Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

Wrong Decision: Sunday Whirl’s Wordle #518

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Wrong Decision

Candlelight feigned the light of the day
and wheels crunched the gravel as he drove away.
I knelt down on the carpet and let my tears fall,
then rose to my feet and walked to the hall.

Too late for touching, I opened the door,
surprised at the flowers placed there on the floor.
Recriminations were all I expected,
but as I opened the card and inspected

the words that he’d written, they opened my heart
and I wished that I hadn’t let him depart.
Instead of surrendering to my misgiving
that he would be angry instead of forgiving,

that I’d opened the door and invited him in.
If I had, now I wonder what might have been?
I might have been living to this very day
with the love of my life that I sent away.

 

This week’s prompts for Wordle are: land, carpets, line, down, kneeling, tears, flowers, late,
wheels, touching, living and candlelight.

Peckish

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Peckish

Just a slight off-center peck on each proffered cheek
is all urbane society ever seems to seek.
First at “Hello,” then “Goodbye,” it’s only a dry token
of all  of the emotion that might be shown or spoken.

It’s as though a more demonstrative form of recognition,
some heartfelt hug or sincere words of fond admission,
some scrumptious soppy kiss on lips or action more revealing
might upset the applecart by showing our real feeling.

We love “love” in the movies or the pages of our books.
We desire seductive actions and long and smoldering looks—
kisses full of passion and genuine elation—
yet our own dry hand shakes are devoid of titillation.

I’m craving real emotion in place of mere air-kisses—
some lips that meet their mark, not just these weak near-misses.
It’s time for modern science to come up with a potion
that puts action in reaction and more motion in emotion!

 

Prompt words today are action, scrumptious, urbane, goodbye and recognition. Image by Limor Zellermayer on Unsplash.

 

Total Recall

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Total Recall

The world of our grandmother has been subsumed
by modern conventions but is exhumed
when remembering the cabin where all our relations
 joined us each year for summer vacations.

Ping-pong and campfires and dunks in the lake.
Muddy dirt beaches on which we would bake
and turn brown in the sun, turning over in turns
to inspect our tan lines and moderate burns.

S’mores over campfires and mulligan stew
cooked on the coals and trips to the loo
making our way in the moonlight at night,
battling mosquitos and all things that bite.

Slapping our necks and our arms and our knees
at chiggers and ticks and horseflies and fleas.
Such glorious penance to pay for the fun
of cousins and swimming holes, horses and sun.

Vacations contemporary just don’t equal
those trips of our youth that have no modern sequel.
They live in our memories where we remember
Pleasures of July we recall in December.

 

Prompt words today are ping-pong, contemporary, cabin, subsume and grandmother.
Again, this is fiction. The camping memories were actually from church camp in the Black Hills
where I went every year. Loved it.

Rainy Day Doldrums

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Rainy Day Doldrums

I’m frenetic with fog, frustrated by rain.
Drop after drop, again and again.
Drumming on roof tiles and gushing in gutters.
Dropping from drain spouts in loud splashing mutters.
Too cold and too dark to chance a meander,
I pull back the drapes to take a small gander.
This poem is a tribute to dryness and sun.
I’ll be glad when the rainy season is done.

I pull back the drapes to have a small ganderPrompts today are fog, frenetic, gander, tribute and glad.

Sticking to the Straight and Narrow

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Sticking to the Straight and Narrow
(Mother Superior’s Rejoinder)

Please do not lollygag. There’s no time more.
We’re closing the shutters and locking the door.
Wipe those dreams from your brain, for it is our fear
that your thoughts will diverge from the prim and austere.
Make sure your spirit is pearl white and pure
with no sinful streaks to compete with demure.
Deadly sins number from one up to seven,
and striated souls will not make it to heaven.

 

Prompt words today are lollygag, austere, brain, striate and lock.

Only Child

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Only Child

She wants to trade her parents for contemporary versions.
She cannot stand their constant recital of aversions.
When it comes to expectations, their rule list never ends.
They derogate her clothes choice and her makeup and her friends.

When she wants to go on overnights, they won’t give their consent.
They never understand her or hear what she really meant.
Her dating makes them nervous. They wait up ’til she gets in,
then interrogate her as to what she’s done and where she’s been.

When it comes to parents, she got the rawest deal.
The schism that’s between them it seems will never heal.
Would she had an older sister who was ill-behaved and wild
to detract attention from this wretched only-child!

