Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

Anagram Poem: Day 24 of NaPoWriMo

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For some reason, I couldn’t get onto the internet yesterday afternoon or last night so I am just posting this now.  It was written yesterday but not posted until today.

(The following poem is made up entirely of words that can be made from the letters in my name (Ms. Judith Kay Dykstra-Brown). For the purpose of theme, I have broken this rule in the last stanza. A friend who read it thought it was too negative, but it is all meant to be funny. I had to make use of the words I could make.  Just try writing a poem with no e’s!!!)

About Moi

Thou art drunk and so rowdy;
you don’t stand to win.
Your body is dowdy;
your hair is so thin.

Thou art a word-junky
both bawdy and wry.
Your workstand so junky;
your wit is so dry.

Your Ma’s from a bowry;
your daddy was bust,
so your sad dowry
was junky with rust.

Your sis was so bratty,
but now is a nun.
Your butt is both tatty
and broad as a hun.

A byword for wordy,
your work is not art.
Your story’s too dirty,
a bard thou art not!

I may do b-tt-r
wh-n I start to think,
As my d-arth of this l-tt-r
just starts moi to drink!

A Poem a Minute with a Triolet in It (Day 23, NaPoWriMo)

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The prompt today was to write a triolet. A triolet is an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetrameter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) ABaAabAB.

My book launch is today and I need to leave for it in an hour, but I hate to get on with my day without completing my NaPoWriMo poem. I dashed this one off in a few minutes to complete my obligation, but hope to get back to it and do another before midnight. If I drink even one margarita at the reception, however, that might not come about. So here is my “obligation” triolet that is, understandably, about trying to write a triolet while experiencing a time crunch:

“A Poem a Minute with a Triolet In it”

When first I tried to write this rhyme
I could not seem to make it scan.
In short, I felt less than sublime
when first I tried to write this rhyme;
but then I took the proper time
and proved the truth as other than:
“When first I tried to write this rhyme
I could not seem to make it scan.”

The Earth, Will and I (Day 22 of NaPoWriMo)

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The Earth, Will and I

The noise of birds so loud—
orioles, grackles, seedeaters
and my neighbor’s fighting cock.
You would think they know
it is Earth Day.

In writing about them,
I have not forgotten
that tomorrow
is the anniversary
of Shakespeare’s
birth and death.

I am having my book launch tomorrow.
No competition for Will,
but I am alive,
and I have completed this book
after 12 long years.
I sing to celebrate
both of these miracles,
my backup chorus
fading out behind me
as I warble
my extreme pleasure
in being chosen
to participate
in this wonderful world
and in having the luxury
to write
about
it.

Circadian Verse Non-pareil (NaPoWriMo Day 20—10 to go!)

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Prompt: Today we were challenged to write a poem that uses at least five of the following words. In my own rodomontadian fashion, I decided to use all of them. I italicized the words as they were used in the poem so you can check up on me!

Word List: owl generator abscond upwind squander clove miraculous dunderhead cyclops willowy mercurial seaweed gutter non-pareil artillery salt curl ego rodomontade elusive twice ghost cheese cowbird truffle svelte quahog bilious

Circadian Verse Non-pareil

Enough, I say! It’s bad enough when poetry stoops to puns
or limericks, but now we’re asked to write of guns????
NaPoWriMo!
Just say, “No!”
I, myself, would journey over dale and hillery
to avoid the usage of artillery!
There is enough of it in every news report
with vivid details: magnum, caliber or loudness of report.

It am so sick of it!!!
Guns don’t fit
in poetry and that is why
I choose to write about fine dining under a cowbird sky
on truffles svelte and mercurial with just a ghost of cheese
upon my plate—a dish that’s sure to please.
No salt, no clove, no quahog purloined from its oceanic lair
should be added to this perfect dish. What dunderhead would dare?

Overhead, an owl drops like a comet to abscond
with some small creature scooped up from the pond.
He flies away, upwind, then curls his flight to fly back over
and in one miraculous swoop, his talons comb the clover
in search of prey that is elusive
and wisely, seconds later, is reclusive.

