Do you really want to hurt me?
Her: Would you still love me tomorrow?
Him: What’s love got to do with it?
Her: How did it get so late so soon?
Him: Does anybody really know what time it is?
Her: Should I stay or should I go?
Him: Do ya think I’m sexy?
Her: (taking out her car keys) Do you know the way to San Jose?
Him: Are you going to go my way?
Him: (To her back as she walks out the door) What’s goin’ on? Am I that easy to forget?
Him: (To the room at large) Can’t you see, can’t you see what that woman, she been doin’ to me?
A stander-by:  What I can see clearly now is what becomes of the broken-hearted!

In case you want to play along or read more poems written to this prompt, here is the NaPoWriMo prompt . Photo by Milo Bauman on Unsplash, used with permission. If you doubt any of the song titles or want to know who sang them, just Google them. I ran out of time or I would have made links.