Category Archives: Poem

“Hide” for SOCS

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Hide-and-go-seek

She enters my hideout and calls it her own.
Now I’ll have to move on, for my cover is blown.
I try to go deeper into my lair
but still she follows, finding me there.
I cannot escape her. She has all my keys.
She blows through my memory like a fine breeze,
usurping my details to make them her own
so I can’t reclaim them, wherever they’ve blown.
From a full-body mirror, she stares back at me.
My elbow’s her elbow. My knee is her knee.
She alters my hairdo and rouges my cheeks.
She searches my memory, looking for leaks,
then piles the lost parts up in her poems,
through her underground railroad, gives them new homes.
When I see myself spread out here in these pages,
some private part of me protests and rages,
but she doesn’t listen. She finds me too fussy.
She leaves herself open, the ungrateful hussy.
Does she not realize that it is me
who has made her whatever she’s turned out to be?
She should listen more closely when I say to stop.
Allow me to be her poetry cop.
But she doesn’t mind. She says what she wishes.
She dines out on me and leaves me with the dishes!

The prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “Hide.”

Writing a Poem for NaPoWriMo Day 3, 2026

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Writing a Poem for NaPoWriMo

I try to comply with the day’s writing task,
and so I rise early to do what they ask.
Turn on my computer to see what I should
write about because I want to be good
and follow the rules and so I start
mining my mind and surveying my heart.

What had I done by seven o’clock?
I’d let in the dog groomer, fastened the lock.
By eight I had fed all the cats and the dog
and turned to my duties: my prompts and my blog.
What had I accomplished by eight or by nine?
I’d returned to the task and and written one line

and worked on another for a short while
’til the plumber arrived with a motor and pile
of tools to put in my garbage disposal.
I talked to the gardener, made a proposal
to plant a new tree, then the housekeeper came.
If my poem went undone, I’d Yolanda to blame.

We talked for awhile, then I bent to my task
A ten minute reprieve was the most I could ask.
At ten, it was Oscar, arrived for his next
lesson in English.  My poem is hexed!
I download five photos that if I am able,
I’ll use with the poem, then spring to the table.

We study the use of “what, when and who”
of “where, why,” and “how,” then the next thing we do
is read a new story about Tio Nacho.
who had an old hat that was not very macho.
He said it in English, I said it in Spanish,
but when we were finished, my poem seemed to vanish.

I finally found it hidden in “notes,”
Found all my photos. Found all my quotes.
I shoo the white kitty off of my purse,
because the plomero I must reimburse.
Then I finish this poem and close up my Mac.
That’s a typical day for this poetry hack!!!

For NaPoWriMo Day 3 we are to write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is considered to be.

“Different” for the One Word Challenge

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When my husband and I did arts and crafts shows, at least once during every show, someone would wander into our booth, have a good look around, and as they left, shrug their shoulders and say, “Well it’s different!” (Usually pronounced “differnt.”) It actually was an “in” joke between those displaying their art—always interpreted as the speaker not understanding and not really liking the arts and crafts. Growing up in a small town, it was not the first time I’d heard the word in its derogatory sense. Thus, this poem: 

“Different”
When I finally made my way into the world so wide
I found myself exotic. Somehow transmogrified.
I liked being the foreigner, eminent in my oddity.
I found that being different was a definite commodity.
It was my prerogative to be just who I was
without creating currents in the small town buzz
of that place I had grown up in. My acts were less explosive.
My strange words now acceptable, not garnered as corrosive.
They thought my weird behavior typical of my nation—
those oddities of word choice and excesses of oration.
In finally being somewhere where “different” was not a sin,
the more different that I was, the more that I fit in!!!

For Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Anomalous. (deviating from what is standard, normal, or expected.)

Killer Clowns and Other Threats

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Killer Clowns and Other Threats

Robot ghosts from outer space
are in the sky, then in your face.
They sat behind you once in school,
thinking all the world they’d fool,
but recently they have been outed,
so although formerly I doubted
action adventure’s crazy plots
of giant creatures and evil bots,
recent events most grieveable
have made such things believable.

This orange devil we’ve elected
and all the buffoons he’s collected
make killer clowns from outer space
less scary than villains we face
day by day in our own world.
So let those forces be unfurled
to fight with him both tooth and bone
so he’ll leave our innocents alone!

Hope “springs” eternal, so I’m using this farcical response to the dVerse prompt this week, no matter how farfetched!!! The hats on the guys  in the UFO are supposed to read “Make Space Great Again,” but couldn’t get AI to cooperate. They came close, so have some of the ICE agents displaying their motto instead. Perhaps they have been in cahoots all along.

