Category Archives: Poem

Framed

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Framed

When I’m tired of television, my digestive tract
draws me to the kitchen and there we make a pact.
Shoe by shoe, approach the fridge and though the hour is late,
We stuff ourselves with what’s inside ’til appetites abate.

Making sorties on the fridge with just my own collusion?
The thought I’ll get away with it it’s merely an illusion.
They’re bound to miss that half a pie, but then the plot will thicken
when they  note the absence of half a tub of chicken.

I leave the fridge a bit ajar, the Colonel’s box in front of it,
hoping when it’s time to blame that I won’t take the brunt of it.
I put the pie plate on the floor, increasing the odds that
if I spread bones around it, perhaps they’ll blame the cat!

Prompt words today are illusion, television, late, tract and shoe.

Why Bakeries Were Invented

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Why Bakeries Were Invented

I’ve baked the cake, but cannot get the damn thing from the pan—
the problem being, mainly, that sticky layer of flan.
My daughter had demanded it, persnickety like her dad.
How had she ever heard of flan? I guess it was a fad.

I poured the custard in the pan and covered it with batter,
not sure whether the flan went first or if it was the latter.
Ten minutes in the oven and the glop began to rage
as though it was an animal, intent to leave its cage.

It roiled and fluxed, formed bubbles and spouted like fresh lava.
I lit a cigarette and poured another cup of java.
Although it was her birthday, I rued the day I’d asked
what kind of cake she wanted, for in this I’m sorely tasked.

But surprisingly, this devil cake did not escape its boundaries,
in spite of all my puzzlements and all my gross confounderies.
Now that I’ve finally got it out, I really am exhausted—
only to hear her next request. Now she wants it frosted!!!

Prompt words for today are exhausted, cage, flux, persnickety and cover.

Doggie Attention

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Doggie Attention

Though they love to eat obnoxious stuff
like bees and grass and dryer fluff,

see how they bristle
at my whistle?
Come a-running
for more funning?

Making pious little prayers for
just one doggie biscuit more,

they’re more pawsome
than they’re awesome—
begging treats
with doggie feets.

They’re authors of expressions of
countless little signs of love.

Giving sure signs 
of their designs,
they tell no lies
with tails and eyes,

Prompt words today are bristle, obnoxious, awesome, pious and author.

How I See

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Can’t believe that I wrote this yesterday and forgot to post it to dVerse Poets! So here it is, a bit late.

dVerse Poets Self-Portrait.

Time and Space

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I hear it from afar—
across the street
or down the mountain—
unoccupied laughter
that carries with it
memories
of long-ago encounters.

Lessons learned,
idiosyncrasies shared
with a place and a love
on a mountain
thousands of miles distant
from any previous experience.

These encounters,
long dead,
resurrected
by anonymous merriment
that, unknowing,
carries messages
linked to memory
by some truth
of quantum physics.

Two beings, once connected,
maintain that connection
over time and space.

 Your laugh.

Prompt words today are lesson, Idiosyncrasy, Encounter, Laughter and Unoccupied. 

Missed Shot

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Missed Shot

He was not noted for his charm, much less for his amenity.
Although he had been praised a bit for success at serenity.
He found spectator sports to be relaxing and most riveting
those times when he was not intent on shooting hoops or divoting.

His interests were not widespread, his hobbies not eclectic.
He simply spent his time at hoops and golf—both actual and electric.
But because a dance or movie caused him great travail,
his attempts to woo fair maidens were to no avail.

And so he forfeited a life of conjugal felicity
for a single life of what was unrelieved simplicity.
And  though he thought that chances for love had passed him by,
it wasn’t just a stroke of fate, but more a lapse of eye,

As he shot hoops with brothers on a public knoll,
a lady he’d admired before out on an aimless stroll,
paused to watch their antics, and especially to watch him
as he lofted up the ball and put it through the rim.

But when the lady winked, he traded one pass for the other
by simply pivoting to throw the ball on to his brother!
He thought that chance had passed him by. He had no luck at all,
when in fact the problem was he only watched the ball!

 

 

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash. Used with permission. Prompt words for the day are serenity, riveting, eclectic, travail and simplicity.

Bird Bath

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Bird Bath

You bask in the sun as you crane to inspect
that bird in the water, demanding respect.
How odd that he has not one thing to say
and as you caw your challenge, doesn’t fly away.
When you bob your head at him, he bobs at you.
He’s an image of everything you choose to do.
Then, Mr. Raven, as you fly away,
So too does the other decide not to stay.
Just as you stage your sudden defection,
flying away with you is your reflection.

 

Prompt words today are bask, odd, raven, respect and image.

Fresh Prizes: For Marilyn and Garry

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Fresh Prizes

Even though she thinks she knows him to the bone,
another little detail comes forward to be shown.
Like a little prize, presented for her viewing,
after all these years, he’s not finished with his wooing.

No fact  inconsequential as he unveils his life,
so even after decades as a man and wife,
new mysteries are still revealed in words coined charismatically.
Each new revelation, an avowal made emphatically.

 

This poem is in answer to Marilyn Armstrong’s comment about her husband, Garry:

Marilyn Armstrong

We still are discovering things we didn’t know about each other. You’d think we’d know it all by now, but we keep surprising each other. It’s kind of cool.

Prompt words today are prize, drain, emphatic, inconsequential and bone.

Tomorrow’s Flower: FOTD Sept 1, 2020

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For Cee’s FOTD

Well-dined

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Well-Dined

Your settings are fantabulous–the china and the cutlery
a window to an earlier time of serving maids and butlery.
Your butter knives and bread plates, shrimp forks and the rest
might lead to intense nervousness as we’re put to the test
to know which fork we should use next. The difference between
the cake fork or the salad fork is not so easily seen.

You’re such an avid hunter through antique stores and bazaars,
searching for ornate candlesticks and antique canning jars,
that you must have been ecstatic when you found this antique set
of twelve place settings, all intact. How lucky could you get?
Eleven serving pieces, plus eleven for each setting—
to hint at all the courses that each diner would be getting.

Spoons for every purpose from ice tea to demitasse. 
So many forks that Martha Stewart would be at a loss.
Cheese knives, cake knives, butter knives. Knives for steak and fish.
A different knife or spoon or fork for every single dish!
As we sit down, it’s quite befuddling perusing them,
let alone imagining that we will all be using them.

Our sideways glances indicate we’re all of the same mind.
No matter how confusing, we are bound to be well-dined!

 

These particular prompt words somehow led me to a memory of a brass-with-teakwood- handles set of cutlery that I bought in a bazaar in India. It was comprised of 144 pieces–eleven pieces in each of the twelve place settings and eleven serving pieces. I was so impressed with it in it’s lovely red felt-lined teakwood case that I bought two of them—one for me and one for my sister. They were, however, a pain to wash and keep shiny as you couldn’t put them in the dishwasher, and when I moved to Mexico, I sold mine. My sister’s had been consigned to her basement storage long before that, but I did once throw a dinner party where I invited eleven people and served a course for each implement. This meant: salad fork, shrimp fork, dinner fork, cake fork, demitasse spoon, ice tea spoon, soup spoon, teaspoon, steak knife, butter knife, regular knife.

Everything went fine until one friend showed up half an hour late from the bar, drunk and with three friends! Needless to say, I was not happy as my service didn’t stretch to fifteen. I had to set up another card table with my regular cutlery and  they had to eat their shrimp cocktail and salad with the same fork.  After that, my own set was consigned to basement storage as well, but at least it led to this poem.

Prompt words for today are fantabulous, hunter, ecstatic, intense and window. Photo by Dilyara Garifullina on Unsplash. Used with permission.