Category Archives: Poem

Beholding Beauty, for dVerse Poets, Apr 17, 2024

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Click on Photos to Enlarge.

 

Beholding Beauty

You are more beautiful than you think you are,
but we don’t tell you because
it is such a pleasure to see you unaware of it,
doing everyday things in such graceful ways.

You are the Burmese cat, stepping high
over the small sculptures
on the wall where he is fed,
his tail curving into a delicate hook.

You are vibrating leaves on the hibiscus tree
adding the contrast of green
to the one exquisite yellow bloom
with its fuchsia sunset middle.

You are a child whose violet eyes
open wider to each wonder––innocent,
never knowing yourself to be more beautiful
than what you observe.

You are music, harmonious, played
on the spur-of-the-moment with no rehearsal,
fingerpaints on the wall in an incredibly wild pattern
that could not have been planned.

You are the gourmet meal
made of leftovers from the fridge,
the wonderful costume gathered
from hangers at the thrift store.

You have a beauty
you were not born to––
one that is an amalgam
of every choice you make in life.

Beauty is in the eye
of the beholder, many say,
but it is impossible to imagine
a beholder who couldn’t see it in you.

 

I hope this follows the prompt for dVerse Poets–Poem of Address.

To see more poems written to this prompt, go HERE.

“Make Your Own Kind of Music” For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 17

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This is actually a true story. When I was at the beach a few years ago, I had a house right on the beach and it got so I never knew who I would find on my porch when I woke up in the morning. In the end, they set a number of my poems to music and recorded them.

Make Your Own Kind of Music

One and  two and three and four.
Four little music makers pounding on my door.
One beats a rhythm, one toots a horn––
wild and sweet––sort of forlorn.
One hums a tune behind his teeth––
a sort of descant underneath
the melody on the steel guitar.
The gulls reel in from near and far
to add their screams to the refrain,
then fan their wings, silent again.

Four musicians at my gate.
I wait for their music to abate.
Then I go and let them in
to add my music to the din.
I sing my lyrics fast and slow
first soft then loud, my lyrics go
up and over the drums and horn–
out into the sandy morn.
Over the rocks and out to sea,
setting all our music free.

When the drummer leaves my porch,
he leaves just three to loft the torch.
Too soon the horn, too, fades away
but the hummer’s here to stay,
and the steel guitar swells out to fill
the morning air until until
the morning fades into full sun
and our melody comes done.

Soon guitar and singer fade,
their morning share of music made,
and I fold my songs away.
I’ll bring them out some other day.
With music left behind I wind
only words around my mind.
They weave their spell with me along.
I lose myself in their noisy throng.
Wander aimless, round and round,
in getting lost, this poem is found.

For NaPoWriMo 2024, day 17.
Thanks, Mama Cass, for making your own kind of music!! Go here to hear her:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mraLsg-G4wA

A Semi-Tall Tale for The. Sunday Whirl Wordle 650 and NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 12

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Image by Satish Nagapuri on Unsplash
JDB Photo
JDB Photo

 

 

 A Semi-Tall Story

Once upon a time, dear friends, long before creation,
the spirits of the universe formed a delegation
to invent our ancestors: the cell  and then the fish,
and eons later, they decided to fulfill the wish
of the lowly haddock to wallow in the mud
with toes and feet to stay erect while walking through the crud.
And thus was born the dinosaur, king of a twig-strewn world,
crashing through the underbrush as all it touched unfurled.

Those parts of earth unbroken eventually gave birth
to animals less violent and much smaller in girth.
Warm-blooded, they awakened to divine memory,
invented words and realized that what had come to be
was what the spirits of the universe had foreseen long ago
while looking in a crystal ball. The predicted it, and lo,
that chain occurred unbroken—ending with you and me,
sitting here upon the ledge of infinity. 

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 650, the prompt words are: twigs divine wake blood wallow cell memory ancestors crystal creation ledge unbroken.  I am combining this prompt with the NaPoWriMo prompt from two days ago, which I forgot to do.  The 12th prompt of the monthly series was to write a tall story. This one is only tallish as it’s based on evolution. The Spirits of the Universe might qualify as the tall part of the tale.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 13 Poem, In Arrears!!!!

