Friendly Game
You come to bat. I toss my pitch.
Convention dictates. It’s a bitch.
You note my sudden augmentation.
A loud crack signals your elation.
Over the fence with deadly aim.
You round the bases to loud acclaim.
Exploit the crowd’s ecstatic cheers.
This afternoon, you’ll buy the beers.
Prompts today are deadly, pitch, augmentation, exploit and convention.
Split Seconds
On Valentine’s Day,
standing dizzy on a dry summer country road,
between weekend dances in different towns,
sweet 16 and finally kissed.
My eccentric English professor,
slapping down his briefcase once, twice, three times
on his table at the front of the room,
opened the clasp, drew out our first papers,
and chose mine as the one to read aloud.
I felt the gun barrel pressed against my head,
heard the gun fire,
fell into the street and rose above
to see them lift his wounded body into a taxi,
my body lying in the street.
The woman in the dream
walked toward me across the barroom,
threw her drink in my face,
then hit me over the head with the glass
and I woke up soaking wet, with a knot on my head,
screaming, “Just wake up!”
I saw him for the first time
on the stage at the little coffee shop in Santa Monica
reading love poems he’d written to another woman,
and it was as though I’d been with him
for my whole life. Then afterwards,
I was with him for the rest of his.
He met me
at the plane
with a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup and a rose.
Hours later, in his kitchen,
after the long ride southward,
luggage spilled sideways on the floor—
another long-delayed
first kiss.
The NaPoWriMo prompt is to “write your own poem that provides five answers to the same question – without ever specifically identifying the question that is being answered.”
After the Storm
My former blithe spirit is rocked by the rain,
but I’ll dry it out and use it again.
I fold up my heart and tuck it away
in case I should need it some future day.
The lingering legs of love walk the floor
long after the time he walked out the door.
Preferring the narrows, the reefs and the gales
to the calm of safe harbors, his ship stretched its sails.
Now he sits in a vase, secure on my shelf,
while I pace in seclusion, all by myself.
The Sunday Whirl prompt words are: ship lingering legs instead narrow stretch door heart vase fold rocked rain
Rabble-Rouser
I am the king of rave and rant,
the champion of irrelevant.
I raid the nest and throw the eggs.
I raise the lid. Stir up the dregs.
I abhor a quiet ride.
I want the chaos that’s inside.
I’m not a fan of calm reflection.
I stir up trouble, prompt dejection.
What arises is bound to fall,
and I contribute to it all!!!
Prompts for today are eggs, irrelevant, arise, abhor and reflection. I want to thank my compliant “poser” for being willing to mimic the worst in us.
The Changeling
At heart I am a changeling, born of fairy stuff.
Reality and daily life simply are not enough.
I yearn for the forest, the valley or the ness.
The only place where I’m content is the wilderness.
And though siblings are rosy and love to laugh and shout,
frolicking like puppies as they roll about,
my skin is wan and pallid and I do not care to play,
keeping mortal company constantly at bay.
Faux parents can’t facilitate my raging appetite,
nor my predilection for the deepest night.
I was born of different stock, unsatisfied and mean,
preferring solitary life, untouched and pristine.
And though I petition that I be let alone,
those who come upon me, alas, are often prone
to try to draw me out, an act that I rebuff,
for I find myself to be company enough.
Somewhere in the forest, in a cavern or a tree,
I know that there resides the opposite of me,
living far away from the place where they were born,
dreaming of the family that they miss and mourn.
Two unhappy doppelgangers, always just off-mark.
One languishes in daylight, the other in the dark.
We stand before a funhouse mirror and without a doubt,
One is looking into it, the other looking out.
While somewhere in the vast lost world, parental arms are aching
for the child that long ago was of their dual making.
What evil force declared that both sets of parents should pine
for the natural-born child each yearns to claim as “mine?”
Those who seek disruption wander through our life,
seeking to take action that cuts us like a knife.
War and rape and pestilence, disorder and melee,
substituting one child and taking one away.
What more brutal action than this cruel deflection
that subverts two tiny lives, causing lifelong dejection?
The human-born and changeling, forced into different lives.
A honeybee and hornet forced into warring hives.
The changeling and the one replaced, both of them misplaced,
yearning from the life from which they’ve been displaced.
Who can blame their solitude, their yearning to be other?
Wanting to take one life and trade it for another?
Prompts for today are changeling, pristine, petition, facilitate and wilderness.
