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Dear John
You say I’m not focused? I’m focused as glue.
The truth is that I am not focused on you!
The prompt today was focused.
Arms “Race”
Millions of planets go spinning around
out of our sight and making no sound.
Because we don’t see them, are they not there?
And if we do not see them, have we a care
of what lies upon them or what it’s all for?
Is the rest of the universe simply a snore?
We are so taken by the mess of our world
that we keep forgetting that we’re merely curled
like a fist of small planets thoughtlessly cast
into a corner of a system so vast
that we’re barely noticed in the scale of it all.
It is not so important, our spinning blue ball
as we make it out to be, fussing and feuding,
warring and hating and bombing and shooting.
Like fleas on an elephant, thinking their bite
reveals such a showing of power and might,
our planet could vanish like that, in a puff,
and truly, the world would have planets enough.
Like millions of tiny balls spinning in space,
we’re in no competition. It’s really no race.
It’s nobody’s loss and nobody’s win.
We always return to the place we begin.
So put away guns and machetes and knives
and let’s simply live out our miniature lives.
The prompt today is planet. This is a reblog of an earlier post.
Vestiges
Crumbs are what’s left when day is done––
Proof you may have missed the fun.
While some were celebrating lives,
you were busy in your hives:
every drudge and every jerk
fussing over busy work.
Yes, do your job and do it well,
but when you hear the ending bell,
close your desk drawers, leave your toils.
When work is over, enjoy the spoils.
Life, in short, is what you make it.
Savor your cake. Don’t simply bake it.
The prompt today is crumb. Love this one! What in the world will come of it?
Nosy Mortal Monologue
Why is our living just part of our dying
and why must our failures be part of our trying?
Who made up this game and who’s throwing the dice?
Why do we play on, no matter the price?
How can men worship this ultimate gamesman
who gives us our faults and then unfairly blames man
for acting the way he’s created to be?
Why aren’t we given mind power to see
how something so seemingly unfair might tend
to all turn for the best when it comes to the end?
Could it be that our dying is part of our living?
That somehow our getting is tied to our giving?
Does Karma exist? Does Heaven or Hell?
Does the Universe know, and will it ever tell?
A question poem for dVerse Poets
Foreshadowing
Why does the loveliest flower have the sharpest thorn
so you had to pay the tariff of young flesh pierced and torn
by the most splendid ornament that you had ever worn
as he clasped you to the music of the saxophone and horn?
It’s been true each day you’ve lived, was true when you were born,
and your father brought fresh roses—your bedside to adorn.
And it will go on being true on that future morn
when roses will be carried by those saddened and forlorn
as they place your ashes where you’ve asked that they be borne:
back to that same rose bush that so long ago was shorn
of the roses that you carried when your wedding vows were sworn.
The prompt today is thorny.
From Afar
I have a penchant for you. You’re my object of desire.
You’ve already lit my embers. No need to fan the fire.
Your conflagration’s handled. There’s a trench around my heart.
I have a backfire all planned out should the ground fires start.
I have an inclination, predilection and a yen.
I know where you are going. I notice where you’ve been.
I won’t admit to stalking. I don’t follow in your wake.
You don’t know I have my eye on you and won’t, for heaven’s sake.
I’m too old for flirting. Too advanced in years for blushes.
I’m twenty years or so beyond midlife schoolgirl crushes.
I don’t go out to hookup bars, to lowlife dives or pubs.
I haven’t yet resorted to senior singles clubs.
But lately I’ve been feeling like my isolation’s stupid,
so I gathered up my courage and signed up for OkCupid.
No chance that I’ll be overcome with romance’s pleasures.
Thanks to you, I’ve done my research on precautionary measures.
The word of the day today was penchant.
Peculiar Little Habits
Peculiar little habits and peculiar little ways
help us pass away the hours and wile away the days.
When you enter in the door, close it exactly twice
to be sure the catch secures as solid as a vice.
Always check the doorknobs before you go to bed
to be sure the deadbolt is completely dead.
Security is something that can’t be left to chance.
You must man the battlements and take a vigilant stance.
Do not invite strangers to wander through your home.
Give foreign folks and foreign thoughts no further place to roam.
Seal your borders. Block people who
may be a different color from you.
Be sure that you have set a ban
on each thing unAmerican.
Burn our silks. Wipe out baklava.
While you’re at it, ban our Java.
Set up a refreshment jury
to vote on food like Indian curry.
Wienerschnitzel’s got to go.
Ban sushi. Nix gado gado.
Chocolate should be exorcised.
Ban music that’s unauthorized.
Raga, salsa and jungle beat
are rhythms we should not repeat.
America for Americans
is how we have arranged our plans.
Blood tests mandatory for sure
to make sure our blood is pure.
