Category Archives: Poem

The Dress

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The Dress

She was blithe of nature and at the harvest dance,
men both young and aged straightened at her advance.
Noting her graceful movements across the grange hall floor,
the men all watched the flowings of the summer dress she wore.

Though the women called it skimpy, men found the dress divine
as it lifted out around her when they passed her down the line,
and as she was dipped and glided,
more than just a few collided.

So were girlfriends’ natures tested and marriage vows stretched thin
as boyfriends, partners, spouses contemplated sin
watching that skirt’s movements, its gentle falls and flow
as it swirled out around her with every do-si-do.

 

 

Prompt words today are skimpy, advance, nature and blithe. Photo is a detail from a photo by Amy Kate on Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Different”

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When my husband and I did arts and crafts shows, at least once during every show, someone would wander into our booth, have a good look around, and as they left, shrug their shoulders and say, “Well it’s different!” (Usually pronounced “differnt.”) It actually was an in joke between those displaying their art—always interpreted as the speaker not understanding and not really liking the arts and crafts. Growing up in a small town, it was not the first time I’d heard the word in its derogatory sense. Thus, this poem: 

“Different”



When I finally made my way into the world so wide
I found myself exotic. Somehow transmogrified.
I liked being the foreigner, eminent in my oddity.
I found that being different was a definite commodity.
It was my prerogative to be just who I was
without creating currents in the small town buzz
of that place I had grown up in. My acts were less explosive.
My strange words now acceptable, not garnered as corrosive.
They thought my strange behavior typical of my nation—
those oddities of word choice and excesses of oration.
So in being totally different, somehow I felt more the same.
In finally being somewhere where different was not a sin,
the more different I was, the more that I fit in!!!

 

Prompt words today are explosive, prerogative, foreigner, eminent and wide.

Night Counselor

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Night Counselor

There is some little magic thing that whispers in the night,
smoothing out our former fears and setting them aright,
forever taking on the problems of the day,
righting them and sending them blithely on their way.
Settling our nerves with some alchemy of sleep
that somehow deals with worries, however wide and deep.
Though travails may be frequent, overwhelming in their numbers,
at least we have partial relief, nightly, in our slumbers.

 

Prompt words today are magic, forever, frequency, nerve and wide.

Tanks or Tankas

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A tanka is a verse form of five lines following the pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. This poem consists of nine tankas that deal with the question, “Does might make right or does write make might?”

Tanks or Tankas?

It is such pleasure
lying in my morning bed,
I forsake those “shoulds”––
pool aerobics and the gym––
save them for another day.

As I exercise
that switchboard of all muscles,
the marvelous brain,
ideas are pumped like barbells
to create a well-toned verse.

Iron man or sage––
which will win and which will lose?
Is it brain or brawn
that moves our species forward
to survive this crazy race?

Our laptops used for
what––as pens or weaponry?
Which serves us better
in this age’s lethal match
for survival, power, wealth?

Which moves us forward?
Philosopher? Iron Man?
Poet? Soldier? Jock?
Which insures our progress toward
a place as Darwin’s fittest?

Physical fitness
in contemporary thought
wins most of the points
to insure a lengthy life
(and a husband or a wife).

but:

They also serve who
sit and wait upon their bums,
writing out their odes
by recording just what comes.
So now you need to tell us

which of these will win:
the muscle man or soldier
or the poet’s pen?
If muscle is your power
If you think that it will win,

please now consider:
the leg may be the longest
of your muscles, but
the largest strongest muscle
is the one you sit upon!

 

For Colleen’s Tues. Tanka prompt–poet’s choice.

Eleventh Hour

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Eleventh Hour

It’s true the groom was old and gray,
a cane or walker his mainstay,
and the one he called his child bride
was just as tall as she was wide.

Her bathing schedule so erratic,
she was rather aromatic,
but since he’d lost his sense of smell,
they were suited very well.

If they had cause to take a journey,
he’d simply push her in a gurney
in lieu of walker. It worked well.
Her needs and his were seen to gel.

Centuries later, folks will recall
the evening of their wedding ball.
The dance they chose was rock and roll—
as practical as it was droll.

He rocked, she rolled, then one dance done,
he wheeled her off to have some fun.
For the groom, so aged and furry
was nonetheless in a great hurry

to address their wedding bed.
Fearing that he’d soon be dead,
he rolled his roly poly mate
out of the ballroom, through the gate,

down the hall and  to their room,
an act, I fear, that sealed his doom,
for once his ardor was diminished,
alas, the groom’s long life was finished.

