Category Archives: Poem

Flight of Fortune

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A little over a year ago, I wrote this post about an unfortunate fortune told me by a stranger.  Because I have so much left to do today before company arrives tomorrow, workmen here now, more coming tonight and a trip to Costco in Guadalajara to accomplish before that, I’m going to link to my former post and perhaps write one later tonight, after I finish painting.  Here is the link: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/12/10/flight-of-fortune/

I had forgotten writing it so perhaps even if you regularly read my blog, it will seem fresh to you, as well.  Merry Xmas–coming up fast.  So excited to see my friends tomorrow who will fly in from Wyoming and California.

The prompt word today was “fortune.”

Conundrum

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A conundrum is a kind of riddle based upon some fanciful or fantastic resemblance between things quite unlike. It creates a puzzling question, of which the answer is or involves a pun. Solve this riddle and win a prize. (My admiration.) Try not to look at the comments until you’ve guessed the answer yourself. Then, please brag to me about it in the comments section!
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What does not think but has a head?
Has many stories never read?
For each of us, just one, not many.
Contains much heart, yet has not any.
Some say once gone, you can’t go back,
and though one letter it may lack,
with it, if you hit the ball,
you’ll have the finest luck of all.
Add “r” and cover all the bases,
and you’ll bring smiles to many faces.
And when you finally come in free,
you’ll find you have come back to me.

 

Today’s prompt word is “conundrum.”

Transcendental Bad Boy

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img_0410Transcendental Bad Boy

Nowhere to go, nowhere to flee.
I cannot run away from me.
I’m stuck inside with no way out.
Just me, with no one else about.
All the others are there outside
this place where I alone abide.

If I could climb out of my skin
and leave this body that I’m in,
escape myself from head-to-toe,
I wonder where I’d choose to go?
Perhaps a river, perhaps a sea––
anyplace that wasn’t me.

For one day, I’d be a cloud
if changing stages of matter’s allowed.
Floating high up in the blue,
I’d think of new things I could do.
I’d find parades for me to view,
then just for fun, rain on a few.

If I were water and you drank me,
I’d view you internally.
Tickle your uvula and then
slide down the chute inside your skin.
Inside you, I would rage and thunder,
from your throat to way down under.

If I were wind, I’d lift the skirts
of dour old ladies and teenage flirts.
I’d muss the hair of social mavens,
pluck nestlings from the beaks of ravens.
No telling what a menace I’d be
if I’d not been limited to me!

The prompt word today was flee.

Asthma Attack

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Asthma Attack

I’ve left the house where I abide.
I can no longer live inside.
The dust has got the best of me—
my lungs, and all the rest of me.
Two weeks of tile and concrete dust
have all built up until I must
admit my lungs gave up at last
with breath a function of the past.

I made it to the pharmacy
before my breath gave out on me.
Once there, gasping, voiceless, paler,
I pantomimed for an inhaler,
then asked how to make use of it
and for a stool on which to sit—
all with gestures wild and manic.
Attempts to breathe brought only panic.

A half hour more I struggled for air.
Clearly I needed help and care.
“Tranquilo, señora,” the store clerk urged,
every time my panic surged
because I could not breathe again.
I tried and tried, but all in vain.
Another spray, then I willed calm
to wrap me in its healing balm.

At last, I finally breathed free.
They called a friend to come for me.
She drove me home, and now I sit
above the dust and all of it:
debris, concrete, tile and grout.
I’ve left it all.  I have moved out
to live in my upstairs casita
a saner, safer señorita

far above the mess and din,
lest this construction does me in.

If you’ve never had an asthma attack, I can only say it is one of the most panic-provoking experiences I’ve ever had, equaled only by my first asthma attack three years ago and an earlier time when I was pinned underwater and nearly drowned. I’ve said before that my greatest fear in life is not being able to breathe, and today I faced that fear again. After a month of severe coughing bouts and three trips to the doctor, I finally checked my meds on the advice of my friend Marti and found my blood pressure meds were known to provoke chronic bouts of coughing. I got my doctor to change my meds and slept well last night. It wasn’t until the man remodeling my bathroom arrived and started sanding and cutting concrete that I suddenly got a severe coughing attack again, in spite of the fact that there were two closed doors between us.

