Category Archives: Poem

Seers

5 Replies

Seers

Psychics make their living by what’s written in the stars,
going by what’s written in Venus or in Mars.

They crumble tea leaves in a cup and set the water steaming,
then pour it in the cup so they can set about their dreaming.

Their supernatural talents are directed at whomever
crosses their palms with silver to discover what they’d never

see through their own vision, and so they pay a stranger
to guide them as they search for love and try to avoid danger.

What some see as inscrutable, the psychic sees most clearly,
constructing pretty platitudes for which we pay most dearly.


Prompts today are platitude, super, inscrutable,Venus, crumble. Image by Tungsten Rising on Unsplash.

As Above Not As Below: For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 544

2 Replies

As Above, Not As Below

I’m plodding, I’m plodding to the sacred north.
It takes all my power as I journey forth.
Is it possible I walk on air? I must examine twice
the ground I pass over, then I see I tread on ice
frozen to translucence, so I see the world beneath—
another watery world below, protected ‘neath its sheath.

Spellbinding order reigns below with creatures slipping by,
protected from the thunder of a threatening sky.
When lightning hits behind me, I hurry helter-skelter,
searching for protection from any nearby shelter.
But alas, here up above is not as below.
So near and yet so far away is that undertow.

Caught in my world, I pass above where I would choose to stay.
It flows beneath me peacefully as I pass away.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 544 prompt words are: north order hits thunder search freeze journey spellbinding power sacred

When I see the disenfranchised and homeless passing through our town coming from South or Central America with nowhere to go back to and yet having no place here and no real place to go to, I wonder how they feel, observing us in our lives that must seem perfect and without problems. To see and not to be able to have must be a heartrending situation.

A Guide to Good Service in a Snotty Restaurant

11 Replies


A Guide to Good Service in a Snotty Restaurant

If you thought I was obsequious, have another think.
I was merely being cordial to get another drink.
The wait staff there was surly so I thought I would be nice,
although it seemed that in this joint, being cuddly was a vice.

There was some ambiguity in regards to being served.
It seems as though they gave the service they thought we deserved.
We couldn’t get attention with our arm-waving and hooting,
but luckily, before we came, we’d done some target shooting.

I put a bullet in the chamber and aimed it at the ceiling, 
and when our waiter heard the blast, he changed his way of dealing
with the placid customer at table number five.
It seems the way to win respect was leaving him alive.

He brought my gin and tonic with nary a snide quip.
He brought my crudités and even brought an extra dip.
And he didn’t raise an eyebrow or even curl his lip
when I left the restaurant without leaving a tip!!

 

Prompts for today are: chamber, blast, cuddly, obsequious and ambiguity. Image by Lefteris Kallergis on Unsplash.

Nomenclatural Revenge

7 Replies

Nomenclatural Revenge

My repulsive nickname is an affront to my pride.
Whoever might have coined it most assuredly has lied.
When I queried who the rascal was, the usual rumor was
that nasty girl Rebecca, and the reason was because

I was dating Walter, the one she lusted for,
but who, because he prefers me, continues to ignore
the bodacious Rebecca, remaining in my arms
just because he prefers my  considerable  charms.

In spite, that bitch Rebecca says the name “Clock Face” should fit
because my face has passing time written all over it!
So I have coined a name for her. I’m going to call her “Lips”
for all the food  passed through them that’s recorded on her hips!

Kiss-off, Rebecca!

 

Prompts today are clock face, bodacious, query, rumor.First image by Glen Hodson on Unsplash. Second photo by me.

Memory

8 Replies


Memory

The excavation of our memories can glue us to the past,
unearthing shards of former lives into which we’ve been cast.
Our mind a virtual theater that draws us through its curtain,
sometimes half-remembering and hardly ever certain
of what is fact and what is mind’s creative fabrication—
the truth eluding us a bit in time’s confabulation.
Its draw narcotic, we accede once more to its allure.
Is it history or fable? How can we know for sure?

 

Prompts for the day are theater, allure, elude, excavation.Second Image by Tsunami Green on Unsplash. All others by me.

The Behavioral Linguist in Love: May 17, 2022

15 Replies

The Behavioral Linguist* in Love

A thoughtful, scientific man, he chose his words with care.
No ordinary words would do. Only ones most rare.
He first spied her in the springtime, finally met her in the fall—
a simply gorgeous maiden—comely, willowy and tall.
But months of choosing his first words seem to have done him in.
What should have been his saving grace turned out to be a sin.

