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
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
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
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!
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.
What Little Worlds
(Ode to a Tiny Fungi on the Rainforest Floor)
What little worlds are lost to us
there on the jungle floor
as, looking up,
we tread them underfoot.
Perhaps whole civilizations
extinguished on those orange orbs—
A solar system of planets with their denizens
too microscopic for us to see.
Heedless Gods we are, our mighty glances
overlooking much of what’s beneath us.
But for the camera lens,
how much more we would miss
as we go about our busy greater world.
For the dVerse Poets Fungi Prompt. Memories of the Lacandón jungle, 2008. Other small memories of that adventure are below (fungal and non-fungal.)
Coping with the 2020’s
If These Walls Could Talk
“It’s for your own welfare that we tell you this,”
my four walls all conspired to tell me with a hiss.
Your life is but a fantasy. It’s dreams that tell the truth.
It’s daylight that echoes the things that are uncouth.
If you could but live in dreams, your life would be an idyll.
It’s living with reality that makes one suicidal.
Prompt words today are echo, welfare, fantasy and idyll. This poem was written in response to the below comment on THIS POEM made by my friend Mary Francis McNinch of the Murdo Girl blog. 
HERE is Mary’s own Talking House poem.
Playing with Matches
A family of good repute,
attractive, rich and most astute,
they were nonetheless resistant,
stubborn, pig-headed, persistent
in the planet’s sure demise.
It should have come as no surprise
when they chose to politicize,
using that influence money buys
to become candidates who chose
to rape and pillage, preen and pose
but did not care a single whit
about the planet, but ravaged it.
They paid for monetary gains
with forest fires and hurricanes.
Cared only for self-serving wealth,
forfeiting safety, and the health
of thousands who fell to the threat
of pestilence and grief and debt.
What cared they of the good of those
who didn’t sport designer clothes—
who hobnobbed with the hoi polloi
so lacking in finesse and joy?
And so politicos and cronies,
ministers and other phonies,
rap stars, lawyers, politicians
fed their spoils to the morticians.
That triangle of greed and crassness
together with the cruel vastness
of their dishonesty and greed,
like a virus commenced to breed
foment in what used to be
a bastion of democracy.
Kids in cages, plagues that flourished—
who cared if the undernourished
perished to the awful swell
so long as billionaires were well?
For four long years their riches grew,
feeding on the likes of you!
The monarch yielded royal scepter
as the inept grew still inepter,
ruling with a heedless hand
to rape the populace and land.
Until the nation finally turned
and, finally, travesty spurned,
kicked out the dolt and started to
restore order to the zoo.
Trump’s hand finally overtrumped,
his evil minions finally bumped
from positions they never mastered,
thrown on the junk heap with the bastard!
The whole world hopes we’ve finally learned
those who play with matches are burned!!!!
Sorry, but the prompt words made me create one last rant. I hope this subject is now closed! Prompt words today are triangle, planet, persistent and repute.
The Sun Hat
Her hat’s broad brim shadows her face,
discouraging his fond embrace.
He removes the hat and then
plants a kiss where it has been.
Both actions—kiss and hat removal
have the lady’s full approval.
So, with no further ado,
he makes it two!
Last Meeting
Listen to the nightingale. Do not dispute the loon.
The truth is told by lonely things calling under the moon.
Brought to the brink, their plaintive truth we cannot impugn
as we glide to their music, out into the lagoon.
Waves form spreading circles around our small pontoon.
Internal sorrows follow them, lapping a soulful tune.
Slanted columns of moonbeams are swallowed by each dune.
Like our brief encounter, over too soon, too soon.
Prompt words are brink, column, internal and impugn. Image by Damir Spanic on Unsplash, used with permission.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 