Category Archives: Poem

Reblog: “Entrapment” Poem from 2017 and New Podcast Commentary

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Entrapment

The city lights are tempting–each theater and store,
but when my outer life is rich, my inner life’s a bore.
Do I want to create my life or should it create me?
And which is which?  I do not know. Which helps me most to be?
I guess I need a balance, but each choice is a trap.
While I think it over, perhaps I’ll have a nap.
Sometimes the truth is found in dreams. Perhaps that will work now.
But once the “what” occurs to me, I’ll have to dream the “how.”
I dream empty buildings and abandoned avenues,
stores filled with pretty dresses, refrigerators, shoes.
Wind through broken windows and grass through broken walks.
All those empty radios where no one ever talks.
While somewhere in the country, away from smog and fumes
those busy cities of the past are sealed away in rooms
writing morning pages and playing with their dogs,
recording things they used to do in their daily blogs.
If I don’t join the city, if I choose to be free,
perhaps the busy city will choose to come join me!

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I don’t recall who sent me this podcast, or how. Could it be AI? If you’d like you can listen to it here:

(Please let me know if this podcast link doesn’t work. I’ve been wrestling with it for hours now!)

I Used to Eat Red, for dVerse Poets “Color” Challenge

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                                                                  I Used to Eat Red

daily life color108 (1)My sister Patti and I, posed by my older sister Betty.  Those are “the” cherry trees behind us. The fact that we were wearing dresses suggests we were just home from Sunday school and church, our souls bleached as white as our shoes and socks!

                                                   I Used to Eat Red

 I used to eat red
from backyard cherry trees,
weave yellow dandelions
into cowgirl ropes
to lariat my Cheyenne uncle.

I once watched dull writhing gold
snatched from a haystack by its tail,
held by a work boot
and stilled by the pitchfork of my dad
who cut me rattles while I didn’t watch.

I felt white muslin bleached into my soul
on Sunday mornings in a hard rear pew,
God in my pinafore pocket
with a picture of Jesus
won from memorizing psalms.

But it was black I heard at midnight from my upstairs window––
the low of cattle from the stock pens
on the other side of town––
the long and lonely whine of diesels on the road
to the furthest countries of my mind.

Where I would walk
burnt sienna pathways
to hear green birds sing a jungle song,
gray gulls call an ocean song,
peacocks cry the moon

until I woke to shade-sliced yellow,
mourning doves still crooning midnight songs of Persia
as I heard morning
whistled from a meadowlark
half a block away.

And then,
my white soul in my shorts pocket,
plunging down the stairs to my backyard,
I used to eat red,
pick dandelions yellow.

 This is a reworking of a poem from my book Prairie Moths  for dVerse Poets

“Gasping for Air” For The Sunday Whirl

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Gasping for Air

No small potatoes are these dreams
that serve to rip apart the seams
of blessed sleep that drifts my mind
down roadways of a gentler kind.
Dread closes off my throat in fright
that I will not survive this night.
Prickles of fear cause neck to seize.
I run outside, seeking a breeze
to fill my lungs pinched off by fear
that my death is growing near,
shifting those stories in my head
to twisted tales of breathless dread.
I shift to hammock and cooler air,
breath coming easier out there,
my glassy eyes opening to
that stillness that comes into view.
Black night replacing former views
that now my memory eschews.

For The Sunday Whirl 761 the word prompts are:
runner potatoes road drifting twisted pinch glassy prickled neck shifted still

Reluctant Guest for SOCS

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Reluctant Guest

It was infatuation. He was there at my behest,
and though I hoped for more, he proved to be a slippery guest.
When I reached out for him and he escaped my grasp,
I improvised a harness out of scarf and belt and clasp.

Before you form ideas about my brashness in this tryst,
imagining the lengths that I might go to to be kissed,
I fear that you misunderstand the situation. Maybe,
I did not make it clear that I was bathing sis’s baby!

 

The Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “guest.”

Christmas Rituals for dVerse Poets

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Christmas Rituals

Why do we go to the trouble to do it?
Cut down the Yule tree and dig out the light strings?
Untangle extension cords ’till they’re all lit.
Set up the nativity: shepherds and kings,
then Mary and Joseph and their holy son.
Arrange all the tinsel and then place the star––
(once the balls are all hung and you’re nearly done)
––on the tree.if anyone can reach that far!
Then turn out the room lights and bask in the glow.
On the couch, the family all in a row,
then turn on the music, and you’ll surely know!

