Category Archives: Poem

NaPoWriMo Apr 6, 2018: Fledgling

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Fledgling

Nobody knew
when she stood Sunday still
and held her breath
and pumped her arms
really hard
with total concentration
that she could fly,
rising straight up
until she reached the place where she could swim the air,

because
even when she did it
in their presence,
they were always looking
in the wrong direction.

Until that night
at the dinner table
when everyone
had someone
to talk to
except her,
and so she rose into the busy air above the table
to hover
over
mashed potatoes
until
dessert.


The NaPoWriMo  prompt was to write a poem that stretches your comfort zone with line breaks. That could be a poem with very long lines, or very short lines. Or a poem that blends the two. You might break to emphasize (or de-emphasize) sounds or rhymes, or to create a moment of hesitation in the middle of a thought.

Cold Weather and the Subtle Art of Wooing

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Cold Weather and the Subtle Art of Wooing

A frozen little nose and frigid little toes
plague my teeny-bopper everywhere she goes,
for she does not cover tender little parts
when the winter comes and when the snowing starts.

Flip-flops on her feet, face naked to the air—
she seems to need to show us everything that’s there.
Little mini-skirts and a tiny cotton blouse
with nary a parka as she journeys house-to-house.

She says the weather’s nothing. She says she isn’t cold,
and she will not listen. She simply won’t be told
by her mother or her father that she should bundle up.
We try to give her mittens, hot cocoa in a cup.

Now once again she’s out of here with a new boyfriend
but without a coat or sweater to protect against the wind.
But then I see her logic. for when she subtly sneezes,
he drapes an arm around her to shield her from the breezes. 

So even though my daughter might seem naive and daft
not taking due precautions against the cold and draft,
there’s a method to her madness. She knows what she is doing.
Instead of dressing for the weather she is dressing for the wooing.

 

The WordPress prompt today is frigid.

Kitchen Chores and the Art of Divination

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IMG_9565

The art of divination need not be limited to tea leaves. Was I scraping the bottom of the barrel or merely scraping dishes when I wrote this odd ditty three years ago?

Washing Up

The churning water brings them up.
The grounds of coffee in the cup
rise like saints to water’s top
while water runs, they do not stop.

I read their shapes like tea leaves now.
I see the future but know not how.
They swirl and change, revealing lives––
swarm like hornets from their hives.

The one I wait for comes unstuck,
careening towards his future luck.
The one that’s me caught in an eddy,
stuck for now, but holding steady.

Other remnants of finished meals––
carrot shards, potato peels––
rise up and circle, forming dreams.
Reality, or so it seems.

I see a heart and charm and lies,
a future lover in disguise,
a plane, a knoll, a tree-lined path,
a woman bound in senseless wrath.

She sends out waves that push you here––
the very thing that she most fears.
I know not who or where you are.
Are you near or are you far?

As all goes rushing down the drain,
I feel a sense of loss and pain.
And so I fill the sink again.
Will I see you one time more,
or was my vision only lore?

The prompt today was churn.

NaPoWriMo Day 4: Lost Weekend

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Lost Weekend 

Trapped within this living Hell,
no guardian angel  breaks the spell.
Colored tan or gray or brown.
Elevator music, sound turned down.

Slow as molasses or legs in splints.
It’s windows smudged by fingerprints
so not one ray of light gets through.
Caught fast like velcro, stuck like glue.

Pointless conversation tending
to go on without an ending.
Tasteless food within the fridge.
Endless hours of contract bridge.

TV blaring with contact sports,
Fox News and stock market reports.
Boredom swells like a balloon.
Would that it were over.  Soon!

NaPoWriMo Day 4, The prompt was to express an abstract idea through Concrete Images. I chose “boredom.”

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 3, List Poem

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Truth is much stranger than fiction. Today, when the NaPoWriMo prompt was to make a list poem, I drew a blank, so I used the WordPress prompt instead.  But, when I went to Facebook to see if my poem had posted there, I found a very strange thing. There, dated April 3, was posted this “List Poem!”  It turns out that it was posted as the Five Years ago Today feature on Facebook. In short, five years ago today when I was making my first NaPoWriMo posts, the prompt on April 3 was the same prompt they gave us today on April 3 five years later!  Go figure.  I took it as a sign, so I’m publishing this one (which had one “like” five years ago when I was new to blogging and had no followers) again.

“When Life Gives You Lists, Make Poetry” 

The poem in a nutshell:

A poem a day might be more possible
if only I were not so bossable.

