Category Archives: Poem

My First Poem Ever

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I have been going through three big cartons that among them contain every letter anyone has ever written to me in my life and even a number of my own that my mother saved as I was traveling around the world in my younger wilder years.  In the very bottom of one box, I found  a card I made for my mother when I was six years old with the very first poem I ever wrote on it.  It’s pretty beaten up but Forgottenman insists I should share it here.  I’m including photos of the different pages. The cover is a doily with three dimensional flowers on it but consider that it has been rattling around in my mother’s top junk drawer or in a box with a ton of other paper things for 69 years, so its condition reflects this.  Here it is. Click on each photo to enlarge and read the poem: 

What is the very earliest example of your writing? Wanna share with us? If so, please link in comments below:

Bad Holiday Attitudes

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I unfortunately didn’t take photos of most of the Christmas ornament devastation described in the below poem, except for the one unfortunate angel found in the yard today, so I will make do with  more of today’s latest.  The pieces of the cushion shown , now collected, were spread over the entire lawn and patio. My day’s exercise was collecting them all and stuffing them back into their cushion, then throwing it away. Luckily the garbage had not been collected so I unstuffed a bit for photo purposes. She also chewed the ties off most of the chair cushions in the garden and the corner off the cushion for the lounge chair.The bedroom duvet is my newest. This is a very recent thing, destroying bedding. Trying to decide what to do. To be fair to Coco, I think most of this devastation is created by Zoe. Pasiano says it is because she’s the smallest and trying to prove her moxie. In that case, she has succeeded.

Bad Holiday Attitudes

My energetic puppies are meddlesome at best.
They seek to alter their milieu with destructive zest.
They create a fizzy ambience on patio and lawn
by spreading lawn chair cushion stuffing all hither and yon.

They parade my Christmas banner throughout my lower yard,
sowing its bits and shreds between the onions and the chard.
No matter at what altitude we hang the decorations,
they seem able to reach them to appease their mastications.

They shred what ornaments they find on tabletop and trees.
climbing up and leaping at whatever they can seize.
A dismembered Santa Claus lies nestled in the hay
where once slept baby Jesus, who’s securely tucked away

beneath the new poinsettia, sadly unidentifiable.
His restoration is, I fear, now totally unviable.
So, unless my naughty canine friends speed up their maturations,
Next year I think that I’ll attempt way fewer decorations.

Prompt words today are fizzy, meddlesome, altitude, milieu, onion and banner.

Costume Check: The Sunday Whirl Wordle #588

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Costume Check

Let me stand here for a moment hidden in the shade,
for my tank top strap is broken right by my shoulder blade.
I’ll shuffle off to mend it when the band starts up again,
but will stand here nearly silent as a statue until then.

My arms are wrapped around me, holding things in place,
for with one side that’s set free, I’m not ready to face
the folks up in the grandstand staring down at me.
Their half-time entertainment I do not want to be!

I’m a living manifestation of how things fall apart,
for the garment that once hugged my frame now hangs below my heart.
The breeze blows yellow pollen downward from the trees
to coat my arms and shoulders and makes me want to sneeze.

Oh that I’d brought the handy shawl Mom thought that I should bring,
I’d now be in the powder room, fixing everything.
Instead, I stand here cross-armed wishing eyes could be averted
so their perusals of my chest could thereby be diverted.

Prompts for The Sunday Whirl Wordle are: shoulder powdery wraps broken shuffle blade stand moment again nearly silence. Image by Racool on Freepix.

Gossip Girl

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Gossip Girl

She always shilly-shallies, so
is extraordinarily slow.
Shopping takes her for forever
for she never ever ever
just does what she has come to do
without a bit of gossip, too.
In other words, it’s cash and tarry
for her instead of cash and carry.

Prompt words are shilly-shally, slow, ordinarily, gossip and forever. 

