Category Archives: Poem

Showing Up Late for Happy Hour at the Corner Cantina, For SOCS Apr 27, 2024

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Showing Up Late for Happy Hour at the Corner Cantina

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Showing Up Late for Happy Hour at the Corner Cantina

I’m late because of accidents and countless little slips
like toothpaste down my shirt front, hair caught in my zips
and a seat belt that was caught and wouldn’t span my hips.

So bring out all your arsenal—your bludgeons and your whips.
I deserve your censure, your curses and your yips.
Perhaps it is my fault that you’re in tequila’s grips!

By looking at the tablecloth and counting all the drips,
It seems that all the salsa’s not contacting your lips,
and all your margaritas aren’t winding up as sips.

I’m making the assumption you might need more chips,
and more salsa fresca and guacamole dips,
which means our busy waiter must make some extra trips.

He doesn’t seem amused by all your clever quips
which increase with the frequency of your little nips,
so I’m hoping the aforementioned will earn him larger tips!

For SOCS: The prompt word is “Show”

4 A.M. for NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 26

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full moon morning, jdbphoto 2017

4 A.M.

It is too early to be stirring, the world is still asleep.
The sound is all still slumbering, the darkness is too deep.
No dayness stirs the nightness. No touch is reaching out.
No stirring and no blowing. Not a whisper. Not a shout.
When I wake before the world does, it seems the end of things
instead of the beginning, when the whole world sings.
Sun rises and the birds demand. The dogs whine for their feed.
All the world around me awakens to its need.
But for now, they are all sleeping. It is a lifeless world.
Its eyes and ears and mouth closed, around me densely curled.

for NaPoWriMo we are commanded to write a poem making use of alliteration, assonance and consonance.

Judy’s Advice on Preparations for the Afterlife

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Judy’s Advice on Preparations for the Afterlife
(For Jim)

Do you get a discount
or will there be none
when your time on Earth
will finally be done?

Whether it is better
to be raw or roasted well
depends on where you’re going.
Is it Heaven or to Hell?

 

I received this request for a poem from Jim Anshutz:

Some of my thoughts on cremation. 1. I will ask if they give senior discounts.. 2. I will also inform them that I sit out in the sun each day and get quite sunburnt. My question is, “do I get a discount for being pre-cooked? You can take it from here, Jude. Please make this a very humorous piece of poetry. Hit it, Jude🔥🔥🔥

 

 

After 15 Years, for dVerse Poets Apr 25, 2024

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If this poem left justifies, click on it to get it to center as it is a shape poem!

After 15 Years

Your memory                                                     cuts so sharply
through my dream’s beginning that I wake,
gasping like a fish on the sand
left by some fisherman
too intent upon his next catch
to end it cleanly.

In its tight skin,
I gasp for air,
rise as it cannot rise
and like you cannot rise
out to that night sea air
which is the only coolness
in a month of burned days.

My memory, curving round,
pulls in the memory of you
like gills seeking to understand
the waterless air.

Landed by some bigger fisherman
whose bait you couldn’t resist,
“Oh,” you said, just “Oh,”
before you took the hook,
slipping from my grasp
as I held on, held on,
let go.

 

This is one of the poems in my book of 50 years of love poems  titled
If I Were Water and You Were Air, about to be published on Amazon.

Posted in response to the dVerse Poets Open Link Night.
See how others responded to the prompt HERE.

Happiness: NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 25

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“Too much happiness or too much unhappiness render us
oblivious to any good or bad changes around us.” 
—Alka Girdhar

 Balance

Happiness, like sadness, takes up too much room—
like a greedy house guest usurping our closets with their excess.
What bride notices the homeless on her bridal route?
What new mother thinks first of the starving hidden half a world away?

Sadness, like happiness, eats up our world.
The hungry yearn first for bread,
the ill for surcease from pain.
Who feels the thorn may overlook the rose.

Life is balanced, not within each,
but within the all.
What seems unfair to the single eye
is perfect harmony for the all-seeing.

So much easier
for the fortunate to feel worthy of their lot.
to feel, somehow, that their place in the  world
was created just for them.

