Category Archives: Poem

The Harvest

4 Replies

Click on any photo to enlarge all.


The Harvest

Most of my lifetime, I’ve gone for the “zing,”
Excitement and novelty were my main thing.
I wrung out of life all the juice I could wring–—
all the diversions existence could bring,
constantly reaching out for the gold ring.

Life without change seemed pointless and dull.
I wanted my life without any lull,
so I greedily sucked all the fruit from its hull,
finding on my own what I needed to cull—
which things I should keep and which to annul.

As I fell to the ground after soaring the skies,
I sorted successes from my mere tries.
I learned from my tendencies to aggrandize,
gave up on false dreams to follow the wise,
and sometimes I managed to capture the prize.

Only now as my life has finally unwound
have I gained some perspective and finally found
that all those wild oats I have sown may be ground
to release all the lessons so carefully bound.
What is seeded in ounces may yield by the pound.

 

The three prompts today are “zing, pointless and wise.” . Here are their links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/23/rdp-53-zing/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/pointless-july-24-2018/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/24/fowc-with-fandango-wise/

Great Pains

14 Replies

IMG_0329

4:15  A.M.

Nothing in life competes with pain.
It wins the race time and again.
Compared with every other force,
it is the thing that stays the course.

All the usual distractions
are in the end, merely abstractions.
Just one reality remains.
Avoidance measures it disdains.

Though we make take great pains to miss it,
in vain we toil to dismiss it.
All else in life becomes inane
when its competitor is pain.

The Prompts:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/23/fowc-with-fandango-compete/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/23/distract-july-23-2018/

 

Books (For Daily Addictions July 21, 2018 prompt of Obsolete)

3 Replies

IMG_1316

Books

The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
its paper sprinkled with drops-—
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory—
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.

Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.

Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages—
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink—
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.

Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial—
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us.

What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Wikipedia replacing dictionaries,
Google already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?

Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs.
Perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
Perhaps the grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them—as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages—one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.

search
search-1Yes, you are right.  These are chairs made out of books.

In response to The Daily Addictions prompt of obsolete  Of all the technologies that have gone extinct in your lifetime, which one do you miss the most?

The Daily Addictions prompt is obsolete.

A Vindication of Single Life

10 Replies

A Vindication of Single Life

I will not love for comfort. I will not love for gold.
I will not love for custom nor approval of the fold.
The handsomest of profiles will not win my hand.
Fair face alone will not insure I’ll wear a wedding band.

Those whom others seek to wed are not my man of choice.
I want a man gentle of heart but bold of word and voice.
One with an eye for beauty written in other places
aside from what the world demands in figure and in faces.

That certain novel contour molded by his hand.
A forearm strongly muscled. Sinewy and tanned.
Serious in nature, but not too melancholy.
Capable of fine reasoning, but also fun and jolly.

A man who carries others securely in his heart.
A man I am a part of even when we are apart.
An oddball twist of humor. A unique bend of mind.
Someone glib in rejoinder, but also fair and kind.

I am by no means perfect in demeanor nor in form.
My face is not the fairest and my habits aren’t the norm.
I am not the world’s best dancer nor a very sexy dame,
but  I bet someone exists whose imperfections are the same!


Written for these two prompts.  Check out their URLS and come play along:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/rdp-50-gold/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/20/fowc-with-fandango-melancholy/

In the Blood

12 Replies

Image downloaded from Internet.

Remember Walter Palmer, the dentist who shot Cecil, the lion lured out of a game park in Tanzania  in 2015?  This is a poem I wrote and dedicated to him at the time. I was wondering how he is doing now and if he ever had the nerve to mount Cecil’s head in his trophy room, so checked up on him again via the link above.  I dedicate this poem again to him and to all who profit from the spilling of blood in sport, be it war games or other blood sport.

In the Blood!!!
(Dedicated to Walter Palmer)

Don’t you just love football—the running and the tackling?
The sounds of hamstrings pulling and the crunch of femurs crackling?
We sit up in the bleachers eating hot dogs, drinking beer,
comfortably viewing blood sport—the kind we hold so dear.

Aren’t dogfights lovely–the growling and the whining?
Too bad they aren’t more elite, so we could watch while dining.
So amusing watching canines being dished their due.
Dying is so entertaining when it isn’t you!

Better still are bullfights, though they’re few and far between.
The bull so lithe and dangerous, the matador so lean.
The best part of the sport is that the dying is so slow.
I feel its thrill suffuse me from my head down to my toe.

We adore big game hunting in such exotic lands–
our chance to prove our manliness with our own two hands–
handing over money to those trackers in the know
who guarantee an easy kill with rifle or with bow.

Easy on the hunter, but not the animal,
for just because he’s hit the prey’s not guaranteed to fall.
We get more for our money if he’s hard to track,
and war games are more pleasant when one’s foe doesn’t shoot back!

All these minor titillations just a prelude to
the main event and the most major way of counting coup.
Once all the good old boys are finding life is just a bore,
they round up all the younger men and send them off to war.

