Bad Fortune
A superfluous excrescence to our sinking ship of state,
of all our past mistakes, I’m sorry to relate
that this uquiet jester is our biggest flub to date–
a fact that many voters cottoned onto way too late.
But if you seek a formula for change, there’s no debate.
Vote this fool out of office before he seals our fate!
Prompt words today are quiet, formula, jester, excrescence and past.
Visiting Grandma
If you must go on an escapade, be sure to take umbrellas.
Do not talk to strangers and do not flirt with fellas.
Why put on all that makeup? Your natural look is best.
Why would you wear a bustier when you could wear a vest?
Pick locales you know are safe. Just go to ones near churches.
Beware of stuff that falls from planes and pigeons on tall perches.
You may think your gallivanting is the stuff of dreams,
but the world of adventure is not all that it seems.
Why not choose daylight hours to see what you can see
and once the sun sets, stay at home, here with gramps and me?
I’ll make a pan of fudge and then we can play Parcheesi.
This town’s not nice at night. It’s very dark and way too breezy.
But if you simply must go out, mind the bottom stair.
Is that funny little outfit the one you’re going to wear?
Put toilet paper on the seat when you use the loo!
A key? Oh, you won’t need one. We’ll be waiting up for you.
Prompt words today are umbrella, escapade, dream, locale and natural.
Attitude
Memory can be a juggernaut, retelling us too often
of hard past events that time should be allowed to soften.
What good is it to resurrect mistakes and acts of folly?
Better to forget times gone and make the present jolly.
Our only security lies soundly in the present.
Why waste our thoughts on bygone days instead of days more pleasant?
Trade former tears for whoops of joy and for the umpteenth time,
remind yourself you have the choice to make your world sublime.
Words for the day are whoops, juggernaut, umpteen and security
merciless, indestructible and unstoppable.
The Archbishop Gets Forgetful
Priests in town know when the archbishop is about,
he’s bound to have a new batch of indulgences to tout.
And though he’s their head honcho so they must all be respectful,
when they see him coming they get super-genuflectful.
“Please dear Lord, don’t make us sell the pardons that he has!”
These days that sort of fund-raising carries no pizazz.
Paying their bills as he suggests has no appeal at all.
They’d really rather make do with St. Vincent de Paul.
Yet no one wants to tell him that selling the way to heaven
was outlawed by the church way back in fifteen sixty-seven!
Prompt words for today are honcho, pizzazz, respectful, tout and bill.
Who Needs an Election?
Our perfunctory president is not in any hurry
to pack his suitcase. He’s a rat that’s unequipped to scurry.
Unready to give up his throne., he thinks we are in need
of his gross incompetence, his racism and greed.
How could his teeming vassals unseat their liege-lord now?
How dare his noble lackeys desert their sacred cow?
Are they in their right minds, seeking to end his power?
Must he desert his White House and make do with his tower?
His orange countenance grows pale. His comb-over descends.
He thought that he would rule our world ’til he was in Depends!
If he could only change the rules, how great that it would be
to play his “Trump,” enabling him to found a dynasty.
First Junior, then Ivanka could inherit his domain.
What other tyrant is equipped to take over his reign?
This liberty these fools taut can’t hold a candle to him.
His light is needed now the torch of liberty’s gone dim.
No need for an election. The world’s too dire for that.
He’ll gladly serve another term growing sleek and fat.
He’ll sack Social Security and supplement the riches
of all the moneyed classes. Never mind the foreign bitches
who have swarmed into the congress. Send those tawny women home—
the sacred halls of governance better suit a gnome
who carries golf clubs as his scepters and overlooks derision
to fuck the whole damn world according to his crazy vision.
“Heil Trump,” his swastika’d supporters chant. “And damn the Jews!”
“Crucify the liberals,” is shouted from the pews
of those for whom religion is being blindly led,
forsaking what is written in favor of what’s said.
As lambs led to the slaughter, let us bleat and blindly scamper
after all the rich men that we were born to pamper.
We do not need good health care, let alone good food or shelter.
Long Live Trump! Who cares if the whole world goes “Helter Skelter?”
Prompt words are unready, perfunctory, racism, scurry and suitcase. Image from Unsplash, used with permission.
Blackbirds Over Lake Chapala
I no longer have to look away from the sunset
to know the birds are flying over.
