Category Archives: Poem

Broken Dreams

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Annie at 17 years old.

My seventeen year old cat, Annie, has for the past two years been awakening me at various early-morning hours to be fed. It makes no difference if I feed her at midnight or 2 am or whenever I choose to turn in for the night. At 4 or 5 or 6, her piercing yowls shock me awake and there is nothing to be done other than to get up to flop an entire can of Fancy Feast into her feeding bowl. She’s taken over my bathroom with her food and water dishes, her litter tray and her bed, so for two years I’ve showered in the guest shower. This old girl rules my world. Today’s five o’clock awakening gave rise to this poem. 

Broken Dreams

I doused my dream to greet the day, but to my great annoyance.
reality, alas, cannot compete with its flamboyance.
The dream was psychedelic and meandering in its plot.
It had all the excitement that my waking life has not.

Before the day resumes its hold, since night is not yet done,
I’ll return to my pillow and awaken to the sun.
The old cat’s fed, the dogs still sleep and so, with luck, shall I.
Perhaps I’ll find that dream again. At least, I’m going to try.

 

Annie at one month, in my headphone case.

Prompt words today are psychedelic, doused, annoy and day.

Kitchen Queen

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Kitchen Queen

Her souffles are a marvel and her cakes a work of art.
Every single thing she cooks, a product of her heart.
Her kitchen full of luscious smells and openness and levity,
every disaster solvable and noted for its brevity.
She surmounts each problem, opens every stubborn jar,
locates each ingredient, no matter how bizarre.

When she puts on her apron and dons her cooking cap,
she conquers national cuisines from all over the map.
Marinara and béchamel, curries and doro wats—
sauces from every culture simmer in her pots.
From kreplach to pot stickers, she has mastered each cuisine.
When it comes to ruling kitchens, our Dolly is the queen!

 

Go check out Dolly’s blog at koolkosherkitchen. She is presently telling wonderful stories about her grandmother and sharing her recipes as well. One of my favorite blogs.

 

Prompt words for today are marvel, surmount, bizarre, levity and map.

Swift Retribution

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Swift Retribution

Out of all who came to court her, she had picked him as the winner.
It was later, after the wedding, that she discovered he was a sinner.
He had planned her initiation to the gambling and the grog—
her debauchment, his ego told him, easy as falling off a log.
But she had not shown an interest in the wild life he preferred,
so though he vowed that with his marriage, his earlier vices had been cured,
his sporadic bad behavior had her climbing up the wall.
His raw language and deportment weren’t acceptable at all.

Like she hadn’t known his weakness, he did not know her power.
She was not a wife to follow nor a girl to cringe and cower.
When they married he had few prospects—not a nickel nor a dollar,
so when he came home one night with lipstick on his necktie and his collar,
she chose not to be tearful, nor to scream or make a threat.
She just threw him into the driveway sans the keys to his Corvette.
And as he hoofed it toward the highway, perhaps he felt his first regrets
as he learned that one who gambles always has to pay his debts.

 

Prompt words for the day are sporadic, raw, winner, initiation and log.
Photo by Zach Rowlandson on Unsplash, used with permission. 

Jurisprudence

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The Defendant
The Claimant

Jurisprudence

One litigant a teddy bear, the other a stuffed bunny.
The plaintiff acting churlish, the defendant merely funny.
The judge’s view obstructed by the toy box’s high rim,
she declared a change of venue out to the jungle gym
where the judgment was decided by an animated race
to see who could swing highest without plummeting through space,
but before the final verdict could even be recited,
it seems a higher ruling had already been decided.

A necessary recess was called for by the judge.
She told the bear and rabbit they should not dare to budge.
When her mother declared nap time, she said that they’d resume
as soon as she was given the chance to leave her room.
She left Barbie, the bailiff, to insure that they’d be good
and both of them assured her that of course they would.
But in the end both parties wound up in custody
after the judge’s jailer called an emergency

made necessary when hard rain and a gusty wind
tumbled teddy bear and bunny both end over end.
So by the time the judge woke up, a power that was higher
had sent claimant and defendant to confinement in the dryer.
Then the rabbit hung from one ear and the teddy from his tie
from the clothesline in the laundry until both of them were dry.
Then there was a happy ending with all of them set free
as judge and bear and bunny wound up on daddy’s knee!

The Judge

The higher power and the bailiff

The prompt words today are view, emergency, churlish, animated and funny. I asked Forgottenman for a sixth and he gave me litigant.

Slow Motion

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Slow Motion

After the fuss and bother, the acquiring and attaining,
somehow life seems better without the extra straining.
Now observing takes the place of doing and of showing.
Tranquility has won out over partying and going,
with “Hold your partner” filling in for former “do-si-doing.”

 

For the dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt, Tranquility

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Frisky Business: Animal Mischief (In Celebration of National Dog Day)

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Frisky Business

My dogs aren’t highfalutin. Don’t compete by size and weight.
All that classy dog shows preach, they repudiate.
Diego never notices where a thrown stick lands,
and neither one’s consistent in following commands.