Note: A Changeling is a fairy that has been substituted for a human baby. While changelings can look like anyone, they do have a true form. Their natural look can be scary to some due to their lack of detail and distinctive features. Their skin tone is always pale, either white or light gray, and they tend to have slender bodies with limbs slightly longer in proportion to other humanoids.The surest way to tell if you have a Changeling on your hands is by observing the temperament of the human in question. Changelings are constantly unhappy, unfriendly, and mean. They may be very cold and aloof, and may even recoil from human touch. Changeling babies’ appetites are never satiated. They may develop nocturnal habits and are abnormally aware of paranormal activity. The mortal child is taken back to the realm of the fairies to be raised and put to work, while the creature left behind usually sickens and dies.
Nativity Diary
I’m curled inside, so soft and warm,
protected in my creator’s corm.
Within, without, the pulse and throb
of leg on stomach, thrusting knob
of head against that source of light
down a channel smothering tight.
I will I must continue toward
that severance of birthing cord.
A final push, a hearty cry,
one eye open, a glimpse of sky.
Helping hands receiving me,
head and shoulder, thigh and knee.
The miracle of freedom from
such tight compression. My questing thumb.
Curled into that outer nest
that has been my nine-month quest.
Swathed in warmth, bright lights above,
I take great drafts of mother love.
She wills and I agree I will
drink until I’ve had my fill.
Pursing lips and searching tongue,
and then a healthy burst of lung.
I declare my presence here
to the whole world’s atmosphere.
The prompt for day 14 of NaPoWriMo was to write the opening scene of the movie of our life.
Image by Christine Bowen on Unsplash.
Misnomer
Why so taciturn, my friend? Are there things that displease you?
If you’re amenable to chat, perhaps I could appease you.
When they named you Deirdre, what could have been the reason?
To give a child a moniker like this is surely treason.
They put it on the record the day that you were born
that you were predetermined with propensity to mourn.
What sort of security is this to give a child
otherwise unblemished—beautiful and mild?
Such a tragic future and so many doleful morrows
must greet a child named after Deirdre of the Sorrows.
Prompts today are security, amenable, taciturn, moniker and record.
Culinary Apologies
Though some would say that I’m a flake
when I’m called upon to bake,
and though I qualify just barely,
I feel I’m typecast most unfairly.
True, I rank with all the rookies
when it comes to baking cookies,
and my cupcakes don’t win prizes
at anything but worst surprises.
Nonetheless, my precedent
at providing less than I had meant
is never intentional.
It’s just that I am rather dull
when it comes to pleasuring
by sifting, baking, measuring.
I lack that culinary calm
so never cook without a qualm.
When I baked banana bread
and measured powdered sugar instead
of flour, yes, I must confess
it created an awful mess.
And when I burned the chicken stew
because I had so much to do,
I hope that you remember that
I trimmed the plants and fed the cat,
wrote a poem and made some art,
(scorched the toast and burned the tart)
took the puppy for a walk,
phoned a friend and had a talk.
So though my fridge is lacking stuff,
I find my life is full enough
All in all, what I’ve got cookin’
may not be where you are lookin’.
Prompts today are flake, calm, intentional, typecast and precedent. (If you want to read about the powdered sugar debacle, click on the link where it is mentioned in the poem.)
Panegyric for Pachyderm
Which one among us says I can’t
eulogize an elephant?
Oh thou of ears floppily gray,
of thee I have so much to say.
Words invented will not do.
I have to coin new words for you.
Your skin, in fact, is so abundant
that I must call you epibundant.
And other words unbunkable?
Tuskidopherous and trunkable.
Unchallenged monarch of the zoo,
parades aren’t complete without you.
Your trumpet fills the savanna air
to tell the world that you are there.
Rip Van Wrinkle might better name
thee, monarch of the great untame!
And though by any other term,
loxodonta or pachyderm,
we do not know thee quite as well.
in size and fame, you still excel.
For NaPoWriMo Day 11, we are to write a poem about a very large thing. And yes, that is me on the back of that elephant!
Early Release
He barely saw the morning view, he was in such a pother.
He skipped his juice and pancakes. He simply couldn’t bother.
Today no one could find a way to dispel his grief.
His nervousness was clear to all. He couldn’t find relief.
His summer bliss was over. The truth blatantly cruel
as his worst fears came true at last with the first day of school!
He dragged his book bag in the dust and lagged behind the others.
He’d be out at the fishing hole if he had had his druthers.
Pencils his ma had sharpened, he broke against the wall,
so when he had to write things down, he’d have no way at all.
He used his brand new ruler to pry up stones and rocks
to catch red ants and spiders to tie up in his socks.
He caught a lizard just before it zipped under a log,
and put it in his pocket with a field mouse and a frog.
So when he got to school he’d have ample ammunition
to bring the brand new school marm to a sure state of contrition
for imprisoning them all inside on such a nice fall day,
and school would get out early if he had his way!
Prompt words for today are grief, nervous, pother and morning view.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 