Category Archives: Poem

Couple-ets: April 1, 2020

7 Replies

“Couple-ets”

The path I thought was straight and easy has developed swerves.
This trick-or-treat relationship is getting on my nerves.

One day you bring me sweets and roses—all my fond heart seeks.
The next you end up ghosting me and disappear for weeks.

Our bond I once thought perfect is showing signs of wear.
Too often I’m a single whereas once we were a pair.

That love once thought infrangible now sports a widening crack.
Don’t show up as who you’ve become. I want the old you back!

Where once I published love poems, now I tell how my heart aches.
Where once I wrote of how love grows, now I tell how it breaks.

 

Prompt words today are infrangible, publish, ghosting, trick and sweet. The jar pictured is a wedding jar I purchased in Chiapas. The idea is for the bride and groom to each drink out of their own spout of the communal cup. Lovely imagery. I put black beans in it to hold the plants upright as they developed roots and filled it full of water. A few weeks later I came out to find that the beans had soaked up the water, expanded, and burst the cup. What a metaphor!!! Perfect for this poem…

 

Childhood Games Revisited: NaPoWriMo Day 1

22 Replies

Childhood Games Revisited

Hide and seek, hide and seek.
I set them down and then I peek
here and there, in purse and pocket.
Find my keys and grandma’s locket
but I do not find my glasses
even after countless passes
over tables, desks and floors.
Opening cupboards, searching drawers.
My life is like that childhood game,
but it’s hardly just the same,
For unlike others seeking me,
what I’m seeking I cannot see.

 

The first NaPoWriMo prompt this year is to write a poem wherein our life is described in terms of a metaphor that is an action. I am comparing my life to playing hide and seek. More literal than figurative, I fear.

(If you’re not familiar, NaPoWriMo – the National Poetry Writing Month – happens every April, an offshoot of NaNoWriMo. Back in 2013 I joined the movement, and I’ve been writing poems daily ever since. If you’re curious, HERE is my first NaPoWriMo poem!)

Enamoured: dVerse Poets, Mar 31, 2020

19 Replies

 

Enamoured

Mere man, mere dame,
a mean red moon.
A dream remade,
a mar, a dune.
Marooned and moored
and no end near.
Me enamoré. 
Me arrear.

This poem was written making use of only the letters in the word enamoured. To do so, I had to make use of two languages. In Spanish, a ”mar” is a sea or ocean, but “amar” can also mean to love. “Me enamoreé“ means “I fell in love.” “Me Arrear” can mean either “I got caught,” “Drive me” or “Grab me.”  It also carries the connotation for me that the object of her affection’s love might be in arrears. “En arrear” can have that meaning in Spanish as well. Since I used the British spelling of the title word to increase my choices, I guess you could say this poem is trilingual. Comes in handy when limited in the consonants and vowels one can use.

For dVerse Poets: Red.

Coronavirus Reflections

28 Replies

Coronavirus Reflections

I’m exploring my options now that I’m alone,
my only distraction my blog and my phone.
Well, sure, I have dogs and cats I can tickle.
to ease, if you will, this sequestering pickle.

Yet I’m a pariah to humans I know,
so my social life is a little bit slow.
That it’s undeserved may be undisputed.
Nonetheless, unless I show up Hasmat suited,

none of my friends want to hug or shake hands, 
and when I explore, not anyone stands
closer than ten feet away from my hips.
Even my lover forgoes my hot lips!

Slick politicians may emphasize how
our social distancing affects the Dow,
saying, perhaps the stock market is mendable
so long as we declare seniors expendable.

This chain of reason sounds bogus to me.
I’d like to remain on my family tree
labeled as living for as long as possible.
I soundly reject being labeled as tossable!

Prompt words today are slick, tickle, undeserved, explore and chain.

Dagwood

6 Replies

473fef2d0018fdef47b61a3b0c92686f--dagwood-sandwich-dinner-recipesphoto from Pinterest

Dagwood

After my pizza and after my knish
I have just one more edible wish.
I’m building its fantasy here in my mind:
a spectacular sandwich of a unique kind.

A little pastrami, baked beans and some cheese,
pickles and mustard and if you please
some mayonnaise lightly spread over the bread.
(Miracle Whip?  I’d rather be dead!)

Some avo and onions sliced thin would be nice,
and if you have it, a green pepper slice.
Some olives and beets would add a good zing,
and then I’d like one more additional thing.

