Category Archives: Poem

Jurisprudence


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

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

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

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

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.

Sun’s up, Cheer Up!

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Sun’s up, Cheer Up!

Although the moon is obstinate, They’re waking up the sun.
It’s time to fold your dreams away, to shake out the day’s fun.
When adventure’s inconspicuous, still you can try to find it.
Time is always ticking but you can’t forget to wind it.
Knit your future to your dreams and life will be your plum.
When life can be so wonderful, why spend it being glum?

 

Prompt words for today are wake, inconspicuous, knit, obstinate and up.

Afternoon Under Cats

 

Afternoon Under Cats.

I’m feeling lethargic, no gumption or drive.
If you saw me now, you would doubt I’m alive.
I’m flat on my back in a bit of a bind,
looking for energy that I can’t find.
So though I need coffee to wash down some Bayer’s,
my cats are on top of me, piled in layers.
Obstinate creatures, they simply won’t move.
They laze around daily  with nothing to prove.
And what must be giggles just come out as purrs.
I need me some whips and I need me some spurs
so I can herd cats from their comfy position
that they have adopted as part of their mission
to make sure that I do not deign to stir,
remaining inert under bundles of fur.

Prompts for today are gumption, layer, giggle, obstinate and find.

What Can One Man Do?

What Can One Man Do?

I’m feeling sort of creepy. I’m feeling sort of weird.
Everything is happening as I’ve always feared.
Each heroic patriot is spinning in his grave
observing how politicos are choosing to behave.
Opportunists rule the day. Liberty is dying.
If our founding fathers saw ,it would be grounds for crying.

Rights of free assembly are brutally curtailed
by countless senseless massacres, no sooner one man jailed
than another slaughter comes across our screen.
When did our land of immigrants turn so crass and mean?
What god puts kids in cages, rips a mother from her baby?

What scripture teaches brotherhood tempered with a maybe? 

One
hundred thirty million of her native sons
slaughtered by our founders is how the west was won.
Our history books rewritten by a kinder pen

Mass lynchings in Arkansas? A secret way back when
history was written. Only now we know the shame.
Even at our founding, “more profit” was to blame.

If we are tired of hearing of greed and violence,

perhaps its time that more of us climbed down from the fence
and let communal voices be heard above the din
of Game of Thrones and other dream worlds we live in.
These films of gore and violence with which we are suffused
make us numb to how real people are abused.

We must take off our blinders and see the truth at last.

It’s time to break these heartless molds in which we have been cast.
Speak with your pen. Bring change about by changing those in power.
Do not turn to fantasy. Do not cringe and cower
in your homes for fear of guns. Ban assault guns for a start.
Show that real Americans have a kinder heart.

Cut our country’s cancer from where it’s gone to fester.

Remove our gallery of fools, starting with its jester.
Each one who sits upon his chair thinking his votes don’t count
votes to keep the status quo. One after one, they mount
a ship of fools who think that politicians are the same—
that refusing to make choices makes them without blame.

So thought the men who saw the tree with bodies hanging slack

and overlooked injustice because the men were black.
If your God is one of mercy, does he not view all?
Does he not see even the smallest sparrow fall?
Would he sanction kids in cages, mother ripped from baby?
Does the God who loves us all temper justice with “maybe?”

What can we do about it? Take up pen and make a check.

Vote out the opportunists. Seize injustice by the neck.
Protect our dying planet. Seize our final chance.
Don’t think that fate is ruled by impartial circumstance.
Looking for a solution for what one man can do?
Take pen in hand. The answer, my friend, is simply you!

Prompts for the day are weird, creepy, and memorialize.