Category Archives: Poem

Generational Reunion

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Generational Reunion

Those stern-looking ancestors with furrowed brow—
if they saw what they’ve evolved into now,
would they be shocked at how I spend my day
toiling for hours on tasks that don’t pay?
Would my sense of humor be found too offensive?
Would they be shocked and would they feel defensive
if I told them the truth about what I believe?
Would how I turned out just cause them to grieve?

Would they swim in my pool, enjoy my strange home
with odd paintings and statues beneath a great dome,
or think me a heathen and pray for my soul?
Would my redemption be their only goal?
Would the truth of their progeny cause them to balk
so they were loath both to laugh and to talk?
Transposed to my setting, I’m sure they’d be shocked
but similar traits might come out as we talked.

One might be an artist, another a writer.
The atmosphere might turn out closer and lighter.
I’d see their high cheekbones and they would see mine.
We’d compare our physiques and our tastes as we dine.
Surely there’s something in genes that would bind us,
draw us together, unite and remind us
this is my past that is visiting me
and I am the one that they turned out to be!

 

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These are photos of my Dutch and Scottish ancestors. The prompts are setting, loath and ancestor. Here are the links:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/07/fowc-with-fandango-setting/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/loath/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/ Ancestor

Red Eye

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Red Eye

I’m suffering from swollen eyes
that make me appear in the guise
of one who’s had a recent loss
or been upbraided by her boss.
But, much as I appreciate
the words of sympathy you state,
 my red eyes, I must confess
are occasioned by much less.
I haven’t cut myself or fallen.
I’m simply suffering from pollen!

For Cee’s Flower of the day

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/06/fowc-with-fandango-swollen/

In a Nutshell

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In a Nutshell

The problems in America? What started the commotion?
A borborygmus businessman got a big promotion.

 

Fandango‘s prompt word today was commotion.
Ragtag‘s prompt word was borborygmus.

The Naming of Gassy Dan

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The Naming of Gassy Dan

I’ll tell you of a man I knew by name of Gassy Dan.
It’s true he was a glutton—a mountain of a man.
A sopper-up of every bowl, a scraper of each pan.

He wasn’t the most pleasant guest to ever grace one’s table,
for his appetite was something of legend and of fable
as he gobbled up more than his share whenever he was able.

Once seated at the table, though, he never had enough
of pork chop and of gravy, still he’d commence to huff
and puff about some gossip with language rude and rough.

With his slanderous assertions, his posturings and brayings,
his sanctimonious protests and all of his trite sayings,
he punished all our eardrums with incessant oral flayings.

Thus the rumblings at our table as we commenced to sup
were not his gastric gasses growling like a pup.
His borborygmus rumblings came from farther up. 


The Ragtag prompt for the day is borborygmus. bor·bo·ryg·mus (a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines.)

Hand-Me-Down Advice

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Hand-Me-Down Advice

May I speak with candor? It may be that those pants
looked fine on your mother, your grandma or your aunts;
but drawstrings are for knapsacks and snaps are to call waiters.
And it’s been 50 years or more since fashion sanctioned gaiters.
I know that they are comfortable but another thing
is that they’re lacking in panache. They haven’t any zing.
And just to finally seal the deal, dear, men just don’t make passes
at girls in baggy bloomers that exaggerate their asses.

 

The prompt words were comfortable and candor.

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/30/fowc-with-fandango-comfortable/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/candor/

Venery (for #RDP)

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Venery

Ivory bangles.
Her wrist rubbed vulnerable
against his horsehair sofa.
She is waiting
opposite
the moose head
on the wall,
the gyre-horned kudu,
altered eyes
implying gentle death.

Her snakeskin heel
stilettos wool carpet
woven roughly foreign
as she fingers
leather covered volumes
on the shelf
wherein he wrote
their sporting deaths.

She needs air.
She retrieves
her mink coat
careless flung
over the elephant leg
tobacco stand.
In the hall,
the bull’s ear
pinned to the bullring poster.

Minutes later,
He descends
to find her gone.
Near the bookcase,
her musk signs the air.
On her scent,
he chevies to the hall.
Fresh quarry.
He has flushed the British bird.

 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/rdp-60-quarry/

Blown

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Blown

It whistles a soft melody, this whisper of the wind.
Sings a mysterious lullaby, seemingly without end.
We do not know its language, but know it well by Braille.
It makes a tangle of our hair and swells our vessel’s sail.
It blows into a tempest that hurls us off our course.
Where it once took us willingly, it takes us now by force.
It is that infinite mystery whose answer is unknown
until someday, perhaps, when we arrive at where we’re blown.