Do the cursed feel equally singled out for hunger, cold, pestilence and misery?
Does a master mason have an intended place for every stone?
Does a baker single out a single speck of flour for inclusion?
Is a bee instilled with life to pollinate a certain flower?

What kind consciousness could have borne the guilt
of thinking through a plan more specific than the overplan–
the functioning of the grand machine of the universe
wherein happiness and sadness
swing like a pendulum
that somehow balances all.

 

For NaPoWriMo: What is your idea of perfect happiness?

The Ticket: NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 24

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The Ticket

Because I could not stop for death,
three times it  let me pass,
but the reprieve it granted,
sadly will not last.

Frequently, it beckons,
choosing friend after friend
in a sad progression
I know will never end.

One day it will summon
and I can’t refuse to go.
I only hope that when it comes,
my passing won’t be slow.

Let us go then, you and I,
forgoing futile censure,
traveling without regrets
into this new adventure.

 

  • “Let us go then, you and I,” from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
  • “Because I could not stop for Death, Emily Dickinson
    For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 24

For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 23

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The NaPoWriMo prompt was to create a new Superhero. This is my response.

No Can Do

Who needs another superhero? Aren’t there enough? 
Thinking up another one is going to be rough.
Of Doctors, Bats and Green ones, it seems we’ve had our fill,
and Possum Girl or Rat Boy doesn’t seem to fill the bill.
All heroic adjectives have already been used.
“Incredible” and “Super” I fear have been abused.
So what’s a gal to do when asked to make a new one?
I think that I must answer, it’s impossible to do one!!

Just for the record, I actually did create a superhero poem a few years ago for NaPoWriMo. If you’d like to check it out, HERE is a link.

This is an alphabetically ordered list of superheroes from  Encyclopaedia Britannica and DC Comics:

 

For NaPoWriMo Superhero prompt Image is a Marvel Stock image

“Nocturnal Shuffle” for RDP

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Midnight Minuet

Sneaking down the unlit hall,
we take turns answering nature’s call,
awaiting our own turn to sneak
to the john to have a leak.

In the darkness, we repeat
this rather tricky hourly feat.
Him, then her, then me at last.
So are our nightly ramblings cast.

It is not choice that brings us here
to void ourselves of pop or beer.
In fact, a full night’s sleep we seek—
our intentions strong, but bladders weak.

At eleven, twelve and one and two,
sleeping is what we’d rather do.
Instead, we do-si-do—just missing
the next sojourner bent on pissing!

 

This poem is dedicated to all of those over sixty who find themselves taking more nightly journeys down the hall than in the past. Perhaps, like me, you are a houseguest. If so, there is no avoiding the nocturnal shuffle if your hosts, like you, are of a certain age.

 

 

The Ragtag Daily Prompt is Nocturnal

Plagiarist, For the Sunday Whirl, Apr 21, 2024

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Plagiarist

I track my sleepy footprints down to the salty sea,
with only tide and sand to keep me company.

Now and then a wispy cloud silvers the rising moon,
breaking into filigree, then vanishing too soon.

A moonbeam cracks the tidal swell and draws a slender line,
whispering this story that now I claim as mine.

Huddling on the outskirts of wave and slivered light,
I nonetheless declare my self as part of this calm night.

Sly interloper that I am, still all I hear and see
opens up its arms and seems to welcome me.

 

For the Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: draw cracks sly sliver sleepy footprints stories moon outskirts wispy sky sea

If I Were. . . for NaPoWriMo 2024, day 18

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If I Were Water and You Were Air

I used to be restless water—
only the froth and currents
of a moving life.

Now I am still water,
sinking down to where
I can be found
by anyone willing to stand quietly
and look.

Is it true that moving water never freezes?
Is it true that still waters run deep?
Is it true that we are wed in steam?

“What if, caught by air,
it never lets me go?” I ask.

“But even water
turned to air
must fall at last,” you say.

“And what if I fall farther from you?”
I say. “Or what if I never again find banks
that open to contain me?”

I used to be swift flowing water.
Now I am a pool that sinks me deeper every year.
So deep, so deep I sink
that on its way to find me,
even air may lose its way.

 

For NaPoWiMo 2024, Day 18