Category Archives: Poem

“Whirlwind” For The Sunday Whirl Wordle, 765

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Whirlwind

The voicemails that the wind exhales could terrify a ghost.
Wailed as stories in the storm, they are the Devil’s post.
Scared mortals wander unaware, their journeys to begin,
Caught in the glow of lightning, they struggle and they spin.
Tossed helpless in the tempest, they must wonder why,
like the fragile lotus, flung high  up in the sky,
the breath of air that gave them life is now how they will die.

been din grin kin men pin sin tin then vin win

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 765, the prompt words are: voicemails high exhale wind begin unaware scared glows ghost storm story lotus

Thumb Screws for For “Cracking Open the Time Capsule”

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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!

For “Cracking Open the Tirackingme Capsule” Frst posted on July 11 2016

A Jellybelly Insight for SOCS

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For The Friday Reminder, the prompt is “Jelly.” This should be fun…

 

A Jellybelly Insight

What feels special in my belly?
Ice cream, peanut butter, jelly,
Scotchbread cookies, pecan pie
and all the chocolate I can buy.
Thus said, I bet that you can tell
my tummy’s padded pretty well.
And since my jeans I can’t fit into,
it’s salad I should have bit into.

“Desert” for Blast from the Blog

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Desert

Year by year, my heart grows sparser––
a lone cactus lifting arms heavenward in supplication.

My heart grows succulent,
hoarding moisture
to grow sparse blooms.

Roots go deeper, looking for that connection
that flows lower every year––
a shrinking lake leaving ringed memories on its edge
like a scrapbook of old loves.

Like that past we all shrink away from,
in living, I desert old loves.
In dying, they desert me.

Is their leaving named for the arid lands that I now ponder,
or is this desert a monument for those who have left first?

This poem was first published ten years ago today, July 10, 2016. I have reformatted the poem.
Photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown

“Glass Enmass” for Today’s Throwback

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Glass En Masse

It’s sometimes seen as goblets stored upon a shelf
where you can either look right through or stare back at yourself.
In a glass of tea leaves, your future may be spoken,
but its message like its holder may slash us when it’s broken.
It is a perfect metaphor of all that we may be––
on one hand pure distraction, on the other help us see.
Whether it’s a looking glass or one you see right through,
The glass you stand in front of mostly tells us about you.

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Reblog from Juoy 9, 2016.

“Nocturn” for Rewind

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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.

This is a “Rewind” Blog from July 7 ten years ago.

Creature Discomforts, For Sunday Whirl Wordle 764

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Yikes! is that a scorpion? Actually, this is a bottle of mescal my student Eduardo gave me last year for my birthday. Inside were three giant scorpions and a coral snake. So far everyone who has visited me has given it a miss, as have I. It is rumored that a sip of it will bolster a man’s virility.

Creature Discomforts

Lest you suffer a hot foot in the darkness of the night
as you journey to the bathroom and feel a sting or bite,
best slip into your shoes first before you journey there
lest a scorpion or spider gives a wound that you can’t bear.

Then in the brightness of the day, out in the prairie grass,
God grant that you’re not bitten in the ankle or the ass
by a coral snake who wounds you and is off, then, in a shot,
leaving you with ashen face, intestines in a knot.

Wishing you were dead,  perhaps, instead of in such pain
that you vow that you will never walk in waist-high grass again
lest it lead to the resurgence of encounters with that snake
who surely you could fight off with a pistol or a rake

Better that you face it in bottle of mescal
than bushwhacking through the grasslands or walking down the hall.
if only you had seen it, but now that subject’s moot.
If you ever walk this way again, you’ll bring a gun–and shoot!

The words for Sunday Whirl this week are: shot foot dark bright prairie grass hot ash dead resurgence fight god

 

Empty Nest for FOWC

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Empty Nest

I’ve been missing
that half-grown kissing
that lasts a minute
with chocolate in it.
Runny noses.
Heads of roses
picked off stems
like rarest gems
presented in
a tuna tin.
Priceless treasure
for my pleasure.

My life lacks
these loving smacks––
even a quickie,
albeit sticky
with peanut butter.
A parting stutter,
and then they’re gone
and off upon
contrivences new,
away from you,
taking their kisses
to other misses.

For Fandango’s FOWC the prompt is “Contrived.”

 

 

 

Spinning Top, for today’s Throwback Edition

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Spinning Top

Is senility a resurrected prenatal state—
hearing the outer world
with limited stages of connection?
Or is it a journey backwards through a lifetime,
remembering details pushed into
the closets of the mind by daily tasks?

The hum of a life is deafening in this world.
Even with earbuds or headsets,
the noise of the world streams in,
wired direct into our consciousness,
quelling thoughts of our own,
wiping clean for the time being,
memories.

The whole world with us every minute
leads to no world of our own.
Barraged our entire lives,
more now than ever,
does senility offer a time before our death
to connect with our inner selves once more?

Relieved of the world,
do we spin like a top into that inner world,
remembering a lifetime lost to activity—
the resurrected adolescence of old age
evolving backwards into a dreaming time
wherein we joyfully wander ourselves again?

Some choose the rope, fearing a nightmare of senility,
yet some of us hope for a return to dreams of childhood,
relieved of all care, even for ourselves.
No one comes back to tell us which it is,
yet some of us?
We hope.
We hope.

( First published on July 4, 2018)

Pretty Bottles All Lined Up for Word of the Day

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Pretty Bottles All Lined Up

How we love to line up bottles on tabletops or shelves.
What we collect in bottles tells us something of ourselves.
Be it pills or perfume or lotions for our skin,
be it liquor bottles or old bottles of our kin.
Be they for forgetting or remembering or curing,
the fact that we see into them is somehow reassuring.

Each bottle opened is no doubt considered well worth keeping,
as applied  or guzzled down, its contents we are reaping.
Hopes or dreams are bottled there––courage, allure or balm.
Their stoppers keep in secrets, unstopped they exude calm.
Pretty bottles on a shelf deserve felicitation
as they meet our eye to please us, or our lips for satiation.

The Word of the Day prompt is “Bottle Opener.”