Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

Special Delivery

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Special Delivery

Fetch the doctor and bring him home.
I’m giving birth to a new poem.
If he gives you the runaround,
I guess I’ll be hospital-bound,
for I’ve got fever, cramps and chills
that can’t be cured by any pills.

I’m falling into a big pit
and I can’t get rid of it.
The lacuna waits for me.
It is the well of poetry
that I’ll fall into if no saint
comes to rid me of the taint
of words that rhyme or words that don’t.
 I fear that if the doctor won’t,
surely I’ll be ripped apart
by narratives that must depart.

They’ve been gestating so long
that I fear something will go wrong.
So call the doctor. Tell the fellow
that my fingers have gone yellow
from the words that can’t get out.
I’m getting rheumatism, gout.

I’ve got a mass within my heart
and I don’t know how best to start
to free the words that must be born—
that from my body must be torn.
Womb and brain and heart and spleen
stuffed full but yearning to be lean.

Emptied of words, stripped to the core,
then I”ll have room to sprout some more.
For though I grow the poems right well
and have fine stories I can tell—
although I’m bursting with the stuff,
I know that words are not enough.
For years they have been telling me
it’s all in the delivery.

 

 

Prompt words are fetch, runaround, chills, yellow and lacuna.
Photo by Freestocks on Unsplash.

“The Fool Doth Think He Is Wise”

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“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
–Wm. Shakespeare
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
                                                                                    —Charles Darwin  in The Descent of Man
“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating
that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.”
–(Wikipedia)

“The Fool Doth Think He Is Wise”

Although his conclusion was toothsome and salty,
it was my colleague’s premise I found to be faulty.
His logic? Ramshackle, for facts in his keeping
would make a logician run, screaming and leaping,
out of the room and over the hill,
when of this insanity, he’d had his fill.

Light intellect teamed up with heavy endeavor,
expressed by a soul neither heartful nor clever
is a dangerous pairing in this Internet world,
where such like-minded fools, their illogic unfurled,
can find a wide audience, hardly deserved,
that would leave Einstein weeping and Hawking unnerved.

 

Prompt words are colleague, ramshackle, leaping, premise and heavy.

He Said, She Said

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He Said, She Said

When she questioned his fidelity, he said she was a loser,
though he was the real lowlife—a bully and a bruiser.
“We’re not a pair,” he snapped at her. “I never took an oath
that I would be true to you, in fact, I’m rather loath
to say that when I married you, it wasn’t a mistake.
The only thing I liked about it was the wedding cake!

I’d had a few too many the day that we were hitched
and ever since we had the kids, you have bitched and bitched.
You like to snap my head off If I partake with the boys
and come home after midnight. If I make the slightest noise
and if I wake the kids up, well, so what? They’re my kids, too.
Perhaps they’d like to spend some time with me instead of you.

So what if it is 3 a.m.? Tomorrow we’ll sleep in.
You’d think that playing with your kids past midnight is a sin!!!!
The way to keep your man is to practice your felicity.
Instead of gripes, I’d like to see some wifely elasticity.
I always was a party guy. I always was a rover.
If you expect much more of me, my time with you is over.”

To Which She Answered:

The kids are at my mother’s, your packed bag in the garage.
Almost from the beginning, our marriage was a mirage.
I’ve called the man to change the locks. I’ve closed our bank account.
There’s money in your suitcase—a very small amount.
My father bought our house and my salary, at best,
is what was in the bank account. You drank up all the rest.

So what if it is 3 a.m.? You’re used to nighttime games.
Check your little black book. It’s sure to yield some names.
If you’ve had too much to drink, it’s best you don’t drive far,
but I’m sure that you’ll be comfy sleeping in the car.
I’ve decided to withdraw from marital complicity,
and that will bring you what you want. In short, your wife’s felicity!!

Prompts today are “not a pair,” snap, partake, felicity and loser. Photo by Elvis Bekmanis on Unsplash, used with permission.

Cherry Summers

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Cherry Summers

They sit on the steps of our low front porch,
cherry-stained fingers dropping pits 
onto the grass or sidewalk.
“They is good but they is sowie,”
exclaims our tiny neighbor, looking up
at my dad, who sits with her and her brothers,
his mouth, too, full of sour cherries
pulled from the trees in our back yard.

My sister and I spend summer afternoons
picking off stems and squeezing
the fruit to expel the pits,
juice running down our arms
to drip off elbows and pool on the 
table, attracting ants.

Bowlful after bowlful is removed from the table
by my mom to make into pies to freeze.
This task of summer is rewarded all winter long
by the crisp thin crust and tapioca-thickened 
ooze of sugared cherry gel surrounding 
the  fruit sweetened by some chemistry
of my mother’s hand.

Those summer days were lengthened
by the absence of the tolling school bell across the street
and by  a sun that lingered into night, 
bedtimes stretching out because of the impossibility
of going to bed before dark.

“Ollie ollie oxen free,” echoed from
games of hide-and-seek that ranged
from the playground across the street
into our backyard where cherry trees
that offered shade in the heat,
offered shelter from detection at night.

The aroma of cherry pie, fresh from the oven,
whetted more than mere appetites
during all those nights when,
snow piled on the windowsills,
we bit into
the sweet memories
of summer

 

 

For dVerse Poets
Image by Joanna Kasinska on Unsplash, used with permission.