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Only after I wrote my Day 14 poem did I realize I’d missed out on days 12 and 13!  Here is my Day 13 poem, in arrears, “Playing With Rhyme.”:

Light Verse

Bitter night winds blow and flitter,
singing songs that hum along
with kerosene lamps that careen.
spilling light that fills the scene,
then joins the sunset’s streaming jet
of fire across a furry sky
of fleet clouds that hurry hurry
pursing lips to blow out  light
and give a welcoming respite
to  day’s unrelenting bright
as night contains it in its purse
and stashes it behind a wall
through which light cannot shine at all.

Then shoes of night step softly through
every midnight somber hue,
tracking light, securely trussed
into tight balls, its loud rays shushed
into small whispers, star after star,
sending it back from afar,
on footsteps constant through the night.
that regather in the morning light.

The optional prompt for the day asked us to play with rhyme. We were to start by creating a “word bank” of ten simple words. They should only have one or two syllables apiece. Five should correspond to each of the five senses (i.e., one word that is a thing you can see, one word that is a type of sound, one word that is a thing you can taste, etc). Three more should be concrete nouns of whatever character you choose (i.e., “bridge,” “sun,” “airplane,” “cat”), and the last two should be verbs. Now, come up with rhymes for each of your ten words. (If you’re having trouble coming up with rhymes, the wonderful Rhymezone is at your service). Use your expanded word-bank, with rhymes, as the seeds for your poem. Your effort doesn’t actually have to rhyme in the sense of having each line end with a rhymed word, but try to use as much soundplay in your poem as possible.

Here is my word list, to prompt. Only one— “thrust,” is no longer in the poem, replaced with  “tracking,” —a word more in keeping with the poem.

bitter  sitter twitter flitter hitter jitter litter sitter titter
song bong dong gong Kong long pong wrong tong along
kerosene obscene bean scene gene Jean keen keene lean mean peen queen seen teen wean machine
sunset bet debt fret get het jet let met net pet Aquanet set Tet vet wet
furry curry furry hurry jury surrey
purse curse hearse nurse terse verse rehearse
wall  ball call doll fall gall hall loll mall  mol  wall tall
shoe blue clue due few goo hew Jew kew loo moo new anew pew queue rue sue two to too view whew  yew zoo
thrust bust cussed dust gust lust must rust shushed trussed trust
whisper Whisker  bicker spiller thinker winter finger per were blur spur whirr

Wind–For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 14

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Wind

The breath of the world blows tendrils of hair,
turns windmills and dries white sheets upon a line.
It  twists into a tornado
and lifts a house off its foundations,
sets it down in a mountain meadow
where zephyrs stir the trees.

The breath of the world blows a bee from its branch,
inhales its pollen and puffs it into nostril hairs
that launch a hurricane of sneezes,
sending a whirlwind of powder
from a powdered sugar donut out the window
onto the shoulder of a passing immaculate black tuxedo.

The breath of the world launches sailboats,
then sends them into safe harbors as it swells into a typhoon.
As it exhales, it lifts kites high into the air
and as it inhales, sends them plummeting to earth.
It fuels our lungs to blast a wind of words: expletives or adamant prayers,
anthems or a tyrant’s raves,
benedictions or cheers for a favorite football team.

Windy cities draw their nicknames
from the breath of the world.
Wind in the Willows names our books.
Woodwinds breathe out melodies.
Wind gives a name to our direction
as we struggle windward.
Hurricanes quench our thirst in airless bars.
Breezes give monikers to our dispositions.

Whirlwind, breeze, zephyr,
hurricane, gale, draft, blow,
tornado, crosswind, cyclone—
from gentle puff to wild tornado,
it is the world’s breath
that sets everything into motion.

For Day 14 of NaPoWriMo we were to write a poem making use of anaphora.

Green Brownies for dVerse Poets, Apr 12, 2024

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(This poem evolved from notes that I scribbled into the margin
of our Mexican Train score sheet while visiting my friend Gloria.)

Green Brownies

The brownie that she serves me
crumbles when I try to break it in half.
Her sense of humor allows it and so I tease her.
“Gloria, this looks like the kind of food
my grandmother tried to pawn off on us—
weeks old and crusty from the refrigerator.”

