Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

If Truth Were Told

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If Truth Were Told

I’d call you oxymoron, but the pun is just too corny,
so I will simply say that you’re as dumb as you are horny.
You’d be Barney Fife’s apprentice if they rated you on brains—
your lantern of enlightenment extinguished by life’s rains.

Your logic is so flimsy that you’re little more than beast.
Left is right, in is out, up’s down and west is east.
When we try to help you, you see reason as assault.
The world is out to get you and nothing is your fault.

Everyone we know says that we should abandon you,
let you reap what you have sown and cook in your own stew,
but we cannot do it. We’re with you to the end,
because for a lifetime, we have called you friend.

Prompt words are lantern, apprentice, flimsy, east, oxymoron and assault.
The goofus in this photo has given permission to use it. None of the other descriptions apply to him, however. (Face by Forgottenman)

Familial One-upmanship

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Familial One-upmanship

My brother has a reputation for excessive lingering.
I think he has advanced degrees in mooching and malingering.

The black sheep of the family, the brunt of all our jokes,
at forty-three he still receives an allowance from our folks.

He ruins family dinners by being loud and brash.
His favorite interactions end up in a clash.

Discussing brands of vodka or motor cars or fashions,
he’s bound to expound at great length about his latest passions.

His family is his outlet for letting off his steam.
His exquisite taste in clothing dissected seam-by-seam.

We get no word in edgewise when conversing with this brother,
so when choosing a table mate, I veer toward any other.

There’s one in every family, it’s true right down the line,
but if you’ve one you’d like to trade, I’d gladly trade you mine.

Prompt words today are discuss, outlet, malinger, clashes, brash,allowance, exquisite and vodka.  (I took this picture but it is not my family.  I took it at a town reunion years ago and it is used for illustrative purposes only. I don’t have any brothers, so the guy  in the poem is fictional, but you might recognize him anyway.)

In Life Not as in Art

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In Life, Not as in Art

Those who have a fondness for surreal modern art
might often hitch their horses behind their apple cart.
Which might lead to dropping apples up and down the road.
Which, of course, will lead to losing half your load.
So, if Pablo Picasso is your aesthetic saint,
My advice for beginners? Don’t practice what you paint.

Prompts for today are cart, beginner, fondness, abstract, drop, modern . Image is Picasso’s la fenêtre ouverte.

Quilting Bee

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Mask quilt by Deanna Taylor
The good, the bad and the ugly. All part of life’s crazy quilt.
Pieces ready to be joined
Broken thoughts
African motif quilt by Deanna Taylor
Detail from mask quilt
This is a lovely poem written by my friend Isidro and painted on my wall. It is his version of a story I’d earlier written entitled “In Mexico There is Always Music.” We all keep contributing to each others’ stories.

(Click on photos to enlarge and to read the rest of the story.)

Quilting Bee

I chop my life up into bits, incongruous and varied:
struggles, victories, tragic loves, the day that I got married.
Clashes create beauty as pains mix up with cheers,
making a lovely pattern as each new piece appears.

In stories as in patchwork quilts, all bits are not roses.
Part of the beauty comes from the pain that it exposes.
We put our art together, fragment after patch
and no pattern emerges if all the pieces match.

A convenient truth of works of art as well as that of life:
beauty’s found in perfection, but also found in strife.
Sweet berries come with brambles and each rose has its thorn.
Both great passion and great pain predate the time we’re born.

Perhaps pain is the awful price that we have to pay
to experience the pleasure of when it goes away.
So with the ugly fabric that finds a place to fit
when contrasting beauty is stitched in next to it.

Life is a lovely story, but not all of it is writ.
Why were we created if not to add to it?
In taking all the pieces we’re provided with,
We take part in creation by adding to the myth.

 

 

Prompts today are patterns, chop, clashes, cheer, incongruous, convenient and brambles.

Whirl

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Whirl

The rumor is that I will fall for anything in pants,
but it’s a reputation I only gained by chance.
It really isn’t warranted, for I must feel a spark.
I’m not apt to woo anyone merely for a lark.

I’m just giving feedback, though it’s really no big deal,
of how I earned my reputation on a Ferris wheel.
I went up as a single, but after a spin or two,
another swinging single came into my view.

He was a mere acquaintance. I’d seen him once or twice
on a barstool at the tavern, and I thought him very nice.
I was a mere scrap of a girl, and he was big and burly.
He had a classic profile and his smile was wide and pearly.

My second spin around the wheel, I gave the smile of smiles,
hoping I could interest him with my girlish wiles.
It must have worked for on my very next time going round,
I saw that fellow standing on the boarding mound.

The spinning stopped while they removed my safety bar and he
climbed right in beside me and turned his smile on me.
I don’t know the legality. Is love a bonafide
excuse to board new people in the middle of a ride?

I do not know the answer, but I know for sure it worked,
and when the safety bar went on and that big wheel jerked
me up into the air again, I never rued the stop,
for we were locked in our first kiss before we reached the top.