On stormy days, Morrie’s been known not to chance the rain
to go about his business in the usual terrain.
They’re murderers of  possums. This is no fresh news.
And when six pork chops vanished, I followed all the clues

down to where the evidence lay “hidden” in the yard.
How did six chop bones get there? It wasn’t very hard
to figure out the mystery. Diego was the thief
tall enough to bring about my dinner party grief,

swiping all the main course directly from the pan.
When his master’s back is turned, a dog does what he can.
But at least they are consistent in appearing for their meals.
No dog can only live on the comestibles he steals.

For more frisky business, go HERE or HERE or HERE or HERE! Or HERE, HERE or HERE or HERE! The entire story of the purloined pork chops is HERE, and, if you want it all in a nutshell, THIS ONE pretty much wraps up the whole story of my misbehaving dogs.

Prompt words today are highfalutin, repudiate, consistent and, since none of my other prompt sites has posted a prompt yet and since August 26 is National Dog Day, I’m declaring  my fourth prompt word to be dog!! If you see this and want to play along, just post a link to a photo or poem or anecdote about your dog to this site.

Here is my link for your pingbacks to this site: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/08/26/frisky-businessanimal-mischief/

Too Much Information

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photo by joel muiz on Unsplash. Used with permission

Too Much Information

Substantiation of your sex appeal is shown in your tattoos—
illustrative options in so many different hues.
It’s true that your charisma is there for all to see,
inscribed upon your body be it thigh or calf or knee.

If I might take a moment, I could read you like a book.
A hieroglyphic record in your body’s every nook.
The snakes around your biceps and thorns circling your neck,
beer bottles on your forearms and the joined hearts on each pec.

All the ladies of your past hidden here and there.
Mandy on your wrist and Susan nestled in your hair.
Lucy on your pinkie and Maxine upon your shoulder—
might you regret them later as you get a little older?

That tear that’s sliding down your cheek, the stars beside your eyes,
that naked lady on your neck—do you think it wise?
I’m thinking of your grandchildren, for when your shirt you doff,
you won’t have any secrets, for your stories won’t come off.

Prompt words for today are charisma, tattoo, options, substantiation and moment.

Culinary Timing

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We reached Corfu this morning and are now 8 hours ahead of my usual Central Standard Time in Mexico.  This can wreak havoc with both maintaining contact with friends back home, sleep and appetite. This morning as I ate breakfast at what would have been midnight back home, I wrote a poem that had nothing to do with this subject. Unfortunately, I unthinkingly ripped it up and threw it away later after I used the same paper to record our scores for a dice game, so here is a substitute on the subject of what big time changes do to the psyche as well as the appetite.

Culinary Timing

I’m in trouble with reason.  My time’s taken flight.
I don’t know the difference between day and night.
My head can accept we’re eight hours ahead,
though my body prefers to stay longer abed.

The diet they serve us now we’ve reached Corfu
agitates me with a troubling snafu.
When it’s breakfast time here, I am taken aback,
for my palate’s desirous of a midnight snack.

Time’s not in contention. I know I am wrong.
As they change the time, I should go along.
All day, it’s my stomach that keeps on resisting.
Shrimp cocktail? I’d rather they desist insisting.

Whatever they’re serving is not what I wish.
I’m ready for pancakes. They want to serve fish.
The meal I desire is not what they’re makin’.
They want to serve lobster when I prefer bacon.

I truly like visiting different places,
seeing strange sites and different faces.
Yet, I may give up traveling merely because
they cannot keep time the way that it was!

 

 

 

Words for today are agitate, diet, flight, contentious and trouble.

Dear John

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Dear John

Your sardonic humor and your endless cynicism
has, in truth, created such a deep and boundless schism
that I can let it slide no more. I simply can’t deflect
the fact that you are losing all our friends’ respect.
I’ve finally had enough and so you’ll see my face no more.
You’ll have one more brunt for your jokes as I walk out the door.
I take this way to say ta-ta and bid my fond adieu.
Perhaps this way you’ll finally see the final  joke’s on you.

Further prompts today are cynicism, endless respect and slide.

Nightly Ritual

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Nightly Ritual

A fleeting shadow on the wall, what do you make of that?
Another and another joins this swirling mass of bat.
Fortuitous destruction, they swarm across the lake.
What an impressive undulating constant stream they make.
They go to eat mosquitos in the farther fields they roam,
leaving only guano here closer to their home.
The wellbeing they foster, I fear is far afield.
Here at home there’s not a single benefit  they yield.
They sleep by day then hurry off on nightly winged weavings,
leaving me, with broom and scrub brush, dealing with their leavings.

Prompt words  today are fortuitous, shadow, wellbeing, destruction and bat.
Also, for Granny’s BOTD.