Category Archives: Poem

Sticking to the Straight and Narrow, for FOWC, July 28, 2024

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Sticking to the Straight and Narrow


Sticking to the Straight and Narrow
(Mother Superior’s Rejoinder)

Please do not lollygag. There’s no time more.
We’re closing the shutters and locking the door.
Wipe those dreams from your brain, for it is our fear
that your thoughts will diverge from the prim and austere.
Make sure your spirit is pearl white and pure
with no sinful streaks to compete with demure.
Deadly sins number from one up to seven,
and striated souls will not make it to heaven.

This is one of my favorite photos, taken at the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. I love the one nun on the left, turned around to look back, plus the one with her arms crossed in back. I should perhaps crop it a bit on the right. Will next time I use it.

 

For FOWC, Narrow

 

At the Olympics Awards Ceremony (For RDP)

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IMG_3700 (1)jdbphoto

At the Olympics Awards Ceremony

You are the one we’d love to beat.
We train, we strain, we sweat. We cheat.
Anything to win the heat
and gain the glory of your defeat.
You are so handsome, fit and neat.
Sure of hand and swift of feet,
with fame and glory, you are replete—
the hero of each match and meet.

You are not boastful, do not bleat
your successes down every street.
You are humble and discreet.
You do not replay and repeat
each mile covered. Nor do you greet
those you’ve defeated when we meet
with prideful leer or smile cloying—
but still, we find your fame annoying.

You win each medal, then repeat
year after year at every meet.
Your well-toned muscles, hair like wheat,
make you every lady’s treat––
propel you to the winner’s seat,
your win made obvious and concrete
while those below complain and cuss.
Could you not leave some fame for us???

For RDP, The Olympics

Truth of the Matter for The Three Things Challenge, July 26, 2024

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We found all sorts of hidey holes in the front yard.

Is Mom watching? Oops. I’ll just hide again.

Truth of the Matter

Shy Creeps,
Sly Lurks

Shy, Creep and Lurk were the words for the Three Things Challenge today.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 664, July 21, 2024

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Daunting Pilgrimage

The raucous calls of prophet crows warn us of our error
in traveling down this moonlit road, thus augmenting our terror.
Our minds connect as voices recite their trembling prayers—
all our former evening plans now peeling off in layers
as one-by-one we zigzag from our predetermined path,
our former plans forgotten in the aftermath
of dreams of ghosts and goblins that await us up ahead.
The woods are dark and scary, adding to our dread
of the moving shadows and that macabre song
that trembles on the wind’s voice to hurry us along.
The silken touch of terror sends fingers down our spines,
reducing some among us to sniveling and whines.
Of the ten of us who started out, just five of us still here,
our group reduced  one after one as our goal grew near—
an aged house much worn away with one feeble light
glowing through the darkness of this frightening night.
But as its door swings open, all five of us repeat
the words that break the horror of our journey, “Trick or treat!!!!”

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 664  the prompt words are: sing trembling zigzag connected mind silk dreams moon prayers crow road prophets Image by Simon Berg on Unsplash.

Escape, For dVerse Poets, July 19, 2024

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ESCAPE

The door to the greatest house of all, the ocean’s edge,
tempts me to leave myself and enter.
This echo of the ocean is the dove in me
that carries the message that I want to fly.

Soaring dove, I want to ride on your back
to the crack of sunrise—to its flower.
To forget the lone compulsions
of the logic that has frozen me.

If I could let this hard time pass,
I might grow less diverted as my distance from it grows.
Time’s ricochet might drive me to the ocean’s rim,
revealing to me that I no longer want to toil.

The stress of guilt slows down
and if I choose to let it, falls behind.
Time will devour my past no matter how grand its scale––
revoke my sentence and set me free.

I will pass and repass it
on my round journey,
until my whole life
finally wears away.

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night. To see other poems for this prompt, go HERE.
AI image from dVerse Poets prompt.

