Category Archives: Poem

The Return

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The Return 

Girded by a pressure suit, guided by skill and science,
an astronaut must learn the lessons of complete compliance.
It requires trust and backbone to travel through the dark,
trusting hands thousands of miles away to guide that ark

that speeds him through the solar system, up to regions where
his surroundings are devoid of gravity and air.
Accepting the unknown and resisting terror’s bark,
he hurtles into outer space, accepting danger’s lark.

What prompts him to accept the threat of loneliness and death—
to face an end from fire or from lack of breath?
It is exceptional valor, proving bravery and worth
to face his end so far from the comforts of this earth.

Does he face a different heaven in another clime,
his molecules merged after death to a different time?
Is he bound to spend infinity apart from worlds he’s known,
blown into the universe, forever, now, alone?

No earth he knows to go to to blend back in the world.
From his own nature’s cycle, now forever hurled.
Does he merge into a wider world, another evolution,
absorbed within the rules of a new orb’s revolution?

Will he travel back again in centuries far distant,
in an alien craft, his molecules so insistent
to return to their origins that they are drawn back home
to the soil of this Earth or to the ocean’s foam?

Or can he find his way back home again solely on his own,
intent on his not spending eternity alone?
How wide is one’s soul’s orbit? How vast its gravity?
Can it bring a shipless astronaut back from infinity?

 

Word prompts for today are backbone bark, science and gird.

Brain vs Brawn

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Brain vs Brawn

Performing ablutions and feeding the dogs,
writing to prompts and checking out blogs.
My movement these mornings is slightly curtailed
now that my circadian rhythms have failed.
With two hours’ sleep, it’s dubious that
my exercise will exceed petting the cat.
You may claim that you still can do a mean pushup,
but lately some of us just can’t get our tushup.
Good for all of you folks with perpetual youth,
although bragging of it I find slightly uncouth.
Do I blather on about crosswords I’ve done
or winning at Scrabble? It just isn’t done.
I don’t swagger around with my I.Q. in view.
Clearly, I have something better to do.
So cover that body. Put your pecs in a shroud.
That muscle shirt clearly should not be allowed.
Put clothes on those biceps, obscure that tight tush.
We know that you pump and you pull and you push,
but must you show us? We find it importunate
that you should flaunt them to all the unfortunate.
We don’t display that we’re learned and clever.
We don’t quote Chaucer. Well, not hardly ever.
We won’t humiliate your split infinitive
if you won’t show off your muscles definitive.
Those of us flabby and rotund and loose
hereby are suggesting that we call a truce.
We will not correct your split infinitive
if you won’t show off  your muscles definitive.

Prompt words today are movement, dubious, claim and ablution.

A Fulmination on Fizgigs

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A Fulmination on Fizgigs

What I go through to write blogs is absurd.
I’m desperate for topics. I search for each word.
Superior writing often evades me,
but still I am happy when someone upbraids me
to get off the bench and engage in the play
of Ragtag, Fandango or Word of the day.

Each day I search out a possible angle.
I plot and I worry, I scheme and I wangle
to make use of each prompt word, however absurd.
I will not be bettered by any strange word!
So, bring on your fizgigs and your mollynogging,
I won’t be intimidated in my own blogging!

And although some readers might be irritated
by having to look up words obscure and dated,
and though I must struggle, often in vain,
to make use of prompt words that I find inane,
still I’ll plod on, stubborn to the ending,
regardless of what crazy prompt word is pending!!!

 

Word prompts for today are bench, superior, happiest, fizgig and wangle.

The King of Beasts Fetes the Animal Kingdom

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The King of Beasts Fetes the Animal Kingdom

When he threw a sumptuous banquet to honor all his minions,
they showed up by the thousands via hoof and fin and pinions.
He planned a sumptuous feast , hoping that it would invigorate,
but instead the meal he’d served only served to agitate.
The pelicans were shocked by the roast turkey and fried chicken, 
for they found such a diet to be less than finger-licken’.

The shrimp cocktail gagged the flounder and made the tuna ill.
Before they even had a bite, they found they’d had their fill.
The black Angus were all traumatized when they were served the veal.
Sheep couldn’t eat the mutton and Baaah-humbugged the whole meal.
Thus, one-by-one they found the king of beasts to be barbarian.
How short-sighted he’d been not to just go with vegetarian!

Prompt words are sumptuous, invigorate, minion . Photo by Jeena Jeong on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Wise Men and Fools

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Wise Men and Fools

Pompous men and religious zealots rush into the fray
professing as the solid truth speculations they
determine to be necessary for things to be righted
and other fools support them because they are short-sighted.
But wisdom is as wisdom does and not as wisdom thinks.
It floats up to the surface when foolishness just sinks.
It tends toward calm and practical when flightier heads turn manic
and is irreconcilable with discord and with panic.

Fools may build vain edifices reaching to the skies
that are palatial prisons—follies in disguise.
In time of war, a bunker furnishes more protection,
offering a wiser choice to screen us from detection.
Fools raise their hands and wave at us, inviting their own end,
standing straight and rigid when a wiser man might bend.
Fools rush in where sages might not speculate,
instead letting  the evidence sit and percolate.

Sages, fools and charlatans mixed up in the fray.
For those who cannot tell the difference, now we’ll all have to pay.

 

Prompt words for today are wisdom, irreconcilable, practical and palatial.

