jdbphoto
Racing Man
I’ve parked you in my dreams
where you sit sputtering,
engine racing,
ready to be off
over the next hill.
As always,
reaching to release the parking brake,
adjusting the seat back,
never noticing the rear-vision mirror
is slightly off-kilter.
jdbphoto
Last Request
I pine, I anguish, yearn and ache;
yet don’t allow myself to bake.
I don’t dessert for calorie’s sake,
for if I do, my floorboards quake.
Yet one request I’d like to make.
When that last sleep I finally take,
if I should die before I wake,
please let my last meal include cake!
Today’s prompt word was “Cake.”
Expert
I used to be plucky, I used to be pert.
I used to pass muster in shorts or a skirt.
But lately my pert parts have just seemed to shift,
and various parts are in need of a lift.
Big tops are my saviors. Caftans are my friends––
obscuring my excesses, shielding my bends.
Back in my plucky days, I was a flirt,
but seduction is over now I’m an ex-pert!
The prompt today was “Expert.”
jdbphoto
Profound Courtship
When my next lover comes around,
I’d prefer he be profound––
intellectual and mysterious,
also ponderous and serious.
Insight and depth I’m sure will be
the things that he looks for in me.
We’ll have no need for Cupid’s dart,
as passion steps aside for smart.
On our first night, we’ll pop a bottle,
arguing over Aristotle,
debating proton, neutron, quark
and entanglement in the dark.
I’ll reel off famous quotes by heart
from Shakespeare, Camus and Descartes––
whisper “sweet somethings” in his ear,
knowing what he’ll want to hear.
He’ll analyze our chemistry
and then discuss the Odyssey,
Plato, Aristotle, Kant––
any subject that I want.
If we don’t get around to kissing,
we’ll barely notice that it’s missing.
Who needs an interlude romantic
when they can have one that’s pedantic?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/249091/
For the literal-minded among us, must add that I’m kidding! If it comes to a vote between Aristotle and the kissing, I’ll take the kiss every time. (Within reason.)
Today, instead of posting a photo of a flower, I chose to write a poem about Cee’s flower of the day. If you haven’t seen it already, go have a look but then come back here to see the poem.
“Dahliance”
Your round perfection, minutely curled.
Your ruby lips in rows unfurled.
The dew you cup in early morn
shows the day has been reborn.
Your face, uplifted, requires no word.
To talk to flowers is absurd.
Instead, I choose a focus and
thus pick you, though you still stand
erect and safe as I depart.
I’ve caught you in my camera’s heart
to be released for all to share,
delivered to them through the air.
You join a virtual bouquet
that I’ve assembled day-by-day
just to give away for free
so whole worlds can admire thee.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Depth
Deep is neither
party conversation
nor the subject of Valentines.
It seeps into the
crevices
under
fingernails
and
the
caverns
of
ears.
Internal
and
curvaceous,
it is hard to get
right to the point of.
Deep does not put down roots––it is roots.
Betrayal, breaking glass
and tunnels leading to
dark wombs that bear us anew
to rock us harshly
and swaddle us in pain.
Deep, I am
sometimes deep,
at other times
swift cold water
with surface
swirlings
or mist
rising
through
sunlight
clarified
by
deep
shadows.
Hope wears a white apron and a pensive smile!
Hope
I hope life turns out as you wish and is a bowl of cherries.
I hope you find a run of luck and that it never varies.
The whole world would be lucky, if I had my “druthers.”
Every line would catch a fish. All orphans would find mothers.
All endings would be happy. All lottery tickets win.
But as I stop to think of it, I have to think again.
If all of us were winners, winning would lose its distinction.
Every hunter bagging game would lead to their extinction.
It seems that often one guy’s luck brings bad luck to another.
If you’re the family favorite, then it cannot be your brother!
So if I must express my hopes I guess that I’ll just say
I hope that when it is your turn, good luck will come your way!
Now I have to tell the story about my camera, which showed up missing (oxymoron) the day after I’d met friends in the Ajijic plaza coffee place. I’d run a number of errands that day, and so after I had searched my house for over an hour, and my car, and my garden, I headed off for town. Was it at the coffee place? No. Either of the stores I’d visited? No. I headed down the street to Ajijic Tango, where I’d had comida with my friends. All locked up. Seeing a door ajar a few yards away from the entrance, I called into it. It must be the kitchen. I called and called and fially someone came. I gave them a note asking the owner to call me.Then I went home.