Prompt words today are nervous, consent, schism, derogate and trade.

Simian Payback

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Simian Payback

In more ways than one, my new roommate is simious.
Eating bananas, he’s hardly abstemious.
His arms are so long that his fists scrape the ground
and when I am gone, he monkeys around!

When we go out in public, the people all gape.
It doesn’t take science to declare him an ape.
He swings on the curtains and ruins my decor
by pulling the drapes from their rod to the floor.

If you said he’s an ingrate, you wouldn’t be wrong.
When I go to the dentist and he comes along,
he mimes for a freebie—a checkup and cleaning,
then stands at the mirror, inspecting and preening,

never imagining he’s out of line
as I dole out the cash for his cleaning and mine.
Just one thing might mitigate his crazy acts,
so I ask that you temper your scorn with the facts.

He was raised in the jungle, then put in a cage
and only let out when he reached middle age.
So how could I help but assist in his exit
with no one around to thwart it or hex it?

With the key in the lock, I just gave a twist
and gave his jailbreak a needed assist.
But now I admit I was way less than clever,
for I have acquired the worst roommate ever!

What prompted my action? Was I less than smart
 when I saw his great need, in playing my part?
I felt that I owed him a really big debt,
 for an ape is way more than merely a pet.

If you studied your science and paid good attention,
you could not have missed this pertinent mention:
if there hadn’t been apes, then there wouldn’t be
any of you and there wouldn’t be me!

 

Prompts today are decor, ingrate, mitigate, abstemious and science. Image by Suzanne Schwartz on Unsplash.

False Endings

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False Endings

His paranoia is one for the books.
He finds disease wherever he looks.
He anguishes over the slightest small sneeze
and the tiniest bump brings him down to his knees.

When his girl left him, the heartbreak he felt
was myocarditis, and the smallest welt
on his neck or his face is cancer for sure,
so he’s off to  to Mayo Clinic to look for a cure.

His fixation’s macabre and his acts supercilious
every damn time that he feels a bit bilious,
for he knows better than all of his friends
that he’ll soon meet his maker, so he makes amends

for all his ill deeds and his slights and his snits,
seeing the light when he’s down in the pits.
He should have done better and eaten less pie,
and now he’ll pay for it, for he’s going to die.

And when he gets better, you can bet he’ll be sure
that repentance has brought a miraculous cure.
So goes the story, and though it’s not his ending,
you can be sure that a new plague is pending!

(Note: I know I’ve used this photo at least a few (?) times before but it’s just so appropriate to this poem that I can’t help using it again. )

Prompt words today are: myocarditis, macabre, anguish, supercilious and paranoia.

Eulogy for Artichokes

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Eulogy for Artichokes

Behold the bristly artichokes scattered through the field—
delicious little thistles when boiled, buttered, peeled.
With our taste buds wakened and when they’re salted slightly,
it takes a bit of discipline to try to eat politely.

Leaf by leaf, we peel them bare, scraping off their meat.
We like them better with each tiny bit of them we eat.
Then scraping off the “chokey” part, we gobble down the heart.
They told us all along that this would be our favorite part.

Who knew these fat green pinecones would turn out to be so tasty?
Now we wish consumption of them hadn’t been so hasty.
And even after plates are bare and not a morsel lingers,
we’d like to slurp the butter up and lick it from our fingers.

 

Prompts for the day are scattered, field, discipline, bristly and wake. Image by Margaret Jaszowski on Unsplash.

Kakorrhaphiophobia

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Kakorrhaphiophobia*

Bemoan the fates of elephants unable to forget,
for it is a talent they’re likely to regret.
Those animals more vacuous have memories that fade
and they forget their failures as soon as they’ve been made.

The present of the wildebeest, for instance, bears no hint
of any past mistakes and so as he begins his sprint,
he has no qualms about his course and runs away assured
that he’s not being herded, sequestered, penned or lured.

So he puts all his energy in living out the present.
His days are worry-free and his nighttimes calm and pleasant.
Not so the worrisome elephant as all his past disasters
dealing with former problems with poachers, hunters, masters

influence every choice he makes in choosing what to do.
Every decision that he makes could be one that he’ll rue.
So don’t go thinking that a sterling memory is pleasant,
for keeping track of all the past can sure screw up your present!

*(The medical definition of kakorrhaphiophobia is abnormal fear of failure.)

Prompt words today are kakorrhaphiophobia, elephant, hint, vacuous and energy.