Category Archives: Poem

“Take 2 Aspirin,” for the Writers Workshop

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Take 2 Aspirin––

For all the world’s diseases and all life’s little ills
they’ve been inventing medicines, elixirs, syrups, pills.
But those crafty bacteria, viruses and germs
keep running on ahead of us as we come to terms
with ways to counteract them. They’re crafty little mites
who somehow slip inside of us through food or air or bites.
So in spite of all our science—our test tubes and our beakers,
all that malevolent mini-world just don their little sneakers
and keep on evolving a little bit ahead.
Enough to keep us sneezing or roiling in our bed.

 

The Writers Workshop prompt is “Medications.”

Slipping Out of the Groove, for Moonwashed Weekly Prompt, Nov 28, 2024

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Slipping out of the Groove

For those of you it might behoove
to operate out of the groove,

I’d like to say that strange is better
than performing to the letter. 

In things you write and words you speak
it’s much more fun if you’re unique. 

Comments boring
create snoring.

The Moonwashed Weekly Prompt is “Otherness.” Go HERE to read other poems on the subject of “Otherness..”

A Sci-Fi Poem for the diVerse Poets Pub

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The Prayer of the First Astronaut Poet

There is no Wifi in space
and so I send my words
out into the Universe
hoping that each syllable
will emit a ray
somehow connected
to all my other syllables,
and if quantum entanglement
is right, they will one day
find each other
again.

For the diverse Poets Pub the prompt is to write a Sci-Fi Poem

“Within” for Quadrille Challenge on diVerse Poets, Nov 26, 2024

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Within

Although they stand stiffly at attention,
these walls reach out
and hold me safe within their middle.
They stand guardian,
cushioning sound,
deflecting sharp edges.
Lucky me to have their protection.
Foolish me to leave their arms.
Yet the butterfly
soars over and away.

for dVerse Poets, the Quadrille Challenge prompt is “With.”

‘CHANGE OF MIND” for MVB, Nov 26, 2024

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                                           DSC00177_2

Relax, it’s only henna! I get a tattoo on my lower leg every time I go to the beach. It fulfills all my contradictory impulses.

                                    Change of Mind

Tattooed pierced and branded, or to be marked for life
with patterns carved into the skin with a sterile knife?
I cannot help but tell you that I find it very strange–
this trend to decorate ourselves by means that we can’t change.

When I was in my twenties, I bought a gorgeous hat
of pink and blue with colored plumes that swayed this way and that.
But what if I had had it sewn forever to my head,
so when I desired a wedding veil, I had feathers instead?

What if those chandelier earrings I found so cool in my teens
were implanted so I couldn’t take them off by any means?
So when I trekked across the jungles, weaving through the trees,
those earrings caught upon the vines and brought me to my knees?

My hair would be a helmet, and my eyes would look so queer
if worn like I did at twenty with eyeliner ear to ear.
So I cannot help but think this child with corks stretching her lobes
might regret them in her forties as she dons her judge’s robes.

Or the youngsters with the tongue studs, one day when they are men
might regret it as the shots they drink leak out onto their chin.
I’m so glad those mini skirts I wore—a poor choice even then––
are not still sewn upon my hips now that I am more Zen.

Thank God those darker outlined colors that made our lips less thin
and those psychedelic tie-dyes are not printed in our skin.
For although our taste was laughable, at least we can repent–
for the choices that we made in youth were not permanent.

                                                      IMG_3244

And, that hat mentioned in the poem? It really existed and still does, although no, I have not worn it in over 40 years. Here it is, a side view!

The prompt for My Vivid Blog today is “Mind.” (Hope is is ok that I am rerunning a poem I wrote in 2015. Just seemed appropriate!

Dressing for Attention, for Poetic Bloomings, Nov 24, 2024

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Dressing For Attention

Purple pedal pushers and a yellow skirt.
For a hat, a fascinator, and a tartan shirt.
A fur stole that’s a relic of another age—
when they didn’t raise them in a tiny cage.

Platform shoes to raise me up in elevation
so the band will see me during their ovation.
Great big shades to block the sunlight from my eyes
and so my date can’t see me flirting with the guys.

Bright pink polish on my nails and rhinestones on my lashes.
A girl has got to dress up right for these special bashes.
I will match the music—loud and brash and brassy.
Bands don’t notice groupies whose style is too classy!

For Poetic Bloomings, we were to write a non-culinary poem making use of the name of one item from our thanksgiving meal. The word I chose was, of course, “dressing.” It’s my favorite part of the meal!

Word Salad for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 682

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Word Salad

I salvage stories from my history and take them for a walk,
measuring their power as I try them out in talk.
But some words are frayed and tattered by rampant overuse, 
their colors dimmed and emptied of their vital juice.