Although I had plenty of nighttime cold meds, I was out of Tabcin Activa, my daytime cold formula, so I decided to drive to the pharmacy to get some more. Thankfully, within the last few months, they’ve opened a Guadalajara Farmacia in my  village. Otherwise, I would have had to have driven 5 miles to Ajijic. This synchronicity, I am sure, saved my life, as by the time I got to the pharmacy, I was coughing and wheezing so severely that instead of asking for Tabcin, I asked for cough medicine. The pharmacist brought out a  lovely gift-wrapped conglomeration of kids’ cough medicine, stuffed toy, vitamin tablets and herbal tea. No, I insisted between coughs, just very strong cough syrup. By the time she brought it and I had ripped open the box and asked her to open the bottle, I was wheezing. I chugged the cough medicine, then went into a full asthmatic attack. I motioned wildly for an inhaler, and then for them to open it and show me how to use it. I used the inhaler once. Twice. Three times. I was presenting the most wild and frantic display of behavior but I knew, in fact, that I would die if I couldn’t breathe soon.

Eventually, I could take small gasps of air, interspersed with more closings of my air passages. I pointed toward a stool, which they brought to me, along with a glass of warm water. I took a sip and my passages closed again. Another inhaler blast. Tears were streaming down my face and I was shaking uncontrollably. Earlier, they had asked if they should call for an ambulance, but I knew if this were done, that my house had been left open with only strangers in it. Both of my computers were out in plain sight. The gate to the street open. The front door open. The workers would not know where I was. Anyone could wander into the house. What’s more, I’d left my cellphone at home along with my phone list. I didn’t have any numbers to call friends to come help. Of course this caused more anxiety and brought on another attack.

In the end, still unable to talk, I wrote a note asking for a phonebook. I finally found the number of a friend, had them call her and ask her to come get me. Unfortunately, she was not a native speaker of Spanish and didn’t understand what they were saying, but I was able to speak enough to say who I was, that I needed help and to come to the pharmacy.

She drove me home, got items from my house I needed, stopped by another friend’s house to see if he’d come mind mine for the day, and since I was breathing well by then, took me back to the pharmacy to pick up my car.  On the way back home, I suddenly remembered I had an upstairs room that should be dust-free and so I relieved my friend, brought possessions upstairs, and here I am ensconced until construction is finished.

I must end here because I’m getting sleepy and think I’ll soon nod off. Ironically enough, what I had originally gone to get at the pharmacy was Daytime Tabcin, a multi-symptom cold capsule for what I thought was my cough and cold. Although I had the night formula, I was out of the daytime one. I had written my request to the pharmacist who had shown me a box. Yes, that was it I said. Now, safe in my upstairs room, breathing freely, I again felt a cough coming on and quickly opened the box and popped two of the capsules. Only afterwards did I think to look at the box. She had given me the nighttime formula! So in spite of the fact that it is just a bit past noon, I think I’ll be off to dreamland soon.

 

The prompt word today was “abide.”

Ephemera

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Ephemera

I saw the shadow of a bird
vanished too quickly to be heard.
Yet with my curtain as a scrim,
for moments I caught glimpse of him.

Strangers at windows on a train
pass by so quickly, then gone again.
They heal no wounds and cause no pain.
Are merely there. No loss or gain.

All of life’s pleasures come and go
for nature has arranged it so.
We’re caught up in its ebb and flow.
We treasure life, then let it go.

 

The prompt word today was Treasure.

The Tile Layers

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The Tile Layers

The tile cutter on his knees whistles “Fur Elise—”
five measures over and over—all day with no surcease.
A younger man behind him, in another room,
whistles tunelessly in rhythm as he wields a broom.
Hod carriers laugh and loudly call. Comida will be soon.
One of the youngest sings out a jolly ribald tune.
Their labors hard, their hours long as they hauled and carried,
and yet they have not seemed distressed, back sore, stressed or harried.

As they go to take comida, they move with one assent
as if to be relieved of where their labor time is spent.
Outside my wall they line the curb, their legs stretched in the street
to eat their warm tortillas­­­­––their chiles, beans and meat.
The only time they’re quiet is now their mouths are chewing,
for they are never silent when they are up and doing.
Five minutes and then ten pass as the silence swells around me,
until I feel the magnitude of silence might astound me.

Then one quiet voice is heard, and then another slowly after.
But still no music, calling out, whistling or laughter.
I can imagine well the scene. They’re spread out in the shade,
on their backs just resting in the shadows trees have made.
An hour’s camaraderie, like school kids taking naps,
their ankles crossed, their dusted clothes, their work hats in their laps.
Against their quietness, a motor hums out from afar.
Persistent birdcalls interrupt the tire crunch of a car.

A lawnmower chops at grass below. My clock ticks out the time.
This hour’s quiet interlude is almost sublime.
They must wonder what I do clattering on these keys––
my room cut off from all the dust , but also from the breeze.
The large dog’s bed is in a cage with an open door.
The little dog forsakes his bed to curl up on the floor
nearer the larger, older dog, although he’s sound asleep.
They too prefer to sleep as one, their brotherhood to keep.