Twice more, we see our willowy feathered friend descend
while our teeth keep chewing and our elbows bend
to stuff yet one more morsel into bodies slightly bilious,
turning a deaf ear to talk now supercilious.
Our whole gluttonous, cyclopean brood
(one eye on the owl, the other on our food)
is loath one morsel of this groaning board to squander
on predator now circling over us, then over yonder.
His wings held straight—no bend or flutter,
he soars down low and eyes the gutter.

The seaweed now he surveys—that generator
of frogs and tadpoles and perhaps a gator.
But, finding nothing this hungry day,
he dips one wing and flies away.

And so must I desert my task circadian,
Lest ego turns me rodomontadian.

“Wanted” (NaPoWriMo day 19)

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The prompt was to write a poem in the style of a personal ad.

Wanted:

It’s not so hard to write a personal ad.
Wanted: someone to replace my dad

who consents to cut the carrots and grate the cheese
Just exactly as I please.

A quirky, pleasant, intelligent, liberal man
who can navigate a day without a plan;

who will throw the dog a bone
and let me be alone

sometimes. At other times, who’ll draw me out.
Someone who doesn’t even want to shout.

Someone who will make me want to be
We.

Dining Alone at the Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar (Day 18 of NaPoWriMo)

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The Prompt today was to write a poem that begins and ends with the same word.

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“Dining Alone at the Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar”

Smoldering.

Señor Garcia is smoking today.
Below him,
Maria Phoenix lies on satin sheets
on the wall of Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar.

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It is a small palapa restaurant––soft orange front with
hot pink trim–– that I’ve driven by hundreds of times before;
and every time, I’ve wanted to come in, but haven’t.
Now today, suddenly,
I don’t want to go home
and so my car turns in across the carretera.

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I am the lone customer.
The cook and waiter
spring to action.
Totopos for him to bring,
a fire for her to light.
This is a fish restaurant
and I am a non-fish
eater, choosing between
quesadillas and beans
or a hamburger and fries.
Needless to say, I’m not here for the food.

I am here for the view and the limits
imposed by eating alone in an otherwise empty
restaurant/bar. I have a poem to write
and need the discipline imposed by a place
where there’s nothing else to do.
My only distraction is the view,
which forms the subject of my poem
and so is anything but a distraction.

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The smoke from a dozen fires
rises into the air from the entire eastern slope
of Mount Garcia across the lake.
Whether by accident or by the hand of farmers
lighting fires to clear last year’s stubble from the fields,
the effect is that this extinct volcano
has somehow come to life,
springing leaks.

Fanned by a recent wind, the smoke grows denser, rises higher.
Below the slopes, a patchwork quilt of strawberry and raspberry
fields, covered with plastic sheets,
spawn fruit for the tables of El Norte.

Maria, that other smoldering beauty, lies suspended all around me––
long canvas banners reflecting her screen loves and her roles.
She looks over one shoulder, wears a rebozo or a mariachi’s sombrero.
Cantinflas, that beloved clown, shares her wall but is never in a shot with her.
They are opposites: the sexual symbol and the comic. One raises tension
and the other seeks to dispel it.

Maria Phoenix

I am in between, a mere observer, I know.
In every case it’s likely that the fire has been lit by means unnatural,
but nonetheless, it ignites my imagination.
I am surrounded by it.
“Blue Bayou” plays on the sound system.
Sleepy eyes.
My eyes sting from the smoke
that has filtered toward me
from eight miles or so across the lake.
The tears in my eyes are from the smoke,
not from memories of the departed one
I used to come with to these fish restaurants.

They are not the place for gringos.
Word is out about the sanitation
or where the fish comes from
or who might be encountered here.
A few restaurants down, there was a cartel killing
just about a year ago––perhaps more, perhaps less.
At any rate, Americanos and Canadians are rarely found here.

Today, no one else is found here.
“There’s no exception to the rule”
plays on the sound system.
“Everybody plays the fool.”
Feeling a stranger in the place where I live
is a feeling pleasurable to me––
an emotion I do not feel foolish for pursuing.

