Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

Grandpa Discovers Virtual Reality

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Grandpa Discovers Virtual Reality

I’ve been over yonder and frankly I’m perplexed
about how all the young ‘uns seem to be so under-sexed.
Virtual reality makes real-time life a bore.
Why bother with reality when you can live on lore?

Real life takes some gumption but virtual life’s a snap.
Who needs real love with Kim Kardashian upon your lap?
It seems that in the future perhaps all folks will live thusly,
sitting watching screens to live their lives vicariously.

 

Prompt words are perplexed, vicariously, frankly, yonder and snap. Image by Lucrezia Carnelos on Unsplash.

Poetic Reconstruction

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Poetic Reconstruction

I’m going to the hospital. I’ve made a reservation,
for I am much in need of a creative restoration.

I need an operation to regain my way of seeing.
I’m going to regain my glow–the fiber of my being.

I suffer from prosaism. Triteness clogs each vein.
My poetic diagnosis? Derivative. Inane.

The abundance of my poems does not refute the fact
of the originality that lately they have lacked.

So, take me to the hospital. I’m ready to be cut.
I’m ready to be lifted from my creative rut.

Unveil my eyes, unblock my brain. Clear pathways to my heart,
but as you improve parts of it, please leave the broken part.

For all the pleasures of the world do not make up a whole.
It also takes some sorrows to feed a poet’s soul.

 

Prompt words today are abundance, hospital, fiber, prosaism and glow.

Pierced Dove

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Pierced Dove

Art historians aver
and modern artists would concur
her paintings are a visual feast
inspired by the dreadful beast
that consumed her from within.
She painted it time and again.
Her sketches were a handbook of
pain of body and of love.
The thorn, the arrow, the pierced heart—
the years together and apart—
her happiness oft on the wing
prompts the cash register’s cha-ching
more than sixty years since she
finally set her spirit free,
leaving part of her unfurled
in paint, on canvas, for the world.

This is the piece I did for an exhibition in Mexico City honoring the 100th year since Frida’s birth. Its title is “Painterminable” (Pain, Painter Interminable.) I was very honored to be one of two non-Mexicans invited to exhibit. It coincided with a retrospective of her work. Sorry that my piece is so much larger than two of hers. I wanted to exhibit all three of her works as a gallery. Click on them to enlarge them. 

Prompt words today are cha-ching, handbook, sketches, aver and feast.

Fun News

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Fun News

Litigation is imperative to end this maudlin folly.
We must petition powers that be to make the news more jolly.
Fill it up with cheerful stuff and cover up the crime.
Scrub the whole environment to cover up the grime.
There isn’t any heartache and prejudice is over.
Cover up the poison ivy. Embellish the clover.
Dealing with reality simply isn’t fun,
so let’s whitewash reality until the the world is done.
Reality shows are way more fun than boring old reality.
So let’s cheer up the news again with fictional banality!

Prompt words today are folly, maudlin, petition, imperative and litigation. Image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

The Greatest Story Ever Told: Wordle 536

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The Greatest Story Ever Told

Join us in the circle that chronicles the blend
of our different stories that lead to just one end.
Our ceiling is the clouds and one wall is the west
and the north and south and east combine to form the rest.
Raven speaks our history that’s written on the sands
of the mighty ocean that touches all the lands,
pounding at their edges with insistent fists
 gathering the  surfaces that formerly it kissed.
Pulling all the rock slides roughly with its hands,
grinding all the boulders down to powdered sand.
This is one grand story that none of us should miss .
Have you any story more relevant than this?

For The Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: room cloud any fist raven rock slide speak west story blend circle

Little Mysteries

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Little Mysteries

The essence of attachment is discovery,
but there’s also much allure in a mystery.
So sometimes when an answer seems definitely certain,
it might behoove us just this once to sagely pull a curtain.

Word prompts today are curtains, essence, discovery, attachment.

Night Visitor: Wordle 535, Jan 9, 2022

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Night Visitor

A shift in light, a shape just glimpsed, a moment fraught with fear.
What spirit floats in front of me and breathes into my ear?
It thrusts into my consciousness, filling all its gaps
with memories that, truth to tell, I’ve recently let lapse.
Its stories fill my night out in whispers soft and low.
It beckons me to follow it, but still I answer “No.”
In fear of where it seeks to lead, I do not heed its sighs.
It might be other than it seems, in another guise.
That truth we find in dreams, alas, carries no guarantee.
Do we see what really is or what we wish to see?

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle, the prompts are: fraught glimpse shape moment lead gap thrust might breath shift sigh low Image by Lux Graves on Unsplash.

Forgottenman  at Serial Monography has acquainted me with another online Wordle of a different type that I have become equally addicted to. You can find an explanation of how to play it HERE . And you can go HERE to sign on play the game. A new one is posted daily. Please note this is an entirely different Wordle not associated with Brenda’s blogging site.

Traveler’s Advisory

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Traveler’s Advisory

An explorer most intrepid, while plodding pole-to-pole,
one day declared this wish to be his penultimate goal.
He wanted to increase his pace to maximal extent
by carrying less luggage everywhere he went.
He found a weightless backpack that, sadly, was inflammable,
into which he stuffed all his possessions that were crammable.
He then set off upon his trek at a healthy trot,
on a day the sun was inordinately hot.

Glancing off his zipper, it started a small fire
near the bottom of his backpack that quickly traveled higher,
igniting matches in his pack, and then the gasoline
he carried to start fires with set a magazine
stuffed into his bag top gloriously afire,
turning his whole backpack into a funeral pyre.
The moral of this story is, if your travel pack
isn’t fire retardant, don’t bear it on your back!!

Prompt words for today are inflammable, pole, explore, maximal and pace.

Scotch Plaid: Wordle 533

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Scotch Plaid

A bloke’s
a joke
when clad
in plaid.
Girls don’t tarry
with guys so merry.
They suppose
such garish clothes
best suit a zone
for golf alone—
a sporting life
lived void of wife.

A plaid-swathed guy
might well let fly
a golf ball and
wind up in sand,
his drive a flub
made with a club,
his signal “Fore!”
a senseless roar,
or perhaps see,
there on the tee,
his ball still sitting
devoid of hitting.

A ball unfired
is best retired
to join a club
that is a pub
where scotch on ice
will suffice.
No more balls fired,
golf clubs retired,
that vest of plaid
doesn’t suit a lad
who is, I think,
best suited to drink.

For such a lad, I think it’s best
to drink the scotch and ditch the vest.

Prompt words for Wordle 533 are: signal, drive, plaid, lone, life, joke ice, fire, club, merry, fly and join

December 26

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December 26

We’re all mindful of the date. Christmas has been done.
Jingle bells are now passé. “Noel” has had its run.
Mall Santas can be irascible for another year
until Christmas season once again draws near
and they must again be jovial, mindful of the tykes
who must be assuaged with their promises of bikes
or quantities of other toys as parents hovering near
make lists of wished-for plunder they’re meant to overhear.
Cash registers the whole mall through will jingle jangle jingle
as crowds of Christmas shoppers brave the crowds to mingle
and provide their little darlings with all that they desire.
So do stores and Santa Claus every year conspire
to insure our economy continues to expand.
So as he bows and leaves the stage, give Santa Claus a hand!

 

Prompt words today are jovial, mindful, bow, irascible and quantity. Images by Chris Murray and Mike Arney on Unsplash.