Category Archives: Poem

Passion Writ in Blood (For Tourmaline’s Halloween Prompt)

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Passion Writ in Blood

The barker at the Carnival was handsome, dark and winning.
One hand signaled passersby, the other hand was spinning
round and round a roulette wheel covered with glassware jars
around them, painted pentagrams of circles around stars.

“Throw a penny in the jar and win your ticket in.
A Mephistophelian experience—a masquerade of sin.
An excruciating onslaught of abominable sights.
Scenes of hair-raising evil and abnormal delights.”

He pitched a hall of horrors with carriages to carry
all the thrill-seekers who might freeze in fear or tarry
too long before each spectacle of blood-curdling fright
set up to fill the need for fear this All Hallows’ night.

One maiden threw her penny and he drew her in with charm,
folding a gentle prodding hand around her virginal arm.
“My adorable mortal darling, please heed well my advice.
The hawks of evil here are set to feed on you like mice.

Get ready for their onslaught—the excruciating shock
of these All Hallows’ creatures who closely watch the clock
as its hands sweep close to midnight and that hour that decrees
that all the creatures of the night may frolic as they please.

A blood-letting bonanza, a nerve-wracking display
will unleash as midnight calls us to the fray.
So climb into my carriage to begin the eerie trip
that will take you through the fun house. I will keep you in my grip.
See these shadowy images careening through my globe?
they say they see your fortune flashing here beneath my robe.

The dagger that I carry seeks a home in thee,
but I have you in my power. I know you will not flee.
You scurry across the meadow with my shadow far above.
I swoop at thee, my pretty, my quarry and my love.

Some passion’s writ in flowers and some passion’s writ in blood.
I feel your life flow out from you and toward me like a flood.
I’ll drink it like the sweetest wine. With it I’ll take thy soul.
To keep it with me always will be my evening’s goal.

Life is a wicked carnival, my dear, now can you see?
When you threw your penny in the jar, the prize you won was me.”

 

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Blood Image from the public domain. This poem, written by me, has been formerly published with a different name.

Things That Go Bump In The Night

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(Click on photos to see larger views.)

Things That Go Bump In The Night

On Samhain tiny goblins compete with tinier witches,
holding out their candy bags with pleading looks and twitches.
Trading in their own names like Sandy, John and Luke,
they go by their pseudonyms of Zombie, Ghoul and Spook.

They only have ’til midnight to cease their operation
of collecting candy, to their great consternation,
for it is at the midnight hour that real ghouls congregate
with witches, ghosts and zombies at the graveyard gate.

Old miners follow flume trails down looking for the gold
that seemed to evade them in the days of old.
Dead school marms lift their rulers looking for a kid to swat,
And zombies execute last haunts before their final rot.

Ghoulies swoop down from the trees and witches brew their brews,
vowing to force feed their glop to any kid they choose.
So best be in your beds before the midnight toll
lest you be absconded with by zombie or by troll!!!!!

Prompts for today are spook, twitch, *Samhain, *flume,  operation, pseudonym,

*Flumes were  wooden troughs elevated on trestles that ran down a mountainside to bring gold down from futher up the mountain.  They were also used in the transportation of logs in the logging industry. We used to hike up the flume trail at summer camp in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

*Our Halloween evolved as a combination of All Souls Day and Samhain, an early Gaelic and Celtic harvest festival which contained many of the elements that evolved into the custom of dressing up in costumes and trick-or-treating.

Rich Folk, Poor Folk

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Rich Folk, Poor Folk

Just because you are loquacious
doesn’t mean that you’re sagacious.
Those who form lucrative pacts
to try to contradict the facts

may wage a campaign national
to promote thoughts irrational,
creating facts out of pure fiction
by making use of fancy diction.

In higher circles, they make jokes
about the gullible simple folks
who hand over all their earnings
forgetting all their earlier learnings

and write their own obituary,
trading futures for cash-and-carry.
Better odds that comets destroy Earth
than that we reclaim their worth,

yet those who bilk and deserve blame, 
wrestle not with guilt and shame.
They buy their Guccis and parade
in decorations for which we’ve paid.

 

 

Prompt words today are obituary, decorate, comet, sagacious, wrestle, circle and irrational. Image by Melissa Walker on Unsplash.

 

Screwing it Up

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Screwing it Up

The superlative woman never winds up in the middle,
for in other people’s marriages she has no urge to fiddle.
Not one fraction of her being is cunning or deceptive.
She belittles no one but is always most receptive

to helping friends with problems, and she always finds an answer
in combatting any problem short of income tax or cancer.
Has she any weakness? I’ve found only one so far.
She is totally hopeless at opening a jar!

Though she tries unscrewing it using all her might,
somehow every lid she meets is just screwed on too tight,
and though she’s never screwed up in anything she did,
it avails her little when unscrewing a lid.

Prompt words for today are superlative, belittle, deceptive, fraction, middle, woman and irrational.

Wild Nights

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Click on Photos to Enlarge.

2001-2022

Wild Nights 

I’m caught up in my surreal dream,
irrational as it might seem,
of tabby cats and wolverines
in leather jackets and distressed jeans,
their animal natures left behind
for culture of a human kind.

Armadillos playing squash,
then coming over for a nosh.
Butterflies on roller skates
hobnobbing with potentates,
wings integral in lifting up
to table level as they sup.

