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Opening Doors
We click them open, pull them shut.
We shine their locks and dust them, but
when we leave a house to roam,
a turned key doesn’t make it home.
Ownership is not the thing
that crowns you as your house’s king.
If you want your house to fit,
you need to put some life in it.
For Thursday Doors prompt.
To view other doors or add your own door photo, go HERE.
A Cywydd Llosgyrnog Poem is a syllabic-based Welsh form with both end and internal rhymes. Here’s the structure of this six-line form (with the letters acting as syllables and the a’s, b’s, and c’s signifying rhymes:
1-xxxxxxxa
2-xxxxxxxa
3-xxxaxxb
4-xxxxxxxc
5-xxxxxxxc
6-xxxcxxb
So lines 1, 2, 4, and 5 are 8 syllables in length with lines 1 and 2 rhyming as well as lines 4 and 5. Lines 3 and 6 have 7 syllables and rhyme with each other; plus, line 3 has an internal rhyme with lines 1 and 2 while line 6 has an internal rhyme with lines 4 and 5. Phew!!! There are no further rules for subject matter or meter. (I think they have rules enough, don’t you?
Here is my poem. Poets in the crowd, may I invite you to try out this challenging form as well? Don’t forget that internal rhyme as well as the end rhymes!
Make it a Double
I must admit that chocolate
is still my favorite ice cream, but
when asked what I’d like to lick,
pistachio is very good
and so it’s likely (if I could)
some of each would be my pick.
(I found the prompt HERE on the Writer’s Digest website.)
Tide of Laughter
I used to roll with laughter most every day or so.
My parties were all riotous. No one would ever go
back home again till two or three or four or five or six.
And some would stay for breakfast, prerhaps hoping that I ‘d fix
my special chocolate waffles or orange berry strudels
or curried eggs or cheesy pie or strata made with noodles.
We’d story-tell and play charades and I admit, we’d drink
and stage our paper yacht races within the kitchen sink.
The guests might come in costume and some might bring a friend
for I had grown notorious for parties with no end.
When I was a teacher, I’d invite the whole darn staff.
Away from school, our hearts were gay. We dearly loved to laugh!
But this was years ago, my friend. Our hearts were young and gay.
Now that we’ve lived past sixty, we live a shorter day.
When I have my friends over to play a game or dine,
some find the spices don’t agree and others shun the wine.
Some have little dogs at home they have to feed by five.
Others have eye problems and find they cannot drive
after dark at all and so they have to leave by seven.
I guess our laughter’s done on earth. Perhaps we’ll laugh in heaven.
If you were around four years ago, you might have already read this. It is hyperbole. Don’t worry, there is still laughter in my life. It just tends to be a bit subtler these days. The prompt today is laughter.
Shut In
No longer is there any need
to leave my house for drink or feed.
Costco delivers, as does the son
of one I used to join in fun
to dance in bars and flirt with men,
but now those times are what has been.
Now I prefer my company
to what I used to do and see.
I hope to circumvent all trouble
By living here within my bubble.
I lay out solitaire alone
and socialize by screen and phone.
I’m done with yoga. Zumba is out.
I do not flounce myself about.
Here with myself, I pass my life
sealed off from politics and strife.
Though the world’s pleasures I don’t forget,
I choose to turn my back on it.
Safe in my bubble, I peer out
and I’m content, without a doubt.
Behind these shutters and barred doors,
I’m safe from robbers, rapists, wars.
I let in nature, and that’s enough.
It’s human nature that is too rough.
The prompt today is bubble.
Three years ago I published this poem with no ending, asking commenters to construct an ending. There were a number of excellent solutions, but unfairly, I never published one of my own, so I’m giving myself the additional assignment to finish the poem since it also makes use of today’s prompt word of “tide.” I’ve made many adjustments in the original poem and added the last stanza.
Neap Tide
Borne, then born.
Clothed, fed, shorn.
Housed and cuddled,
Brain filled and muddled,
schooled, polished, allowed to roam,
to make the world into a home.
In my third quarter, now sedate.
Content to let my life abate.
Find worlds inside and there abide,
to let what happens be my guide.
To try to live with less precision.
To fear less the world’s derision.
Why so hard to be oneself?
Easier when on the shelf.
Now as I pull my world around me,
memories and dreams surround me—
my solitude a crystal jar
that lets me ponder from afar.
The current of my life, its tide,
reaches without and pulls inside
the things that help me try to see
where my life has taken me.
I contemplate and sometimes share
the truths that I’ve discovered there.
You come to read and judge each word
as wise, amusing or absurd.
You give new insights to what I’ve said—
poems not completed until they’re read.
Less in the world, ironically,
more of the world’s discovered me.
If you’d like to see how others ended the poem three years ago, go HERE.
The prompt today was tide.
Impromptu Gallery
This tennis fact you might observe
when a certain lady goes to serve:
each man who passes tends to swerve
to watch neither her skill nor verve,
but her body’s line and curve––
(each one a visual hors d’oeuvre.)
They keep their thoughts well in reserve,
for no observer has the nerve
to risk the censure he might deserve
in revealing himself as a perv.
And thus can Mel and Chuck and Irv
their conjugal harmonies conserve.
The WordPress Daily Prompt is observe.
Nyctophilia
I love the night. I love the night.
So personal and sparse of light.
Naught to stay my straying feet
in their journey towards a late night treat.
No one to interrupt my thinking
or to disapprove my drinking.
No one knocking at my door.
No one to put a bra on for.
I love the darkness and the calm
of blackness spreading like a balm
cushioning the obligations
and the constant consternations
of the cluttered daylight world
with all its busy fuss unfurled.
Though daylight’s pleasures you may recite,
Still, stubbornly, I prefer night!
Pariah
His classmates found him bookish and his siblings found him odd.
There were no other similar peas within his pod.
Nobody understood him—not his parents, not his teacher.
He found no ally in his doctor nor his preacher.
Oftentimes the acts for which they should have been astonished
were the ones for which he had only been admonished.
They flunked him out of chemistry for blowing up the table
by concocting an explosive that was something less than stable.
They called him just a “ne’er do well.” It seemed he wasn’t able
to do what other kids could do and so he earned the label
of klutz and geek and doofus. He could do nothing right.
He couldn’t chug a beer down. He couldn’t win a fight.
He never ever dressed right. He was fond of oddball hats.
Other people shunned him. His best friends were his cats.
Even as an adult, bad luck didn’t abate.
He remained a pariah. He couldn’t get a date.
He failed at conversation and he was a lousy dancer.
His single social skill was that he found a cure for cancer!
The WordPress prompt today was astonish.
The Weird Wild World
One hundred fifty calories is what you burn away
per hour if head-banging is how you spend your day;
but if you’re prone to thinking great thoughts you merely may
burn 50 calories per day, or so the experts say.
A raccoon group’s a nursery and bullfrogs do not sleep.
There are no bridges on the Amazon, although it’s very deep.
A human nose remembers fifty thousand scents.
No telling which ones please it or which ones it resents.
The average woman spreads her height in lipstick each five years,
and hippo sweat turns scarlet when they are immersed in fears.
If you find these facts astounding, as strange as facts can get,
please do not attack me. Just check the internet!
The last NaPoWriMo prompt for 2018 is: write a poem that engages with a strange and fascinating fact. It could be an odd piece of history, an unusual bit of art trivia, or something just plain weird