The waiter, as though I’m a repeat customer,
brings an entire bucket of ice
and fills my glass each time he passes.
They have my brand of rum.

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I have always known this place could be my place.
The pleasure of knowing it to be so warms me
as much as the second jigger of rum.
Shall he pour it for me? Do I want it all?
Just half, I tell him, and fill the glass with Coke.
I like it weaker, so I can spread it out.
Like the fire.

Smoldering.

Hello, NaPoWriMo (Day 17)

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The assignment today was to write a poem of greeting.

Hello, NaPoWriMo

Good morning, NaPoWriMo, and good night.
Whether I have written or will write,
you tend to fill my day with obligation
for rhymed and metered concentration.
Social engagements––a thing of the past.
No time for conversation and repast
except for sandwiches and coffee quickly quaffed
in glow not candlelight (but just as soft)
that shines from my computer screen
from morn till night, with no relief between
as I strain for yet another rhyme.
For this is how I spend my time,
NaPoWriMo! With fourteen days to go,
it is impossible to just say, “No.”
No matter how I yearn to just resume my life––
to end these rhymes with which my days are rife––
I have to finish what I started
lest I be branded fickle-hearted.
I read somewhere that half the poets who first committed
to write a poem a day have by now quitted
the task they took an oath to do;
but still a few
plod on with me. We’ll never meet,
though we walk down the same blank path with metered feet.
Perhaps one day we’ll meet in poetry heaven or hell
knowing we did this task completely if not well!

In conclusion, I have heard
That in Hawaii, there’s one word
that means both hello and good bye.
It means love, affection, adios and hi!
That word, “Aloha,” covers all from dark to light;
and so, Aloha, NaPoWriMo, and good night!

“Escape” Day 16 of NaPoWriMo

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NaPoWriMo Day 16 Prompt: Write a “translation” of a poem written in a language you don’t actually know . . . (and try not to peek too much at the translation). Now, use the sound and shape of the words and lines to guide you, without worrying too much about whether your translation makes sense. (In my case, I didn’t look at all at the translation until after I’d written my poem. I wrote a translation of each line according to my intuition, then edited, trying to stay close to the original thread of the idea. My original was in Italian—a language I do not know.) Since I speak a bit of Spanish, there were three or four words whose meaning I could guess at, even though most of these guesses were found to be incorrect; nonetheless, they sped me on my way. I love getting to the part of my mind where something other than myself guides me, even though I hold the reins all the way–especially during the editing.

The poem I chose:

SPIAGGIA SETTEMBRE DEL ’64,  by Gabriele Frasca  (Link to that poem and its translation.)

The poem I wrote:

ESCAPE

Your life catches in its static house.
Nothing but the lightest footfall betrays its presence.
The door to the greatest house of all, the ocean’s edge,
tempts you to leave yourself and enter.
This echo of the ocean is the dove in you
that carries the message that you want to fly.
Motionless dove, I want to ride on your back
to the crack of sunrise—to its flower.
Forget your lone compulsions.
Leave your comfort.
Desert the logic that has frozen you.
If you could let this sick time pass,
you might grow less diverted as your distance from it grows.
Time’s ricochet might drive you to the canyon’s rim,
revealing to you that you no longer want to fall.
The stress of guilt slows down and if you choose to let it, falls behind.
Time will devour your past no matter how grand its scale––
revoke the sentence and set the guilty free.
You will pass and repass it on your round journey,
until your father, his wife, and your recalcitrance
finally wear away.

April 16, 2013, Judy Dykstra-Brown

Three Pantuns (Day 15 of NaPoWriMo)

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Today’s assignment was the pantun, which consists of rhymed quatrains (abab), with 8-12 syllables per line. The first two lines of each quatrain aren’t meant to have a formal, logical link to the second two lines, although the two halves of each quatrain are supposed to have an imaginative or imagistic connection.

