Category Archives: Poem

Conspiring with the Enemy

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Photo thanks to Nik on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Conspiring with the Enemy

Accoutered best for sabotage, they peer over the ridge,
intent now on the enemy crossing o’er the bridge.
All of their stealth and camouflage is not, at last, in vain.
Each inch they push their foes back is another inch they gain.
They’ve learned that cynicism of war as friend becomes their foe.
Each success they win will be another’s loss and woe.
His battleground littered with the corpses, G.I. Joe
now wanders off the killing field, choosing where next to go.
War is not Hell for those who are just playing at the game.
As war games end, the dead arise, as do the halt and lame.
Off to a game of baseball, the conquered and the winners
play together all day long until called to their dinners.
Children could teach their fathers that enemy can be friend.
Oh that their fathers felt the same and war was at an end.

The prompt words today are sabotage, cynic, vain, accouter and friend.

The Passenger

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The Passenger

I see her back her car outside.
She never offers me a ride.
I go the same way she is going,
but she passes, still unknowing.

After ten long years, I stand
making no sign with head or hand.
My legs are tired. My back is bent.
My footsteps follow where she went.

It takes two minutes to go by car.
I take an hour to go that far.
If she knew, perhaps she’d say,
“Would you like a ride today?”

She would have rolled her window down
to offer me a ride to town.
I’d dust my clothes and step inside,
grateful, at long last, for the ride.

And at the bottom of the hill,
as though, perhaps, she’d had her fill,
She’d say, “I’m turning left from here.”
And I’d assemble all my gear,

and give my thank-you, even though
I need to go where she will go.
Charity goes just so far,
I think, as I exit the car.

I live about two-thirds of the way up a very tall mountain in Mexico, and often as I drive down to the main road, I give a ride to whomever I encounter walking down the cobblestones—especially the women, most of whom work as housekeepers in the houses in my fraccionamiento. But now and then when I am in a hurry or when I see a man suspicious-looking or dusted by his labors, I drive on by. Then I wonder what he is thinking as I guiltily observe him in the rear vision mirror.

 

For dVerse Poets Change of Perspective.

Confession to an Errant Grandchild

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Confession to an Errant Grandchild

From the first, I called you “Piggy,” my small bundle in a poke.
You grew into a ham, as though you got the silly joke.
In return, you called me “Brammer,” for your whole younger life.
I ignored your teenage insolence, which cut me like a knife.

For years, you called me nothing, while off roaming with your friends.
I waited for your twenties, when you would make amends.
Those foggy baby early years, I’d held you in my arms,
your most ardent admirer, a captive of your charms.

When your parents fussed, I was always on your side.
Made cookies for your naughty friends, embraced your errant bride.
Wiped your babies’ noses, patted their small behinds,
as they toddled off to school, observed from behind blinds.

 So many decades later, sitting by my bed,
not knowing it was just a cold, fearing I’d soon be dead,
you asked why I was always there and why I didn’t balk
at your teenage indifference and your dismissive talk.

What was germane to the matter, I finally confessed,
was a truth which on your own you might have never guessed.
As I observed the recklessness of you and your rude crew,
In every naughty act, I saw a bit of me in you.

Prompt words today are brammer, germane, foggy, ardent and joke.

Out There

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Out There

Back when you were innocent—back when you played the clown,
before your mind was jaded by seeking wide renown,
back before the pomp, the glory and the plaudits,
back before the news reports, the surveys and the audits,
back there when a diary preceded post and tweet,
there were words of innocence, secretive and sweet.

Back when every aspect of life was not for show,
back when information tended to move slow,
was there more than one hushed aspect of your life,
secrets not used against you, as lethal as a knife?
Everything’s now out there in selfies and YouTubes—
your angsts and loves and conquests, not to mention boobs.

What is left to grow inside, to flourish and to bloom?
What secrets left confined to the safety of your room?
Everything’s out spinning in the cruel world.
No way to get it back again, no secret ever curled
safely under the covers of a private book
where even your best friend has never had a look.

Do they still make diaries that aren’t electronic
where words languish on pages, quiet and laconic?
Where little girls confide their thoughts to a much-smudged page,
all their secret passions, their hurts and hopes and rage?
“Dear Diary” the sweetest confidant of all?
One that will never tell on you. One always there on call.

