Category Archives: Poem

Grandpa’s Pronouncement at the Family Reunion

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Grandpa’s Pronouncement at the Family Reunion

“Pack up all your suitcases, we’re going on vacation.
Don’t forget your sleeping bags and some alimentation.
We’re heading out in two hours for the challenge of your lives,
so load up all your kids and hurry up your wives.
I’m making a pronouncement that perhaps you won’t agree with,
but since you are the folks that I most enjoy to be with,
I spent all of your legacies on this giant bus
that it is my fondest wish to fill with only us
and set out for the summer having various adventures.
Most likely we’ll get lost and perhaps Gram will lose her dentures,
but all-in-all we’ll have great times that no one will forget.
You’re going to spend this summer with the finer set.

I’ve cleared it with your bosses. I’ve contacted your friends.
No need to call anyone. No need to make amends.
You’ll live without your boyfriends for a month or two.
Just tell them that your family needs some time with you.
Go and find your places–kids all in the back.
I have some games to play with you while your mothers pack.
No phones, laptops or notebooks are allowed aboard the bus.
I want communication to be narrowed down to us.
I’ll teach you snakes and ladders, Monopoly and Chess.
You can beat your Uncle Tom and your Auntie Bess,
your grandma and your sisters, your cousins and your brother.
Why bother to beat someone else when you can beat each other?”

The ending you might well project. The mom’s find fault. The kids object.
But once he’d packed us all inside and started out on our grand ride,
we settled down and all joined in to get to know their closest kin
and all in all, that summer trip, each tent-pitching, each skinny dip
turned into one fine memory, just as Gramp knew it would be!

(Click on photos to enlarge and view as slide show.)

Morning brought Patti’s scrambled eggs

 

Prompt words today are pronounced, legacy, challenge, alimentation and suitcase. Sadly, this is fiction and the photos a compilation of various friends and family. I wish this had happened, but alas, it didn’t. The fourth photo is a picture of part of my actual family.

Cold Jack Ice

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The dVerse Poets prompt was to write a poem inspired by one of these vegetable names. I’m going to try to use them all: Black Beauty, Trail of Tears, Lazy housewife, princess, purple queen, Jacob’s cattle, The Czar, Wizard, golden acre, dazzling blue, purple sword, Jack ice, Reine de Glaces, blue fire, aurora, tender and true.

Cold Jack Ice

As accomplished in his love-making as at a game of dice,
his name was John Dukakis, but they called him Cool Jack Ice
because his smile could warm or freeze, depending on the way
his luck played out or didn’t, as it changed from day to day.

When he purchased Jacob’s cattle and his Golden Acre Farm,
He thought that he would use them to impress the new school marm.
He’d be a wizard as a cowboy, a czar of cultivation.
He’d win her as his bride before the coming school vacation.

He’d heard she was an ice queen a real “Reine de Glacé.
And since he was the King of Ice, he knew the game to play.
He donned his purple sword and a coat of dazzling blue.
If he was to be her Lochinvar, he knew just what to do.

He swooped down on his Ellen at the school fete,
saved her from the stag line and took her on a date.
The aurora borealis shone down from far above
As, feigning true and tender, he declared undying love.

He called her his sweet princess for those months he sought to woo her.
It was only after they were wed that he began to rue her.
She was a lazy housewife, he said, and counted coup,
taunting her as his black beauty as he beat her black and blue.

She fled into the freezing cold, a trail of tears behind her,
taking refuge in a secret place where he would never find her. 
And as her bruises turned her into a purple queen,
she plotted out her vengeance, silent and unseen.

They say it was blue fire that streaked across that night
that both Jack Frost and Black Jack Ice took their final bite.
What footsteps there were left were so filled up with snow
that not a single tracker could tell where they might go.

Severed from its body, Jack’s face had ceased to smile
as the one who wiped it off his face sped onward, mile by mile.
on Jack’s steed, and since that day, no one has defamed her,
for to put it bluntly, not one who knew him blamed her!

And, in case you didn’t read it before, here’s another poem I wrote about an heirloom tomato: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/02/12/aunt-lous-underground-railroad-tomato-for-black-history-month/

FordVerse Poets prompt.

Advisor to the Lovelorn

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Advisor to the Lovelorn

Although she was a novice, she had a trenchant wit.
No matter what the problem, she had a cure for it.
With very little practice, she had soon mastered the job
of advice to the lovelorn—that suffering, confused mob.

She composed her column while sitting in the tub,
dispensing rules and practices to her admiring club
of followers who hung their lives on her guiding words
from their first fumbling kisses to the bees and birds.

She gave names to their thingamajigs and taught them how to use them.
Taught them all the body parts and how to not abuse them.
Virgins forsook their single cots for their marriage beds
with thoughts of all her wisdom swirling through their heads.

But when it came to her own life? Up that proverbial creek.
No wiser soul advised her. No counsel did she seek.
Lover after lover was given a brief chance
to try to woo this very master of romance.

But, alas, their tactics never quite took hold.
This one was too timid and the next one was too bold.
So was it that, sadly, did this mistress of romance
miss out on on her own turn at the wedding dance.

So is it that our betters tell us what to do
whereas within their own lives, they do not have a clue.

Words for today are thingamajig, practice, novice, trenchant and composed.