The prompts for today are: unknown whisper infinite  lullaby
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/29/fowc-with-fandango-unknown/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/rdp59-whisper/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/daily-addictions-2018-week-30/(infinite)
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/lullaby/

 

Once a Week

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My hat rack

Once a Week

To be eccentric every moment takes too much from me,
so I limit my oddness to every Saturday.
On that day my zany hats come out from their hiding,
anxious for one day a week they get to go outsiding.

I don my feathered boa and stick on rhinestone lashes.
I wear my fringe-tiered flapper skirts with neon colored sashes.
I hop onto my bicycle, my cockatoo inside
the wire basket on the front and take him for a ride.

When we drive by the playground, at first the children balk,
but I pique their expectations as we have a little talk.
The cockatoo speaks bird talk and does a little jig.
Then he does impressions of a donkey and a pig.

He does a little rap routine that every child loves
and then I don my riding hat and my driving gloves
and pedal off to other adventures up the street,
expressing eccentricity to everyone I meet.

Later in the afternoon, I pedal us back home,
turning up the driveway by the garden gnome.
I put my bike into the shed, the bird behind his bars.
I put my rhinestone eyelashes in their storage jars.

I strip off all my finery and pull on my old jeans.
Microwave a hot dog. Open a can of beans.
I sink into my Barclay lounger, flip on the T.V.
turning once again into the ordinary me,
having exorcised my cravings for eccentricity

The prompts for today are expectation, moment and eccentric:

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/expectation/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/28/fowc-with-fandango-moment/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/eccentric-july-28-2018/

Time Out!

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Time Out!

He was an avid sports fan. Alas, his wife was not.
With box scores and with averages, his mind was fully fraught.
Tennis, football, cricket? It mattered not a whit.
If a ball was fought over, he had to witness it.
Basketball and baseball and soccer were the same
as golf to him. Whatever. For all sport he was game.
At last, his wife had had enough and did what she was able
to cure his wild obsession. She cut the TV cable.

The TV went as black as night. The sports fan sat in shock.
He did not move a muscle. He did not blink or talk.
Then he began to jerk and shake as though having a fit.
Withdrawal from his sports fix seemed the cause of it.
As his delirium tremens overtook his life,
 things were getting better for his kids and wife.
His wife could watch her soap operas, the kids watched their cartoons.
No longer did a sports announcer fill their afternoons.

This furtive arrangement lasted for awhile
until our ballgame junkie figured out their guile.
He moved into a condo to catch up on his sport
and his wife remarried to another sort
who did not know a baseball from a hockey puck.
That such a man existed, she could not believe her luck!
The blessed quiet of her house with no announcer shouting
made her glad she turned her spouse’s inning to an outing!

The Prompts:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/27/fowc-with-fandango-arrangement/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/avid-july-27-2018/

Reflections

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I think I was 12 or 13 when this was taken, playing dress-up in my older sister’s dress!


Reflections

I do not seek out mirrors, for I don’t like what I see.
That pudgy older woman barely resembles me.
I prefer reflection of the memory kind,
rooting around within my brain to see what I can find.

Old lovers all hang out there, frozen as they were,
and when I break into their worlds, I create quite a stir,
for I am as I was as well, less inches ’round my waist,
my hair much longer and my skirt length much more to their taste.

I’m thinking just how fortunate it is that we should meet,
both of us together on this familiar street.
What are the chances we’d be here at the selfsame time––
drawn in from our different lives to join here in this rhyme?

Then of course I realize it is by my orchestration
rather than a miracle of synchronization.
At first, our talk is  shallow, our conversation bland.
What causes  a big flurry is when he takes my hand.

It’s then that I remember what it is I miss.
It’s not the conversation, but rather it’s that kiss
that sent my senses spinning off to some future land
where I imagined he would ask my father for my hand.

But when that event came for real, that time for plans and rings,
I found my mind was turning to many other things.
College and then travel to many foreign strands—
things that wouldn’t happen if we wore wedding bands.

So we parted directions—off to different lives,
adventures with different spouses, children with different wives.
Building separate futures that led us both to this:
to fifty years thereafter and that same remembered kiss!

Written for these three prompts:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/rdp-54-reflection/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/25/fortunate-july-25-2018/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/25/fowc-with-fandango-shallow/