Category Archives: Poem

Musical Intercession

6 Replies

Musical Intercession

If I delete the news from home and flip all my attention
to aspects of the world escaping major media’s mention—
consign my concentration to birdsong and the tide
that washes out world sorrows that I bear inside
and fills me with the opposite of what the news exports—
that awareness of perfection that is what nature reports—
my life becomes more peaceful as my mind is set at ease
by nature’s lullaby sung to the music of the bees.

 

Prompts today are delete, home, flip, consign, opposite, birdsong.

Kiss and Tell

24 Replies
IMG_3601

                   “How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.” – Jane Austen

Kiss and Tell

How did you make your way into my heart?
Quick, tell the answer before we next part.
Come into my comfort, then comfort me back.
The way of the pair beats the way of the pack.
Reasons are given for all that we do—
For the ways that we love and the ways that we woo.
Approving my actions in loving you is
What wins you my love and wins you this kiss.
We swear to each other that we will be true
Like all the lovers in storybooks do.

Like brides and their bridegrooms and lieges and kings,
We shall swear our obeisance and seal it with rings.
What others have done is what we will do.
Approving tradition will make one of two.
For the rest of our lives, if they revile and chide us,
Reason’s just one of the things that will guide us.
The love we keep strong will keep us together.
Come be my steed, and I’ll be thy tether.
Quick, take my hand and give me thy pledge.
How we’ll kiss in the meadow and roll in the sedge.

For dVerse Poets
This is actually a poem I wrote 8 years ago, inspired by a line of Jane Austen’s. Read the first word in each of my lines to see her line, first forward and then backwards.

and HERE is the prompt, if you’d like to kiss and tell yourself.

A Cautionary Tale

3 Replies

A Cautionary Tale

I’m held spellbound by your plan. It is ingenious for sure.
You might be a benefactor and your motives may be pure,
but still you are a diplomat and know your way around
all of the maneuverings that daily may be found

in politics and daily life and so I wonder why
the minute that I said I’d sell, you made an offer to buy.
Is it, as you say, because you know I need the cash,
or are your motives otherwise and have I been too rash

in leaping at your offer? Perhaps I’ll look around
and see if there’s a better deal waiting to be found.
Conspiracies are floating ’round. I hear there is an air full.
In politics and real estate, you cannot be too careful.

 

Prompt words today are spellbound, why, benefactor, ingenious, diplomatic. Image by Maria Lin Kim Luhn on Unsplash

Flipped

12 Replies

Flipped

Do you feel a bit off-kilter,
like your life has lost its filter,
friends are either crass or boring,
same old stories leave you snoring,
news from north, east, west and south
has you foaming at the mouth?

What politicians have to say
more like folklore every day?
The world more than you can abide
now that our heroes all have died?
How do you sift the lies from fact—
determine how you should react?

Ladies and gents, I have to say
that I do not know the way
to save a world that’s in a pickle.
Best that we just toss a nickel
and see what way the flipped coin goes.
Heads are yesses, tails are noes!!!!

Prompt words today are filter, boring, foaming, react, folklore and lady. Image from Unsplash.

Musical Arrangement: FOTD, Feb 17, 2023

4 Replies

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Surprise Ending

3 Replies

Surprise Ending

When friendship flares to romance with a speed that is flammiferous,,
what’s thought to be just kinship might turn out to be splendiferous.

. . . . and you must find it ironic
that regard you thought platonic
(more a brother or a cousin)
now brings roses by the dozen
as a symbol of affection
that somehow escaped detection
all those years you were “just” friends,
and that is how your story ends.

Loves that come about from friendings
are the happiest of endings!!!

 

Prompts today are ironic, symbol, romance, kinship, dozen, flammiferous. Image by Nick Karvounis on Unsplash.

Absent Hearted, Feb 14, 2023

4 Replies

Absent Hearted

On the shirt tails of Christmas and the dregs of New Year’s Eve,
comes a celebration only the most naive
dare to overlook and refuse to celebrate
by offering a valentine and/or a special date
with sentimental offerings—a heart-shaped box of candy.
(Jewelry or even a small bouquet is dandy.)

I advise you take my wise advice and that you beware.
If you do not mind me and sit there in your chair
viewing reruns on TV and do not heed my warning,
take me at my word. You will be punished in the morning.
Your breakfast will be cold.  Also, your spouse’s shoulder
will, without a doubt, be forty degrees colder!

Prompt words today are celebrate, punish, dregs, sentimental, chair.  Images all from Unsplash.

Creative Process

3 Replies

Creative Process

With 4/5ths of my life now in the past,
I am trying to pen some thoughts that will last.
I tackle the prompt words and as they pop by,
off of the screen and into my eye,
they proceed past the junction of optic nerve and brain,
link couplings and thereby become a word train.

As they leave my brain and into my fingers,
almost in seconds, not one of them lingers.
They rush past my fingers and onto the screen
where they’re determined to finally be seen.
Was I their author? Don’t be absurd.
This poem was merely writ by the word!!!

Prompts today are tackle, high, junction, past,  (Two fewer than usual, as two of the prompts had not been posted by the time I started writing this.) Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash

Re-Generation, Wordle 592

8 Replies

Re-Generation

Once I realized culture owned me, still I had no will to change,
for alternate modes of living are so hard to arrange.
Yet I set out to mold me to be different from the crowd
and I have done so well at it that I admit I’m proud.

First I got a nose ring and then I got tattooed.
I push my way up to the front where formerly I queued.
Whereas once I used the phrase that “You’re so very very,”
I finally invested in the Urban Dictionary.

So while I was once “with it,” now finally I’m so “dope,”
that this former Boomer will soon be Gen Z, I hope.
I regret all those years when I pressed front seams in my jeans,
but now that I have shredded them, I feel I’m in my teens.

Now that I’m a “meme”ing master and Snap Chat is a snap,
I’m expert in my dissing and I’ve reversed my cap.
Now that I have changed so much,  I feel I’m at my best
in becoming different exactly like the rest!!

 

For the Sunday Whirl 592 the prompt words are: culture realized owned first proud change me here dictionary

 

Ending: Feb 12, 2023

13 Replies

Ending

You offer reassurances and try to take my hand
as we journey homeward, shuffling through the sand.
Your words imply condolence, but they are not sincere.
Your thoughts I know are far away, although you hover near.

I consign our love to memory, safe and tightly curled,
for I know your next love waits for you out there in the world.
I no longer seek your favor and would rather you depart.
I do not crave your presence when I do not have your heart.

 

Prompt words today are: sand, shuffle, condolences, imply, favor.