Category Archives: Poem

Rejecting Advice, for the Writer’s Digest Prompt

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Unsolicited Advice

With buckets of advice and a blizzard of suggestions,
and prolific answers to all of life’s great questions,
he blusters and pontificates and tells us how to live
with advice he never follows, but which, nonetheless, he gives.

He imparts his wisdom to everyone he meets:
from how to run your business to your life between the sheets.
Advice on morals, love and sex (all in his domain)
make even brief encounters such a royal pain.

You know he’ll scratch his whiskers and open up his yap
and once again you will be caught in his vocal trap.
And so you’ve found that at first sight, you must avoid detection
by altering your footsteps to an alternate direction.

For the Writer’s Digest Rejecting Advice prompt.

Night of the Dragon for dVerse Poets

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photo with permission from Lachlan Gowen on Unsplash

Night of the Dragon

Behold the dragon, how it flows
from its tail up to its nose.
Thirty feet and thirty arms
move the dragon’s sinuous charms—
its razor teeth, its threatening frown—
through the streets of Chinatown.
On its head, a golden crown.
Its many humps move up and down,
forming valleys, growing hills
while moving over rocks and rills.
Straightening out to cross the bridges
spanning between neighboring ridges.
Never flying through the air,
rising only up the stair.
So many mortals make one beast,
one night a year to roil and feast
on errant spirits wandering out
their vile sentiments to flout,
chancing their ends once more to free
those rotten souls they used to be.
One night of all we form the back
that otherwise the dragons lack.
We form their arms and form their feet,
arousing awe in all we meet.
And thus it happens, once a year,
we become that which most we fear.

For the dVerse Poets prompt, “Dragon.”

Skipped Out, for MVB

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Skipped Out

It was a wretched theory. They postulated that
if we’d all collaborate, we’d lose all of our fat.
They weren’t very subtle. They gave us tubes of stuff
to squeeze over the food we ate, but never quite enough.
We had to buy the second batch, and prices just kept rising,
but we never lost a pound—a result not surprising.
Later, they skipped out of town—an act our friends found funny.
They told us from the first the only thing we’d lose is money!!!

For MVB: Skipped

Breaking Tradition for FOWC

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Breaking Tradition

A tradition is a habit that we’re loath to break,
a memory that our hearts continue stubbornly to make.
It is our continuity, our chain link to the past.
We make a resolution that it’s always going to last.

And yet our lives must segue to what future we might grow.
We cannot drag the past with us wherever we may go
lest it become a ball and chain that keeps us from what may
be an opportunity that may come our way.

Traditions are so comforting. They deal with what has been.
They make tiny departures seem a sort of sin,
but sometimes they just hold us back, keep us from being free,
and we must let loose of tradition to see what we can be.

Revenge can be tradition and one that’s hard to break,
causing backward facing hearts to fester and to ache.
As hard as it may be for us to turn around and heal,
it’s the only course that may enable us to feel.

When we peel away tradition, it gives hearts room to grow.
We plant seeds of new memories and tend them row on row.
The garden of our consciousness so fertile and so vast
that there is room for new traditions as alluring as the past.

 

For FOWC: Traditional

Happy Medium

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                                          Happy Medium

I’m no rocket scientist,
but neither do I drool.
I once was an icon––
valedictorian in my school.
Living on a pension,
spending most days on my couch,
I’ve kept my sense of humor
and not become a grouch!!!

For Esther’s “Can you tell a story in. 39 words”   the words are:

  • ICON
  • DROOL
  • PENSION
  • ROCKET
  • COUCH

 

911 for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 679

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911

The fire sighs and flips the ravaged timbers to the floor,
sends soaked ashes swirling in currents toward the door.
Blue flames lick at skins of walls, then weave around the beams,
trying to escape the fire fighter’s streams
as they emerge in masks from the house’s inner places,
assassins of those flames who’ve chosen not to show their faces.
Thus is the conflagration robbed of its power and beauty
by this crew that sees extermination as its duty.

For The Sunday Whirl
The prompt words are sighs fire flip ravaged blue floor emerge masks ashes soak skin weave

“Nostalgia” For the Sunday Whirl Wordle #669

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Nostalgia

Memory is a strong vine up which we keep on vanishing—
every upward movement, more of the present banishing.
Toward  the top, our back flashes set up such a yearning,
tripping sighs and anguish that set our hearts to churning.

Basking in past glories makes us turn a blind eye to 
all we might tap into looking at the world anew.
Living in the past instead of seizing on today
I fear creates a “now” that we choose to throw away.

 

For The Sunday Whirl today, the prompt words are: back flash vanishing tap top trip yearning blind sigh vine strong fear   Image by Luis Galvez on Unsplash

“Static” For the MVB Prompt on Aug 29, 2024

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Static

Your life catches in its static house
until nothing but the lightest footfall
betrays its presence.
The door to escape, the ocean’s edge,
tempts you to leave yourself and enter.
This echo of the ocean is the dove in you
that carries the message that you want to fly.

Motionless dove, I want to flush you
to the crack of sunrise.
Forget your lonely compulsions.
Leave your comfort.
Desert the false logic that has frozen you.
If you could let this still time pass,
Time’s ricochet might drive you to the canyon’s rim,
revealing to you that you no longer fear the fall.

For MVB the prompt is Static.

All and Everything, For Wordle 669

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All and Everything

Our bones are branches gathered to keep our bodies tight.
They move us in the daytime, but settle down at night. 
We are not furred or feathered, but sometimes, still, we scratch
at winged and legged invaders we aren’t able to catch. 
Our skin is smooth but softer than stones smoothed by the tide—
our minds blown into hurricanes by what we keep inside.
Emotions tilting back and forth from agony to bliss,
once strangers, we turn lovers just with a simple kiss.
All things caught inside of us, our bodies are the home
to the whole history of man—as stuffed full as this poem.

 

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle the word prompts are: scratch bones branches gathered blow words stone stranger keep tilt feathered we  (Image from Pinterest.)

 

 

Old-Fashioned Attention for MVB prompt, Aug 22, 2024

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IMG_4387

Lunch Date

One thing I’d like that I will mention
is some old-fashioned attention.
The kind with no device in hand
is the kind that I can stand
better than the sort with texting—
minds caught in “before” and “next”ing—
and not a thought for whom you’re with
until I’m sure that it’s a myth
that I’m the one you want to see,
even though you have invited me.

For though our table is for two,
you bring so many more with you—
every relative and friend.
Your texts to them just never end.
Our tete a tete‘s become absurd.
I never get to speak a word!
Since I’ve discovered you’ve come to see
your smart phone as more smart than me,
there’s just one thing I’d like to state.
Please cancel our next luncheon date,
and the next time you desire a munch,
just take your iPhone out to lunch!

FOR MY VIVID BLOG PROMPT: OLD-FASHIONED