Heart’s Eye

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Heart’s Eye

Who can pass a bookstore door
and fail to note the vellichor
or fail to feel within their heart
the message of a piece of art?

A  poignant poem or pithy quote,
well-loved and thereby learned by rote,
is a means by which we might denote
that part of us that we devote

to what we can’t repudiate—
that part of us that is a gate 
to a special way of seeing—
the heart’s eye of a human being.

Word prompts for today are art, repudiate, vellichor and denote.

Cheap Thrills: VJ’s Weekly Challenge, Urge

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Cheap Thrills

Stand by the door of the room with your coat still on.
Try to stay focused
while he unbuttons his shirt.

Relax everything.
Different parts of you
like clothes in a pile on the floor.
You’ll get wrinkled falling down so often
from the tempest
that has dropped him
back again,
flat on you, as you melt into the bed
above his favorite spot.

He will go
where everyone goes
without you.
You may have crossed the equator,
returning home
with treasures
from around the world and back,
but not the kind of prizes
you can hang
on dressing table mirrors.

Your exquisite things of the world
live with you,
but you have never been
where they all go
though you have tried
and tried
and sometimes you have
nearly made it
yet,
cheap thrills, in the end,
have always evaded you.

In your deepest voice,
you want to
“Hey baby,”
and you want him to
sink you down.
You want to almost drown
call help so he comes after you
and you rise up
together
for the splitting of an
atom     gone
‘til you
come
back
to fall
back down together.

It would be a miracle.

Imagine.

 

VJ’s Weekly Challenge prompt is URGE.

A Night in Shining Armor

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A Night in Shining Armor

The royal chambers  were impressive, their ceilings high and vaulted,
and the king that lived within them was respected and exalted,
but he’d grown a bit too portly around his hips and bust.
To put it more politely? He was overly robust.

Only once a year was there a problem with his girth.
On the anniversary of his country’s birth
when he had to put on armor, it had become a must,
if he was to fit inside it, to be securely trussed.

Thus girded and then girdled, he was stuffed within
armor made for him before, back when he was thin!
Luckily, there was sufficient room around his face,
so, although the rest of it lacked sufficient space,

he was able to make speeches about affairs of state,
to eulogize and glorify and pontificate!
Then, after the ceremonies, feeling young and sprightly,
he visited his concubines, clad regally and tightly.

But when he tried to exit his protective crust,
he found that he’d been glued within by a seal of rust!
They tried to use a crowbar, a hammer and a chisel,
but, alas, it was a rainy day and all that drizzle

had sealed him tight within the metal of his kingly raiment,
making it a prison, not just a brief containment.
At length, they called a blacksmith who with cutting, prying, hammering,
in spite of the king’s protests, his commanding and his yammering,

removed the monarch from his shell, released him to his ardor,
none-the-worse for all those nightly visits to his larder.
The ladies took him to their beds and comforted and soothed him,
giving him that royal special care that much  behooved him.

And when next year the king was placed upon his royal charger,
the armor that he wore was seen to be some sizes larger.
The invoice that the blacksmith sent for the king’s re-guising,
tactfully just charged him for adjustment and resizing,

but in fact, the artisan had made a big improvement
bound to make it easier for future royal movement
if he kept up his nightly search for items that were edible.
Cleverly, he made it out of chainmail that was spreadable!

Prompt words today are robust, invoice, sprightly and exalted. I took this photo in 1969 on an eight week driving tour of Great Britain. It was taken in the castle of Sir Walter Scott.  Just this year, I bought a slide converter and converted the slides of that trip to jpegs. I hadn’t seen these photos in almost fifty years! Came in handy today.

Sunday Haven

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Sunday Haven

On Sunday mornings in her pew her countenance was numinous,
her eyes benign, her serene smile was nothing short of luminous,
but by that evening, she had shifted to a mood bituminous.

Dark skies, in short. Her mood and look becoming less than cheery
as she descended into attitudes more dark and dreary—
cantankerous and woebegone, martyred,  doleful, weary.

As luck would have it, those of us that she deigned to call friend
suffered through each dark spot, just praying for its end,
waiting for the skies to clear and for her mood to mend.

And sure enough, after a week of musings mired in dolor,
clouds parted and her mental weather slowly crept toward solar,
her mood-swings forming textbook illustrations of bipolar!

If only we could find a way to keep her on her perch
balanced there with hymnal on her pew of gleaming birch,
for the only time we’ve respite is the time she is in Church!

Prompt words today are hug, luck, cheery and luminous.

In the Garden of the Ice Goddess

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Photograph by Kelley Farrell

In the Garden of the Ice Goddess

It’s been a chilly fantasy living in your world.
In every tiny rosebud, an icycle is curled.
Though all of us are vying to try to win your favor,
every single day you require a new flavor.

When you ask us over to have a friendly dip,
we swim in your excesses and it’s an uphill trip.
With one toe in the water, you declare it to be frigid
and state the obvious now that the water has gone rigid.

You bend to lift your skirts up, revealing silver blades,
then glide most gracefully away in one of your charades.
Who can guess your motives or your next vain act?
What new futile effort do you wish us to enact?

Logic is not your forte and kindness not your thing.
You always cast asunder everything we bring.
One by one, we falter and we fall away,
knowing we too will turn to ice if we choose to stay.

Photo by Kelley Farrell. See her blog HERE. Prompt words today are chilly, swim, fantasy and vie.