But in the end? A bit of magic,
for the ending was not tragic.
Nine months later his game was won
when posthumously, he had a son!!!

Prompt words are aromatic, century, journey, mainstay and wide

Change of Tune

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Change of Tune

A new aesthetic each few years from dead head to new waving.
It seemed a change of music was to be his signature craving.
Disco led to hip hop, new age to heavy metal.
When moving to new rhythms, he felt in finest fettle.
Some found his music vile and others found it strange,
but at least within a year or two, it was bound to change.
The prestige of being “with it” was probably the reason
he changed his favorite style of music every other season.

 

Prompts today are aesthetics, strange, vile, prestige and wave.

Magic Circle

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Magic Circle

Pardon my astonishment that rhyme and allegory,
as well as words like firmament and comminatory—
billions of rules and concepts, laws and definitions,
as well as music, laughter, a mother’s hands, munitions,
all evolved from stardust—clouds and soil and lake,
bow tie, fingernail and love, liver and wedding cake.

Movie star and  surgeon, macho, bi and femme
evolved from cosmic particles that wanted to be them.
A baby’s cry and earwax. Ribald jokes and laughter,
all the plots and schemes and lies to get what we are after—
all were once identical and so they’ll be again,
as after our becoming, we go back to what we’ve been.

Prompts today are rhyme, allegory, astonishment, define and lake.

Cyber Tragedy

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Cyber Tragedy

Much as they wished that she would wander, their child was otiose,
Glued to her computer, growing tissue adipose.
They wistfully imagined a life where they were free
to wander on their own in perpetuity.
In vain her parents waited, but their freedom never came.
They watched her eat and then begin one more computer game.
Her mother darned her hose and her father worked to feed her.
If she were a plant, there is no doubt that they would weed her.
They’d raised a human vegetable, capable of more.
If only they had earlier rushed her out the door!

 

Prompts today are hose, wander, wait, wistful and otiose.

Nose Job

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Nose Job
The precipitant of my angst is this macro of my nose.
I didn’t vie for this when my friend asked me to pose.
I thought she’d use my profile in a locket or some token,
not knowing that she’d use it for purposes unspoken.
If she had told me earlier what the shot was for,
I would not have been compliant. I’d have shown her to the door.
It’s true my nose is cone-shaped, but no one has ever rated it,
disparaged it or laughed at it or scoffed at or debated it.
So, her dad’s a plastic surgeon and what did he use it for?
Someone else the “after,” and my nose the “before!!!”
Yesterday a letter came–inside two hundred bucks
for my rights to the photo from the clinic mucky-mucks.
I’ve discovered I’m no beauty, and yet I’m charmed in life.
I just got a “nose job” without suffering the knife!!

 

Today’s prompt words are macro, profile, precipitant, cone and unspoken.

Cattitude

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Cattitude

The grey cat cries and cries for food, but in spite of her bitchin’,
it seems there’s naught to satisfy her in her master’s kitchen.
She would not eat the Whiskas tuna that she loved last week.
Fresh hamburger? She only deigned to have a peek.

Pork tenderloin she shuns as well as beef and cream and cheese.
A bit of gravy is another treat that does not please.
Fresh bass I bought and poached for her merely got the nose.
No mouth was closed upon it. It was not a taste she chose.

Chicken in soup with veggies? She chanced to have a taste,
then raised her nose and flicked her tail and made away in haste.
There’s canned tuna on the counter with the other four
new cat foods that I bought today at the cat food store.

I’ll try them out tomorrow, but I do not have much hope.
Chances are her majesty will only sniff and mope.
What is it with these felines that gives them attitude?
I’ve never seen the double of this old girl’s cattitude.

She awakens me at scandalous times, demanding of her feed,
then looks at me askance when I attempt to fill her need.
I fear it’s true she’s skin and bones––my fault it is supposed,
but I assure you that her fast is strictly self-imposed!!!

 

Not fiction! I made a special trip into town today in spite of my wracking cough, donned a face mask and braved Walmart. I bought fresh fish, which I abhor, for the first time in my life, along with all of the foods mentioned above and so far, she chanced one tiny bite. But, just checked and she drank all of the fresh cream I poured out for her. Her highness is satiated for the time being!

I’m linking this to dVerse Poets’ Open Link Night. See other poems HERE.

And to see their website, go HERE.