Category Archives: Poem

78

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78

Skinny arms,
too thin to fill the skin out.
Tiny empty rivers,
terminally dry.
When did they
carve their courses
through these arms
once anxious
to lose baby fat,
now
nostalgic
for their lost
opposites?

After reading this poem, Forgottenman sent me the below poem, which he wrote years ago. It is such a perfect answer to my above poem that I have to share it with you here.  It is my favorite of many things he has written in the past.

   She Calls Herself a Spinster

She calls herself a spinster with a sly and sultry smile.
At seventy-eight, she knows so well the art of luring guile.
A silken string strewn on his face from her outstretched bony hand
is not seen by the younger man she knows that she will land.

This young man is manly, which must lead to his demise.
A spinster spider knows too much and casts her come-on lies.
She twirls him round and round and round and round again once more.
He’s dizzy now and lustful. She has him to his core.

He’s bound up in her silken web, her web of love’s deceit.
Her sweet perfume, her purring tongue, the web of his defeat.
At his last gasp engulfed in thread, he knows that he’s been had.
But he would not trade in his fate. His last breaths are not sad.

She’s energized, another score! And she dabs on more perfume.
The darkness that she penetrates, it leads to weak men’s doom.
She calls herself a spinster with a sly and sultry smile.
At seventy-nine, she knows so well the art of luring guile.

Spider

Hello, NaPoWriMo

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If it’s April, it must be:

Hello, NaPoWriMo

Good morning, NaPoWriMo, and good night.
Whether I have written or will write,
you tend to fill my day with obligation
for rhymed and metered concentration.
Social engagements––a thing of the past.
No time for conversation and repast
except for sandwiches and coffee quickly quaffed
in glow not candlelight (but just as soft)
that shines from my computer screen
from morn till night, with no relief between
as I strain for yet another rhyme.
For this is how I spend my time,
NaPoWriMo! With fourteen days to go,
it is impossible to just say, “No.”
No matter how I yearn to just resume my life––
to end these rhymes with which my days are rife––
I have to finish what I started
lest I be branded fickle-hearted.
I read somewhere that half the poets who first committed
to write a poem a day have by now quitted
the task they took an oath to do;
but still a few
plod on with me. We’ll never meet,
though we walk down the same blank path with metered feet.
Perhaps one day we’ll meet in poetry heaven or hell
knowing we did this task completely if not well!

In conclusion, I have heard
That in Hawaii, there’s one word
that means both hello and good bye.
It means love, affection, adios and hi!
That word, “Aloha,” covers all from dark to light;
and so, Aloha, NaPoWriMo, and good night!

For dVerse Poets, the prompt is “Make up your own name for a micro season.”

“Firm Ground” for Ragtag Daily Press

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Firm Ground

Between all of you and me,
I’ve no experience with scree.
Given the type of ground to walk on,
scree’s the surface I would balk on.
Other folks may be adventurous.
My choice is usually ventureless!

The RDP prompt is “scree.”  (Image borrowed from the RDP prompt site.)

Dental Retaliation

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Dental Retaliation

Do you remember toothbrushes lined up on a rack
in the medicine cabinet, at the mirror’s back?
Your father’s brush was ocean blue, your mother’s brush was green,
your sister’s brush the reddest red that you had ever seen,
whereas your brush’s handle had no color at all—
as though it was the ugliest sister at the ball.

How you yearned for color, reaching for your brush
as the first summer’s meadowlark called to break the hush
of the early morning while you were sneaking out
to be the first one out-of-doors to see what was about.
Making that fast decision, your hand fell on the red,
thinking your sister wouldn’t know, for she was still abed.

You put toothpaste upon it, wet it at the tap
and ran the brush over each tooth as well as every gap.
Each toothbrush flavor was different, your older sis had said,
so you thought it would be different brushing your teeth with red.
Your father’s brush was blueberry, your mother’s brush was mint.
Your sister’s luscious cherry—its flavor heaven-sent.