Fresh fruits plucked from my garden feed a hunger in my soul, 
filling up my spirit’s vast collecting bowl,
yet this garden of the world does not belong to me.
I simply walk its corridors while waiting to be free.

Until that time, my body makes do with what it finds––
plucking out the fruit of words from their obscuring rinds,
mixing them together and hiding them away
to create fresh word salads to serve another day.

 

for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 682 the prompt words are: hungers until garden frayed tattered belonging spirits body salvage history walk stories

Your Dishwasher’s Advocate

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For the PAD challenge, we are to write a poem about a machine.

Your Dishwasher’s Advocate

Cycle after cycle, they clean our dirty dishes
yet do we ever think about acceding to their wishes?
Maybe they, too, have appetites, and I sometimes think perhaps,
they were patiently waiting for their favorite scraps.

A bit of rich spaghetti sauce, a dollop of our mousse,
a little bit of buttered bread or rib eye’s savory juice
might have fulfilled their evening’s dreams or might have made their day,
But instead we diligently swab it all away!

No rich reward for faithful servants waiting for our scraps.
No satifsfactory searches for tidbits left in gaps.
And so they go another day, our faithful old machines,
without a taste of hamburgers or beets or nectarines.

They cannot live on water alone. Those soapsuds have no savor.
And so the next time when you scrape, please do your pal a favor.
Leave a few scraps on the plate. Don’t clean too well those tines.
Think about your faithful friend who oh too rarely dines.

Leave your dishwasher a tip—something on which to sup.
Leave wine dregs in your goblets and leave them facing up!
Leave rice grains in your rice bowl. Do not clear that sauce away.
Being less efficient, will make your Maytag’s day.

If your wife makes a kerfuffle over the job you do,
remind her it is you that’s here scraping off the goo.
Take her by the shoulders and deflect her view.
Your dishwasher is grateful for it every time you do!

 

“Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210” for Fandango’s Flashback Friday, Nov 22, 2024

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For Flashback Friday, Fandango has asked us to rerun a blog we published on November 22 of a previous year. Mine is from 2014!

IMG_7969
Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210

Thanks be to God for TV that’s evolved beyond Godzilla.
And thanks to him for frozen cream—both praline and vanilla.
Another pleasure is writing in bed. It’s how I start my day.
With no spouse or kids to feed, it’s where I get to stay.
I know that grandkids would be nice, but still I’m rather grateful
that being childless cuts to nil the chances they’ll be hateful.

Chocolate and potato chips, together or alone
are two more guilty pleasures for which I must atone.
I try to limit quantities that pass between my lips,
for if I eat too many, they’re displayed upon my hips.
Another guilty pleasure that’s high upon my list
is a stupid TV show that somehow I just missed

the first time that it came around and which I must admit
is really superficial, although it was once a hit.
Still, I can’t stop watching it when I am all alone—
a guilty pleasure for which I’ve found ways I can atone.
I only watch it from the pool as I do exercise—
computer balanced within view while I aerobicize.

The show I watch is Beverly Hills Nine-Zero-Two-One-Oh.
And that’s about as far as this confession’s gonna go!
I’m sure I’m shrinking brain cells, but I grow them back again
by reading hours of Marcel Proust, and then Anais Nin!
My ending comment must be this sincere beatitude:
for friends who like me as I am, I have great gratitude.

Guilty for my sins and the excesses that are mine—
grateful for the friends who still insist that I am fine
if I never turn out perfect both in looks and my behavior,
I guess the fact that they’re not perfect either is my savior.
Guiltily and gratefully, we all pass through this life,
pudgy from our excesses and battered by our strife.

But that’s how life is patterned, and we all are lucky still
that of our guilty pleasures we’re allowed to have our fill.
Thanks be to our compulsions and life’s excesses of pleasure,
for all our peccadillos end up as life’s greatest treasure.
So, thanks be again for naughty things. We both love and revile them.
With some of them we stuff our mouths. With others, We just dial them.

Just Beyond My Grasp For SOCS, Nov 23, 2024

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Just Beyond My Grasp

When I’ve passed a restless night,
to once more welcome morning light,
I do not leave a lover’s grasp.
No knitted legs need to unclasp.
What time on waking I can afford
is simply spent unwinding cord:
the earbud cord around my neck,
my PC power cord from the wreck
of pillows, comforter and sheet
that somehow, now, are at my feet.
My MacBook Air, just by my shoulder
has come unplugged and so is colder
to my touch. It won’t power on.
Then, when plugged in, my poem is gone.

For SOCS