Category Archives: Poem

Lick for Lick

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Lick for Lick

Ice cream is my weakness—my favorite sort of sweet.
A flavor that I don’t adore is one I’ve yet to meet.

Mandarin orange or licorice, tequila or dill pickle?
I am not true to any of them, for I fear I’m fickle.

When choosing ice cream flavors, it’s impossible to pick.
I simply am incapable of choosing which to lick.

And so I’d like a flavor that has a bit of each:
chocolate and vanilla and a little touch of peach,

strawberry and mango and lime and toffee crunch—
why choose just one flavor when you can have a bunch?

Throw some tangerine in and some pineapple sorbet.
Licorice and banana? Who am I to say nay?

This flavor would be popular with those who cannot choose
whether they prefer the flavor of pickles, fruit or booze.

Though some of you may scoff at it and laugh in your derision,
the name of my new flavor? I call it “Indecision.”

The Prompt: Flavor # 32—A local ice cream parlor invites you to create a new wacky flavor. It needs to channel the very essence of your personality. What’s in it?

It’s a Gas

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                        It’s a Gas

I know that I saw it on You Tube
(and I’m sure that it wasn’t a dream)
—a machine that shreds old soda bottles
and melts them to make gasoline.

The machine they were using to make it
was compact—and could possibly be
installed in each house or wherever
you think you might like it to be.

Grocery stores, motels or roadside—
(wherever these bottles collect)
instead of machines set for vending,
would have a machine to inject

with all of the plastic you brought there
and for it you’d get, I deduce,
credit for all of the petrol
the bottles you brought in produce.

Every gas station would honor
these chits that you’d get every day.
You’d make a big saving on gas bills
with bottles you once threw away.

You could save up your old plastic bottles
and toss them right into your trunk
right next to the tools and blankets and flares
and all of the usual junk.

And when you next went for refreshments,
for soda or candy or chips,
you could also deposit your bottles,
’cause your car also needs a few sips.

Daily Prompt: Vending Wishes—Soft drinks, electronics, nutrient-free snacks — you can get all of those from a vending machine. But what type of vending machine is sorely needed but doesn’t yet exist? Share your automated retail fantasies with us!

The process I describe here is not fictional. Google “pyrolysis” if you want more information.

June 24th

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June 24th

The rain falls
fresh as cucumbers
on cobblestones and tiles,
the dust of summer
washed from crevasses
and curves of stone and clay.

The air is cleansed
of the scent of primavera,
jacaranda
and flamboyant trees
and the whole world
breathes easily again.

Clouds dried up
by sunlight,
the silent birds
are flushed
from their covering leaves
and open in chorus

to the booming crack
of cohetes, splitting the air
in celebration
of Saint John the Baptist
who has baptized all
this day.

The Prompt: Seasonal Scents—S’mores, salty ocean breezes, veggie burgers on the grill, sweaty people on the bus — what’s the smell you associate the most with summer?

 

 

Groundhogs in Sri Lanka

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Groundhogs in Sri Lanka

Groundhog Day (the movie) was frustrating for sure.
When that same day kept happening, there seemed to be no cure.
But this was not reality. It really could not be.
And so to write about it has no appeal for me.

Instead I want to write about something on my mind;
and it, indeed, is something day after day I find.
When I look at my statistics on my blogging site,
I see the countries that have viewed my blog each day and night.

And when I see “Sri Lanka” occur day after day,
I wonder who that person is and what they’d have to say
if they could comment on the words that I have said to them
and wish that I could know a little more of her or him.

So if you read this message and know that it is you
who reads my blog, reveal yourself. Say who you are, please do.
I’ve been to Sri Lanka many years ago and saw
Colombo and the stupas—I viewed them all with awe.

The elephants in Kandy, the tea fields on the way,
the little inn called “Bird’s Nest” where we slept at end of day.
We climbed Anuradhapura, we stood beneath the tree
where Buddha sat 2,000 years ago. (How can this be?)

You probably weren’t born then so I’m sure we didn’t meet;
or as a babe in arms, perhaps you passed me in the street.
But nineteen sixty-seven (or was it sixty-eight?)
is very long ago and so I’m sure it’s not my fate

to reconnect with anyone I might have met back then
and it is not important what happened way back when.
To me, it is more vital to know what’s happening now,
and that is why a day or so ago I made a vow.

I mention this thing only to try to drive you to
share a little bit of what it might be to be you.
I’ve told you all my secrets, kept nothing back in shame;
so dear Sri Lanka viewer, please at least reveal your name!