Piecemeal for dVerse Poets, July 16, 2024

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Piecemeal

Two lives once pieced together
one day may come apart.
Who knows if time will loosen
that fine mosaic of heart
that happened after melding
two souls into one?
Even mighty continents
slowly come undone.

 

For dVerse Poets Pub. To see other submissions to this prompt go HERE.                                 Mosaic by Alma Thomas

“The Approach” For the Sunday Whirl Wordle, 662

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the pink clouds,
Clouds above
\

The Approach

The edges of my wishes wrap around my mind
over expectations of another kind
curling over “To Do” lists, jerking at their edges,
causing piled paper work to fall off bookshelf ledges,
breathing life into that void—that gap left in the middle
of all those daily tiresome tasks to leave some room to fiddle.
To look at curling banks of clouds that sail across a sky
so vast that I can’t count them, so I don’t even try.

Everything in life need not be a tiresome task.
Every day presents a time when I take time to bask
for at least a moment, or ten or twenty more,
in other natural treasures that lie outside my door.
Life seems to be speeding by, rushing toward its brink—
once stretched out before me, but soon over in a blink.
Ever conscious of those acts that I will leave behind me,
I wonder what life choices in the end will have defined me.

 

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 662 the words are: jerk void breath gap vast blinked curling sky wish wrap edge ever

Judgment Day, For Sunday Whirl Wordle 661, June 30, 2024

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Judgment Day

I bury ominous secrets in a locked box, lose the key.
In their secret grave, I know they await me—
barren bits I’ve buried lest they clutter my life,
knowing, once revealed, they’d cut me like a knife.
Those riddles that most humans choose to drop into a grave,
each like a hibernating beast sleeping in its cave.

No one knows where to hunt for them except for just that one
who carries only memories now that that deed was done
and buried deep. The thud  it made dropping into its nest
its one and final murmur as it joined the teeming rest
 of hidden acts of anger, temper, greed and lust.
Dirty little secrets now turning into dust.

Buried and forgotten until that judgement day
when, perhaps, we all will be called upon to pay
for simply being human, and as humans must,
making bad decisions others might judge unjust.
But our severest critics might better atone
for those buried secrets of the past that are their own.

 

For Wordle 661 the words are: riddle hunt barren bits ominous thud grave keys box drop temper secrets

Painted Poetry

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An ekphrastic poem is one that describes a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. For this exhibition, however, an artist was given a poem and asked to create a painting that reflected the themes of the poem. (To my knowledge, there is no term for this reversal of the ekphrastic process.) My poem about forbidden love is given below and above is the painting it inspired. Painting by Leonardo de Dios Jerónimoque, poem by me.

The show was the  ExpoColoquio Internacional PreTextos del Solsticio held in Tabasco, Mexico, on June 20. I was honored to be a part of it. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but a friend took the photo of the painting that was based on my poem.  Below is its Spanish translation.

“Adventure’s End” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle, June 23, 2024

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Adventure’s End

“Holy smoke!” the young man cries, pulling on the reins,
his heartbeats quickened, sending blood surging through his veins.
This glorious adventure—this quest across the plains,
fording raging waters, swollen by the rains,
seems  to have turned against him as the arrow whizzes by,
shaving off his hat brim just inches from his eye.
He cradles fear, as weeping, he whips the plodding team,
prodding them to frenzy as though within a dream.

The bitter taste of panic, one brief surge of regret,
causes him to finally accept his sobriquet.
When his mother named him Chauncey  which his dad shortened to “Chance,”
it signaled wild adventure and dangerous romance,
and as he set out on his travels to find fortune and fame,
not once did he consider the two sides to his name.
Now he rests forever beside that lonely road
that in his youth he thought would lead him to the mother lode.

 

For Sunday Whirl Wordle 660 the words are: holy plains waters beats travel weeping veins cradle rained taste brief glorious Image from Unsplash.