Category Archives: Poem

“All Lined Up” for SOCS Jan 25, 2025

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“All Lined Up”

Lined up at the show
and everywhere we go,
it seems like we spend half our lives in lines that move too slow.

It seems that half the doing
consists of constant queueing––
a penance that we have to pay for eating, riding, viewing.

At cafes, traffic lanes,
post offices and trains,
museums, subways, cafeterias, we make small gains.

Standing more than walking,
muttering and gawking,
our progress is so slow that there’s less moving than there’s taking.

As we go two-by-twoing,
like milkcows softly mooing,
waiting here in lines, we find that we are all-too-often ruing

leaving our house at all
to line up at the mall
I think I’d rather be at home than waiting with y’all!

Here are a few “LIned Up” visuals: (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Santa lit and lined up with friends.
I said line up in order of size!!!
Always one that has to get out of line.
Mini Lineup
All lined up for the tasting.
Lined up for service.
The blessings of the animals were done in both Spanish and English. Frida’s smart mom noticed the long English line and that there was no one in the Spanish line, so we were blessed in Spanish. Frida died a few hours later!
Cowboys line up to herd bobble-heads. Tableau by Edgar.
The cormorants were collecting in a long strung-out line

And, for more “lined up” photos go HERE.

The SOCS prompt is “In Line.”

A Poem of Negation for dVerse Poets, Jan 23, 2025

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Why I do not Ham on Rye it

You cannot borrow steal or buy it.
Sumo wrestlers never try it.
Female starlets do or die it.
Vitamin makers fortify it
You never cookie, cake or pie it.
Pizza parlors terrify it.
Now and then I me oh my it,
but I hope I don’t defy it,
for if I ever hope to guy it,
I simply must stay on my diet!

 

For dVerse Poets, a poem of negation.

“How Much is Enough?” for the Writer’s Digest Wed. Poetry Prompt

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How Much is Enough?
(Appraising the Situation)

Enough’s too much when it comes to fish
or any other smelly dish.
Too much for castor oil in spoons
or relatives on honeymoons.
Amoebas?  Any one’s too much,
and a date who wants you to go Dutch
clearly tells you he’s not “it.”
One mosquito, when you’re bit,
is not “enough,” but “one too many.”
when your preference is “not any!”

Kids with colds and snoopy neighbors,
tiresome chores and heavy labors,
bitter pills and jerked-off scabs,
rainy days with no free cabs,
diarrhea, scabies, gout?
Too much! Too much, without a doubt!
“Enough’s enough” is repetitious,
obvious and almost vicious.

So don’t go spouting it at me.
I hate cliches from A to Z.
I won’t have any said to me.
If you use them, you’re dead to me!
“It is sufficient” I will accept.
“I’ll have no more”  is most adept.
But don’t go muttering platitudes
at folks like me with attitudes,
or I promise we’ll be getting rough
enough to prompt, “Enough’s enough!”

 

For Writer’s Digest Poetry prompt: Appraisal  Image by Tonmoy on Unsplash.

An Apple a Day, for The Sunday Whirl Wordle, Jan 19, 2025

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An Apple A Day

Witches use them for enchantment.  Kids give them to their teachers.
Trees dangle them from tree limbs to turn passersby to reachers.
Everyone craves apples at one time in their life.
Even Adam reached for one offered by his wife.
Latchkey kids  would miss them as a snack when home from school.
We’d miss them in our stocking toes if absent from our Yule.

It would be a small catastrophe if apples were not able
to snuggle with bananas and peaches on the table
or for folks with bows and arrows to use cucumbers instead
of apples for their targets, balanced on the head
of some trusting  assistant who surely would be pissed
if that smaller target meant that the archer missed!

Wouldn’t it cause chatter? The story would take wings
It would become that ballad that everybody sings
About the gifted archer whose limits were revealed
when he struck an unplanned target which alas, has never healed!
And, alas, no catalyst has ever been suggested
to solve the riddle of just how an apple might be bested!!!

(While posting this poem, I looked for an illustration in my photo file, I finally found the photo of the cored apple I had taken in the past so I used it.  Then I went out to the beach and found this apple lodged under the support of my beach chair. How it came to be there, I have no idea. I needed an apple and nature provided! So I had to post it as well.)