What will happen in a world where everything’s on view
forever to be classified, forever part of you?
Never will we ever leave our pasts behind.
Everything is indexed, simple enough to find.
Your sons and your daughters will peek into your past.
Google yourself now. Won’t they just have a blast?

Prompt words today were pomp, diary, jaded, aspect and clown.

I just stumbled upon my old diary from age eleven through thirteen yesterday. What a revelation. Facts garnered: I had someone sleep over at least three times a week, lots of relatives passed through one summer, my best friend went home mad a lot, I called lunch dinner and did the dishes every day, woke up late whenever I could and never revealed the names of secret crushes, even in my diary. I had a “dreamy” boy-girl party the year I turned 13 (a feat never repeated, at least among my friends) and danced with every boy except J (yuck.) Mr. G didn’t like me anymore (perhaps) and we seemed to take a lot of trips down to the Frosty Freeze at night––probably because other kids did the same and we had no other place to gather. Nothing, however, to preclude my running for public office and all easily burned if there were. And that simple event and the thoughts thereafter led to this poem.

 

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A Halloween Primer

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A Halloween Primer

Bloodcurdling screams of banshees and the moans of other specters
are signals to skirt graveyards and other creepy sectors.
Do not go close to water. La Llorona* lingers there.
Hobgoblins roam on Halloween. Please take extra care
that you aren’t impeded by your costume’s girth and weight
so just in case, you can maintain the proper speed and gait
to insure escaping witches, vampires, ghosts and ghouls
who inhabit Halloween and make up all the rules.
Heed well my past instructions of where you should not go.
Get home before the witching hour. These warnings you should know
lest you become another statistic of the night
set aside for horrors, for hauntings and for fright.
Halloween is filled with fun: the costumes, pumpkins, candy,
and if you heed my warnings, everything should turn out dandy.
Just stay away from witches of the authentic sort—
the kind with real black three-inch nails and a genuine wart.
Make sure the vampire’s fangs aren’t real, that ghost is in a sheet.
Assure the authenticity of every friend you meet.
It does not do to make new friends. Be guided by your fear
and do not talk to strangers on this one night of the year.

*In Latin American folklore, La Llorona (pronounced [la ʝo.ˈɾo.na], “The Weeping Woman”) is a ghost of a woman who lost her children and now cries while looking for them in the river, often causing misfortune to those who are near, or who hear her.

Go HERE to read more spooky poems.

For the dVerse Poet’s Pub scary poem prompt.

Comeuppance

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photo by Mari Lezhava on Unsplash, Used with permission

Comeuppance

His behavior was egregious, his actions purely shocking.
With combat boots, upon each leg he wore a nylon stocking.
Never appeared in public totally alone
lest he meet his comeuppance and be asked to atone
for all the calumnies he’d voiced upon the telephone.

Yes, a shocking gossip—slanderous at best.
A million little rumors started at his behest.
Diamonds on his fingers and slander on his tongue,
he had become a legend while he was very young.
How Cher was such a harridan and how Sonny was hung!

Needless to say, he did well there in the Hollywood scene,
his appearance so eccentric, his behavior so obscene.
Until that certain story spread both far and wide
concerning certain juicy bits where he had surely lied
that led to an untimely death—this time from suicide.

He tried his usual posturings, excuses and false proof,
but this time all his public chose to remain aloof.
They pointed at his nylons. They snickered at his boots,
speculated that his rings were diamond substitutes.
He and Donald Trump, they’d heard, were rather in cahoots.

Dropped now from the A list, he barely made the C.
Got tables near the kitchen, his meals no longer free.
His rise to fame so rapid, his fall was just as fast.
He became a pariah, a definite outcast.
Of the victims of his venom, he was the very last.

Prompts for the day are comeuppance, public, alone, egregious and legend.

 

 

Donald Trump Tweets from Hell

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photo thanks to James Lee on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Donald Trump Tweets from Hell

With tardy regrets I come to you, now knowing what is best,
for there are things I simply must get off my chest.
You may wonder at my timing, and you may find it strange
that I should choose the afterlife to make this last exchange.
In life I was a basket case and I too easily yielded
to the influence of cronies and the power that they wielded
to make me go along with what my wealthiest peers wanted.
I blustered and I blathered. I acquired and I flaunted.

