Category Archives: Poem

Contemplating the Letter “C”

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                                             The Letter “C”

Here’s to the letter “C” that marks what is in the middle.
Somewhere between “A” and “F,” it has been known to fiddle.
While “A” studies most diligently, “C” is bound to shirk.
It has a certain phobia regarding too much work.
It’s head and shoulders above “F” and far better than “D.”
Nobody ever flunked a course by maintaining a “C.”

And yet it calls no sound its own. It’s either “K” or “S.”
At birthday time,  we’re given kake and winning brings suksess.
We’re stopped dead in our trases. When we’re kissed, it’s a karess.
Why “C” has no sound of its own, not one of us kan guess.
When the sirkus komes to town, it’s happened onse or twise
that the krokodiles eskape. It isn’t very nise.

Townfolks run and skurry—skared as they kan be,
for katastrophes kan happen when krokodiles run free.
It isn’t too konvenient, as you kan klearly see
to be a kurly letter the likes of letter “C”
that’s firmly in the middle, with no sound of its own.
Does “C” dream of being “S” when it’s fully grown?

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For NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 23, the prompt was:

“to write a poem about a particular letter of the alphabet, or perhaps, the letters that form a short word. Think about the shape of the letter(s), and use that as the take-off point for your poem. ”

While I’m thinking of a new letter poem, I’m publishing this reblog of one I wrote that meets the prompt two years ago. As you ponder “C,” I’ll be Pondering the Possibilities of the Perfect other alPhabetic subject–maybe “P.”

Morrie

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Morrie

He displays such fierce bravado, barking at the man
who dares to try approach me. He’ll bite him if he can.
If he does not get his nuance, perhaps he’ll get his grasping.
If he can’t heed the exposed teeth, perhaps he’ll get their clasping.

If that human could but read the globes of Morrie’s widening eyes,
he’d need no communication in any other guise
from this dog that has decided he is his only rival
for his mistress’s affection. Every time, there’s a revival

of his barking and his lunging should this man dare approach me.
It’s as though he fears he’s coming with intentions to come poach me.
With everybody else, he is a charmer through-and-through.
He cannot wait to make a friend of anyone who’s new.

His emotions are a crazy-quilt of trying hard to please—
of greeting you with ball in mouth and jumping at your knees.
He cannot wait for you to sit to jump up on your lap
and insists on long ear rubbings before he takes a nap.

He’s every visitor’s best friend. Greets strangers on the beach,
and will bring a ball to anyone he finds who’s within reach.
Never will he wear out when chasing after balls.
He goes to bed when I demand and answers all my calls.

But why he feels my gardener of nineteen years duration
is a threat to me, and such a threatening aberration
that he flies to my defense whenever he is near,
is a mystery that I’ve not solved, and never will, I fear.

 

Prompt words today are bravado, globe, quilt, nuance and grasping.

Speaking in Tongues: NaPowWrimo 2020, Day 21

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For the NaPoWriMo prompt today, we were to find a poem written in another language we do not know and to write a poem according to what we thought it meant. Here is my translation of a poem by a poet from the Netherlands. Her original and a true translation follow.

Messages in Bottles

Messages they send out to the world in bottles
(those they think up as they stir their morning cups of chocolate)
—beware their dangers.
These messengers have hands that can slap you awake,
then abandon you as they return to the problems of the privileged rich.These parasites, dosed with their vitamin B, ride roughshod over their hosts.

They linger in their beautiful dreams of percentages,
profit on the hunger of the poor.
They see not your skeletons when they look in the mirror.
They do not see the hearts they have broken.
Once, surrounded by the stricken, they put their fingers in their ears
and pretended they were evangelists to the poor.
Then, their illusions shattered by going door-to-door, they slammed doors shut again.

Their messages in bottles are swift to flow away.
The ocean has no doors to slam in their faces.
And their heads bent in prayer will not open those doors they have closed.
The ballast their bottles carry does no good.
The hunger of the world has no stake in the good books they carry.
The mood of their verses is malevolent. The vows they swear
are words in a wind that has come too late.
                                                                 –Judy Dykstra-Brown, April 21, 2020
Below is the poem in  Dutch, its original language—the language  my grandparents and father grew up speaking. I know about 5 words in it–and the alphabet!

GROUND CONTROL

Meisje van botten en pezen praat een wereld
aan elkaar van ’s avonds drop en chocola
de rijst voor straks bewaren, dagelijks
een handje noten voor het slapen en alleen
geen kaas vanwege mogelijke huidproblemen.

