Category Archives: Poem

NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 2 The Road Less Taken in a Modern Age

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The farther up the mountain we went, the smaller the road became. I was on the outiside and for most of the way the drop was severe–with no siderails or walls or shoulders. Vertigo? Yes.

The Road Less Taken in a Modern Age

Who wanders for pleasure, wanders alone
marking no boundary, barrier, zone.
The earth has no limits and time has no chime,
my steps undetermined by schedule or clime.

This used to be my modus operandi—
travel my sweet tooth and freedom my candy.
No email or Google, no iPad or phone,
without Internet service, I rolled like a stone.

But today I am traveling from town to town
with heavier luggage–more weighted down.
And though I go singly, I’m never alone
thanks to my computer, my Kindle and phone.

Right now I’m imprisoned and my progress is bound
by the cords of my ear buds confusingly wound
round my camera charger and Ethernet connector.
My GPS determines my vector.

No more do I travel unfettered and free.
Cell tower to tower is where I must be;
so every person that I’ve ever met
has me perpetually in their debt.

Birthdays to remember and twitters to answer,
queries of grandchildren, hip sockets, cancer.
Traveling with this extra weight is not pleasant.
I much prefer traveling just in the present

unfettered by email, phone calls or that voice
calling instructions at every choice
of northwards or southwards or eastward or west.
Yes, I know GPS directions are best,

but if I’m never lost and never alone,
I’d best just stay home and talk on the phone,
for most of adventure has come when I’m lost
from all of my past, whatever the cost.

Still the ways of the present make planning much easier,
finding my next destination much breezier.
These tricky freeways have changed in past years
and I find my memory much in arrears.

So perhaps for today I’ll turn on GPS
so I won’t get so lost and I won’t have to guess
which freeway to take: eight-oh-eight? Eight-oh-six?
Getting myself in a terrible fix.

Tomorrow’s the time to become vagabond,
using personal radar and my fairy wand
to maneuver through life by the skin of my pants.
Just for today, I won’t take the chance!

for NaPoWriMo 2021 Day 2

The Wordsmith’s Divulgence

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The Wordsmith’s Divulgence

My story is a flamfoo, ornamented too excessively.
I always overdo it. I’m over-endowed expressively.

Why use one word with two in mind? I fear I’m never spartan.
Instead of wearing loincloths, my poems are dressed in tartan!

Instead of coming one-by-one, my thoughts come in a storm.
So many little busy bees, descending in a swarm.

I do not have the patience to select them one-by one.
When I seek to edify, I simply find it fun

to pile on word after word. The more the merrier.
Bald truth is not my forte. I prefer my grand thoughts hairier!

 

 

Prompt words today are patience, wordsmith, flamfoo, edify and storm. A flamfoo, by the way, is a gaudily overdressed woman or an ornament of her dress.

By All Means

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By All Means

Grandmother Air, Grandfather Tree,
forgive our eccentricity
in doing what we’ve done to thee.

The parricide that we have done
is more than just a smoking gun.
If it’s a war, chaos has won.

By burning, we’ve killed both of you.
Nature’s response should be our clue
that our end, too, is well in view.

No prankster when you make your threat,
you state explicitly, and yet,
still your message we fail to get.

An accurate interpretation
is that man’s manipulation
has resulted in great agitation.

Everything’s off-balanced and
gotten rather out of hand.
So nature has to make a stand.

Her arsenal is most minute.
and though mankind is most astute,
ironically, hard to refute.

Fools will say that we have won,
but still, when all is said and done,
we still hold the smoking gun.

If we don’t change our reckless course,
and solve our problem at its source,
she will respond with greater force.

Be it virus, fire or wind,
if our ways we do not mend,
we’ll be the means to our own end.

Prompt words today are eccentric, air, accurate, prankster and grandfather.