But now that I’ve departed, I must say that I’ve regrets.
I should have done the right thing. (I should have hedged my bets.)
For though my life on earth was one of privilege and ease,
I do not find the afterlife all that I might please.
The climate here is much too hot—perpetually baking,
but the greatest agony is that it is of my own making.
It seems that merely proclaiming that I’m on the Christian side
does not actually serve me in saving my own hide.

I realize now that actions must reflect what I profess.
What in life I overlooked, in death I now confess.
I did not serve the common man. I made him pay and pay
by cutting corporate taxes and courting the N.R.A.
I put children in cages, I lusted and I lied.
I turned my back on science as the planet slowly died.
But now  I cannot call fake news all that they accuse
and with no golf courses in Hell,  I finally pay my dues.

PhotPhoto by Jon Tyson on Unsplash. Used with permission.

He may profess to be sorry, but he’s still a rule-breaker. His tweet definitely far exceeds the space limitations of Twitter!

Today’s prompts are: Chest, Basket, Regret, Strange and Yield.

 

She Brings Us Together

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She Brings Us Together

She can’t solve this problem. She is falling to the cold.
Her strength in all this dying— a wonder to behold.
She must relinquish life, but she will not abandon humor.
In these few remaining weeks, she’ll be a joyful roomer
in this hospice where she’s finally been brought to reside 
by that shadowed companion who shuffles at her side.

Her children group around her. Old loves come to her aid.
As her ending’s written, her last decisions made,
her wit and love of living stay with her even now,
as though she is a beacon, directing us in how
to do this thing with dignity, joyful to the end.
Once more, we’re being guided by our loving friend.

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Prompts today are falling, solve, relinquish and cold.

 

Feeling Poorly

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Shades of pumpkin face. What I look like!!!

I’ll do you the favor of not taking a selfie of my grotesquely swollen face. A 1 a.m. mad dash to hospital emergency last night did not seem to do anything to solve the problem so I need to be off again to try to find a solution after zero sleep last night. Poor, poor Pearl. What am I doing blogging? Just passing the hours until the lab and dentist office open up. Then another trip to a doctor to get results of blood tests. 

Feeling Poorly

The solution to my problem may be labeled as arcane,
for all attempts to solve it have been, alas, in vain.
I’ve visited three dentists but the jagged pain persists,
driven to emergency, gripping the wheel with fists
at 1 am, hoping that I’d soon be on the mend,
but alas is seems as though my pains aren’t going to end.

New antibiotics that have not as yet kicked in,
my pain pills ineffective, I cannot resort to gin.
Two teeth pulsing, face swollen from jaw to cheek to eye.
Skin pulled to the bursting point. I’m barely getting by.
With not one hour of sleep last night, I’d better catch a cab
to take me back to Ajijic for blood tests at the lab.

I’ve got to ask my dentist to try to fit me in,
but all-in-all my patience is wearing rather thin.
Once I’d grown accustomed to all my regular ills,
clear on how to treat them with my handy stash of pills,
it seems that Mother Nature is up to newer tricks.
Is messing with us humans the way she gets her kicks?

If she wants to pay us back for ills that we have done,
could she pick a guiltier target with whom to have her fun?
I’m trying to do right by her by cutting down on trash,
recycling all my plastics, my cardboard and my glass.
And I can give directions to Washington D.C.
so she can plague the guilty guys and lay off li’l ole me!

This is a poor excuse for a poem. Just can’t think of anything else at the moment as I wait for the medical world to awaken. I’ve had a miserable night.

Signs of a sad Halloween

Prompt words today are mend, regular, jagged, arcane and drive.

Blind Date

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OldPaintDuckieSoulRedBlind Date

I’m idling at the stop light, irate at the delay.
Though your chatter is innocuous, my nerves begin to fray.

As I gun the engine, the car leaps from the ground.
Is there a single subject on which you won’t expound?

Every single statement hits another nerve
as the tires chew the road up and navigate the curve.

I finally reach your neighborhood and my spirits soar.
We say good night and I am gone before you reach your door.

As blind dates go, this was the worse. For sure, there’ll be no other.
Never again will I accept a line-up by my mother!

Today’s prompts are light, irate and innocuous.