I’ve come to recognize the sound,
like water rushing against the banks of a stream,
of thousands of wings pumping then gliding then pumping.
The ribbon of their combined mass
twists for miles like a giant ghost snake in the sky,
its molecules dividing, joining,
undulating from the green marsh grass
into eye blue sky.
Birds silhouette against
an edge of tangerine cloud
that is a scribble of glue in the sky.
Below them,
the smell of dirt, smoke from the burning mountain,
drum beats from the heart of the hazed city.
A canoe shaped like a Nile barge bumps against the reeds.
Sounds of a new flock flying over whip the air
above the night heron
who stands on short legs
on a post surrounded by low water.
The whole mass of birds is blown by the wind forth and back,
forth and back.
Some separate and circle back to marsh grass
where another mass lifts to fly east,
away from the setting sun.
The scene is ripped by
the rapid raucous staccato of two small boys
lofting rocks toward the soaring banks of birds,
violence feisty in their harsh raised voices.
Again and again they throw their stones,
a futile gesture,
as above them the sun turns angry orange
over the purple mountains,
then sinks to radiate like something sacred
from behind dark clouds.
Watching two egrets open the air with pencil points, then vanish into it,
I only hear the diving pelican cut the water behind the tall reeds.
And, like a sudden wind over my head,
a new rush of blackbirds.
A number of people wanted to see photos of the blackbirds taking flight at Lake Chapala, so I spent a few hours going through old boxes of photos and found some which you can see HERE. The picture I used to illustrate above is one I took of starlings, I believe, and not taken at Lake Chapala, although the skies look similar!
Snapped
My nails are often inky or besmirched by dirt or paint.
Perfect rounded ovals are often what they ain’t.
You can always ascertain what project I’ve at hand,
be it cooking, painting or digging in the land,
simply by observing the shape my nails are in:
paint bespeckled, ringed with dirt, ragged, chipped and thin.
There’s usually no saving them. I use each as a tool.
When I trim the pergola or scrape mold from the pool,
my nails bear the brunt of it. They are no pretty sight.
There is no manicure on earth that could put them right.
So a month or two ago, imagine my surprise
when ten perfect white-edged nails appeared before my eyes.
I located the orange stick, the cuticles to shape.
I rounded off the tips of them and couldn’t help but gape
at hands equipped with fingernails for once all the same length!
I admit it. I admired them—their whiteness, shape and strength.
I decided I would polish them. The first time in a year.
First a coat of fleshy peach, and then a coat of clear.
Finally, all the nails except just one were done.
I saved it for the last because it was my favorite one.
It had the nicest shape of all, in fact it was the longest.
According to my reasoning, it was likely the strongest.
So imagine my displeasure. Try to feel my sense of loss
when I reached out for the nail polish and broke it clean across!
Cruel fate has ways of testing our will and sanity,
sometimes by means of toying with our silly vanity.
Prompts for the day are fingernail, pergola, inky, ascertain and savings.
Photo by Shane-Ha7FZYLEmA on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Ennui
If she weren’t so frangible, she would be independent.
Her causes would be epic and her actions more resplendent.
She could get more exercise and wouldn’t be so stout.
She’d be so much more sprightly if she could go out.
Her initial actions if she weren’t so fragile
would be acts of daring so spellbindingly agile
that the world would view her as a wonder. Oh, if only,
perhaps then she wouldn’t be so weary and so lonely.
Words for the day are stout, epic, initial, frangible and independent. Photo by Shane-Ha7FZYLEmA on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Lazy Day Resolution
I do not want to write a thing. I don’t want to design.
When it comes to creativity, I’m ready to resign.
My efficacy’s at an end. I have no further drive.
No further motivation to prove that I’m alive.
I’m going to eat chocolates in front of the TV.
No schedules to live up to. Now all my time is free.
I have no excuses. Your aid is not required.
To end this conversation, I will just say I’m retired!
Prompt words today are design, aid, conversation, efficacy and excuses.
State of the Nation
Faith is growing cynical. Grace is wearing out.
Happiness is in the doldrums. Patience wears a pout.
Our country that connoted fairness and liberty
now holds us in its fist. We are anything but free.
Its silver saber tarnished, we’re falling to its blade.
So much for all those plans our founding fathers made.
Prompt words for the day are cynical, grace, connote and silver. First image from Unsplash used with permission.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 