Category Archives: Poem

Daily Post: The Sowing Room

Leave a reply

The Sowing Room

My house is filled with plants and art
and furniture and clothes and heart—
my whole life spread for all to see
what nourishes and comforts me.
Things surround me everywhere
until at times I gasp for air

and go outside to try to find
some emptiness of place and mind.

I was given the gift of another room—
a place as sparse as an empty tomb,
and limited to objects three,
my choice, to take inside with me.
I chose my laptop, desk and chair—
no other objects needed there

for all the rest was in my head:
books that I had heard or read,
flowers, fountains, trees and lawn,
last rays of evening, first of dawn,
cherry pie and chocolate milk,
batiks, manta, linen, silk—
(all my favorite comfy clothes),
memories of friends and foes,
places traveled, lessons learned,
favorite dishes cooked or burned.
For lack of them, I need not pine.
Put to the page, they all are mine.

Their very absence becomes my muse.
If I want them, I have to use
imagination and memory,
then write them down for all to see.
Here poetry can seed and grow
to fill this room, and then can go
out in the world to find its place
so other words can fill its space.

When given the gift of breathing room,
that empty space became a womb.

 The Prompt: An extra room has magically been added to your home overnight. The catch: if you add more than three items to it, it disappears. How do you use it?

The Daily Post Snapshot Stories: Hair Washing Day

7 Replies

The Prompt: Open the first photo album you can find — real or virtual, your call — and stop at the first picture of yourself you see there. Tell us the story of that photo. (Note: Although I’ve posted this picture on my blog before, this was the first photo in my album, and since I’ve never told the story, I’ll do so now.)

Image

Hair Washing Day

The phone was on a party line.
The leg, the robe, the hair was mine.
The chair was from our dining table.
I’d called as soon as I was able
with all the news that had occurred
since last we shared a private word.
Though my friend lived just two houses away,
my mom had had to break our play
so she could wash my dirty hair.
Take 15 minutes (how did she dare)
from “Cops and Robbers” or playing store?
Washing hair was such a bore.
First to take my clothing off,
barrettes and rubber bands to doff,
a chenille robe to cover all
my nakedness, and then the crawl
up on the chair to lie upon
the kitchen counter. My efforts done,
it was my mother’s turn to work—
to wash my hair without a jerk
or pull to create whines and tears,
avoiding water in the ears
and soap in eyes and water squirts
on ceiling, counters, shoes or shirts
of family who might gather there
to watch my mother wash my hair.
Then, trials done, my friend to phone
for all this time I’d been alone.
Without her fine complicity,
life had too much simplicity.
No imaginings or plots.
No hide-and-seek on empty lots.
No bike rides up to Mowell’s drug.
No comics on the bedroom rug.
No love letters to steal and read
from older sisters—that evil deed
we both adored and did most often.
No trumpet vine pods to peel and soften
in the sink to make our boats
for potential rainy season floats
down ditches swollen with summer rains
No paper dolls or paper chains.
I’d been away from my friend Lynn
for fifteen minutes! It was a sin.
So I’d called to say I’d be right over
to search with her for four-leaf-clover.
And tell her all I had to tell
since mother rang the “come home” bell.

The Daily Post: Unsafe Containers: Envy

2 Replies

Unsafe Containers

Today’s Prompt: “Which emotion(s) — joy, envy, rage, pity, or something else — do you find to be the hardest to contain?”

ENVY

I do not crave a sylphlike form.
Mere gorgeousness is not the norm
I seek to build my ego up.
I do not need a 4D cup—
the back strain nor the stares and gawking.
The genius of a Stephen Hawking?
I do not want it, seek it not;
and I would not wish to be caught
inside a Porsche or Aston Martin,
for joy’s not packaged in a carton
large nor small. No jewels seek I.
No diamonds sparkle in my mind’s eye.
I do not envy your honor student
Your sex life I just find imprudent.
I covet not thy ox nor ass,
thy husband nor thy backstage pass.
There’s just one thing I’m thirsting for
If I had it, I’d need no more.
I guess I’ll tell the truth, y’all.
What do I want? I want it ALL!!!!

The Daily Post Prompt: Madame X

18 Replies

Madame X JPEG

 Another day, another challenge.  This time I’ve used the WordPress prompt from
“The Daily Post” which was: “In 300 years, if you were to be named the patron saint
of X, what would you like X to be?”