Here are three I dashed off quickly in an hour, after a too-busy day. It would be nice if there were room for poetry in every day, unfortunately that is not always so. NaPoWriMo gives us that additional shove to make some time for it, even if that time is very short.

She grows exasperated with his love.
See how his fingertips caress her face?
The hand that fits too tightly in the glove
Might chafe from the embrace of even lace.

The coat tossed idly over kitchen chair.
Inside the pocket is a diamond ring.
The branch outside the window stark and bare.
One tries in vain to pay the birds to sing.

The window that is your connection with the world,
when darkness falls, shows only you.
The author writes, his characters’ truths unfurled,
but it is he the readers view.

Confessions of a Retired Superheroine (Day 14, NaPoWriMo) (really dumb, I know, but at least I did the prompt!)

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This is the prompt: “I challenge you to write a persona poem — that is, a poem in the voice of a particular person who isn’t you. But I’d like you to choose a very particular kind of person. How about a poem in the voice of a superhero (or a supervillain)?”

Confessions of a Retired Superheroine

What’s happening tomorrow?
the same thing that happens every Friday
since I was forced into retirement last year.
I’m going to go make my collections.

It will be my first day
off the diet
I’ve been on for a week––
and my leathers aren’t at all as close-fitting
as they were before,
so I deserve a small reward.

I’ve washed my hair—
Well, no surprise. I do every day.
A bit OCD on that activity,
but today I washed all of it.
Every inch.
Ears, too.

I can’t remember when I first thought
of the lucrative business
I’ve been opurrrrrrrating since my retirement;
but I do remember that tomorrow is the day
I go from door-to-door doing collections.

I usually dress in leathers,
which I look pretty good in for a mature sex-kitten.
No, not a biker chick.
I am more of a femme fatale
with a haunting and mesmerizing voice.
Everyone says it sends chills down their back–
a sort of backyard Les Mis.

My parking garage is six blocks away,
so I take a shortcut: leaping over walls,
soft-toeing it along the top edge of fences.

Sometimes I crouch in the bushes,
waiting for strangers to pass.
As I do, I sharpen my fingernails—
a weapon no one can take away from me.
Anyway, what good would a gun be
for a woman with no opposable thumbs?
Hey. Don’t feel sorry for me, okay?
I’m Puurrrrrfectly happy with my lot in life.
I’m puurrrrfect without them.

Sushi? Yes.
A trip to the beach? No.
Not unless there is raw fish involved
that I don’t have to catch myself!

I’m a night person.
I sleep for most of the day
and go out every night.

I am sexy, fit and nimble.
I fill out my leathers in all the right places.
I can jump to the ground from a rooftop,
land on my feet and be off before you see
any more of me than a shadow.
I am a thief by birth and inclination, and I
I pre”fur” my daily fare to be purrrrrrloined.

I can take swift revenge and kill mercilessly,
or curl up and enjoy
a long petting session,
as docile as you please.

Actually, I don’t know why I’m giving you this sales pitch.
I usually ignore people,
so when I actually notice them,
they are honored.

The diet? Well, low-protein, low carb and low fat.
That leaves nothing but grass, right?
And the problem with that is that everyone thinks you are sick
and so tries to trick you into a dose of this or that.
The cod liver oil isn’t bad,
but I’ve never developed a taste for Pepto Bismol.
My neighbor sneaked some into my cream a few months ago
and I gagged so hard I coughed up a hare-ball.
Just the nose and whiskers, actually, but it created a sensation, nonetheless.
I was at a party and no one was yet drunk enough
to take it in their stride.

Anyway, I’ve gotten distracted.
I’m just going to smooth my hair a bit
and then go to bed and get rested up
for tomorrow’s collections.

What kind of brilliant female was I to create a job for myself like this?

“Cat Woman Pest Disposal––You trap them, we collect them.”

I actually get paid for going from door to door,
collecting a course here and a course there.
No of course, no matter how hungry I am after my week’s fast,
I will not reward myself in my client’s presence.
I always wait until I get to my catmobile to have my first nibble.
After all, even a retired superheroine has to watch her image.