Category Archives: Poem

Working off Calories

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Working off Calories

Once I’ve xertzed down my dessert and licked clean my plate,
I subject my coffee to a similar fate.
And exhausting my sugar and caffeine allowance,
I nonetheless refuse to state my avowance,
for I cannot quit cold either sugar or coffee—
lattes or chocolate or cupcakes or toffee.
I won’t make a pact to take that big leap
to make empty promises that I can’t keep.
I’m suffused with the shame of these terrible truths:
I’m addicted to donuts and adore Baby Ruths.
Then gulps of coffee between every bite
keep me awake, I admit, every night
which means countless trips from my bed to the shelf
where I keep the means for indulging myself!
And it’s true that I scarf down more delectable treats,
but in my efforts to gather more treats,
I get most of my exercise going and coming,
getting in steps  on the way to my yumming.

 

I Prompt words are cold, pact, xertz, suffuse, allowance and empty. Image by Isumi Daizy on Unsplash.

Things My Mother Taught Me

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Things My Mother Taught Me

I’ve used you as a paradigm of what I want to be,
and for those years I had a child, raised her as you raised me.
Used your fine discernment in establishing the rules. 
Taught her to respect herself and not to suffer fools. 
Issued all the necessary caveats and warnings,
tucked her into bed at night and rousted her most mornings. 
Help her when she needed it and then I let her be, 
for the truest gift you give a child is when you set her free.

Prompt words are caveat, paradigm, necessity and discernment.

 

Nipped Bud! For Prompts and NaPoWriMo, Apr 13, 2023

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A Flowery Metaphoric Rejection on a Bad Cold Day

When it comes to heroes, I prefer mine picaresque–
not one that clouds his meanings in terms more picturesque.

“We could make some upbeat music?” Your intent I can’t detect,
so I must entreat you, try to use words more direct.

All my friends have warned me you’re desirous of my hand,
but you seem to seek my membership in some sort of band.

I, too, can speak in metaphors, admiddedly not choral,
for instead of musical, my imagery is floral.

I cannot speak concisely for I have ad awful code.
But as to our conjoining,? Gotta snip it in the node!

 

(Disclaimer: I had written this all in lingo that sounded like a bad cold, but it seemed indecipherable, so I reverted to just using it in the last two lines.)

Prompts today are upbeat, picturesque, direct, entreat, node and membership.
Also, For NaPoWriMo 13

Intimations of Mortality

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Intimations of Mortality

Though I am still active, for sure I’m not my best.
Whereas once I boogied, now I find I’d rather rest.
I know I’m winding down for sure but I feel I must
achieve those things I said I’d do before I bite the dust.
While I’m waiting to be cancelled, I’ve agreed that I’ll  be wise.
My finale bears no stigma, for everybody dies.

 

Prompt words today are  wise, agree, finale, stigma, active and cancelled.

And for NaPoWriMo

Regimen

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Regimin

I eat vegetables, berries and seeds to quell my hunger,
for I gotta mind my gullet. I’m not getting any younger!
I must nullify the ills of a life of over-eating
if I wanna dull the din of a heart that’s over-beating.

Jane Fonda is my idol. Can you see the pecs on me?
I exercise each morning, and my diet’s sugar-free.
I’m gonna live forever ’cause I jog and bike and run.
My one and only problem is, I never have no fun!

Words of the day are gullet, nullify, idol, din, seed and free. Image by Malik Skydsgaard on Unsplash. 

Bossing Words Around

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Bossing Words Around

Poems used be as easy as falling off a log,
but I get more rickety with every single blog.
Sure, there is a wellspring of thoughts within my head,
but there’s a bit of work involved before those thoughts get read.
Sometimes they disband and fall apart before they’re pieced,
and no one ever sees these poems that end up as deceased.
So though words are my idols, whether earthy or dramatic,
I must say dealing with them is sometimes most traumatic.
If only words would step in line in meaning and in rhyme,
perhaps I would achieve my goal every single time!

Today’s prompts are log, rickety, idol, wellspring, dramatic, and disbanded.

Maybe also for NaPoWriMo?

I had a very traumatic day, actually, and when I came to the end of it and finally had time to write this poem, I found that Forgottenman had totally set up all the prompt links for me, including for NaPoWriMo.  This for me is sweeter than chocolates or flowers!  And that is the reason why I’m even posting a poem today.  oxoxox to him.

