Category Archives: Poetry

Birthday Debacle for Stream of Consciousness

7 Replies

Birthday Debacle

The rumors are untrue. He is a scurrilous liar.
I did not eat the birthday cake. I did not start the fire.

My serenity is not a ruse. I’m innocent of error.
I swear I had no hand in your recent birthday terror.

The dog has done his utmost to brand me as the thief,
but the fool is barely lucid. Could you not see his relief

when you started to upbraid me as he chased me, headed south,
crumbs falling from his chest hair, frosting around his mouth?

Oh that I knew your language and I could tell you that,
but instead, for ever after, you’ll be blaming “that damn cat!!”

The Stream of Consciousness prompt is “Crumb.” Yes, guilty. I had AI make the photos.

“Seer” for the Weekend Writing Prompt #443

5 Replies

Seer

Her statement that she’d had a vision
was met by general derision.
They went west though she’d said, “Go east,”
and thus were eaten by the beast
or, overtaken by the flood.
died soaked in water or in blood.
So, the moral of this little tale
is heed your mystics or learn to bail
or run faster than the beast
lest you become his morning’s feast.

For Weekend Writing Prompt #443, the task was to write a 66 word story or poem on the subject of “Vision.”

Reblog: No Longer in the Present

8 Replies

I’m rerunning this blog from two years  ago for Lisa, who liked this photo I used on my Numbers Game blog and wanted to know the story behind it.  This is the poem I ran with it in June of 2023.

 

No Longer in the Present

Seated around the table in our favorite cafe,
attention to each other has come to be passé
We are not present here and now. We’re all in other places
as we stare at tiny screens, intent on other faces.

The friends we have around us will simply have to wait
for our interest in the world-at-large to finally abate.
The news that’s happening elsewhere is simply more amusing
than what might be happening in this space our body’s using.

Other friends are funnier in their “selfie” poses—
pooching out their lips at us and scrunching up their noses.
It won’t do to look natural, we have to look unique
in the selfsame pose that all selfie-flashers seek.

So if your friends are boring, not half so chic as you,
you always have the option to make a Tweet or two.
Check out the latest fashions available from China.
They’ll only take three months to reach you here in Carolina.

Check out the weather in Tibet and give YouTube a glance.
Companions won’t distract you if you don’t give them a chance.
Living one life at a time no longer has to do
so long as you remember to have your phone with you!

So if you’ve dropped a French fry and spilled ketchup down your dress,
you needn’t be embarrassed. It couldn’t matter less.
Intent on Twitter, Instagram, Facetiming and Facebooking,
the friends with you won’t notice, for nobody is looking.

Life is More Wonderful

11 Replies

photobyokcforgottenman

Life is Wonderful

Concentrate on daily things—
the scent of toast perfectly browned,
new sheets gathered from the line,
this morning’s treasures spread on the ground:

a robin’s egg, inventing blue,
left on your doorstep, as though for you.
Seed of sycamore spinning down
to land with precision on your shoe.

Life is more wonderful with what
can come through serendipity;
and once we’re clothed and fed and sheltered,
what’s most valuable is free:

A child’s questing hopeful look
as he searches worlds within a book.
Heartfelt laughter dispelling pain
and friends who will return again.

Pity those for whom success
means piling gold in offshore banks;
whose quest for more will sacrifice
the health of children to buy more tanks.

They’ve gone too far to ever know
how much pain and how much woe
is occasioned by their status quo—
how much unhappiness they’ll sow.

Acceptance of their ignorant greed
will lead us down the path they’ve worn.
They’ll leave our world stripped and bereft,
her wondrous freedoms raped and shorn.

So as they pillage, ruin, and rape
an environment that can’t escape,
be glad that stubborn others insist
that we drive these bullies from our midst.

We know too much of the world’s ills
to ever fully feel at peace,
for that safe world that we have known
can not be lived without surcease.

Enjoy your happiness in each thing
that luck or your hard work might bring,
but share these things with everyone
lest all we stand for comes undone.

There is much in life that we
must learn to live with and accept;
but other things that we can change,
and leaders who are more adept

at giving us the basics for our health and happiness:
clean water, schools and health care. Never accept less.
If our quest for fool’s gold destroys what it can’t buy,
we’re simply fools caught building dream castles in the sky.

In times that are distressing,
millions of voices shout,
“To preserve simple pleasures,
drive these carpetbaggers out!”

The prompt for MVB is Wonder

“Deer Ones”

9 Replies

Arising early, I stumbled upon this poem, “Table for One, Please” by Bartholomew Barker. That led to reading more of his poems, including THIS ONE at BeatnikCowboy.com. Have a look at it, but please come back to hear my reply. I was so impressed that he knew a herd of deer could be called a “parcel,” but then it occurred to me that perhaps he was just being poetically inventive, so I had to research the matter and in doing so, found this list of synonyms for “herd,” as it applies to deer:

In most situations, you can refer to a group of animals like deer simply as a “herd”. A herd of deer is probably the most common way to designate them, but it is most assuredly the most boring. To be more deer-specific, the other ways to refer to a group of deer include a bevy, a rangale, a bunch, or a parcel. When using parcel, however, it’s generally going to refer to a group of only young deer.