DSC06784June 2 sunset in Missouri.

Love Stories

8 Replies

DSC06776

Dim Sum are little love poems shaped like a heart. I challenge every reader
to write one and send it to me! For the fun of it, I made mine into a chain of hearts.

Morning Metaphor
When you rise hours early
to stand in front of the window
and watch for the UPS truck,
I shift my dreaming over
to your warm pillow.
If you are a child,
I am a
cat.
The Computer
has become the new hearth
and heart of our home, now
glowing out in the darkness
long after we have moved
to the room next door
to try to sleep
in vain.
A Clock
on the wall of every room
speaks its midnight language
and intrudes into my dreams,
each one telling me I am
another hour closer
to leaving
you.

In the Motel Breakfast Room: Poetry by Prescription

7 Replies

Image

In the Motel Breakfast Room

That little boy
is screaming and mad.
At eight in the morning,
he’s already bad!

He tasted his waffle
and doesn’t want more.
He just dumped his Fruit Loops
all over the floor.

His mom didn’t see
from her side of the room.
The attendant was swift
with her dustpan and broom.

She removed all the cereal
dumped at my feet
by the brattiest child
I ever did meet.

I came to this place
for some coffee and quiet.
I didn’t expect
to encounter a riot.

He’s having a tantrum.
He will not sit down.
His voice at screech level,
his mouth set on frown.

Does he want to go back
to the room? asks his mother
as she struggles to feed
both his sister and brother.

At this breakfast bar set up
for all of the guests,
regrettably, no sign says,
“We don’t serve pests.”

Last night when my friend
went to get us some ice,
“Excuse me, Excuse me,”
the desk clerk said twice

as he ran down the hall
in a manner uncool
heading straight for the door
that leads into the pool.

Now I can imagine this
terrible kid
pushing some button.
(I bet that he did!)

that signaled “Emergency
Call 911!”
watching the panic
and calling it fun.

The manager thinking
“perhaps a cracked head!”
but encountering only
this bad boy instead.

Now this morning my coffee
was ruined by his cries.
This early-day tantrum
a rite I despise.

I started to gather
my coffee and fruit,
then grabbed a few
creamers and sweeteners to boot.

When from my eye’s corner
before I could stand,
at the edge of my table
I saw a small hand.

I looked up to encounter
a smile ear-to-ear.
That horrible child
looked ever so dear!

He flashed me the smile,
for a moment stood near,
then departed the room
nevermore to appear.

When I looked at the table,
an astonishing sight.
He’d left me one Fruit Loop
right there in plain sight.

That child’s behavior
now leaves me in doubt
whether I should remember
the smile or pout.

Was my disapproval
so plain to see
that this tiny child
could see right through me?

And had he the wisdom
to do what he did
simply to remind me
a kid is a kid?

 

Note: The event described in this poem actually happened on May 24 at a motel in Des Moines, IA, where I was attending my nephew’s h.s. graduation party. And yes, this is “the” Fruit Loop, which I still have.  The subject was prescribed by Duckie, who, when I told him what had just happened, said, “You gotta write about this.”  Poetry by Prescription. You suggest the topic.  I will write about it.

In the Open

4 Replies

DSC08727

In the Open

The day is balmy
with segmented clouds.
The African tulip tree
spreads its boughs wide
over the seated ones
as well as the one who stands in front of us,
leading us to ground our feet,
relax our arms with hands palms up
and to go inside ourselves
to watch our breath
and be in the now,
in the state that she calls openness.

To be in the future is not openness, she says,
and to be in the past is not openness.
Only the now is really living.
And it occurs to me
that when I think I want a cup of coffee
and leave my studio to go in search of it,
then, in the kitchen,
can’t remember what I’m there for,
(and the reason why so many
friends my age are doing the same)
is because we are in this state of openness
more frequently
as we get older.

Wanting a cup of coffee is in the future,
and remembering we wanted a cup of coffee
a few minutes ago
is having to remember the past.
Standing here in the kitchen
listening to the baby birds’
loud cheeps
from their nest in the kitchen overhang
is being in the now.

And so it is that all of us, as we age,
are in the deepest stages of meditation
most of the time
and should not worry so much
about Alzheimer’s or dementia,
because we are where Tibetan monks
and ladies leading meditation
would have us be.
Open. Living the now
with increasingly
less memory
for what was
or was to be.