Fly-Bye on the Day of the Dead

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Fly-Bye on the Day of the Dead

That fly that chose to falter
for a minute on the altar
I’d constructed for my lover
should have made the choice to hover.

The worst choice of all
was to choose to land and crawl
attracting my attention
to a means of his detention.

Namely, to kill the squatter
with a switch of my fly swatter.
Though he was silent ever after,
no more soaring floor and rafter,

it was I who did the gasping,
for the bottle he was clasping
of my mourned-ones favorite drink
soared out to shatter in the sink.

Thus in the battle between darter
and me, he was the martyr
while I strained my funny bone
accepting actions to atone

by cleaning glass shards from the table
and all places I was able
to reach within the kitchen
without grumbling and bitchin’.

Then I quickly made a trip
to buy a sticky strip
so future flies would be defeated
and my actions not repeated.

 

Prompts For the Sunday Swirl Wordle 600
are: bones gasping strip switch shatters battle fly altar martyr bottle crawl falter

Also for NaPoWriMo

Info Overload

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Info Overload

Contemporary culture is one I dread to contemplate—
much more prone to outcry than to logical debate.
Folks bury fact with fiction misleading and irrelevant,
quelling truth and logic in favor of their rave and rant.

Who can deal with all the various sorts of messaging,
let alone absorb events rarely less than harrowing?
Lately my delete button has become my dearest friend
as I limit messages mostly to ones I send!!!

 

Prompts today are bury, outcry, contemporary, contemplate, absorb and irrelevant.

Bucket List

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Bucket List

I have learned it is not wise
to reveal to other eyes
one’s bucket list lest they despise
those things that you
have chose to do
that they eschew.
Their judgement  might be too severe
for what you’ve yearned for, year on year—
to saddle up a wild deer
and ride for miles through his world,
fearing not that you’ll be hurled
to die out in the wild, not curled
within your room of board and nail
with loved ones there to hear you wail,
wanting to help, to no avail.

Or, to choose a pilot that you trust
to carry you to some high gust
that will waft you, chuteless, down to dust.
Do not dismay, oh friends of mine.
Do not doubt and do not pine
because I’ve chosen to decline
that death bed pressed and white and clean
with prolongation by machine
devoid of beauties of the scene
of forest, ocean, mountain, beach—
those places that by choice I’ll reach
more quickly in that final breach.
Know that the wildness of their lending
creates for me less painful  wending
toward my journey’s final ending.

 

For NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 7, we are to write a list poem…or an anti-list poem. That certainly widens the field!!!

I”m combining this prompt with my usual poem that makes use of prompts from six different  blogs. The prompts are linked to their source. Today they are: wise, dismay, bucket, severe, trust and nails.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Speaking in Tongues: NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 6,

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Our assignment was to pick a poem in a foreign language we didn’t know and to write a poem saying what we think it means.  I have done this twice for NaPoWriMo in the past 13 years so I’m going to say turnabout is fair play and do a reblog.  My excuse is that I have literally been on the phone, internet and emails for 12 hours trying to do my taxes… dealing with banks in U.S and mexico, Charles Schwab, my investment people and my sister.  Going crazy!!! A friend just pointed out I hadn’t don’t NaPoWriMo for the first time yesterday and today. Mea Culpa.  I’ve been distracted.  So, here are the first two stanzas of my poem “guessing” what the original poem in Dutch might have been saying: 

Messages in Bottles

Messages they send out to the world in bottles
(those they think up as they stir their morning cups of chocolate)
—beware their dangers.
These messengers have hands that can slap you awake,
then abandon you as they return to the problems of the privileged rich.These parasites, dosed with their vitamin B, ride roughshod over their hosts.They linger in their beautiful dreams of percentages,
profit on the hunger of the poor.
They see not your skeletons when they look in the mirror.
They do not see the hearts they have broken.
Once, surrounded by the stricken, they put their fingers in their ears
and pretended they were evangelists to the poor.
Then, their illusions shattered by going door-to-door, they slammed doors shut again.

And here is the link to the rest of my poem as well as the original poem and its real translation: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/04/21/speaking-in-tongues-napowwrimo-2020-day-21/

 

Reblogged For NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 6