Enthusiastic in his love, he just had to express
his much-gone-over feelings about her loveliness.
He’d formerly determined not to use just any word,
but his final declaration turned out to be absurd.
He should have called her beautiful and just left it at that,
for when he called her pulchritudinous, she thought that he meant fat!

 

*Note: New to the world of behavioral science, Behavioral Linguistics is the science-based use of language to persuade. It’s rooted in nudge theory combined with psychology, sociolinguistics, and principles of marketing. Language is a powerful way to change behavior.

Prompts today are behavioral, enthusiastic, pulchritude, fall.  Images by Fabio Lucas and   Mandy Zhang on Unsplash.

Word Friendly

12 Replies


Word Friendly
I have a rabid interest in snazzy ways of talking.
Sauntering or loping are more interesting than walking.
Dew is more refined than mere sweat or perspiration.
In short, words are much juicier infused with inspiration.

I isolate my favorite words, then bring them back together,
joining unacquainted words with hyphens as a tether.
I guess that I write poetry as an excuse to use them,
for words become your friends as you’re struggling to fuse them.

(If you’d like an illustration of this type of word-joining,  go HERE.

Prompt words today are guess,  rabid, isolate,  dew and  snazzy,

Flower Power

20 Replies


Flower Power

As it slipped off the shelf, the flower gave a growl.
It never intended to go on the prowl.

It’s against flower ethics to go off on one’s own,
unopened, unblossomed and not fully grown.

No flower’s a star. They’re all one of the bunch,
but given a shot at it, I have a hunch

that beneath every garden, the flowers below
are driven to rise up—to open and crow,

to greet the new morning and bask in its heat,
and that then they ‘d be off if they only had feet.

Their one chance at freedom is if they are clipped
and bunched into bunches, then bartered and shipped

to  exotic places where the minute they’re sold,
they’ll be off to adventures and their world will unfold.

Then if perchance they are placed up on shelves,
they may tumble to earth to be all by themselves.

Short-lived as they are, they might think as they fall
from their limited knowledge, that they’ve seen it all!!

 

For Sunday Swirl’s Wordle 553, the prompt words are: star shelf growl slip open flower crow against prowl beneath beat shot.

Wet Alibi

10 Replies

Wet Alibi

Two thunderous bolts of lightning split the midnight sky.
No one was here to hear them. Only the dogs and I.
The priggish cats were nestled in a knot deep in their bed,
stomach against stomach, inverted tail to head.

Rain fell down in buckets. Lights flickered off and back,
then off again and all the world descended into black.
When some derelict wiring succumbed to the first drop,
I tried to phone a report  to the electricity cop,

but not a person answered at the guard house or Con Ed,
so I finally accepted that the whole world had gone dead.
No wifi meant no internet. No music. No TV.
A twelve-hour outage led to nil blogging activity.

And that is why the phone just rang with an inquiry.
Forgottenman was wondering what had become of me.
Was I not going to post? So I hastened to the job.
The lights are on. It’s time to feed the hungry blogster mob!


True story, all of it., except for the poetic license of calling the Mexican electrical commission (CFE)  Con Ed.  The rhyme, you know….Over 16 hours without electricity. My story and I’m sticking to it. Actually, half of the house was in brownout and the rest totally without electricity. Evidently this was an area-wide outage, but just in spots. All the houses around me were dark. Below me there were lights and this was true in all the villages along the lake. Weird.

Check out this post if you want to see some hard rain: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/08/17/sudden-hard-rain/

 

Prompt words today are thunderous,  active, derelict, prig,
accept.

Revolt at Walmart

5 Replies

Revolt at Walmart

Give us the proper rebate if you want us to behave.
We have our coupons in our hands and we’re not going to cave.
It is not iniquity to ask for what you’re due.
Accede to our demands or we’re going to mount a coup.

So what if it’s a misprint in the paper? Not our fault.
Produce what you offered, for we’re not going to halt.
Although you say to honor it would amount to a steal,
20 for 1 seems to us a reasonable deal!

Prompt words for the day are proper, beam, rebate, iniquity and behave.