“But because you are adopted,” your sister had the gall
to tell you, “they gave you the brush with no flavor at all.”
You waited to taste cherries, but that taste never came.
That red brush tasted like toothpaste. It tasted just the same
as every other morning when you brushed with yours.
You heard your sister stir upstairs, the squeaking of the floors.

You toweled off her toothbrush and hung it in the rack
and started to run out the door. Then something brought you back.
You opened up the mirror and grabbed her brush again.
A big smile spread across your face—a retaliatory grin.
The dread cod liver oil stood on the tallest shelf.
You were barely big enough to reach it for yourself.

You dipped her toothbrush in it, then quickly blew it dry.
Replaced it, shut the cabinet, and when you chanced to spy
your own reflection in the glass, each of you winked an eye.
Then you ran out to cherry trees to catch the first sunbeam
and brush your teeth with cherries while you listened for her scream.

(Not a true story, by the way!!!)

 

For One Word Sunday the prompt is “Teeth.” Image created with help from AI.

“Bad Sport” for SOCS

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Bad Sport

I don’t do sports, nor watch them, either.
A one block jog? I’d need a breather.
At volleyball, I don’t excel.
Touch football is a sort of hell.
For passing time, by hook or crook,
Jog on alone. I’ll read a book!!!

The Stream of Consciousness Prompt for Oct 18 is “Hook.”

Meeting Mr. Right for Weekly Writer’s Workshop

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Meeting Mr. Right

Scrabble, Dice and Mexican Train—
I play them once and then again,
while he won’t play a single game
of any sort or any name.

I like to travel. He sits at home.
Walmart’s as far as he will roam.
Won’t go to movie theaters, clubs,
exhibitions, galleries, pubs,

museums, fiestas, meetings, for
such crowding makes him hit the door.
Tourist attractions leave him numb
and make him wonder why he’s come.

I fill my house with Mexican art
that drains my purse but fills my heart,
but my artful clutter makes him frown.
His décor? Purely hand-me-down.

I like people. He sits alone.
His desk chair is his chosen throne
where he supervises the internet—
the biggest nerd you’ve ever met.

I dance whenever I’ve the chance,
but you might have guessed—he doesn’t dance!
He’s six-foot-two. I’m five-foot-six.
Yet tall and short just seem to mix.

I know our friends and family
find us an anomaly.
for these differences are just a start.
We’re 1600 miles apart!

So how can he be my best friend
when our differences never end:
a scorpion talking to a crab,
a Chihuahua running with a Lab?

What makes our congress less absurd?
We’re both addicted to the written word!
We both love puns and definition.
Apostrophe errors? Pure sedition!

While others discuss films or drama,
we dissect uses of the comma.
We discuss dashes from en to em,
and how the world misuses them!

Splitting hairs but not infinitives,
sound editing advice he gives
for everything I write online.
If words were grapes, he’d strip the vine

of sour grapes and slugs and weeds
and after he had done these deeds,
the wine would pour more sweet and rare,
culled out by his loving care.

And so it goes here on my blog.
In its machine he is a cog—
mending lost links and feeling free
to cut that spare apostrophe.

To wrestle errant prepositions,
question faulty suppositions,
to polish off each word writ wrong
until a ditty becomes a song.

We meet each day on the cyber page
that is the parchment of our age.
While you meet others of your type
at coffee bars, we meet on Skype.

Our discourse clever, funny, rare.
We do not pine and ache and stare
eye-to-eye hour after hour.
For us, it’s words that carry power.

The Prompt for This Week’s Writers Workshop is: Meeting

A Modern Tale, for dVerse Poets

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A Modern Tale

Beware the headless horseman. He knows not where he’s going.
For without his brain or senses, he cannot be knowing
north from south or here from there. In fact it’s rather hopeless.
Instead of coping with his journey, he’s completely copeless.

Better to have a head man who hasn’t any horse,
for he can find another vehicle to aid his course
here and there and every where that he seeks to go,
for his brain can lead him, be his progress fast or slow.

