Category Archives: Poem

“Stirring the Pot” for FOWC

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Stirring the Pot

Chunks and grains swirl round and round. They form a muddy mass.
I keep my paddle churning them as I turn on the gas.
As all the chunks and  bits melt down, the volume now decreases.
I watch the whole mess carefully. My vigilance increases.
I see it all congealing—an oily inky sludge
that after lengthy stirring finally turns to fudge!
This horrid, bubbling, lumpy goo that appeared so pernicious,
in the end turns into something creamy, rich, delicious.

For FOWC the prompt is “Decrease.”

Baby’s First Soda Pop for “Lets Hit Rewind” for July 28.

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Couldn’t resist rerunning this July 28, 2016 blog for the Rewind prompt:

Version 2

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Baby’s First Soda Pop

When finally a kid is poppable,
once the bottle is untoppable,
the overflow may be unstoppable.
It’s fortunate the floor is moppable!

Care-less for dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge

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Care-less

Lately I don’t give a thought to what I’m going to wear,
and I’ve let my hair grow down to my derriere.
No longer do the men I meet ever stop to stare,
but it doesn’t bother me. I simply do not care.


The dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt today is “Care.” To see other responses to the prompt, go HERE. Image created with AI.

“Panic” for Take A Look Back.

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The prompt for “Take a Look Bacj” is to look back at what I published on this day, July 27, on an earlier year in my blog. I chose this poem published in 2016:. True now as then.

1958

Panic!!!

When I was younger and a rover,
the things I should have panicked over
never seemed to stick to me.
I guess that’s part of being free.

But now with bigger guns and Isis,
we all feel continual crisis.
Though it’s true, I must confess,
I overlook the world’s grand mess

and concentrate on creaking knees
and where I left my ring of  keys.
As I get older, I would guess,
I’ll feel more panic over less.

“Successful Crossing” For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 767

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Successful Crossing

I crossed the wilds, my staff in hand,
the first to conquerl this wild land.
My hood in place to combat the sun,
I would not stop until I’d done
the task I’d set to cross this space
that had been the burial place
of so many, from first to last,
who had found their lot was cast
as they had tried, only to find
the task to be a hopeless grind:
trails split by crevasses deep and wide,
cliff ledges with no room to slide
back to cliff, from right to left
across the mountain’s mighty cleft.
As said before, so many failed––
died in the act, or merely bailed.
Only I succeeded, by machination
to cross in my imagination.

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 767 the prompt words are: wild cross left staff last split burial grind space land room hood

The Wall, for Crimsons Creative Challenge

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The Wall

I cannot follow
where these lost parts of me go––
these thoughts, wishes,
aspirations
that I surrender to the wall.

It is not by choice, you know,
that I sit here facing what
has  been leached out of my life.

I go on living what life I can,
knowing that in time
all of me will finally
flow into the wall.

So much of what has kept me engaged in life
has already  gone into that gray world
where I cannot yet follow.
I’ve lost so much ambition to it—
and hope and curiosity.

Now I sit here, facing it,
acknowledging my failure
as well as the wall’s exclusivity.
Only my shadow
cast against it
reminds me that
somewhere behind me
there is a sun.

For  Crimsons Creative Challenge

“When I Was Young and Limber” for Thursday Inspiration

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Watching kids in the playground

When I was young and limber and given to wild rambles,
I came home from my wanderings complete with burrs and brambles.
I shed them on the carpets, I shared them via towels.
Never taking credit for the curses, shrieks and howls.
I thought my lovely meanderings among the fields and ditches
were worth the sacrifice of things brought in on my britches.

For Thursday Inspiration, the prompt is “Young.”

“Punished” for Rewind

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Punished

 

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Punished

There is something one can do with anger—
some sign that can be recognized
and answered—
a scab to be picked,
a mystery that leaves clues.

The only punishment
impossible to rectify
is
silence.

“Rewind” asks that we. republish a post from a past year that was published on the same day of the month. In this case, July 23. This poem was one I published on this date ten years ago.

Love in a Warm Climate for RDP

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Love in a Warm Climate:  Bali/Mexico

Why did we think that love would be any easier in a warm climate?
Shed of clothes in Bali, we didn’t shed our different skins.
You were prickly as a rambutan,
while I slipped in and out of moods
like one directed
by a maestro.

You once said you couldn’t write when you were happy,
and when you didn’t write for years with me,
you were unhappy in your happiness.

All the planets of your family were pulled by the gravity of your moods.
Could we break the fatal pull beneath the Southern Cross?
Pulled back into love by a climate Equatorial?

We tried again, but once there,
you said you couldn’t stay in Mexico for three days,
let alone a year,
and lobbied for our ejection from this paradise.

Then one week later,
you asked me how I knew
that this was what we were supposed to do,
and you won the argument I never thought I’d let you win.
We bought a house in Mexico.

Perhaps we both thought we could warm our hearts once more
to find that hot love that had fueled our beginning,
and I am left to wonder how our story might have ended
if you had lived to try with me––

love in a warm climate.

The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is “Eject.”

Pleasure/Pain for dVerse Poets

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This is the dress made for me by my sister, Betty Jo, in 1957 for the parade celebrating our town’s founding fifty years before. The theme was “fairytales” and you have probably already guessed that I was Little Bo Peep.

Our dVerse  Poets assignment today was: Now write a list poem that begins ‘These I have loved:…’ of the everyday things that are important or precious to you. Be specific, picking out tiny details, and don’t stop until you get to the bottom of the page.Finish with ‘All these have been my loves’. Leave yourself time to refine your draft.
Here is my answer to this prompt:

Pleasure/Pain

These I have loved:

Tastes abandoned, former loves,
outgrown pleasures, bleached white gloves
worn for church or the senior prom,
fresh cherry pies cooked by my mom
from cherries pitted by our juice-stained fingers.
How memory of both labor and reward still lingers.

The cold bite of a walk-in freezer on a sweltering summer’s day.
The smell of sweet clover and itch of hay.
The press of leather constricting toes in my first pair of three-inch heels.
The squeak of rusted bike chains and the crunch of wheels
on gravel roads in our small prairie town,
the pelt of hailstones coming down
deafening on the metal of our brand new ride
with myself and sister sealed, terrorized, inside.

Hurtling across the street to the last school bell’s pealing.
Scabs peeled from skinned knees too slow in their healing.
The squeeze of painful memories of love gone wrong,
resurrected by the lyrics of a song.
Placing flowers on a sister’s grave,
remembering the past gifts that she gave:
that tiny dress that she once made
for me to wear in the parade

Recalling the pleasure and then afterwards, the pain
of the swell of memories the heart no longer can contain.
Grandma’s crazy quilt, of family clothing scraps stitched thin and wide,
left abandoned on the bed wherein my sister died.
Homes left to the lives of others, families left for other lives,
memories like bees swarming to other hives,
memories crumbling in boxes stored on shelves,
these bygone relics of our other selves.

All these have been my loves.

And this is that same dress, 69 years later, brought to me by my niece Cintra when we met in Peoria, AZ a few months ago. She had found it in her mother Betty’s things when she passed away a few years ago.  More mingled pleasure and pain.