Poetry by Prescription: “Alone”

5 Replies

DSC06650

Alone

Alone is not lonely
And single’s no sin.
Solo is only
a state I am in
because I need time
to do what I do.
To scan and to rhyme,
to create and to stew
both poems and soups
without watching the clock
or jumping through hoops
or having to talk.

I really like cooking
dishes for one.
I’m simply not looking
for “coupley” fun.
I like doing art
far into the night.
This freedom is part
of traveling light.
Going solo is groovy.
Single-handed is fun,
and it might behoove you
to try being “one”

instead of a brace
or a duet or pair.
You’ll have all this space.
You’ll have all this air.
Your closet’s your own
to fill up with shoes.
No sharing a phone
and no bathroom queues.
You won’t have to fiddle
with left or with right.
You’ll sleep in the middle
every night!

You’ll eat what you want to
and dine when you wish.
You’ll get to eat tofu
and never eat fish.
You can stay up till dawn
to finish your quilt.
You’re nobody’s pawn,
so you’ll never feel guilt.
Leave coffee cups sitting
all over the house?
It’s behavior most fitting
when bereft of a spouse.

Pop bonbons and read
all day in your bed.
You can meet every need
when you’re no longer wed.
On the other hand though,
you must walk your own dog
and when water comes slow,
must unclog your own clog.
When you blow out a fuse
and your lawn goes unmown,
there are no “honey do’s”
when you’re all on your own!

 

Today’s “prescription” came from my friend Betty Petersen, a wonderful artist, who asked me to write a poem about the single life. If you have a topic you’d like me to write about, please post it on my blog or send it via Facebook or email.

 

Poetry by Prescription: Goodbye Old Paint

2 Replies

Old friend, new friend.

Goodbye Old Paint

What have you eaten that we have forgotten?
What lost earring resides
in the deepest recesses of your front seat?
What coins shaken and pushed into your crevasses?
And do you remember the song made up on the spot
and sung just once, then left forgotten in Nevada?
Do you still carry the dust of Tonopah
or that yearning to actually see something extraterrestrial
on the Extraterrestrial Highway?
Do you carry shards of his boredom while driving
mile after mile of Utah beauty?
Do you still carry my expectations of sharing
the giant faces of Rushmore
and echoes of the fact that he expected more?

What of molecules of the Mississippi crossing
or dreams of the memories of Hannibal?
What sweat from those Mississippi hours
waiting outside the B.B. King Museum?

Salt grains and chocolate crumbs
and DNA of those few souls who rode along in you—
all parked in a parking lot waiting to be bought
by someone who will never know the hidden you.
Just like the rest of the world,
frequented by interlopers.
Only we, leaving you, will murmur “Goodbye Old Paint”
and know that although you neither hear nor answer,
somehow our past is locked up inside of you
and there a part of us will stay
while we depart without it.

The prompt today was by Forgottenman, who wanted me to memorialize his faithful automobile companion, Old Paint (pictured here to his right). To his left is his new love, Soul Red.  To see his prompt, go to his blog here.

Poetry by Prescription: A Single English Teacher’s Lament

2 Replies

DSC06579

Today’s prompt was suggested by Ann Garcia, another “reformed” English teacher.  Her prompt:  Write a poem about grading homework.

A Single English Teacher’s Lament

Two periods of composition
have put me in a bad position.
With class size swelled to 38,
no longer have I time to date,
for teaching all to write a thesis
means my workload never ceases.

Each weekend I take home a pile
to check and grade and reconcile.
To try to sort them out is hard—
each sentence shuffled card by card.
Each comment must be made with tact,
their logic looked at fact by fact.

Each student had to write just one.
Now handed in, their toils are done.
While I have 76 to grade,
and now regret assignments made.
How many more? I have to ask,
imprisoned by this grading task.

I have created my own repentance.
I gave myself the thesis sentence!

Thesis: noun: thesis; plural noun: theses

  1. 1. a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved.”his central thesis is that psychological life is not part of the material world”
  2. 2. a long essay or dissertation involving personal research, written by a candidate for a college degree.”a doctoral thesis”

 NOTE TO READERS:  I HAVE RUN OUT OF PROMPTS!  IF YOU WANT TO SUGGEST A PROMPT FOR TOMORROW’S POEM, PLEASE SEND IT AS A COMMENT.