“Those chocolate chips were like that when I bought them!”
she insists, even before I question their green tinge.
I think that this is even worse than the alternative,
and say so and we both laugh as she eats her brownie
and I reduce mine to dust. Not a hard task, as it turns out.

She’s had a bad infection for a week or more.
“I’m not contagious,” she insists each time she coughs
a long low rasping rumble that threatens to avalanche.
“Now stop!” she tells the sounds that explode
without permission from her chest.

“Perhaps,” I say, “These brownies are a godsend
and that’s penicillin growing on the chocolate chips.”
Then her deep coughs transform into
gasps of laughter that echo mine.

The young man there to rake the garden
looks up at us and shakes his head
at two old ladies drinking rum and
eating something chocolate,
and it occurs to me that perhaps
what the world sees as senility
is simply evolution
out of adulthood
to a higher
stage.

For dVerse Poets Open Link 360
You can see how others responded to the prompt HERE.

Day’s End, NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 11, Monostich Poem

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Day’s End

One more stitch in the garment of life.

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a Monostich Poem–a one-line poem. (I couldn’t resist the pun.)

“Kitchen Cruelty” For NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 10

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“Woman sentenced to 5 years Expulsion from Kitchen for Cruelty to Kohlrabi”

Concerning cruelty to food, I’m worthy of your jeers.
I’ve tortured tortellini and brought green onions to tears.
I’ve chopped heads off of celery, gored eyes out of potatoes,
cut kernels off of ears of corn and boiled live tomatoes.
Shredded parmesan and Julienned countless bell peppers,
minced salmon into balls and rolled pancakes into crepers.
I’m guilty of the boiling of innocent spaghetti
and of wielding blade to chop a cabbage into fine confetti.
I am a kitchen torturer of unthinkable portions,
stretching bread dough into the most grotesque contortions.
I never met a batter that I didn’t want to beat,
so if edible, it’s best you stage a fast retreat
or in my oven or my stove, I’ll find a way to heat you,
In short, if you are edible, I”ll find a way to eat you!

For NaPoWriMo Day 10

Cold Comfort, for NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 9

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Click on Photos to Enlarge.

Cold Comfort

This thermal cup was different. Things stayed cold all night through.
I liked the one that I had first, so then I bought a few.
Four cups grew to six and then finally to eight.
When I misplaced one of them, it always had a mate
waiting in my kitchen drawer, or  three or four or five.
There were always one or two remaining in their hive
when one was left out in my car, the other by my bed,
another in some restaurant  where I had been fed.

One loaned to a friend and one gone to who knows where?
Yet almost everywhere I looked, there was at least one there.
Each time I went to Walmart, I bought all that were left.
When they were discontinued, you can bet I felt bereft.
Now I’m down to six of them from ten that I have bought,
so I need to keep good track of  them—(all of them I’ve got.)
Precious dear containers that keep my ice intact—
my most dear possessions? Yes. It is a fact!!!!

 

NaPoWriMo, Day 9: Write a poem celebrating an everyday object.

“Python Pariah” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 649, Apr 7, 2024

Python Pariah

The root of all his problems is a bad mood he can’t shake.
Spooning with a garden hose?  A horrible mistake!
Returning now to his old den is not within the cards.
Too humiliating to face his former pards.

Outside it is both cold and wet and ice stands up in slivers.
It’s the sort of weather that can give a snake the shivers. 
Hard to move through ice and snow with neither arm nor limb
and all those constellations of shards of ice on him.

He’s gobbled down a lizard and nibbled on a squirrel,
then lay rigid on the platform until ready to unfurl.
He negotiated train tracks after descending a stair.
Zipped right down the train aisle without paying his fare.

Slipped into the baggage room and curled up in a coil,
rocking with the movement as the train began to roil.
He then passed a dreary spell while digesting his food.
It’s hard to enjoy traveling when in an iffy mood.

When he is finished shivering, then he begins to cough.
He knows not his destination, knows not where he’ll get off.
He only asks that it is warm with places he can hide
and curl up somewhere safe with a real girl snake at his side!

 

The Sunday Whirl Wordle 649 prompt words are: nibbles slithers spoon platform shards root constellations limbs dreary spell shake wet