Heeft het over parasieten, vitamine B, genetisch
aangejaagde schommelingen in haar percentages
vet op water. De honger heeft het laatste vlees
van haar skelet gegeten en nu lukt het niet meer
om haar vast te pakken zonder haar te breken.
Onze enveloppen met de stokken, potten pindakaas
en preken neemt ze met een glimlach in ontvangst en
spoelt ze daarna ongeopend door haar lievelings-wc.Meisje van botten en pezen zweeft bij ons vandaanen wij, gebonden door de zwaartekracht, kunnen alleen
nog van beneden naar haar roepen dat ze haar verloren
ballast altijd terug omhoog mag hijsen, dat het nooit
te laat is om het hongeren te staken, een buik te kweken
om moed in te verzamelen, een vrouw van gewicht
te worden en de wind de wind te laten.
                                                         
                                                       —© 2018, Gerda Blees Uit: DwaallichtenUitgever:                                                                                    Uitgeverij Podium, Amsterdam, 2018.

 

And here is a translation into English of the above poem. I did not read this translation until after I had written mine. Obviously!! But, it is interesting that the idea of hunger did come across, somehow, although my poem is in an expanded world context whereas her poem about anorexia is very personal. I prefer hers!

GROUND CONTROL

Girl of bones and tendons strings together a world
of words: licorice and chocolate in the evening
keep the rice for later, a handful of nuts
every day before going to sleep and no cheese
because her skin might break out in a rash.

She talks about parasites, vitamin B, genetically
driven fluctuations in her ratios of
fat to water. Hunger has eaten the last flesh
off her skeleton and now we can no longer
put our arms round her for she might break.
Our envelopes with the sticks, peanut-butter jars
and preaching she accepts with a smile before
flushing them straight down her favourite toilet.

Girl of bones and tendons floats away from us
and we, bound by gravity, can do no more than
call out to her from below that she can always
hoist her lost ballast back up, that it is
never too late to stop starving herself, grow a belly
for gathering courage, become a woman of
weight and let the wind be the wind.

The prompt for NaPoWriMo 2020 day 21 was to find a poem written in another language that you do not know and to write a poem about what you think it says.

Tableau

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Tableau

She found him obnoxious, he found her inane.
Their thirty-day marriage, suddenly insane.
Both were fatigued by exhausting routine.
The breakfast, the paper, the washing machine.
A giant moth fluttered, beating the screen
and the window glass— imprisoned between.
The cryptic message it beat with its wings
sang of detachment and other sad things.
Both heard its struggles and both moved to free
anxious to end at least one tragedy.
Her hand touched the clasp and his moved the screen.
The moth vanished into the fresh morning green.
A brush of his knuckles on the hair of her arm,
his gentle reminder that he’d meant no harm.
Her turning toward him, a touch and a kiss.
Their world straightened out with nothing remiss.
A silent tableau—solution with no words.
A moth soaring free. A chorus of birds.

 

 

Word prompts today are flutter, screen, obnoxious, cryptic and routine.

Empty Spaces

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Empty Spaces

The world has stilled its hectic pace, although its clocks tick on.
We stand at windows peering out, imagining what’s gone.
Rapid passings night and day, our reachings and attainings
have made way for the meantime to leave us our remainings.
There is a little secret the Swiss learned long ago
that has to do with leaving space—the worth of going slow.
Their cheese that is the richest is full of empty spaces—
its flavor made the tangier by what nature erases.
The holes are not just emptiness, for factors that have made them
create a richer cheese than the cheeses that evade them.
The blocks with larger spaces have a better taste.
In short, the empty room they leave is anything but waste.
Perhaps it is the same with the new spaces in our lives.
Perhaps the empty spaces are where the meaning thrives.

Note: Holes in Swiss cheese are created by the bacteria which change milk to cheese. Propionibacterium uses the lactic acid which is produced by other bacteria, and produces carbon dioxide gas; the gas slowly forms bubbles which makes the holes. In general, Swiss cheeses with larger eyes have a better taste.

Prompts today are Swiss, hectic, attain, secret and clock. Image by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Leavings: NaPoWriMo 4/19 2020

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Leavings

Do I walk the long kilometers of beach
to look for the next shell
or stand stable, like that woman
casting and recasting her hook,
patiently waiting to pull her world in to her?

I’m gathering things
that I’ll collect into stories–
pinning them down to use like words.
Nothing wrong in finding meaning
through a piece of driftwood, a stone or shell.
Objects are only things
we cast our minds against
like images against a screen—
a shadow glimpsed crossing a window shade.

My shadow cast in front of me
is such a different thing
from one I cast behind.
In the first, I am constantly hurrying
to catch up to what I’ll never catch up to.
In the other, I am leaving behind
what I can only keep by walking away from it.

I take this place along with me in clear images–
not as they were, but as my mind has cast them;
so every picture taken of the same moment is different,
each of us seeing it through our unique lens.
We cast these things in bronze or silver-gelatin,
stone, clay or poetry.
A grandma holds out pictures of her children
and her grandchildren. See? Her life’s work.
And then this and this, without further effort on her part.