Although I started solo, we came to earth a pair.
I had found my next true love way up there in the air,
proving it once and for all that romance may be found
even in a swinging cage fifty feet off the ground.

And while the whole experience prompted jubilation,
it had a negative effect on my reputation.
So though I still find rides upon the Ferris wheel are neato,
I arrive there fully masked and I ride incognito!

 

Prompts for the day are incognito, feedback, spark, acquaintance, scrap, Ferris wheel and legality. Image by Juliana Malta on Unsplash

Breakup Breakdown, for Wordle 569

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Breakup Breakdown

My tenacious efforts to climb that hard rock face
of the tower of your indifference has brought me great disgrace.

I regret my wasted journey  to regain your love.
What can’t be saved below can’t be re-won above.

My thoughts are swarming wildly like bees around their hive.
They crack my shell of reason. I’ve no wish to be alive.

Though I present a normal face, I’m not sane at all.
I grit my teeth and curl my broken body in a ball.

And though this seems to demonstrate that I am quite agile,
actually, it protects a heart that is most fragile.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 569 prompt words are: regret wasted journey tenacious bees agile rocking climb crack teeth present face. Photo and brooch by jdb.

And…it’s fiction, Dolly!!!!

Eyeing my Neighbor’s Sandwich in the School Cafeteria

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Eyeing my Neighbor’s Sandwich in the School Cafeteria

Since they garnisheed Dad’s wages, we’ve been bleary-eyed and passive.
The influence on our diet, in short, has been most massive.
Sister has a headache and mother’s getting thin.
My football playing brother has no energy to win.
His lack of skill’s been vindicated by the fact that he
was relegated to a diet riboflavin-free.
For since Dad has no wages, there’s no money to buy bread,
so dandelion greens are what we’re grazing on instead.
Since vitamin g is what we have been missing in our diet,
if you don’t like that sandwich, do you think that I could try it?

I know. A really bad poem, but hope I am “vindicated” when you view what the prompt words were: Prompt words for today were bleary, passive, win, vitamin g, vindicated and garnishment.Illustration thanks to Chic Young.

Note:

Vitamin G isn’t a term you’ll hear very much anymore. It’s actually an outdated name for riboflavin (also known as lactoflavin and vitamin B2), a micronutrient found in bread and pasta. Riboflavin is an easily absorbed micronutrient that plays a key role in maintaining health in humans and animals. It is required for a wide variety of cellular processes and is very important in getting energy from the foods we eat. Studies have shown that riboflavin may play a role in the prevention and/or treatment of iron-deficiency anemia, carpal tunnel syndrome, cataracts, migraines and rosacea (a skin disease). And recent research has found that riboflavin is one of three vitamins involved in the regulation of circadian (daily) rhythms, because it helps to activate some light-sensitive cells in the retina of the eye and synchronize our daily biological rhythms with the light.

Jam and Toast for Dinner

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  Wishful thinking.

Jam and Toast for Dinner

She could not stand to touch a worm,
for squiggly things just made her squirm,
and so she cast a naked hook
into the waters of the brook.
You might have guessed she was not able
to provide protein for our table,
thus proving that old axiom
forgotten by our squeamish mom.
“When you go out fishing, best do it by the book.
No one ever caught a fish with an unbaited hook.”

For the dVerse Poets prompt: aphorisms.

I believe this is a new aphorism to add to your list!

Forced Celebration

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Forced Celebration

As they frogmarched their prisoner into the room,
uncountable candles dispelled the gloom.
A pervading odor of sugar and wax
was entrenched in the air around piles and stacks
of brightly wrapped boxes of variable sizes,
yet she was not swayed by potential surprises.
Soothing smiles of friends and the song they were singing
were tangential to thoughts that were wildly zinging
through her mind, for in short, she did not find it nifty
that this was the day that she would turn fifty!!!

Prompts today are frogmarch, variable, soothing, entrench, pervading, candle and tangential. Image by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash.

Imitating Grandma

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Imitating Grandma

In my grandma’s pleasant house,
dressed up in her peasant blouse,
a towel stuffed in to form a lump
to imitate her dorsal hump,
I tried to imitate her waddle
and her propensity to dawdle,
offering morsels from her cookie jar,
as she watched me from afar.

With not a filament of shame,
I went about my childish game,
beaming as I played the gimp,
miming her arthritic  limp.
In my innocent portrayal
was the cruelest betrayal.
The family knew the shame was mine,
but as I toddled down the line

of people who filled up the room,
I gloried to the cheerful boom
of Grandma’s laugh as she piped up
to save this youngest clueless pup
from the shame I might have felt
if she had not approached and knelt
down next to me, gathering in
this cruel mime, absolving sin.

And though I thought the final line
would surely be a quip of mine,
aping her halting foreign speech
as I tried to avoid her reach,
she gathered me in loving hug
and giving an indulgent shrug,
said, “Forgive her, for she’s only three
and gets her sense of humor from me!”

 

Prompts today are dawdle, (love that word) mine, peasant, filament, morsel, beaming and portrayal. Image from the internet.