Kangaroos keep up the beat
by drumming with their paws and feet.
Cicadas sound their castanets,
summoning their sobriquets*
as rain joins in with steady drumming,
to accompany their humming.

Varied species get along:
wolf and canary join in song,
the party only breaking up
when I’m awakened by my pup
and the pets of my imagination
succumb once more to sublimation.

2022

*In Mexico, cicadas are nicknamed “Rainbirds” because their noisy clatter announces the imminent arrival of the rainy season.

Prompt words today are: culture, squash, surreal,integral, wolf, tabby cat and irrational. Photos of cat, butterfly, cicada and Zoe biting my ear are all by me. The rest are thanks to Unsplash.

Moonshadowed

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Moonshadows

The rising moon between the hills gives nothing away,
but is a mute observer of the ending of the day.

Shadows moving through the grass eventually lie
quiet as the full moon ascends higher in the sky.

Then night birds weave a lullaby from their bill and croon
as broken clouds join shoulders to pass before the moon.

Space seems to reach its arms out and throw time away
as all of eternity comes to hold its sway.

We take a small vacation to join it in our dreams,
stitched into eternity within creation’s seams.

 

For the Sunday Swirl Wordle 572 the prompt words are: moon between throw time give nothing rising lull space broken mute shadow

Driven

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Driven

If only we had been more patient
when our child’s skills were nascent.
Hadn’t prodded, hadn’t shoved,
that young one we so dearly loved,
had not created goals irrational
local, regional and national,
vying for ribbons and for gold,
pushing for numbers over-bold.

If we had stressed an education,
built a stabler foundation,
put less zhuzh into her clothes
and more of it in what she knows,
the cyberbullies who mocked her fall
would have had no power at all,
to instigate the wounded pride
that led her to her suicide.
But as it is, it was our sin
that did our lovely daughter in.

 

Prompt words are ribbon, zhuzh, numbers, nascent,foundation,cyberbullying and irrational. Image by Kirklai on Unsplash.

Culinary Differences (Coping with an Artistic Palate)

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Culinary Differences
(Coping with an Artistic Palate)

I’ll admit that I’m perplexed
for my spouse is sorely vexed
because he finds my menus bland
and untouched by artistic hand.

He finds my soup so pale and thin, it
needs a bit of color in it,
so I asked him how to do
more pleasing palettes for my stew.

He painted me a portrait of
a consommé he said he’d love
with so many veggies in it
and a ruby wine to thin it.

He’d like to wrap his mouth around
colors that are more profound.
to the point where I’m perplexed
over what I should cook next.

My color combination tends
towards browns and whites of various blends. 
Might I aspire to red and yellow,
with pickled beets in lemon Jell-o?

He says my taste in food is static
whereas his is more erratic.
But, tired of his bitch and moan,
perhaps I’ll let him cook his own.

Alternate ending:  (don’t read this one, Sam)

He suggests a novel dish
of tomato aspic around fish?
The thought of it makes my lips pucker.
Perhaps I’ll just divorce the -ucker!!!

 

Prompts today are red and yellow, pickle, perplexed, aspire, mouth, portrait and erratic. All of the images are from Unsplash.

Wallpaper for Flashback Friday, Sept. 30, 2022

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When Fandango asked us to reblog a blog from the past, I had over 9,000 to choose from, and for some reason I chose this one.

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday, we are to repost a blog from the past.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

DSC09880

Wallpaper

Clinging to the wall
like an old wallpaper scrap
are the words
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you.

Their refrain slides up and down
the musical scale—
an old country tune,
plaintive and clear.

Why do I want you?

The first time I met you,
there was something about the curl of your hair.
Your eyes, so familiar­—puzzled, as though
you, too, were trying to remember.

After that, it was
the set of your shoulders—
the arm stretched between your seat and mine
with your hand on the back of my seat.

All of your restraint an aphrodesiac.

The truth is
that I pined
for two days after I left,
then went on with my life.

Still, that scrap
of wanting
comes up early in the morning
as I waken

and my mind walks,
looking for someone to pin it to,
and every…

View original post 10 more words

Detente in the Animal Kingdom

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Detente in the Animal Kingdom

The queen of hippopatamuses feels a bit perplexed
for she crossed the hyenas and now she has been hexed.
They’ve jinxed her favorite swimming hole so she has to swim
in a muddy tiny pond with crocs around the rim.

When she lumbers from the pond to have her usual binge
on grass, her favorite supper, she feels a little twinge.
It seems like in the puddle where she most recently sat,
waddling through the bottom mud, dragging all her fat,

she must have nudged a bit too close to a crocodile
and snagged a bit of hippo fat on his croco-smile.
He’s swinging there behind her, his tooth hooked on her tush,
creating  a great disarray while crashing through the bush.

With her competing waddle, they’re an ecological threat,
destroying all the underbrush as they thrash and vet.
How will they resolve this problem that they cause?
First it’s necessary that they cool down and pause

to make peace with the hyenas so they can use their claws
to disentangle hippo skin from the croc’s sharp jaws,
thus restoring order and reinstating peace
so all this inter-species angst finally will cease!!!

Prompt words today are jinx, swing, perplexed,disarray, compete, twinge and hippopatamus. Image by J. Anders on Unsplash.