I share stories of children I don’t know
who gently unwind fishing line from a struggling gull,
of a minefield of jellyfish found on the beach
or other treasures nestled in a pile of kelp.
I find my world in both these findings and departings—
the leaving each morning to go in search of them
the part I find most exhilarating,
perhaps teaching this woman
of the death-themed night-terrors
not to worry,
that leaving is just a new adventure.

People forget and let me slip away
when I would have held on, given any encouragement,
yet fingers, letting go,
flex for that next discovered treasure.

Life is all of us letting go constantly—
taking that next step away from and to.
A white shell. I have left it there
turned over to the brown side,
so someone else can discover it, too.

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to take a walk and collect objects to turn into a poem.

Here’s to Small Pleasures! Day 18 of NaPoWriMo 2020

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Small Pleasures

That last sip of coffee when you thought that you were through.
A lazy sleep-in Saturday with nothing much to do.
A walk through fields with children or a late-night talk with friends.
When you know just where to look, the pleasure never ends.
That last square of chocolate. The popping of a blister.
Getting there to lick the icing spoon before your sister.
Summer nights with highway noises from a block away.
Knowing that you’ll take that road away from here one day.
Constant daily pleasures are a matter of the mind.
Some pleasures of the present, others of the future kind.

 

Like Chocolate? Here is a song by someone else who does. Me! Lyrics by Judy Dykstra-Brown, music and presentation by Christin Anfossie: https://judydykstrabrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/chocolate.mp3

Today’sNaPoWriMo prompt is to write an ode to small pleasures.

A Requiem for Film Cameras

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A Requiem for Film Cameras

I’m sure not a single person’s debating
the merits of digital shots over waiting
a week to see whether the shots that you took
would be found to have merit or found to be crook,
but what is it digital cameras have not
that came with each new role of film that you bought?

Those nifty film canisters everyone got
that were handy for bobby pins, just right for pot,
that held your spare change and were toys for the cat?
Digital cameras have nothing like that!
They held rolls of stamps back when folks still wrote letters,
put sponges in others and they were stamp wetters.

The uses of film canisters knew no bonds.
We’d roll them down sidewalks and float them in ponds.
They’d serve as small coffins for dead flies we’d bury
and kept safe our lost teeth until the tooth fairy
whisked them away in trade for a coin.
(Different rates for each one she’d purloin.)

A dime for an eye tooth and quarters for molars.
They formed doll house tables and substitute rollers
for sisters to use in their ratted up hair.
Who could ever discover them there?
But now that film cameras are all passé,
children, I’m sure, have become more blasé.

They need Barbie Doll suites with push sofas and chairs,
hot curling wands to curl up their hairs,
Technical toys that move on their own,
tooth fairy pouches, intricately sewn.
But what do they use to roll down the bannister
now that technology’s banned the film cannister?

 

For NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 17 We are to write a poem about an obsolete bit of technology.

Rebuffing Human Nature

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Rebuffing Human Nature

Nature is overwhelmed by us, regretting what we’ve cost.
We’re clouding up her atmosphere and melting all her frost.
She’s showing she’s indignant now by arming every gun.
Before we even see them, I fear that they’ll have won.
Her armaments are minuscule, but nonetheless they’ll beat us.
Weapons need not be visible in order to defeat us.
Determining their actions, our leaders often stumbled.
They find it hard to face they’ve been outstrategized and humbled.
When this mess is over, one more mess will be presented.
Mother Nature will not quit ‘til mankind has repented––
cleaned up all its messes, ceased drilling for her oil,
stopped polluting water and messing with her soil.
If we do not listen and stubbornly persist
in annoying Mother Nature, we may cease to exist.

 

Prompts today are overwhelmed, indignant, now, determine and frost.

 

Love’s Allusions

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Illustration by King Lip on Unsplash, Used with permission

Love’s Allusions

I fear that my Adonis became an Achille’s heel.
His charms were an illusion. He wasn’t the real deal.
His bombastic bearing was one I could not bear.
I plumbed his deepest psyche and found it wasn’t there.

His attempts to woo and win me were perfectly rehearsed,
We were Samson and Delilah, but the ending was reversed!
I was the one who lost my head. Thank god it was not literal,
for when he sought to wield his sword, his target was just clitoral.

My romantic Odysseys give precious little peace.
At times I’ve felt like Jason, seeking the Golden Fleece.
A female Don Quixote, with endless optimism,
If I’d met Dr. Jekyll, I’d have overlooked the schism.

I’ve felt passion ignited via heroes from the telly,
but then found out that my Clark Kent turned into Machiavelli!
My Bat Man became a vampire, which was most disillusioning.
So at least for the present, I swear off romantic fusioning!

I have a feeling that the prompt was meant to be about the illusions of life, but perhaps not, and since the prompt said “life’s allusions,” I took them literally and tried to fit in as many allusions from legend and literature as possible. The allusions are presented in boldface. The theme, however, dealt with my romantic illusions and the rest of today’s prompt words were fit in as well. Prompts for today were: life’s allusions, bombastic, precious, ignite and present.