For dVerse Poets, the prompt was to write an “Eleventh Power” poem:I. Eleventh Power is an invented stanzaic form introduced by Christina Jussaume who requests the subject be uplifting. The elements of the Eleventh Power are:
––stanzaic, written in any number of 11 line stanzas.
––syllabic, 11 syllables each, per line.
––rhymed, rhyme scheme:   abababccddd or ababababccc.

Oops.. just realized I didn’t do abababab but instead did abab cdcd. Mia culpa!

 

 

“Immortality” for The Three Things Challenge

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Immortality

In no way am I ready for meeting the Grim Reaper.
If it were up to me, I’d rather he be a Grim Creeper.
In all ways, I repel the thought that he’s advancing fast,
for when it comes to living, I wish that it would last.
In short, I’m not in readiness but rather in denial,
for I’m simply not in shape to walk that final mile.
I’ve dug my heels in. I’m not ready for that journey in the sky.
I’m going to go on living. I’m not ever going to die!!!

For the Three Things Challenge the prompt words were: REPEL READINESS REAPER

(When we had my sister’s grave marker made, they offered us a “deal” so my other sister and I had our own markers made at the same time. I did not realize that they’d actually install the stones in our family plot!  So, as you can see above…my eternal resting place awaits me. Strangely enough, one childhood friend has told me he mows around it monthly and another sent me this photo of flowers he’d placed on it for memorial day. As you can see, there is no reason for me to actually give up the ghost as I’m getting enough attention without doing the actual deed.)

A Walk up the Mountain With My Dogs During Wildflower Season, Oct 3, 2021

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Pulled by my dogs, I ventured off the gravel road onto the tire tracks that forged a path up the mountain.  Lifting the hatch to a metal gate that granted access to the sloping meadows behind the high fence that otherwise would impede our progress, we ventured off the tire tracks onto a path worn only by previous feet. The heavy rains this year had created wildflowers so high that they formed an arch over our heads, belying the fact that the rains, long over, have left the hills so dry, so dense the underbrush, that where I pushed my way the giant hush was changed to soft explosion. The dogs, however, venturing farther into the great banks of flowers, found greener grass that they grazed upon like sheep, impeding my progress as I gave into their needs and let them determine our pace.

for dVerse Poets, we were to write a prosery piece of just 144 words, ithat included the line of poetry from a poem by Yver Winters that I have put in italics.

Below is a video I took during that walk!           

     HERE  is the dVerse prompt and the entire poem by Yver Winters.

Jellybelly Saturday Night

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Jellybelly Saturday Night

The only right place to put jelly
is on toast and then into your belly..
Then when you are sated
and fully elated,
 go sit it in front of the telly!

for the Limerick Challenge, the prompt was Jelly

“Capitol Hill” for The Sunday Whirl

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Capitol Hill

He tolls the bell, this liar son
saying that the war he’s won.
He casts his spell, pretending that
the tricks he pulls out of his hat
are gospel truth as he finds fault
with saner men who try to halt
his lies and tricks and machinations
with news reports and protestations
that find him guilty of heinous acts
while he hits back with money’s power
as all around him succumb and cower
fearing their own loss of station,
fortune, job, or reputation.
“It’s fine,” they sigh, “and meant to be
so long as it advances me!”

For The Sunday Whirl #760 the prompt words are:
tolls spell inclined mind find sigh hit guilty fine fault liar 

“Something Old” for dVerse Poets

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                                                                                                                              jdb photo

Something Old

Love is a narcotic that makes us think we’re wise-—
nature’s slick conspiracy for matching girls and guys.
It hangs around in barrooms, obscured in eyes and talk,
and before you know it, it makes you walk the walk
down rose-petaled aisles on your way to say “I do,”
in something new or borrowed and something old and blue.

Then love becomes a train wreck, beginning with the pastor
and continuing through daily life until the last disaster
when “I do” becomes “I won’t,” and all love’s vows once-spoken
wind up in love’s dump heap—abandoned, crushed and broken.
Blame it all on Cupid, that chubby little liar,
who never warns us that new love is likely to expire.

For dVerse Poets “Something old. .  .” Prompt

Darn. I took so long trying to find an illustration for the “Something Old, Something New”. . .’ prompt that the Mr. Linky link lapsed, so here it is. for Open Link Night.