 The Prompt: Groundhog Week—If you could relive the past week, would you? Would you change anything?

 

 

Lush Night

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Lush Night

Remember that delicious
walking, arms linked,
down the middle
of the gravel road
in your pajamas
at five in the morning
when you were twelve?
That first slumber party
in your safe small town
when you all stayed up all night
for the first time in your lives?
That eerie first sight
of the sun coming up
when your head had never hit a pillow
since it went down?

And then you knew for the first time
the delicious pleasures
of being a night owl—
of finding time
that everyone else was wasting
through dreams.

And you have been
an aficionado of night
ever since.
All of your term papers
and exams studied for
at the last minute,
all night long.
Books written, poems written
mostly in the dark
while towns and cities around you slept.
That power of having all of your time for yourself
with not a chance of phones ringing.
Some magic happening
once you had the world to yourself
so ever afterwards
you have survived
on as little sleep as possible.

During your party years,
dancing and drinking till three,
then going for breakfast with the single crowd
and driving straight to school at six.
You were invulnerable.

Even married,
sneaking out of bed once he’d fallen asleep
and working in your basement studio all night long,
sometimes sneaking back to bed before he awakened,
at other times caught.
“It’s nine in the morning! Have you been up all night again?”
Feeling that little terror, like a vampire caught by light.

Then at 54, with no more husband,
no more job necessary,
with a new country and a new studio
above ground,
guilty pleasures no longer needed to be hidden—
watching light after light go out
as you sat piecing art together
in your studio—until suddenly,
impossibly,
light after light went on again
so you were going to bed
as your neighbor was arising
to start his day.

Then, improbably, at 62, internet romance
entered your midnight-and-after world.
Every night serenaded to sleep
from 1500 miles away
by an equally night-addicted lover bard
at two or three or four a.m.—
or whenever pillow talk led to it.

Skype became your love letters
and your trysting spot
now and then all day long;
but still, night better swaddled
that intimate invisible union
through the dark air
that has always been magic for you,
but which now joins instead of
sending you into the single space
where you unite with that within you
which you keep separate from the world.

At night, united or alone,
you know exactly what it is you want
and live it,
with no world
to lead you elsewhere.

 

The Prompt: Sleepy Time. More and more of us go to bed too late because of sleep procrastination. What are the nighttime rituals that keep you up before finally dozing off?

 

Jock Balk

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Jock Balk

I’ve never climbed a mountain.
I don’t dive in the sea.
Sports are simply pastimes
that don’t agree with me.

I cannot bat or pitch or catch.
A baseball skill I lack;
and when I tried at tetherball,
it hit me in the back.

I flinched and ducked, then stood back up,
tried once more for the ball;
but when I missed, got hit again
and took another fall.

I ski a lot upon my back
and when I swim I sink.
The water I can handle well
is in my kitchen sink.

In grade school when we played those games
involving run and chase,
I was the last one chosen;
for I never won a race.

I did not shine at tennis,
nor at volleyball.
When it comes to doing sport,
I find I’ve flunked them all.

Bowling, golf and badminton,
croquet and racquetballing
are talents I just don’t possess.
They simply aren’t my calling.

I fear I lack the focus
to hit balls with stick or hand.
To me, it’s hocus-pocus.
I’d rather join the band.

In games that take sports prowess,
my teammates rave and rant
that I do not play kick-the-can,
but rather, kick-I-can’t.

Some people lacking talent,
coordination, speed—
simply choose spectator sports
to fill their sportly need.

But I don’t like watching football,
your soccer or your hockey;
and when it comes to horse racing,
I neither bet nor jockey.

I admit, at sports I am
the worst you’ve ever seen.
So stop expecting more of me.
I simply lack the gene!!

 The Prompt: Team USA is playing today in the soccer World Cup in Brazil. Do you have any funny/harrowing/interesting memories from a sporting event you attended, participated in, or watched?

Changing Lines

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Changing Lines

Would passion carry the same voltage
or heartbreak the sting
if from the beginning we knew
that every extreme
brings us a step closer to its opposite?
It is that great pendulum of the I Ching—
that flowing from the yin to yang—
that foretells the fall of great regimes
glorious in their altruism
who, reaching their apex,
must head back again
towards cruel tyranny.

If we’d known this from the start,
each Summer Solstice would become
a day of mourning,
knowing that having reached one summit,
there is no further height to climb to.
And tomorrow, the start of our slow descent
will bring us closer to that other summit
where dark will reign.

