Category Archives: Poem

Retired (For Daily Prompt: Clock)

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Disclaimer: Naughty word implied in this poem. Do not read if easily offended.

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Retired

Mr. Clock, Mr. Clock,
though your advances I try to block,
my attempts you seem to mock
with your continuous tic tic toc,
echoed by my neighbor’s cock
crowing from his noisome flock.

No longer cheerleaders or jocks,
nor femmes fatale with flowing locks,
in Birkenstocks, flip flops or Crocs,
(worn in the winter complete with socks)
we huddle safe behind our locks,
afraid of terrorists with glocks
or neighbors’ children tossing rocks.

We hear your phone calls and your knocks,
we know you gather in your flocks,
your PTAs and your ad hocs,
while each of us sits in our box
as stubborn as a mule or ox,
busy in our painters’ smocks
or cooking spinach in our woks.

Our homes all sealed up like Ft. Knox,
we have no need of the world’s shocks,
its pestilence and chicken pox.
We have our pensions and our stocks,
our Lean Cuisines in our ice box.
We shun your CNN or Fox!!!

Our TV sets set to the past
neglect to show the latest blast
as all the world seems set to cast
Armageddon, coming fast.
So as you watch the latest drone
on your notebook or your phone,
as you predict and hate and moan,
please leave us the f— alone!

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/clock/

Carefree in My Labors

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Carefree in My Labors

I’m not so good at carefree, don’t know how to be gay.
When others loll out on the grass, I’m always cutting hay.
While other people spend the day on some fun and dumb thing,
something whispers in my ear I should be doing something!

When the alarm bell signals, my day’s labors start:
feeding dogs, then writing, sorting, filing, making art.
Even when at leisure, my mind is always working.
If I’m not doing something, I feel that I am shirking.

It’s one thing when you’re with someone and sharing repartee,
or watching interactions you encounter day-by-day.
It’s another to rethink all that has been done or said––
to mix them with the other things you have in your head.

If I put them all together, they make a lovely story––
sometimes love and romance and sometimes sad and gory.
And that is what I think about even in my bed.
I guess my retirement will be when I am dead.

 

Thttps://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/carefree/

Thumbscrews

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Thumbscrews

At what point might your courage fall 
and might you deign to tell it all?
What waterboard or thumbscrew might
cause you to give up the fight
to tell the secrets of friend and kin
just to stop the pain you’re in?
Please friend, before revealing facts
involving secrecy or pacts,
consider what I tell you here
before you choose to grace my ear.
Never would I tell your pain—
repeat your secrets e’er again—
under normal circumstance,
nor betray by eye or glance
anything once told to me
with a vow of privacy.
Until, that is, the knives come out
or waterboards?  Without a doubt
gross cowardice would be revealed.
To torture I would surely yield.
In short, in matters of gross pain––
I would repeat your words again.
So if you have a secret dark
that you have a need to park
inside the conscience of another,
please tell your sister or your brother,
for a wise decision it would be
to choose a braver soul than me!

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/cowardice/

Nocturn

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Nocturn

With half a life lived in the dark,
an owl’s hoot, an answering bark,
the moon across the water scattered,
ragged clouds, wispy and battered––

I float in night and solitude,
the night determining my mood.
I lie in darkness and I brood,
a momentary interlude.

When sunlight comes in fits and starts,
The day brings out my other parts.
They rise in me from dawn to noon,
dispelling powers of the moon.

Thus balanced between dark and light,
each half consumes its daily bite.
I welcome each within its time
Life varied, balanced and sublime.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/darkness/

 

DVerse Poets: Spill

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This one word prompt was “Spill” and called for just 44 words to be used. If you are a word-counter, oh ye of little faith, you will find there are just 43 words in the body of the poem because, after reducing the first draft from 96 words, I didn’t realize until after I’d posted that the 44 wasn’t supposed to include the title.  Although I could easily and happily have reinstalled the last word painfully cut, I cannot because the poem is actually a photograph that took me forever to print out (because the printer isn’t cooperating) and photograph (because I needed to find a spot without a late afternoon glare) and adjust the poem to make all the words the same darkness because I never did find a spot without a glare.) So please just consider the title the first word of the poem.  It really is, anyway! (WordPress does not believe in letting us “shape” poems, thus the need to print up and photograph it.)

 

Want to play along?  If so, go here to find the prompt and other poems written to it:
https://dversepoets.com/2016/06/13/quadrille-11/

Eminent Domains

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Eminent* Domains

As a new wife I chose mountains, made a home of them and that’s
where we were surrounded by potted plants and cats.
Perched amid the redwoods, my art studio in their shade,
I looked out across the mountains as I made and made and made.

I was happy in the mountains, but the incline and the trees
made living somewhat harder as I began to wheeze.
The pollen took my breath away and walking was a labor––
the trees impeding access to and vision of each neighbor.