Or, The unabridged version:

I had the best intentions when
this morning I picked up my pen;
but then the phone began to ring
and all day long, thing after thing
presented obstacles to rhyme,
ate up attention, devoured my time.
First, the printer who needed pay
of course, lived 15 miles away.
Two hours later, home at last,
I had to cook a light repast
for company who now have left
me feeling not a bit bereft.
My laptop open, my mind about
to function, I was beckoned out.
My mood was less than  joculant
as the gardener asked for flocculant
for pool algae gone amuck.
When? Now? It was just my luck!
He made a list, demanded more
since I was going to the store.
He added chlorine and algaecide
as I considered suicide.
Finally home, I yearned to go
devise some verse, but to my woe,
my propane tank had just run dry.
We made the call. They said they’d try
to make it out within the hour.
My mood grew crabby, dark and dour.
From then on, things just kept on being
averse to my poesy-eeing.
Thing after thing came up to do.
If I know you, maybe some from you!
I‘m just a girl who can’t say no
so this is how ‘twas bound to go
until I figured how to make
adversity a piece of cake.
Make the best out of the worse.
Let interruptions become the verse!

New Faith

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I really started blogging exactly five years ago today, when I wrote my first NaPoWriMo poem, having little faith in my ability to make it for the whole thirty days.

In the end, day-by-day, I did it.  A year later, I did it again and when I came to day 30, I didn’t stop.  Since then I’ve exercised a different sort of faith by writing every morning—doing  a number of writing and photo posts, including at least one poem or story, every day for the past 1,460 days. (This post will be my 4,074th one.)

The pool exercises I once did faithfully in a water aerobics class three mornings a week at the clubhouse pool,  I still do at midnight in my own pool under the stars and moon, surrounded by the blossoms that fall from the tall Washingtonian palm trees that rise like giants in the night air above the pool.

I swim with the moon,
stars strewn like wedding flowers
in this midnight pool.

For dVerse Poets Haibun Monday, Faith.

Love Letter to Estrella

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Love Letter to Estrella

If they were to make a gradient
between dull and radiant,
the scale for brilliance, it is true,
would have to culminate with you.
In both countenance and mind,
I could never ever find
such a shining, clever soul
who could begin to fill the role
you have been cast to in my life.
Your clever wit cuts like a knife
through the toughest, dullest day.
Your brilliance takes shadows away—
bans them to the corners where
they’re safe to gather, for you’re not there.
My dear, if you had any betters,
life would be full of love letters,
but since I find you’re without peer,
it’s only you that I call dear.

 

The Word Press prompt word today is radiant.

Toxicity Report

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Toxicity Report

Toxic little rumors and poisonous little lies
circumvent veracity and cloak it in disguise,
poisoning perception, holding truth at bay,
obscuring what is truth in favor of hearsay.

The prompt today is toxic.

Naughty Little Pleasures: NaPoWriMo, April 1, 2018

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jdb photo        

Naughty LIttle Pleasures

Naughty little pleasures, secret little games—
they are our private treasures, these solitary shames.
We never can admit them to family or friends,
for fear that doing so would  bring about their ends.
Childhood is when our private pleasure starts—
not stifling our sneezes or holding back our farts.
Eating the last cupcake or hiding Grandpa’s teeth.
Watching skirts on windy days to see what’s underneath.
Torturing sister’s Barbie Dolls and kidnapping her bears.
Reading Daddy’s magazines underneath the stairs.
Guzzling ice cream from the carton and milk right from the spout.
Opening sister’s love letters to see what they’re about.
Telling mom you’ll help her because she’s running late,
then licking all the cookies you’re putting on the plate.
If being perfect were more fun, then probably we would,
but there’s little pleasure in always being good.

For your listening pleasure, my friend Christine Anfossie added music to the poem and sent me a copy to share with you. Listen to it here: 

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt: write a poem that is based on a secret shame, or a secret pleasure.

Seer

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Seer

Her statement that she’d had a vision
was met by general derision;
so though she tried to warn them all,
they heeded nothing but “last call!”

So while she stocked up her provisions,
they hemmed and hawed with their decisions
and had a round of boozy toasts—
gave their laments, boasted their boasts.

Then they went west while she went east
and thus were eaten by the beast
or overtaken by the flood.
Soaked in water or in blood.

The moral of this little tale
is heed your mystics, or learn to bail
or run faster than the beast
lest you become his morning’s feast

or starve to death in time of drought.
Her warnings met with only doubt
instead of action to stem the tide,
by those who stood as one. And died.

Gotta warn you.  Once again, a poem from three years ago. The prompt word today is warning.