Send all the dark skins we have banned
to places not so tightly planned:
Prince Edward Island or Mexico
are places they’ll be forced to go—
places less pristine and picky
content to take folks slightly icky,
not perfect folks like you and me,
immaculate in our ancestry.
With endearing little habits, peculiar little ways,
we’ll wile away our hours and wile away our days
waiting for those foreign folks on whom we need to pounce,
doling out our safety by the pound, not by the ounce.
Picking fights with neighbors, casting insults at Korea,
twittering and ranting in a verbal diarrhea.
As it is above, so has it become below—
Trying to regress from what was once the status quo.
Truth becoming what we make it, in spite of evidence—
reinventing science by divine providence
Though we cannot lock out hurricanes or fires caused by our blindness,
we have power to lock out sanity, ecology and kindness.
We’ll check our country’s doorknobs before we go to bed
and insure that all the deadbolts are completely dead.
The prompt word today is peculiar.
Odd Little Saturday Morning Poem
I lie in bed, flat on my back, head raised by pillows,
computer raised to eye level
by a wadded comforter over bent knees.
I listen to raised voices in the village down below,
the staccato of an inadequately mufflered car revving up,
a hammer falling on wood, birds in the coco palms.
A pianissimo chorus of dogs spread
over the surrounding hills swells to a frenzied crescendo,
then falls silent but will swell again.
I have dropped obligations
like clothes shed for a lover.
My Saturday morning pool aerobics and Zumba,
I slipped out of years ago.
Group luncheons hang from doorknobs and chair backs.
Committee meetings lie sloppily abandoned in the hall.
I have retired from the running of the world
to run my own small universe on paper.
Saturday morning is my brainstorm session
with “Me,” “Myself” and “I.”
“I” suggested feeding the dogs,
but they are quiet now, so
“Me” suggested we let them lie.
“Myself” laid out some words to dry
in the heat of the fire of our communal
inspiration, laying them smoothly on the page,
rumpling up others in her fist to send them sailing
to join the crumpled singles event invitations in the corner.
This slow Saturday morning dressing of pages
and stripping them bare
is a sort of ceremony celebrating seizing time
and making it my own.
Pages fill up with passion, angst, anger,
irritation, joy, laughter, camaraderie.
There is more than one word for each.
Imagine such control over your world–
not having to live the world of any other.
If you could have any life you wish?
Imagine a Saturday morning building it.
The prompt today was crescendo. This is a reprint of a poem written a few years ago.
jdbphoto
Acclaim
Those who seek to elevate
their fame with words too profligate
often find that others balk
at such narcissistic talk.
One heard tooting his own horn
is often lonely and forlorn.
When it comes to charity,
many have reached parity
who do not need to try to flout it,
let alone to shout about it.
Others have performed great acts
without broadcasting the facts
of honors won or feats achieved,
and one who boasts is oft believed
to be exaggerating––or,
is simply thought to be a bore
So, even though you’re justly proud,
please don’t voice that fact out loud.
If your act is worth a plaudit,
best leave it to another to laud it!
The prompt word is elevate. (Rerun of a poem written three years ago.)
Dead Possum
A rude surprise,
it lay like breakfast rejected
on the patio outside the dogs’ sleeping room.
The dogs were restless this morning,
barking for their kibble,
unwilling to follow the rules
that decreed paws known all too well
as lethal weapons needed to be contained,
the dogs in their open cages before I’d venture out to feed.
But some wildness recently sated
drove them to assault the door
and refuse repeated demands to
go to their beds.
They staged their impatient war dance,
telling with growls and claws
the tale of the hunt—
That won battle.
I lock them in their cages
and, order restored, I dish their meals
and free them to their feed.
I walk behind them to secure the sliding glass door,
gather dust pan and broom, plastic pail.
Their quarry too large to fit, let alone be lofted
by a dust pan, I grasp the tail and lower the possum
like a colossal tea bag for a dipping,
into the wash bucket,
walk the long path down to the lower wall,
heft it over into deep underbrush
of the vacant lot next door.
I own that land.
It has been the burial place
of sixteen generations of those possums
too slow for escape,
with teeth and claws insufficient for defense––
every one a battle won
by the dogs
and each one equally mourned––
their wild ferocity not enough
to best even dogs seemingly grown docile
until these night battles
gone unnoticed in my dreams
are brought to view in light of day.
The possum’s fur wet and matted but only slightly torn,
every time I hopefully delude myself
that perhaps it’s playing witness to its name
and only playing possum.
Optimistically, I don heavy gloves and winter coat,
ready for the struggle as I try to save
what an adult part of me knows
no longer is in need of saving.
Each corpse ironically made heavier by loss of life,
that dead weight of it
is echoed in a central part of me
as I try to lift with reverence
this newest evidence
that most of life
and all of death
is out of our control.
