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
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.
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!
Image by Hayden Dunsel on Unsplash, used with permission.
Prompt words today are scry, meticulous, together, confiscate and landscape.
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.
(Click on photos to enlarge.)
Backyard Adventures
No one to talk to. Nothing to do.
A trip to the kitchen. A jaunt to the loo.
Nowhere to go to. Forbidden to roam.
If I want to travel, I’ll do it at home.
Down in my garden, the flowers and bees
pose for my photos whenever I please.
I record the sights just to prove I have traveled,
clicking the sights as my journey unraveled
Word Processing
Lightning flashed,
sparking the current which fueled the dream.
Letters zinged across a field of white,
waiting for justification to join other letters
in neatly-spaced rows of words.
For split seconds between thought and white space,
they danced into the dream.
Smoothly, straight-backed l’s and i’s
slid together in magnetic minuets
while b’s and d’s bumped heavy bottoms,
vying for position.
Into the dream they went,
and then,
their brief dances over,
they froze into equal rows upon the stage
to watch the choreography
of each new letter as it joined them,
for the dream was of
entire dictionaries of words––
syllables holding hyphenated arms with syllables,
antonyms crowding synonyms in tight ironic cliques,
articles moving in swing rhythm
toward their appointed nouns.
Four rows of tables
faced the stage,
one fat spectator sitting on each table,
third row back,
surveying the white screen of the dream.
Applause issued from the table-sitters,
pushed out in broad solid farts––
brief ovations as they jumped from table to table
in swift movements
so that they themselves
seemed dancers on hot pavement.
When they paused,
it was to hover lightly over each table
before pounding short applause
with their fat rumps
and moving on.
Yet their applause was indispensable,
for it fueled the dream.
When lightning flashed again,
the dream stood still.
The dance over,
the spectators vanished
like the single-fingered ghosts they were.
Rain tapped the window,
adhering to the spider web
which hug like an intricate rope ladder
between the bougainvillea
and the window frame.
A distant alarm clock
burred into the silence.
A door opened,
and a woman
entered the empty room.
The dream called out to her from the screen,
but she did not heed it
as she disconnected the cord
that ran from the machine to the wall,
destroying its memory of the dream.
And so the poem died.
This, Too?
In planning for a place remote,
considering a life afloat.
I might collaborate with friends
so we can meet communal ends
planning out a scheme for life
far away from pain and strife.
We’d set a mutual course on seas
far away from the disease
that snakes its way as it might please.
And having learned our lesson well,
we’d escape this landlocked Hell
and float in colonies off shore,
keeping at least ten feet or more
apart until the curse was through
and we could start our lives anew.
But, alas, I have no yacht
and a sailor I am not,
So my sailing schemes are shot!
Instead, I’ll sail a sea of dreams
and face the threat landlocked, it seems!
So don’t drop in for a small visit.
A social life’s not healthy, is it?
I’ll pass my social life alone
chatting on the telephone
attired in my sleeping togs,
stroking the cats, patting the dogs,
communicating on my blogs
with all the humans I have left.
in a sequestered world bereft
of face-to-face and hip-to-hip,
let alone of lip-to-lip!!
This too shall pass, optimists say.
The world will see a brighter day.
We’ve survived aids, the plague and SARS,
global warming (so far) and cars.
We’re the universe’s superstars.
Prompt words today are remote, collaborate, lesson, course and snake.
Strangely enough, no matter how many times I center this poem, every other stanza wants to separate itself from the stanzas that precede and follow it. Strangely enough, it echoes the theme, so instead of trying to center it for the third time, I am just going to leave it as is.
Ocean Airs
The surf and sand we fell down on—
a bed provided by the sea
that smoothed the sheets we lay upon.
Those stories spun out by your tongue
slipped out of you through parted lips—
portals through which your life was sung.
Letter, syllable and word
was carried by the power of breath—
each a lovely soaring bird.
How did they know to find their way
to one who coveted their sound—
their whisper and their plaintive bay?
That night stretched out upon the beach,
finally, we fell to rest
and tell our stories without speech.
For the dVersePoets Pub, we were to write a poem of tercets, using three of these sets of words as ends to lines. I broke the rules and used all five.
SPEECH REST BEACH
ON SEA UPON
WORD BREATH BIRD
WAY SOUND BAY
SUNG LIPS TONGUE
Lazy Feet
Crossing the room or traversing the plain,
one foot goes in front of the other again.
It is the business of shoe after shoe
to follow each other through sand, dirt or goo.
They have easy going through fields filled with clover,
but when they meet something they have to climb over,
their task is much harder. No reflecting or browsing,
for climbing up hills is ten times more rousing.
They pump up the blood, these mountains and ramps.
They irritate arches and instigate cramps.
They cause blisters, pulled muscles, and wear a girl out.
That’s why I don’t often saunter about.
You won’t often find me walking out there
with the wind to my back and stirring my hair.
For although there’s less scenery, I do not care.
I prefer bed or hammock or chair.
Prompt words today are something, browse, revenge, traverse and business.
The Prize
Our weekends at the cabin were vacations we adored,
for our grandpa and our grandma made sure that we weren’t bored.
Every single Saturday, they sent us on a quest.
I always set out on my own for I feared that the rest
would take credit for the fact that I’d found the strangest thing
that our grandparents had set the task for each of us to bring.
Those times out on my own were a relief from the noise
from all the squealing little girls and all the shouting boys,
for the numbers of my cousins— all those brothers and those sisters—
pounded on my eardrums ’til I feared that they’d make blisters.
I hated all the folderol, for I preferred the calm.
The quiet sounds of nature acted as a balm.
The whispering of treetops and the music of the loons
were a contrast to the cowboy movies and the Looney tunes
streaming from the playroom where the television
was another thing that prompted my decision
that I could best seek treasure on a solitary search,
and, indeed, I found it in the shadows of a birch—
an eye that looked out at me from the darkness and the gloom
like the only thing alive within a haunted room.
I freed it with my pocketknife—too large for my pocket.
Too large for grandpa’s “thing” box, let alone for grandma’s locket.
What is it? I’m not going to tell where I found the eyes
one of which won me that week’s treasure prize!
Prompt words today are calm, cabin, quest, hate.
I’m also including my photo for the What is it? prompt.