An hour passed, the jefe wakes and jostles all his neighbors
who find their voices as they waken to resume their labors.
The gentle scrape of trowels sets the rhythm for
young men shouldering hods of what old men spread on the floor.
The jefe scolds for tiles mismeasured, rails against the waste
of both time and materials lost because of haste.
After the day’s siesta, they work three hours more.
They measure, chip and cut and smooth, then fit and trim each door.

By day’s end, hands are coated, and collars ringed with sweat.
The dust of their day’s labors in their work clothes firmly set.
But folded in each backpack they once rested heads upon
is a fresh change of clothing that later they will don.
Cleaned and pressed, they’ll walk on home unmarked by dust or dirt,
ready for the ladies to admire and to flirt.
For a man’s not made of merely the work that he might do,
and when he leaves his labors, his day begins anew.

Actually, I was imagining the scene described in the poem as the house hushed for an hour after a morning and early afternoon of extreme noise. Diego and Morrie were imprisoned in the small run outside my door but in sight of the front entrance gate all the men had vanished through, tortured by observing all the activity they couldn’t get their paws on, not to mention all those lunches in the back packs.  Then, after I wrote the poem and started to hear a few voices from what seemed to be a direction not anticipated in my poem, I went out to the living room to see the younger members of the crew hunched over their smart phones on my patio, first watching some drama, then talking to what sounded like female voices. One lay stretched out as expected, but by the pool rather than out on the sidewalk. (I had earlier invited them to eat at the patio table and the table in the gazebo, but they had preferred to warm their tortillas in my microwave and then go eat in the street.) My former stereotypes dashed, I then ventured beyond my walls into the street, and there found the older generation living up to former experience and present expectations.

(Click on first photo to enlarge all.) 

Uncorked

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I first visited the lovely little fishing village of Cadaqués, Spain, with my friends Patty and Judy. We loved the place, which at the time was the home of Salvador Dali. When I returned there a few years later with the man who would within the year become my husband, he was equally charmed and our expected one-night stay swelled into four. The only marring detail was the black ash that blanketed the town, blown in from the miles of cork trees that had been burned in a flash fire earlier that year. This ash covered a patio table table recently cleaned off within an hour. Nonetheless, it was a lovely unspoiled village and we enjoyed watching the fishing boats go out in the morning and return at night and bathing in the warm Mediterranean.  When I saw the prompt “Scorched,” the image of those hills covered in blackened trees came immediately to mind. Unfortunately, I’m not at home right now so can’t publish an appropriate photo.

Uncorked

Cork trees grotesque in the Spanish sun,
scorched not by it, but one by one
caught by fire that stripped their skin
and then consumed that thing within
that forms the plug that seals our wine
and thus preserves fruits of the vine
for wintry nights–for tongue and lip
to savor every ruby sip.

Nature can be a surly thug
vandalizing nature’s plug
and thus we’re forced to man’s creation
to solve a vintner’s consternation.
These synthetics made of plastic
are neither natural nor elastic.
They do not breathe or swell or stain,
or decompose in sun or rain.
And yet when nature chose to burn
those hills of oak, it lost its turn.
What nature might choose to take from us,
will be replaced with little fuss
by hand of man who knows it all.
And thus began Adam’s first fall!

The prompt word today is “scorched.”

The Most Buck for Your Buck

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The Most Buck for Your Buck

Why would you stop at ostentatious
when three bucks more buys you bodacious?

The prompt today was “ostentatious.”

Works for Fandango’s prompt as well!

Myth or Liar? A Prevarication Primer

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Myth or Liar? (A Prevarication Primer)


What is the difference between a myth and lie?
Four and twenty blackbirds baked into a pie
clearly is a myth because it is impossible,
while your claim you baked that pie you bought is just implausible.

It seems the only difference is a matter of degree.
The biggest lie’s the only one to go down mythically.
If you aim small, it’s true they’ll only label you a liar.
If you want to be a legend, simply aim your lying higher!!!!

 

The prompt today is “Mythical.”

8 O’clock Gourmet Club

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8 O’clock Gourmet Club

I wish my worries would abate,
but instead they percolate.
How can I find an opiate
to calm the fears I can’t placate?
The horror of the scene’s innate,
for I cannot eradicate
the fact my cooking’s second rate.

My conscience bears a dreadful weight,
for I know that it will be my fate
to confess those weaknesses I hate.
The truth is that it‘s nearly eight,
my company at the garden gate
with appetites for me to sate,
and oh, my dears, the caterer’s late!!!!

 

The prompt word today was “percolate.”