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So I moved to the desert, with openness my quarry.
I loved its subtle beauties and the sparseness of its glory.
All the arms of cacti reaching to the sky,
the faded pastel sunsets as starry nights drew nigh.

But, although good for walking at a faster pace,
the desert, lacking moisture, dried my hands and face.
It dusted all my furniture and opened cracks in wood,
carved other furrows in my face, where they remain for good.

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The ocean spreads before me, a different watery land––
all her morning treasures displayed across the sand.
I examine coral and the fragile bones of fish,
surveying and collecting everything I wish

But the ocean is bipolar—sometimes she’s a bitch.
Perspiration trickles, causing me to itch.
I love the beach in wintertime and love it in the fall,
but beachside in the summer is no fun at all.

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I have lived in mountains, the desert and the sea
and all these special places still have a place in me.
But if you ever ask me which place I’d like to be,
I fear I’d have to answer that I think I need all three.

The mountains in the summer loom up and beckon me.
The desert in the winter, balanced by the sea.
It seems there is no place on earth where I will just remain.
I claim mountains, sea and desert as my regions of domain.

*Note:  Although “eminent domain” is a familiar phrase, I am speaking of eminent in its other connotation, namely:
  1. used to emphasize the presence of a positive quality.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/mountain/

About Not Giving Rage’s Yell

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……………………………………………………….About Not Giving Rage’s Yell

About what
Niggling minor matter are you
Going to
Rage until
You convince yourself that you want to be

Anyone else but yourself?
Notice, please, that your
Gait is even. You have two strong legs.
Resting  in your arms, a child.
You are so blessed.

A look around you might reveal
Neighbors with broken legs or wings or
Gaping minds.
Remember, please, all
You have been given.

A miracle that you were even born.
Nothing in the world
Gives a larger gift than
Receiving life itself.
You are most fortunate.

Yelling never
Opens any doors to
Understanding.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/angry/

Note: Here is a perfect example of an alternative to anger in responding to a situation with which you might not agree : 
situation: http://community.today.com/parentingteam/post/if-you-see-something-say-something-my-note-to-three-teen-girls-at-starbucks

Truth

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 I invite you to send a photo to illustrate this poem, according to your understanding of it.


Truth

I fly on wings through morning dew
to try to get away from you.
I cry in vain, I kick and scream
to slip away—but still I seem
in spite of anything I do,
still to be caught up in you.

So I give up to float the stream
flowing from this morning’s dream.
Let all that it may generate
flow through me to create my fate
at first for minutes of my day
then hours and days that float away

to lose themselves in clouds of dreams
that leak out from the day’s stitched seams
conceived to keep reality
of other worlds inside of me.
I pull at threads and slip between
into the universe’s scene.

There thoughts float free in eddies of
creation that consist of love
and hate and light and dark and all
that generated our earthly ball.
We seek to have just part of it.
Impossible from the start of it.

We do not know the why of it,
but we are born and die of it––
that paradox of evil and good
made tragic by our parenthood.
That truth born out by earthly schemes
we seek to comprehend in dreams.

We are not meant to understand
by what generative hand
life flowed into the universe.
But still we’re fated to rehearse
the truth of light shadowing dark,
in novel, painting, play and quark.

Dramas in the world around us––
the sounds and sights that still astound us––
contain these opposites within––
light versus dark, yang joined with yin.
These ironies of life and art
are, in the end, what create heart.

The prompt today was “Generation” which of course means not only a generation, but also the act of generation.  That prompt led me to this poem which is really about some hard truths of life that we all face but few of us, if any, really understand.  Nonetheless, the truth of the world is  something that we all hold within us.


 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/generation/

Carpe Diem Tan-Renga Challenge, May 9

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new Tan Renga…morning glory!

The idea is to take a three-line stanza, written by one poet…and write a two-line stanza to complete the Tan Renga. The first three lines were written by Chiyo-Ni (1703-1775)

 

morning glory!
the well-bucket entangled,
I ask for water.

and my answer is given
in rain.

Sacrifice

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Some people give their lives to it,
And others never do––
Conditions never calling for
Rash actions to ensue.
I’ve held onto my life because
Fate never asked me to
Immolate myself to save
Child, soldier, Jew,
Ensuring that I remain here
Securely in life’s queue.

I don’t think sacrifice has been anything I’ve had to do much of in my life, short of occasionally knowingly giving someone the last pork chop or the biggest piece of cake.  Perhaps this is because I had no children.

I can think of only one big potential sacrifice I made in my life and that is something I will not speak of–mainly because people it might affect are still alive. So, in lieu of writing a personal essay or poem on this topic, I invite you to read an article about the top ten most inspiring self sacrifices.  You can go  HERE to read it.

 

If you’d like to read what other bloggers have to say about the subject of sacrifice, go here:: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/sacrifice/