Headless horsemen are, I fear, mostly made-up tales,
like the  one by Washington Irving, which, I admit, pales
compared to the real-life tale of that living gent
who is a headless horseman and sadly, our president!!!

The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a poem about a headless horseman.

Advice to Folks in High Places for the 3 Things Challenge

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Advice to Folks in High Places

Of course, coarse words might prove a curse,
but words that weave a lie are worse.
So don’t use utterances truthless
as terrifying as they’re ruthless.

The Three Things Challenge asked us to include three words: COURSE COARSE CURSE

Dream Diary for The Sunday Whirl

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Dream Diary

Tattered strips of memory are so easily forgotten,
be they draped in velvet or wound in filmy cotton.
Yet moments revealed in our dreams may spin us back in time
to an earlier period when we were in our prime.
The sound track of our dreaming, be it jazz or rock or rap
be it lullaby or roar, may serve us as a map
putting us in touch with times we’ve chosen to forget—
showing just the tip of an iceberg we’d regret
to see the submerged truth of, preferring to recall
just what we have chosen, not remembering it all.

 

 

Words for the Sunday Whirl are: draped moment velvet reveal tips jazz touch back roar filmy strips forgotten

A&Wesome Burgers for the Ragtag Daily Prompt “Sandwich” Prompt

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Okay, when I saw the Ragtag prompt was “sandwich,” I decided I simply must rerun this post from 2016:

img_5457-1
Today dawned rainy and foggy with a prediction it would last all day, so instead of spending five hours on the Cabot Trail before heading southwards for another three hour journey to get my car returned to Hertz by 9 p.m., I decided to head immediately for the airport and my overnight stay at the very classy Alt hotel which is located right at the Halifax airport.  Very handy.  Enroute, I noticed an A&W Drive-in and had to stop. I thought they’d gone out of business years ago but here is proof that they are still alive and thriving in Nova Scotia. Thanks, WordPress, for the very timely prompt.  I didn’t even know what it was until I got to the wifi of my hotel in Halifax. Nice coincidence that I was already supplied with an illustration for today’s prompt of “Sandwich!”

Version 3

A&Wsome Burgers

The first drive-in I went to when I was just a kid
(before there was McDonalds or wax cups with a lid)
was an A&W sixty miles from home
with root beer served in frosty mugs and sporting heads of foam.
I haven’t seen another for years, so I believed
there weren’t any anymore—a fact that I have grieved.
So while driving into Halifax, imagine my elation
when I saw an A&W next to a filling station!

I had meant to fill my rental car before I turned it in,
‘cause the prices when Hertz fills them up are really quite a sin,
but all thoughts of filling up the car vanished in a blink
with thoughts of luscious burgers and foamy things to drink.
There’s mama burger, papa burger and even a teen,
but still no baby burgers, or anything between.
They have onion rings and French fries and something called poutine?
An addition to the menu? I found it most obscene.

Now it has been a long time since I have had the fun
of consuming family members stuffed into a bun,
but I am really very sure that poutine is a new one.
In all my life I’ve never before had the chance to chew one!
I asked the friendly sales girl for a bit of erudition
that could clue me in to this Canadian addition
to what I thought was sacrosanct—an act of pure sedition.
Just what has the world come to when franchises have permission

to add things to the menu? It simply is not right
that they can think up something new for us to bite!!!
She filled me in on what it was and said it was delicious.
French fries, cheese curd, gravy??? A mixture most pernicious.
What good are French fries served with cheese that’s certain to taste boggy,
topped off with gravy that no doubt would make the whole mess soggy?
I bought a teen burger and naked French fries at their best—
then left to eat them in my car—a sure sign of protest.

But in the end my protest was paid most dearly for.
For when I took my food to go, slamming shut the door
and roaring off to eat my food in another place,
I ended up with poutine all over my face.
For I forgot to buy my gas which would have cost a third
of what I had to pay to Hertz—a total most absurd.
Yet even though my protest in my budget put a crimp,
at least I did not stoop to eating French fries that were limp!!!

The prompt for RDP is “Sandwich.”