Fashion Reveal

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Fashion Reveal

Though once judged diabolical , with no rhyme nor reason,
my acts once labeled as commitments of the highest treason,
I have at last been vindicated, judgements now reversed
and I can hold my head up high—an action I’ve rehearsed.

Though once I cowered in my room, at the limits of my sanity,
waiting for the world’s conversion from  its rude inanity,
I’m ready to come out again now all the world agrees
that it is cool to wear your jeans when ripped out at the knees.

Shredded around the ankles, slashed along the thighs,
butt cheeks half revealed to any passing viewer’s eyes.
What once I was reviled for, when down on my luck,
is the coolest fashion now that intact Levis suck.

Prompt words for the day are limit, vindicated, room, diabolic, ready and high. Image by Tyler Nix on Unsplash.

Bad Actor

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Bad Actor

Why are you now limping? Dish me out the dirt.
Are you a malingerer or are you really hurt?
It seems as though you are in pain, especially since
each step you take is punctuated  by a little wince.

Feigning discomfort’s sinful—neither savvy nor a notion,
and this you should consider if you’re seeking a promotion.
You must ban such actions and revise your plans anew
to remain a member of my retinue.

Prompt words today are punctuate, malinger, sinful, savvy, ban and promotion.

Tough Girl

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Tough Girl

She’s a diamond in the rough,
shiny, beautiful and tough.
Not one to be steered by force,
she’ll decide her lifetime’s course.
Not likely to be shamed or battered,
no way will her dreams be shattered.
She will boggle macho men,
for she won’t play the cackling hen.
Won’t be distracted from her goal
of what she feels to be her role.
Be just what she wants to be,
undeflected by any “he.”

Prompts today are boggle, shattered, distracted, cackle, decide and diamond. Image by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash.

New Years Eve: Wordle 586

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New Years Eve

Scraps of mindless party chatter
whispered behind backs don’t matter.
Clink of glasses, passed hors d’ouvres,
mastering those party nerves.

Which old boyfriend is a rat?
Which college roommate got so fat?
How have you handled life so far?
What new degree? What brand of car?

Be you in hut or stately castle,
lift your glass or raise the wassail.
Quit petty talk and ribald laughter
and in the silence that comes after,

cash in on the quietude,
of this less ribald interlude
to give your thanks for what has passed
and pledge your petty gripes won’t last!

For Wordle 586 The Sunday Whirl the prompt word are: back chatter laughs glasses champ scrap cash rat handle master pass castle

Spinning Tales

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When I talkied about my laptop computers not lasting much longer than five years, Martha Kennedy commented “Same here. All one (of mine) does is play YouTube I project on my TV monitor for riding the Bike to Nowhere.”  When I commented that I’d like to steal, with attribution, that phrase “Bike to Nowhere” and write a poem about it, she generously agreed, so here it is:

Spinning Tales

As I go spinning on the bike to nowhere,
imagination knows no bounds.
Earlier adventures catch up to me,
jump on the handlebars and  hitch a ride.

Riding the highway shoulders
north and south and east—
gravel corridors with their destinations
too far away to ever be reached.

Lunch in a brown paper bag,
top twisted in the bike’s basket.
My tan Hiawatha,
my best friend’s blue Schwinn.

Passed up by boys
with fishing rods
fastened to rear fenders,
somewhere to go revealed
by their hurry to get there.

Our kick stands
useless in the soft dirt,
our bikes lie toppled over
beside us.

As we lie flat-backed in the grass
beside the North Dam,
we hear them cast their lines, again and again,
into the fruitless water.

My ham salad, her peanut butter,
potato chips in a twist-tie baggie—
all I remember of earlier rides
almost lost to memory.

 

 

Life Experience, for dVerse Poets

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Life Experience

A soul need not be in the know
to boldly come and boldly go.
You’re likely not to move an inch
if you are prone to falter  and to flinch 
because you fear you lack the knowledge
earned by those who’ve gone to college,

 

For dVerse Quadrille Challenge: Bold

You can find the dVerse Poets Pub prompt HERE.