See how the valiant struggle, see their stripes and purple hearts–
apt pay for missing arms and legs and other blown off parts.
Lucky to be home at last and lucky to be living–
the products of that blood sport that just somehow keeps on giving.

The Daily Addictions prompt for today is dedicate.

Away

1 Reply

Away

I write through early morning, long before the day
intrudes upon the shadows, intent to have its say.

Words birthed in the nighttime never seem to quit.
They come like half-tamed horses, chomping at the bit.

They seem to have a power and meaning all their own,
where they complete their foaling before the seeds are sown.

Truth is there behind us before it ever shows—
like words before they’re spoken, and wind before it blows.

Before the morning opens, memories fully lit
are brought to life in wondrous tales, straining at the bit.

Brought swiftly to these different worlds to live a life apart—
far from the one who made them, like a horse without its cart.

I like to set my words free to canter on their own,
to feed upon the prairie grass that grows where it has blown.

The Ragtag Prompt was open.

Fandango’s prompt was memory.

First to the Gate

8 Replies

IMG_3816

First to the Gate

If you were born to innovate,
your one desire to create,
take care you don’t equivocate,
for if you do, I fear your fate
will be that you react too late.
Someone will beat you to the plate!
So if you don’t desire this fate,
Act boldly, friend, and do not wait!!!

The Daily Addictions prompt is innovate.

Knees

14 Replies

IMG_0266

Knees

Knees, knees, folks have knees
from Katmandu down to Belize.
In Peru, where they ride llamas
they still have knees in their pajamas.
Further north, up where it freezes,
even Polar bears have kneezes.

Knees, knees, folks have knees
to ogle, fondle, pet and squeeze.
(It’s easy when they’re under kilts.)
Some knees on roller skates or stilts
are scabbed and scaly, skinned and sore
but still they know what they are for.

Knees are great to bounce a baby,
to kick a soccer ball, or maybe
to bend in prayer when they’re in church,
or form a perfect sort of perch
for swains who fall on bended knee
to say, ‘I’d like to marry thee.’

Knees, knees, folks have knees.
In sun they burn, in snow they freeze.
Yet  knees can cross and knees can knock.
Knees can jog you round the block.
Knees are handy and dependable.
And aren’t we glad that knees are bendable?

 

The Daily Addictions prompt today is convenient.  I ask you.  What is more convenient than knees?

In Search of Kerfuffles

8 Replies

Chances are one of these photos depicts a kerfuffle. Click on first photo to enlarge all and view as a slide series.


In Search of Kerfuffles

What, I must ask you, is a kerfuffle?
Is it a soufflé or perhaps a ruffle?
Is it that fuzz that hides under beds
or those stubborn snarls at the back of our heads?
Perhaps they are tasty and come with whipped cream—
a dieter’s nightmare, a sweet tooth’s fine dream.
Do kerfuffles have feathers and beaks on their noses 
to fly overhead and poop on our clotheses?
Does one have to walk them or clean up their messes?
I’m no closer to knowing, in spite of these guesses.
Guess I’ll quit my job and pack up a duffle,
set off in the world to find a kerfuffle.
And when I discover it, I’ll bring it home
and finally be able to finish this poem.

The Ragtag prompt today was kerfuffle.

Blind Date

24 Replies

 

Blind Date

With an air of abandon, she threw off her clothes,
rolled up her hair and night creamed her nose.
She was sure she’d see no one ’til morning at work,
so she removed her bridge with a tug and a jerk.
She peeled off her eyelashes, creamed off her blush.
Did all  this slowly with no need to rush.
A natural girl now, her face put away
for her to reclaim the very next day.

She’s snugged up in flannel, propped up in her bed.
By the end of this evening, her book will be read.
The large bowl of chili that rests on the table
right by the bed, she’ll devour when she’s able.
In between page turns, she’ll take a big bite.
She’ll feast and she’ll read ’til she puts out the light.

Until the night’s silence is shattered by ringing.
The strum of guitars and some romantic singing
completes all the ruckus occurring outside
as she pulls up the covers to cower and hide.
For she has remembered, alas and too late
that this was the night that she had a blind date.
She springs to the bathroom to try to redo
all that she’s lately hastened to undo.

“Just a minute!” she calls, and she hears his reply.
Her beauty procedures are done on the fly.
She rips out her curlers, unwinding, unfurling
the locks she’d just put there for overnight curling.
The mascara wand flies. Rouge is rapidly swiped
across the same cheeks she has recently wiped.
She throws on her clothes, grabs her phone and her purse.
No more time to prepare, and no time to rehearse.

She opens the door to survey her date.
He has a nice face and a shiny bald pate.
She consults her watch and she scolds, “You are late!”
Her side of the tale, she’ll neglect to relate.
They’ll have a fine evening and he will take care
not to mention the curler in back of her hair.
Some things best unspoken are things her date knows—
like her one missing eyebrow and cream on her nose.
These slight imperfections he took in his stride
Which is why one year later she wound up his bride.

.

The Daily Addictions prompt is abandon.