Category Archives: Poem

Another Modest Proposal

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DSC08411“Macho” assemblage and photo by jdb

Another Modest Proposal

Once a species has been depleted,
it’s sad that it can’t be repeated.
This is true of guys and gals
as surely as for animals.
So though we hate to limit fun
that might be realized with your gun,
unless you’re hunting for your fodder,
we ask that you confine your slaughter
to paper targets, or wood or clay,
and do not blow game sport away
like rhinos, elephants, giraffes.
Their slaughters are the greatest gaffes.
If you must kill a living thing,
form yourselves into a ring,
make prayers to the Holy Mother
and target practice on each other!

 

Yes, this is hyperbole!! The WordPress prompt is deplete.

Loving Thy Enemy

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Three years ago yesterday, I wrote an abecedarian poem for NaPoWriMo that contained today’s pompt word of “froth.”  What are the chances?  There must be some poetic synchronicity at work here.  If you don’t know what an abecedarian poem is, it is one where each word in the poem begins with a letter of the alphabet in order from a to z.  I did one poem in this manner, then wrote another  where I stated with z and went backwards through the alphabet to a, and then forward again, a to z. Give me any kind of game and I can’t resist it.  Especially word games.

 

Loving Thy Enemy

Age
becomes
creative.

Don’t ever fictionalize
great heroic intimacies.

Just keep looking
major nemeses over,
proudly quieting
rash stabbing thoughts.

Under violent words,
xenophobic
yearnings
zing.

****

Raw Savage Thoughts

Zealous young
xenophobic wanderers
veer under
the sun’s rays,
quitting promenades
over nomadic mesas.

Let’s keep jumping
into harsh green fields,
eternally delving closer
before age accents
belligerent crankiness.

Delicious effervescence
froths gushingly homeward
in jugulars,
keeping lymphatic matters
normal or palpitating,

quickening
raw savage thoughts.
Understanding vulcanizes
woman’s X-rated,
yearnful zest.

 

The prompt today is froth.

Simultaneous: NaPoWriMo 2018, Day 10

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Simultaneous

Galaxies spin out of sight
far out in this selfsame night
where I attempt to journey in
to universes within my skin.
Whole worlds inside that I can’t know.
I feel sometimes they guide me, though.
How else explain my need to range
into environments more strange.
Like many, thinking I’m unique
when many others who also seek
share a larger journey all,
trapped together on this ball
that spins our world through time and space
taking us all to the same place!

For Napowrimo.

“Ant”cestry.Com

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“Ant”cestry.Com

“I think we may be family,” was whispered in his ear,
but he couldn’t see who said it, though he looked both far and near.
Again that small voice spoke to him. “We share a family name,
although as the biggest, you possess most of the fame.”

Thus did the massive elephant notice for the first time
the tiniest of animals who’d finished its long climb
from the dirt so far below up to his mighty ear.
From foot to knee to shoulder, it had climbed in spite of fear

that one great flinch might cast it from the air down to the ground.
Yet still it journeyed upwards, driven to expound
on how great an irony, surely it must be,
that this small “ant” and the eleph”ant” must be family!

NaPoWriMo 2018, Day 9: write a poem in which something big and something small come together.

Speechless

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.


Speechless

I’ve been thwarted in my efforts to shine at elocution,
for though I memorize the words, I flub their execution.
In short, although I’m erudite, I don’t excel at speeches.
I stammer and I blush and sweat. My words come out as screeches.

I don’t give toasts at weddings. At funerals, I am mute.
And although I am quite clever and politically astute,
you won’t find me expounding on what I think I know,
for when I seek to share my thoughts, they just advance too slow.

Even if I’ve known for years the people I’m among,
I simply do not have the gift of a silver tongue.
There are no debate trophies cluttering my shelf,
for I’m usually speechless unless talking to myself.

The prompt today is thwart.

Poet vs. Prosaist: NaPoWriMo 2018, Day 7

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Poet vs. Prosaist

I make the words just snap in line.
The rules of rhyme and meter, mine.
One line suggests the next in time,
limited by theme and rhyme.
I step aside and words rule me.
I love the puzzle of poetry!

Your rhyming games are your excuse.
A form of literary abuse.
Your joking rhymes become the norms
while you eschew more serious forms.
If you would cast your poems aside,
You’d find where deeper thoughts reside.

The prompt today was to list all of your identities, then to divide them into ones that make you feel powerful and vulnerable and to have one identity from each of the different  sides of your personality talk to each other.

Powerful: poet, artist, friend, pet wrangler, swimmer, art collector, traveler, gardener, photographer, driver, girlfriend, teacher, sister, advisor, beloved.

Vulnerable: Stepmother, friend, daughter, widow, wife, senior citizen, kid, dancer, guitar player, singer, sorority girl, hippie, sister-in-law, home owner, prose writer, advisee, student,patient, lover.

 

.http://www.napowrimo.net/day-seven-5/

 

Long Haul

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Sins of Omission

We’ve had a long haul, dear, with a heavy load
over a long and difficult road.
That day that you left and never came back,
the whole world you left felt stretched on the rack.
The dogs howled the moon, the horses milled ‘round.
Then everything stilled, just poised for the sound
of your homebound footsteps. We listen still.
The kids often bound to the top of the hill
looking for something. Perhaps it is you.
From sunup to sundown, we still hope to view
the sight of your figure rounding the bend
so our struggles without you can finally end.

Did you mean to leave or was it a quirk?
Were you a victim or were you a jerk?
Wherever you’ve gone to, here’s what you’re missing:
my shepherd’s pie and all of my kissing,
backrubs and whispers deep in the night,
love’s deep caresses and its sweet bite.
Selfish adventurer, it’s time to atone
for the sins you’ve amassed while off on your own.
Come home to your duty. Come home to your life.
Come home to your kids, your parents, your wife.
Your old life awaits you. Wherever you roam,
there must be a road that will lead you to home.

The prompt today is haul.

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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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.