Part of the power of youth’s sweet ecstasy
as well as bitter heartbreak is that it seems as though
they’ll last forever.
This is the spice of life.
Its bread comes later,
as we recognize that
everything,
everything                   everything
changes          into its
opposite.

Since today is June 21, today’s prompt was to write about the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Dreaming A Path

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Dreaming A Path

Dream, Fri. Oct 18, 2013

We were at a booth in a café. It was a huge room with booths on every side and each booth had a clock, or at least I thought they did. I don’t think I ever looked. Our alarm started going off and there was no way to turn it off. It was by me and I tried and tried but couldn’t get it off. I said I was just going to unplug it, but Patti said perhaps it was timed with all the other clocks at tables and then it wouldn’t match. I said couldn’t they just reset it when we left? Someone agreed, but still we didn’t unplug it and it went on and on and on. Very annoying. Our booth came equipped with a little dog. It was tiny and light with long very curly white hair that was in loose corkscrew very long ringlets. It was so adorable and affectionate. I held it most of the time. It had legs like wires that went straight down..very skinny…and it jumped a lot. When the waitress came, we told her about the alarm and she said yes, she’d noticed that it was going off…but she didn’t do anything about it. We told her how cute the little dog was and she said yes…but then it seemed like it was the little dog who had the alarm that was going off. We ordered and afterwards I was wanting a dessert but thought I shouldn’t order one. Patti was to my right and I suddenly realized she was eating a very rich chocolate dessert—a sort of fudge flan or very moist slippery cake that was hot with a hot fudge sauce over it. She offered me a taste. It was a very small rectangle…not very big…but I tasted it and immediately said I’d have one, too. It was incredible. Still, the alarm went off. It was driving me crazy! Then I woke up and realized it was my own bedside alarm. I reached up with my eyes still closed and tried to turn it off, but couldn’t find the control. Finally I picked it up, opened my eyes and found the control. It was 8:10. The alarm had been going off for 10 minutes!!!!

My interpretation:

I found this dream in a folder on my computer. I have no memory at all of having dreamed it, and perhaps that distance makes it easier for me to interpret it. In a few weeks, I turn 67. For the past year, I’ve thought repeatedly about death and the fact that if I’m lucky, I probably have only 30 years left. For some reason, that awareness is very stressful. I feel a need to finish everything I’ve started and never completed. Earlier, that consisted of a lot of sorting, construction of storage spaces and weeding out of the contents of my house. That effort is ongoing. What also happened, however, is that I have an incredible drive to get everything published that has been lying around in file cabinets for many many years as well as a need to write new work and somehow disseminate it. My blog is part of that effort, as are my efforts to get all my books on Amazon and Kindle.

Seeing this dream as if for the first time, I clearly see that theme of time running out coupled by a sense of alarm that I need to do something about it. The little dog shows the attractive quality (adorable and affectionate) of finally dealing with all these loose ends—(note all his corkscrew hairs). Those wiry little legs that kept him always active certainly reflect the urgency I’ve been feeling to write write write.

One aspect of this awareness in my real life for a time consisted of my fear that I will stop breathing. This often gets me up gasping at night to run outside to try to breathe. For some reason I haven’t had any of these panic attacks since I started writing every morning. What I interpreted as a growing fear of death and a dread of ceasing to exist was perhaps a fear of not living and creating while I am alive.

I think the interplay between my sister Patti and me in the dream reflects a number of things. One is a difference in our approaches to life. I think in a way, she is more of a rule-follower and since she was my immediate pattern for most of my earlier life, I think a part of me feels this same need, but this is coupled with an equal and stronger need to create my own path in a direction unique from my two older and very competent sisters and to break a few rules to do so. At a very early age, much as I admired and imitated my sisters, I felt the need to prove myself. To find something to know that they didn’t already know. I found this route when I started venturing out at an early age to find new ground where they had not gone before me. It led me first into the homes of friends and strangers where I saw life being acted out in a manner entirely different from my own home. The road led further—to summer camp where I was a stranger to all and vice versa. I loved being the stranger. In choosing a college, I fell back on the reliability and comfort of attending the same school my sister had attended, but in my Jr. year I took my first big leap—a trip around the world on World Campus Afloat. That early adventure in seeing dozens of new and strange cultures set my life path. I’ve been traveling ever since and have been living in Mexico for the past 13 years.