Some chips to add crunch––put them right there inside.
(Only a ninny would place them outside.)
Then slice it diagonally if you will,
with a pickle beside it––a big kosher dill.

Then you can leave, please, so I can I start
greedily ripping that sandwich apart.
For though I needed help, perhaps, in its construction,
I need no further guidance in its destruction

Prompt words today are sandwich, fantasy, ninny, vanquish and guidance.

Plaza Scene in the Time of the Coronavirus

8 Replies


Plaza Scene in the Time of the Coronavirus

Birds pick at rice
gone stale on the steps of the church.
Doors closed,
no choir sings matins
on this Sunday morn.

Rolling over in their beds
or gathered around the breakfast table,
the faithful listen to the mass
broadcast over speakers
loud enough to be heard a mile away,

while belligerent teens, sabotaging
their parents’ careful advice,
make the green benches
in the plaza across the street
their communal habitat.

 

Prompt words for today are belligerent, care, sabotage, rice and habitat.

Oh, if Only

6 Replies

Oh, if Only

Folks from the east and folks from the west
are going to parley to see what is best.
They’ll quiz the offenders and empty them out
to see what this deception has all been about.
If they empty their dark souls and spill their confessions,
at the end of all of these fact-finding sessions,
we can correct their corruption and sin
and really make America greater again!

Prompt words today are empty, confession, quiz, parley and west.

Bird Chorus

3 Replies
and came closer to the bait

Bird Chorus

Birds perch on countless branches, each a separate bell
ringing out the cadence of stories they must tell.
Around them, eerie silence, for no other sounds compete.
No calls of children playing. No pattering of feet

up and down the pavement. No playing girls and boys,
for all the busy humans, infamous for their noise,
are staying in their houses and no amount of blustering
from their scattered leaders is bound to stop their clustering.

Families draw in closer as friends all fade away
into their particular intentions for the day.
Offices turn cyber. Schools are merely screens.
Mothers sit at kitchen tables, perusing magazines.

Fathers pace on carpets and worry about money.
How are they to make it now that the world’s gone funny?
Now and then, the silence split open by a bell
tolling for the human race who haven’t done too well

at going with the scheme of things. They prefer to take over,
making malls and parking lots out of fields of clover.
Trashing up the landscape. Peppering the tide
with their plastic mountains grown too big to hide.

Is it any wonder how nature responds?
We’ve held her prisoner long enough. She’s sloughing off her bonds.
She’s given us broad hints, but still we do not mind her.
So she’s erasing her mistakes and putting us behind her.

 

Prompt words today are countless branches, amount, eerie, infamous and bell.

Our POTUS in a Time of Plague

11 Replies

annie-spratt-zCgEsdlLNnk-unsplash
Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash, Used with permission.

Our POTUS in a Time of Plague

As scientists studied and scholars debated,
the course of our nation has been confiscated
by someone elected to counsel and guide us
who instead has chosen to confuse and chide us.

His grasp of the matter is less than meticulous,
therefore his statements are rather ridiculous.
His words contradictory, coming together
unfettered by wisdom, with nary a tether.

The palm-reader’s advice and crystal ball’s scry,
and what the astrologer sees in the sky
might deliver more guidance than this crazy guy
with one hand on his club, the other in the pie.

He surveys the landscape, concocting more lore
as he swings back his five iron, calling out “Fore!”
A reality star, but alas, little more—
at the next election, let’s show him the door!

hayden-dunsel-aQeLVaGZuiA-unsplashImage by Hayden Dunsel on Unsplash, used with permission.

 

 

Prompt words today are scry, meticulous, together, confiscate and landscape.

Piscine Phobia

24 Replies


Piscine Phobia

I don’t eat salmon, don’t eat flounder.
I prefer my protein rounder—
chicken, roasts or food like that.
Fish is too fishy and too flat.

Tuna mixed with soup and noodle,
I despise kit and caboodle!
Nothing could persuade me that
I should eat food fit for a cat.

I won’t eat food grown in a swamp,
so crabs and clams I never chomp.
No protein caught by motor boat
will ever pass my teeth and throat.

When dinner parties serve up chowder,
I’m likely to just take a powder.
I simply can’t take the suspense
of what fish lurks in soup so dense.

So if you want to plan a treat
that I will find the nerve to eat,
once again, I must repeat,
forget the lobster. Give me meat!!

Words for today are flounder, suspense, nothing, swamped and motor.