And that new knowledge led, unfortunately, to this hair-splitting and corny rhymed poem on my part:

Deer Ones

A “herd” is most commonly what you will hear
folks  calling a grouping of two or more deer;
but if you’re a poet in need of a rhyme,
perhaps you’ll use “bevy” some of the time.
Which is just as correct, though granted, more rare
to describe groups of deer that are more than a pair.
But if you need a rhyme for deer in a dale,
you just might prefer to use a “rangale,”
which is also proper—or perhaps a “bunch,”
to label a deer herd gathered for lunch
in field or in forest, munching on leaves
or grass, twigs or acorns—or crops left when sieves
abandon their fields of soybeans or corn
leaving some crops abandoned, forlorn.
But if you use “parcel” to call deer among
deer of their ilk—that’s just deer who are young!

An Apologia for Poesy for dVerse Poets, Aug 27, 2025

18 Replies

An Apologia for Poesy

My gardener’s broom goes whisking light
first left, then right, then left, then right
with touch so slight I barely hear
the bristles as they take their bite.

The birds were first up and about,
and then both dogs asked to get out.
Then that broom reminded me
of one more creature left to rout.

Searching for ideas and words,
I use the rhythm of the birds
and Pasiano’s sweeping broom
the braying burro, the bleating herds.

Noises fill this busy world
even as I’m safely curled
still abed, my senses all
alert and ready, full unfurled.

I hear the grackle far above,
the insistent cooing of a dove,
as in the kitchen, Yolanda dons
her apron and her rubber glove.

I hear the water’s swirl and flush
the busy whipping of her brush
around each glass I might have left,
careless in my bedtime rush.

Her string mop silent, I barely know
if she’s still here. Or did she go?
I find her in the kitchen still,
arranging glasses, row on row.

Then it is to my desk I trot.
Arranging glasses I am not,
but rather words I nudge and shift
here and there until they’re caught.

Glued to the page forever more––
be they rich words, be they poor––
nevertheless, these words are mine:
poems, stories, truth or lore.

We are not slothful, lazy, weak
because it’s words we choose to seek
instead of labors more obvious
like plumber or computer geek.

Words’ labors are most harrowing.
Our choice of them needs narrowing
and not unlike the farmer’s sow,
mind’s riches we are farrowing.

So blame us not if others mop
our houses or they trim and crop
our gardens for us as we write.
From morn till night, we never stop.

Poets, our lives may seem effete––
not much time spent on our feet––
but those feet are busy, still,
tapping out our poem’s beat.

Cerebral though our work may be,
we are not lazy, you and me,
for though we sit and write all day,
our writing’s labored––­­that’s plain to see!

The dVerse Poets prompt is “Noise.”

“To Do List” for the Sunday Whirl 702

1 Reply

To Do List

Shoot moonbeams at your heroes,
shoot bullets at your foes.
Sing songs of blended melodies
to exorcise your woes.

Don your hood and start a brawl.
Flick hound hairs from your sleeves.
Wear your racing stripes to prove
what nobody believes.

This present trip around the track
is not your first or last.
It’s only things we have not done
that make us feel aghast.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle702 the prompt words are: races wear hound brawl song hood blend heroes flick shoot trip beams

Moody Blues, for The Sunday Whirl

6 Replies

Moody Blues

Like a child denied its favorite toy, you slip into that gloom
that seems to cast a sorcerer’s  spell all across the room.
You jinx that joy  formerly sown––that rapture gone astray.
Like a gift once kindly given, then cruelly  jerked away,
A soft wind blows a kind of truce that stills your restless mind,
and styles a more tranquil place for you to hide behind.

For the Sunday Whirl the words are: favor kind jinx spell sorcery gift denial child style rapture truce 

 

“Indigo” for dVerse Poets, Feb 24, 2025

11 Replies

Indigo

The color known so well by teens
that is used to color jeans?
Bet you thought, as I thought, too,
indigo was a shade of blue.
Yet, upon further inspection
during internet detection,
it seems more pupleish a hue
which transforms itself to blue.

For dVerse Poets Quadrille Monday the prompt is “indigo.” (Image by Levi Strauss)

To read more Indigo poems, go HERE.

The Taste of Love for dVerse Poets

11 Replies

The Taste of Love

What we feasted on
in those first stages of internet romance—
when nine hours was too short a conversation—was words.
We passed on to the next stage of computer dating:
our first dinner date.
He watched on his desktop computer as I prepared a salad.
This was a long and lengthy process
I recorded as closely as was possible,
using the camera from my laptop.

A prisoner of his large unmovable console computer, I watched his empty desk chair
as he repaired to the kitchen to prepare his meal, hearing sound effects but little else.

When he returned to the living room, he laid his meal in front of his computer.
I had yet to see it as I, in turn, placed my salad in front of me and took my first bite,
watching closely my technique according to my Skype image.

I chewed politely and then smiled,
revealing the lack of lettuce shards on my front teeth.
I looked up. He was watching me as lovingly as usual.
Now, it was his turn.

What are you eating? I asked. Ham, he said.
He lifted a huge hunk on his fork, taking a dainty bite
and chewing happily.
What else? I asked. Just ham, he answered.

And so he demolished the entire pound of thick ham steak,
now and then washing it down with a healthy swig of rum and Coke.

Rum and Coke.
It had been one of our bonding experiences
to find that the drink of choice for each
was Bacardi Rum with caffeine-free Diet Coke.
How could this not be a romance made in heaven?

Culinary compatibility from 2,000 miles away
seemed to be less of a problem than it would be months later,
when we first made physical contact.

But, there was a resolution. He started munching on carrots and I had no objection to ham.
We discovered a mutual mania for potato chips, and true romance bloomed
when I found the full bar of Hershey’s chocolate atop his refrigerator.
Who says we need to concentrate on our differences?

For dVerse Poets we were to post a poem about internet romance in honor of Valentines Day