I believe this dream depicts the sense of urgency I’ve had my entire life to “do” something with experience. My art and writing allow me to turn off the alarm for the hours in which I practice them. That small dessert might symbolize the rewards of doing what I need to do to do so.

P.S. An interesting insight I have had just as I started to post this: (And, interestingly enough, wordpress will not accept my blog entry. Perhaps it is insisting I add this P.S. before it does so.) I just got back to Mexico from a visit to the states wherein I visited my oldest sister Betty who is now in the depths of the world of Alzheimer’s. While I was there, she seemed increasingly distressed by the fact that she can no longer communicate, but one day as we were sitting in the living room portion of her small apartment in a managed care Alzheimer’s wing, she motioned to the middle of the floor and said, “Look a that cute little white thing there—that fluffy little white dog!” This was the first incidence that I know of of her actually hallucinating visually, and for some reason it popped into my mind in relation to the little dog in my dream. All of these images—of our dreams as well as our daily life—remind us to live while we can and to do what is most important to us. In my case as well as my sister’s—to communicate. Too late for her, although she continues to try. Not too late for me.

P.S.S.  By the way, the instant I completed the above P.S., the wordpress page that had continued to not allow me to post this blog entry flashed the message:  What do you want to post?  Text? Picture?  I chose text and and you have just read it.

The prompt: Freudian Flips. Do you remember a recent dream you had? Or an older one that stayed vivid in your mind? Today, you’re your own Freud: Tell us the dream, then interpret it for us! Feel free to be as serious or humorous as you see fit, or to invent a dream if you can’t remember a real one.

Note in response to this prompt: (When I think of dreams, I think of Jung, not Freud, and he continues to influence my thoughts and actions much more than Freud ever did.)

 

Fame

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Fame

I don’t want to be Gwyneth Paltrow or Pink,
Madonna, Shakira or Cher.
Their kind of renown is simply too much.
Much more than this woman could bear.

Though there’s no famous person that I’d like to be,
it’s not that I wouldn’t like fame.
It’s just that I want to be known for myself
and not by another one’s name.

I want to be known for my words and my art,
but not by my form or my face.
So I can dine out and walk down the street
without all the bother and chase.

I want to go out for a coffee or tea
and see someone reading my book.
And without her knowing, to study her face,
interpreting how she may look

as she reads every page, be it smile or tear,
I’d be known by my writing alone.
Like watching your child go out in the world
to establish a life of its own.

I want to stand hidden, unknown by the world,
to observe someone viewing my art.
To see if what registers there on his face
is what I’ve revealed of my heart.

Unnoticed, unphotographed and unpursued,
I could walk at my usual pace.
I’d get to the finish in plenty of time
without ever joining the race.

 

The prompt was to pick the famous person we’d most like to be.

Stepparents Day

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Stepparents Day

She’s the lady who married your father.
He’s the fellow who married your mom.
Not really your actual parent,
like a date that’s set-up for the prom.
In other words, you didn’t choose them;
and also, they didn’t choose you.
But you now have each other as family.
There’s really not much you can do.

Sometimes you wind up as real buddies,
becoming a sort of strange friend.
Other times you feel resentful,
like you wish that their marriage would end;
and your dad would go back to your real mom,
or your mom would go back with your dad.
Then you realize that’s not really happening,
but only a dream that you had.

Then you notice your mom is now smiling
and your dad seems happier, too.
So you think you’ll just go with the flow now
and you give in and finally do.
You now have two happier families—
two places that welcome you in—
and decide that liking stepparents
is really not much of a sin.

Then you wonder why there is no day for
stepparents and grandparents, too,
and decide that this brand-new tradition
might just as well start now with you.
You declare July 1 to be chosen
as National Stepparents Day.
So even though it’s not official,
and the powers that be might say, “Nay,”

you throw on some burgers or hot dogs
and cook up a fresh apple pie
and buy your particular “steppie”
a nice box of candy or tie.
You tell her you know your dad’s happy
and tell her that you’re happy, too;
or tell him you’re glad your mom’s “single”
has turned into a table for two!

Let’s start up a national movement
to honor our stepparents now;
and ask for our step moms and dads and our grands
to come center stage for a bow!
So children all over this nation
can welcome their stepparents in
and acknowledge they’re part of the family,
exactly like regular kin.

 The Prompt : Familial Feasts. Yesterday was Father’s Day in many countries. If you could dedicate a holiday to a more distant relative, who would it be — and why?