Category Archives: Poem

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.

Tanaga for dVerse Poets: New Wisdom from Old

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New Wisdom from Old

Words copied from the I Ching
turn new eyes to everything.
Propped up on her vanity,
they preserve her sanity.

for dVerse Poets Tanaga Challenge.

Plethora

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Plethora

How I love umbrellas! When I see them in the store,
frequently, I buy one, thinking I could use one more.
At the entrance to my casa, there is a jardiniere
with umbrellas tucked inside it, conveniently near.

All the long dry season, they sit shoulder to shoulder
waiting for the weather to get rainier and colder.
I see them in my passing and give each one a pat.
When the time comes that I need one, I’ll know where they are at!

The thunder comes at midnight. Wild lightning cracks the sky.
I see it all around me from the bedroom where I lie.
The rain comes down in torrents, but perhaps it will abate
by the time I leave tomorrow for my breakfast date.

If not, I know umbrellas stand ready at the door.
I can always use one, for that is what they’re for!
Until then, I watch the lighting flash, the drapery’s wild billow .
The dogs whine at the lightning. The cat curls on my pillow. 

When morning dawns with raindrops beating a barrage,
I’m in need of an umbrella for my sprint to the garage.
All the trees are dripping and the rain’s still coming down.
So I need a big umbrella to protect my hair and gown.

I grab a likely candidate and draw it from the jar
like a sword pulled from a scabbard, but I don’t get very far.
It seems I can’t unfurl it. Its opener is stuck
and when I try to force it, I find I’m out of luck.

The next one lacks a handle, the third misses two spines.
The hall fills with frantic curses, my grumbles and my whines.
Where can all my umbrellas be now that they’re finally needed?
The one that shows the Eiffel tower? The one so finely beaded?

One loaned to Yolanda, another in the car,
one given to the old man who had so very far
to trudge up on the mountain in the driving rain.
There’s always one umbrella more, yet now I search in vain.

I grab the last umbrella, but it won’t fit through the door.
If it’s too wide to fit through it, then what is it good for?
Finally, I make a dash without the aid of shelter.
My shoulders soaked, my glasses fogged, my hair blown helter-skelter.

In my journey through the garden, the rain does not abate.
I dodge around the soggy dogs and wrestle with the gate.
When I reach the refuge of my car, I refuse to feel down.
I’ll just buy a new umbrella when I get to town!

 

(jdb photos. To open umbrellas wider, click on any one.)

The prompt today is frantic.

Morning Alarm Clock

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Waiting for breakfast.

Click on any photo to enlarge all.

Morning Alarm Clock

First the ghoulish yowl of cat.
Then the dogs’ accompanying scat.

The far off whine of the machine
that whines the gardener’s routine.

With creak of valve and scrape of tool,
water streams into the pool.

This water surging from the jet
completes my waking up quartet.

Yolanda’s key turns in the door,
adding one harmony more.

Her music joins the morning’s set
to swell it into a quintet.

What finer way  to stir one’s head
on alternate mornings, here in bed?

The prompt is quartet.