Opposites Attract.

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Opposites Attract

They had a transitory friendship.  In class, it was effusive,
but once out of the classroom it tended toward abusive.
Teachers provided discipline that they lacked otherwise.
They needed supervision to deal with the surprise
they felt when their thoughts differed—to control their yin and yang.
Somehow, self-moderation simply was not their “thang.”
Differences enrich us. They expand our point of view.
They teach us how to listen while buffering the “you.”
Show our differences and likenesses with the ultimate end
of taking an acquaintance and making them a friend.

 

Prompts for today are friend, transitory, effusive and classroom.

Making Hay

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Making Hay

Take dinner at your leisure but with breakfast please make haste
lest one minute of your day you should think to waste.

Contemplate your choices. Delegate with care.
Of capricious working mates, I warn you to beware.

If you nurse idle habits, they’re sure to grow and thrive,
so don’t rest on your laurels while you are still alive.

Life is given as a gift so please don’t abuse it.
What a waste of riches if you choose not to use it.

Prompt words today are breakfast,  capricious, haste,  delegate and nurse. If you don’t understand the  allusion in the title, go HERE for enlightenment. Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Ascension Dementia.

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Ascension Dementia

When it comes to penthouse parties, I’m an equivocator
if it is a building that lacks an elevator.
Lately, my flair for climbing stairs seems to be out of whack.
When it comes to floor ascension, I do not have the knack.

My gumption seems to flag a bit as I reach the brink,
for as I run short of breath, I simply cannot think.
Thus, I’m an oxymoron, for when I climb the stair,
my mental acuity simply isn’t there.

At the bottom I am boisterous and have a lot of pep
that vanishes too quickly as I take step after step.
I try to remember what I climbed nine stories for,
but I can’t for the life of me remember anymore.

 

(According to poetic lexicography, an oxymoron is someone who loses mental acuity due to oxygen loss to the brain.)

Prompts today are flag,  gumption, oxymoron, whack and boisterous.

 

Last Ride

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Last Ride

He was a motorcycle zealot,
so when his wife said he should sell it,
he protested, “It’s too soon!”
and headed out under the moon
in zipped-up jacket and leather boot
for a ride along that route

he’d ridden in his glory days,
but this time it was in a haze.
Those gorgeous hills and dales he’d ridden
somehow now seemed to be hidden,
rivaled by McDonald’s and
Target and Computerland.

Gone all the open road that he
had ridden when he’d felt so free.
His buddies ’round him in a pack—
Rowdy Bill and Badass Jack.
That place where they had raised such Hell
now turned into a Taco Bell.

He turned his bike back homeward then,
back to his place in Shady Glen.
Tacked a sign that said “For Sale” 
over his bike next to the rail
whereupon he hung his youth,
wild and free and so uncouth:

his leather jacket, his buckled boots
his companions down so many routes.
Hills and valleys away from home
where in wild youth, he’d gone to roam.
Finally knowing those days were done
now that he was ninety-one.

Prompts today are soon, zealot, gorgeous, rival.

Spring Brakes

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Spring Brakes

Her freshman year at college, my sis brought home a guest
that dad said was a nincompoop–rude and badly dressed.
His pants were tight, his buttons opened half way down his chest,
but my sister made excuses for the crudeness he expressed
by saying he was sensitive and recently depressed.

He strode into the kitchen and jerked open the door
of the refrigerator and began to pour
milk right from the carton, down his chin onto the floor.
What’s more, when he was finished, he asked if there was more!
Well, I could sense Dad’s anger before I heard his roar.

“He can’t help his behavior, he’s parched!” my sister cried,
pleading with our father as he threw the jerk outside.
Where, by his own volition, the kid sauntered to his ride,
put the keys in the ignition and, gathering his pride,
put the pedal to the metal, but then the engine died!

To inject a bit of humor would probably be rude,
but I simply can’t resist expounding on the dude.
My parents called his parents who came a bit unglued
and gave the kid a lecture on respect and rectitude,
imposing a Spring Break spell of solitude.

And that is why my sister spent her term vacation
in a state of martyrdom and excess perturbation.
I chalked it up to part of her farther education
and gloried just a little bit in her situation,
trying to abstain from another smug oration.

And that’s part of the story of when sister was a fool
and chose a dud as boyfriend, but to dwell on it is cruel.
That year she learned more lessons that weren’t taught in school.
When it came to spring vacation, it became her rule
that mixing  dads and boyfriends really wasn’t cool.

 

Photo by Mark Decile on Unsplash, used with permission. Prompts today are parched, nincompoop, inject, bide and guest.

What the —-? Palinode for dVerse Poets.

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The Invitation

“You are invited to a party at our house, Saturday at 7.
Please bring a dish to share and what you want to drink.”

 

The Reply

Pot Luck?
What the F—?

If I’m to bring a dish to share and also what I drink,
just who’s throwing the party? It sounds like me, I think.
If I’m going to cook a dish and also buy the wine,
I think I’ll just stay home instead, where all of it is mine!
The purpose for a party is for entertaining friends—
Not the other way around. This said, my poem ends!