Music of the Spheres II: If Mankind Were A Thought Bubble

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Music of the Spheres II:
If Mankind Were A Thought Bubble

What else might nature have done
if it had wanted to have fun?
Could it have made a man, instead
of hair, with hands above his head?
To grab the brush from off the shelf
so it could simply groom itself?
Could the music of the spheres
have been reduced to human ears?
A sort of cosmic saxophone
that altered mankind bone on bone?
Kindness bubbling up from ooze
to be the quality we’d choose
instead of hate and greed and trouble?
What if man were just a bubble
rising through the ocean’s murk
to rise to air and go to work
to turn into a different sort
of human driven to comport
himself with generosity?
You for you and me for me
lost to perpetuity?
What a different world we’d see.
All for one and one for all
precluding mankind’s final fall.
How I wish this fantasy
was all that I would have it be.
Not just a dream within my head
but how things really worked instead.

 
The NaPoWriMo prompt was to watch this video and write a poem based upon it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX_xh2do3eM

And HERE is the NaPoWriMo prompt.

Music of the Spheres

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Music of the Spheres
“What tears us apart can bring us together.”

Music dips a candle and lights it at the wick,
spilling notes like light out, full and round and thick.
It builds a room around us, brick by brick by brick,
shedding shards of ditties sharp enough to nick
our inflated sensibilities, popping those balloons
of our inflated selves to turn us from buffoons
into sentient beings, open to romance,
and filling out our lives with more than circumstance.
Anger, joy, nostalgia, need or fear or wonder
can unite us in experience or tear our world asunder.
All these warring sentiments are meant to coincide
in human hearts where all of them are destined to abide.
Music is the language that gives us each a tether
that unites individuals and ties us all together,

Prompt word today are music, note, crumbs, coincide and brick.

Bottlebrush Bloom: FOTD Mar 30, 2021

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Just before I saw the rattlesnake today, I snapped a photo of this gorgeous flower in my sister’s yard–or perhaps it was her neighbor’s. They join together along the arroyo that runs behind them both.

Does anyone else see the face in this photo?

 

For Cee’s FOTD

United States

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United States

As I peruse the system, I cannot help but balk.
Instead of fixing fissures, they just bring out the caulk
and stuff it in the spaces, obscuring every crack,
not finding it expedient to deal with what we lack.

If we could come together in more than just our name,
looking for a way to fix instead of just to blame,
we could start on the road  to our founding fathers’ aim
and prove for once that politics is more than just a game.

It’s become unexpected for our government to work.
Various private agendas cause senators to shirk
the purpose of their being there—to work the problems out.
Instead, each chance to work together turns into a bout.

Republican or Democrat, their whole agenda should
be to make our country fair and safe and good.
Bring mercy out of hiding. Make lady justice proud.
Surrender guns. Thereby decree,”No violence allowed.”

Take back the halls of governance from the N.R.A.
Accept that we’re all brothers, be we black or white or gay,
transgendered, brown or red, no matter how we look or talk.
If our true aim is democracy, we’ve got to walk the walk.

Prompt words are unexpected, peruse, system, balk and game.

Cold Shoulder

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Cold Shoulder

He parcels out emotions as though he has to pay for them.
If you expect affections, you’ll be waiting night and day for them.
He thinks those who show emotion to be members of a cult,
so he does not appreciate nor covet nor exult.

He gets antagonistic when a lady holds his hand.
He believes that blatant signal to deserve a reprimand.
Communication? Dangerous when it goes too far.
If joie de vivre is what you seek, for sure, he’s under par.

 

Prompt words today are covet, dangerous, parcel, antagonistic and  emotions.

Photo

Loam

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Loam

My roots are in the soil of the place I once called home
and still I feel a part of that South Dakota loam.
It had rich humus that gave life to all that seeded me,
clay to hold my memories and sand to set me free.

Lest I give the impression that they’re gone without a trace,
a myriad of memories lie rooted in that place.
They flit like prairie moths through everything I do,
then sink back down into my heart like rich Dakota goo.

 

Prompts for today are impression, myriad, flit and home. (Loam is a fertile soil of clay and sand containing humus.) Photo by Nikola Jovanovic on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Old Friends

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Old Friends

Like a well-worn garment rubbed thin by life,
I’m becoming translucent,
my secrets still partially obscured,
lest you be inundated with the whole of me.

Friends of long duration, 
we see each other 
as through a light fog,
that scathing inflexibility of youth
loosened in us,
as I grant you the foibles
I hope you grant in me.

Prompt words today are translucent, inundate, flexibility, scathe.