A day or so ago I wrote about a friend in Missouri who tends to straighten out my life for me on a regular basis? Well, I wrote to him bemoaning the fate of my camera. Within the hour, he had sent me a link to a local message board and lo and behold–there was a picture of my living room with friends I’d invited to a viewing of the new documentary of another friend all sitting in it! A picture that had been in my camera! Turns out the lady pictured above had been approached by a man who tried to sell her a camera. “He asked too much” she said in her message, which stated that when she’d inspected the camera, she had surreptitiously removed the sd card from the camera as well as three more in the pouch of the carrying case, then posted one of the pictures on the card in hopes of finding the owner.
Did she know the man who had the camera? She did. Long story short, she went to his house to ask about the camera. Sadly, he reported, it had stopped working. (He still didn’t realize she’d taken the sd cards out. Brilliant move on her part.) Did he still have the camera? No, he had given it to his son, who, it turned out, worked in the restaurant next to where I must have lost my camera! After a few more trips to enquire on her part, the next morning I recovered my camera from the son, giving him a good reward, although he didn’t ask. I then recovered my four sd cards from the angel pictured above and gave her a reward as well, in spite of her protests. And that is how my Music Man in Missouri once more came to my aid and turned disaster into luck. (If you regularly read my blog, you might have guessed that I cannot survive without my camera.) What does this story have to do with hope? Simply that I hope if you ever lose anything dear to you that you have two angels looking over you as I did!!!
For the past year, I keep getting these heart-shaped wounds on my arm. I think they are from the dogs jumping up on me or from wounds won trimming the bougainvillea, but it is amazing how many times they are in a heart shape. I’d already written this poem before I decided to try to make a concrete poem out of it. As I progressed, it wanted to be a heart.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a sonnet. One of the world’s most famous sonnet forms was the Shakespearean sonnet, the form I use below. William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616–exactly four hundred years ago today. He is still the best known playwright and among the best loved poets in history. I apologize to him for these sonnets, with which he would most certainly be disappointed; but luckily, “Disappointment” is exactly the prompt for WordPress this day, and so I thereby kill two prompts with one poem!!
Three Wan Dogs before Their Feeding
Our mistress lies upon her bed too long,
her favorite silver thing upon her lap.
That she should put our feeding off is wrong.
We sit and stare at her through her door’s gap.
She taps upon her thing and taps and taps.
Sometimes she chortles, but we don’t know why.
Where formerly her bed was used for naps,
a favorite dog cuddled against her thigh,
she now spends all her time there with that thing
as we sit hungry, waiting to be fed.
She seeks the nourishment that words can bring,
for she is sure that if she leaves her bed
before she finishes her sonnet, then
her muse will not agree to come again.
Three Hungry Dogs Intent Upon Their Feeding
At last at last she opens up her door
and feeds our sister first, lest we devour
her food ourselves and then not leave the poor
dear girl with any sustenance to power
her barking at the other dogs who pass.
But now our mother fills our bowls as well––
each portion measured by a measuring glass.
Each second we must wait becomes a Hell.
She scoops out first the dry and then the wet––
more for the big dog and less for the small.
We worry over how much food we’ll get,
remembering times when we had none at all.
But finally, our portions, too, are dished
(although not quite so full as we’d have wished.)
Three Patient Dogs after Their Feeding
Now see our dishes cleaned and neatly stacked?
Our human lolls once more upon her bed.
to write more stanzas that she formerly lacked
and free herself of rhymes that fill her head.
The small dog leaps upon her bed to lie
and garner a small scratching now and then.
We larger dogs lie watching from close by,
kept from our human in her iron pen.
See her now, look quizzical and rapt?
We know not what she thinks there on her back.
Where formerly she read or watched or napped,
she stews about just what her poems might lack.
For Shakespeare she is not, the silly goose.
Her talents? More in line with Dr. Seuss!!!
(Click on the first photo below to enlarge photos and read captions–also written in couplet form.) Good grief. It’s my muse’s fault. The girl can’t help it!!)
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 