Category Archives: Poem

Happy Hour

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Happy Hour

Let’s get together to workshop our souls,
then toss our past regrets back in their bowls.

Though life’s a lottery, full of calamity,
we are the agents of all of its amity.

Choices we make determine our ends.
Fate’s only responsible for its trick bends.

You bring the biscuits and I’ll provide wine.
We’ll discuss life as we sip and we dine.

No better remedy for life’s aversions
than hors d’oeuvres and drinks to provide our diversions.

 

Prompt for today are workshop, lottery, biscuit, calamity and agent.

Plum Pit, Apple Core

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ecologyeco

Plum Pit, Apple Core

Never saw an apple tree, never saw a plum
that I didn’t want to reach out and get me some.
Bite into the fleshy fruit. Chew around the pit.
Spit it out into my hand to get rid of it.
Dig a hole to bury it. Smooth it with my heel
to grow another fruit tree for a future meal.

Such a simple motion in a world grown gross—
most folks isolated, fearfully morose
about  nature’s rebellion against humankind.
Reaching deep within her and taking what we find
without giving back again—everybody keen
on scraping out her riches with some grand machine.

For manifold acts of mankind, dangerous and mean,
nature has not found an adequate vaccine.
But, by giving back again, we signify devotion
to start to rectify our sins with a simple motion.
Let’s help her out by simply remaining aware
that each and every one of us needs to start to care.

By every single action, let’s demonstrate our wills
to rectify our heedlessness, atone for all our ills.
For everything that we take out, putting something back.
To therein change our dangerous course and take another tack.
Just a simple gesture, signifying more.
Building back our world pit after pit, core after core.

We talk about solutions, never coming close—
spewing words not actions, maddeningly verbose.
But if every person just took their life in hand,
polluting less, enriching their surrounding land,
perhaps we’d shift the balance, tree by tree by tree,
restoring our world to what it’s meant to be.

Prompt words today are plum, motion,  vaccine, verbose and never. 

Runaway Bride

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Runaway Bride

I hear church bells in the distance.
Yesterday I thought I would be there,
but here I am, the runaway bride,
standing by the side of the road
with the suitcase I’d packed so carefully for my honeymoon.

I try to imagine what Richard is doing right now.
What he might be thinking.
Is my mother regretting the money she spent on my gown?
Is my father wondering about the reception—
whether they will just carry on
since he will have to pay for the hundred meals
whether they are eaten or not?
Will my sister blame me forever
for the dress I’ve made her wear with no payoff?

Who will announce
to the assembled guests
that the bride will not be in attendance? 

A truck slows. In the back are cages of chickens
and one muddy pig.
The old farmer asks where I am going.
“Anywhere you’re going,” I announce,
and hitch up my skirts,
flip my bridal veil over my shoulder
and climb up into the pickup. 

As we take off to wherever,
I notice that my veil has come off my shoulder.
Through the side rear vision mirror, I can see it 
flapping cheerily in the wind
as we drive past the church,
and I see the groom, mouth agape.

I do not wave good-bye.

Narrative Poem for dVerse Poets. Photo by Dylan  Nolte on Unsplash, used with permission.

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.