Hibiscus: FOTD May 10, 2020

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For Cee’s FOTD

Traveler

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Traveler

Nobody’s secretary, no one’s wife.
I’d be a nomad for all of my life.
Traditions converged as I traversed this earth,
discovering foibles, unveiling my worth.

What I saw as empty was something to fill.
Was it something to savor or something to kill?
It depended on choices of what I would savor.
Would I hold out for love or just curry favor?

The choices I made determined my life.
I was somebody’s secretary, someone’s wife.
But first was a nomad so when I came back,
the world was a memory, not merely a lack.

I no longer wander. I no longer roam,
for when I did, I brought it back home
so the whole world’s my neighborhood spread out around me.
From here in its middle, I let it astound me.

Prompt words today are nomad, empty, tradition, converge and secretary.

Spring Cleaning

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Spring Cleaning

It’s that time of the year when I want to come clean
and turn into a virtual sorting machine.
I’m emptying closets and clearing out shelves.
Disposing of all of my former used selves.
Keeping the best of me. Tossing the worn.
Keeping the new me that’s daily reborn
and discarding the jaded, the bored and forlorn.

I’m renouncing old habits and starting anew.
I’m not limping along in my regular queue
of things to accomplish and deeds I must do,
and I’m making a list of things I’ll eschew—
things that inevitably make me blue—
politics, violence, things all askew
that have turned our whole planet into a zoo.

I’m making an outline to use as a guide
with all the things that I’ve certified
will make my life better and straighten it out.
They’ll make me happier, without a doubt.
Troublesome people I’m going to avoid.
Life is too short to spend it annoyed.
What is life for if not to be enjoyed?

I’ll go on a diet and I’ll become svelt.
Shorten my hemlines and tighten my belt.
I’ll take all the tactics I’ve learned in this life
as daughter and student and girlfriend and wife
and put them together into a rich stew
of what I have vowed that I’m going to do.
Then tackle my life with this new retinue.

Or else I’ll stay home and not worry about
having a gorgeous body to flout.
I’ll cook puddings and pastries and share them with friends,
put on a few pounds without making amends.
Taking more time to stare at the birds.
I’ll do fewer shoulds and do more absurds—
cavort with my art and play with my words.

Consort with the dogs and cuddle the cats.
Issue fewer “No’s!” and give way more pats.
Since this is my life and I am the boss of it,
I’ll make a vow to get rid of the dross of it.
Clean out the dreads and stock up on the wants.
hang out at all of my favorite haunts,
believe what praise comes and ignore all the taunts.

Word prompts today are limp, outline, new, renounce and politics.

Enforced Reflection

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Enforced Reflection

I’m keeping my composure and compensating for
the fact that they won’t let me venture out my door.
Given lemons, I make margaritas—take the opportunity
now that I can’t wander about in the wide community,
to revel in the riches that abound right here at home,
watching Jesus painting murals all around my dome.

I’m baking lots of cookies, although their fate is sad.
After painters ate just one or two, Diego was so bad
that he raced into the kitchen and made off with all the rest.
One friend suggested delicately it might have been best.
Would I have eaten any that remained? Yes, it’s true, I might.
I must admit my waistbands are getting sort of tight.

Perhaps it’s lack of exercise. Perhaps it’s medication.
Since I so rarely don street clothes, I have no indication.
I avoid the scales because, you know, they are so changeable.
Up one day but rarely down. (Wish they were more arrangeable.)
With nature as our trainer, perhaps we will be changed
in other crazy pastimes in which we’ve become deranged.

Fracking and polluting, casting all our trash
out there in the ocean, making a god of cash.
Nature has to teach us to change our foolish ways
by sending us all to our rooms to pass our “time out” days.
And perhaps now I’m sequestered and set upon the shelf,
Diego’s her reminder to take care of myself.

The image of Diego with a cookie in his mouth is from a retablo/art collage I’m making that is recording my time spent in Mother Nature’s Time-Out period. Why don’t you join me? Mine was finished but then I have to keep adding to it. At least a story a day. Diego was that day’s.

Prompts for the day are composure, compensate, opportunity, revel and trainer.
And, for dVerse Poets Pub prompt: Solitude.

Funny Man

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Photo by janko Ferlic on Unsplash. Used with permission

Funny Man

He invented silly. It began with how he looked.
His eyes were slightly bulbous and his nose was long and hooked.
But he had such charm within him that it really didn’t matter.
Choosing between Brad Pitt and him? I would choose the latter!

 

 

 

For dverse poets quadrille prompt: silly and Here is where you can read more poems on the subject. A quadrille is a poem that contains exactly 44 words.

Two Faces

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Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash. Used with permission

Two Faces

There’s a twinkle in his eye in spite of higher education,
and although he is hard-headed, there’s an air of jubilation
whenever he is in a room. There’s magic in his laughter
that sets you all to wondering just what it is he’s after.

He’ll bathe you in attention. His queries will resound,
but his answers to your problems are likely to rebound.
He’ll write you up on charges and you’ll wish you gave a pass
when he inquires about your problems, then fires your whiny ass!

 

Prompt words for today are twinkle, education, hard-headed, resound and bath.

Besotten

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Love charms1Retablo: Love Charms by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Besotten

I’m inundated with your charms and blinded by your light.
If you wished to bewitch me, I’d give in without a fight.
I’d gladly be your handmaiden if you were just to ask,
and I’d say yes to overtime if you were my task.

Prompts today are overtime, inundated, yes, bewitch and light.