“The Full Story” for The Sunday Whirl

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The Full Story

Thinking creatures don’t mind visiting those rumbles in their heads
that contain their darkest thoughts––both phobias and dreads––
that exist alongside their wishes, hopes and dreams.
For writers, criminals and gods seem to exist in teams,
walking through their consciousness, sometimes in equal measure,
as though they know that gold and dirt are equally a treasure
when it comes to spinning tales that reflect all the world they see.
So, at story time, we flock like children to their knee
to hear the truth of all the world––its laughter and its wails––
for life consists of tragedies as well as  pretty tales,

Prompts for The Sunday Whirl are: mind visit thinking creature exists criminal know dirt walk head writer rumbles (Image created with the aid of AI)

Self-Portrait for SOCS

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Looking Glass Menagerie

I am trying to escape the menagerie—
all those selves I hold in front of me
as well as the ones I have let escape.
Those that run ahead—
the ones that are my future selves—
are here, hidden in the portrait that you see.
Domineering, perhaps. But seasoned with
an awareness of what might have created
all of the parts of myself I try to reign in.
This has produced a certain slowness to connect.
The natural is seasoned with a desire to honor dreams
of what I hope to be. When I look in the mirror,
I see them all: my mother and my grandmother
and my sisters. We demand, are stubborn.
Sometime we are martyrs, stifling tears.
Then suddenly, I pass them by like memories
of nightmares: all the anxiety attacks,
illnesses and heartbreak.
We are all wonderful performers,
using bad luck to fuel good.
The belles of our own ball,
we push back the grim news
of what we fear we really are.
Headstrong, we reach for what we can be.
Utterly addicted to change,
Tony or no Tony,
we are the stars of our own lives.

The SOCS prompt is Portrait

A Culinary Confession for the Three Things Challenge.

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A Culinary Confession

My kitchen is my “killer kit,” or so my husband thinks,
as warily he eyes his meal––main course, dessert and drinks.
He says he doesn’t blame me for my culinary lack,
because he didn’t marry me because I have the knack
to fry and broil and grill and roast
or even fail to burn the toast.
Yet I see him eye the knishes,
turkeys, pies and other dishes
served up by the other wives
who, wielding pans and spoons and knives
create dishes edible
as well as being bedable.
While I, though skillful in the sack,
their kitchen talents sadly lack.
So for years, we’ve had to make out
mainly on phone-in or take out!

Prompt words for the Three Things Challenge 375 are: killer, kit, kitchen. (Image created with help from AI)

“Breaking Her Diet” for Esther’s Writing Prompt

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Breaking Her Diet

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Breaking Her Diet

I measure her cat food with care from the vat,
but she has such an aptitude, my little cat,
for flushing out lizards and others like that.
With delicate paw thrusts, she gives them a bat
’til they barely know where it is that they’re at,
then unleashes her claws for a more severe pat.

Be it lizard or bird or scorpion or rat,
she defeats it as though it were merely a gnat
and lays it out nicely on my front door mat:
one scorpion sting less or a feather for my hat,
then returns to the stool where she formerly sat,
licking her chops, and that’s why she’s so fat!!!

Esther’s Writing Prompt this week is “Break.” Nope, I’m not condoning such behavior…especially in regards to birds. Breaks my heart. The scorpions I can put up with, so long as she’s careful and doesn’t get stung.

The China Bulldog––Review by Derrick J. Knight

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Here is a link to Derrick J. Knight’s review of my book, The China Bulldog. His review is personal and touching and I thank him for the time he spent both reading and reflecting on the book. He includes a good many long excerpts of my what turned out to be my own favorite poems and passages, as well. If you want to read the entire book, it is available Here on Amazon.

You can see the entire review on his blog by clicking on the link below:

The China Bulldog

Tunneling, for Weekly Prompts

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Tunneling

Deep is neither
party conversation
nor the subject of Valentines.
It seeps into the
crevices
under
fingernails
and
the
caverns
of
ears.

Internal
and
curvaceous,
it is hard to get
right to the point of.
Deep does not put down roots––it is roots.
Betrayal, breaking glass
and tunnels leading to
dark wombs that bear us anew
to rock us harshly
and swaddle us in pain.
Deep, I am
sometimes deep,
at other times
swift cold water
with surface
swirlings
or mist
rising
through
sunlight
clarified
by
deep
shadows.

 

 

For Weekly Prompts, the prompt is “Tunnel.”