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle  the prompt words are: enchantment latch apples chatter crave catalyst catastrophe wings gift sing miss limit

“Pick”led for SOCS, Jan 17, 2025

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“Pick”led

Pack a peck of pickle parts
in a silver jar.
If you feed them to a lover,
he will not stray too far.
Neither pocket book nor hockey puck
will sway his thoughts for long.
You’ll have him humming melodies,
then you’ll pick out your song
repeated in sweet harmony
as he sings along.

For SOCS the prompt is: “pack/peck/pick/“pock/puck.” Use one or use ’em all for bonus points—it’s up to you!  https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/24840312/posts/5529707414

“Unprompted” for The Daily Prompt, Jan 17, 2025

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Un-
prompted,
they’d be single-tasked,
In fact, if she had not been asked,
she would never have de-masked,
the wine would not have been de-casked,
his shy love not
so quickly-tasked
in saying  yes to
the question asked.

The Daily Prompt is “Unprompted.”

“Fancy” For MVB, Jan 14, 2025

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From the excesses of Day of the Dead to ornate expressions of art to a faux-fancy shower knob, “fancy” can be found anywhere!

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That said, there is fancy of a different sort:

A Prick of Fancy

The world I see outside my sill—
the clouds that cover lake and hill,
treetops and vines that seek to fill
every space–both rock and rill,
completing  crevasses until
they’ve rendered empty spaces nil.
These things now serve to fuel my quill.
They are my unguent, band-aid, pill.
They prick my fancy, charge my will.
They level out that long uphill
journey to that final kill
when wan and empty, sore and ill,
I will finally pay life’s bill.

 

For MVB, Fancy

Gossip at the 50th Class Reunion, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 689, Jan 12, 2025

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Gossip at the 50th Class Reunion

The ghosts of teenage memories flutter and alight,
recalling card game  marathons that lasted through the night,
revealing ruinous secrets—spilling all the dirt.
After all these decades, how much could they still hurt?

Alluring little tattle-tales,  spinning out their webs,
sully reputations of aging former debs.
whose glittering reputations are maligned in manners ruthless,
by stories pulled out from the past that they insist are truthless.

Their former chastity like glass, cracked, broken and shattered
fifty long years afterwards–as if it even mattered!
We’ve strayed so far from our old roots, why is it we demur
when someone tries to alter what we insist we were?

Note from the author: Pure fiction, folks! Only the photo is of my real class reunion. I was led to this rhyme by the prompt words, not the past! For the Sunday Whirl Wordle the prompt words were: ruinous cards glass alluring spin dirt flutter secrets roots ghost glitters web 

The Knitted and the Purled for RDP, Jan 11, 2025

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The Knitted and the Purled

Ups and downs create the whole of our amazing world,
its surface formed by contrast of the knitted and the purled.
Sometimes we’re given what is sweet, at other times the bile
as we choose moment by moment to live happily for a while.

Nothing in this world can exist happily ever after.
A house is built of lows and highs: foundation before rafter.
Up and down’s the truth of it, the brilliant and the dark.
No week is composed totally of Sunday in the park.

Existence is a pendulum that sweeps across our lives.
Worker bees die every day in service to their hives.
Good seems finely balanced by a constant lurking evil.
Roses have their aphids.  Cotton has its weevil.

There is so much that’s wonderful in the world we live in,
but no one wins at every game. Sometimes we have to give in,
playing with the cards we’re dealt—flush or straight or fold—
sometimes in the heat of luck, sometimes out in the cold.

 

For RDP Saturday: Knit

Daily Prompt Daily Prompt for Jan 10, 2025

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Echoes
That echo in your heart is the dove in you
that carries the message that you want to fly.
Soaring dove, I want to ride on your back
to the crack of sunrise—to the day’s rebirth.

Time’s ricochet might drive us to the canyon’s rim,
where it will devour the past
no matter how grand its scale
and set us free from it.

The echoes of the world
passing and repassing
in their journeys
until they finally fade away.

 

The Daily Prompt is echo.