Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

“To Do” List for a New Roommate (NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 9 and Daily Prompts)

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“To Do” List for a New Roommate

*If you value this abode,
please plan to shoulder half the load
to keep it lovely, clean and neat.
This rule, I will not repeat.

*Underwear should not be seen
on chair or floor or in-between.
(To insure I’m a happy camper,
dirty clothes go in the hamper.)

*If, on occasion, you feel you might
have a lover spend the night,
lest my ire you might incite,
please have him leave by morning light.

*No mongrels, kittens, fish or birds
or other denizens of herds
may cross my doorway, now or ever.
In short, are pets allowed? No. Never!!!

*If personal details you recite,
please insure they are not trite,
for next to messiness and snoring,
I most dread roommates who are boring.

* Don’t steal my cookies or my chips.
My food should never pass your lips.
Don’t steal my leftover knishes,
and when you cook, do your own dishes.

*If these requests you can’t abide,
just pack your bags and move outside!
Follow my rules, or it’s your loss,
for in this house, I am the boss!

 

Prompt words today are shoulder, underwear, mongrel, trite and love.  Image by Sincerely Media on Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Also, for NaPoWriMo, Day 9, Make a To-Do List

Keeping Abreast

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Keeping Abreast

If I were made the ruler of
this universe I rue and love,
the one thing I would not let “be”
is the force of gravity
in respect to just one issue.
Namely––my mammary tissue!

For, though you may feel dubious,
each year, I grow more boobious!
I do not like them hanging there
where once they used to thrust the air.
Where once each strained against its cup,
It seems like now  they’ve given up.

Listless and flat, downward they droop.
Sad Sack replaces Betty Boop.
They have no personality.
They’ve lost elasticality!
The result is truly tragic,
so this is why I need some magic.

Please, gods of nature, give a cure.
There must be some way to inure
my breasts from force of gravity.
Now that I rule, hear my plea!
Tell gravity that it is best
to loose its hold upon each breast

so they are perky once again,
thrusting out below my chin
instead of hanging in two vees
somewhere down around my knees!
Restore my pride. Dispel my frown.
I want them hanging out, not down!

 

For dVerse Poets: Body Parts

 

Is it cheating that this is a poem I wrote six years ago? More true now than then!!!!

Line of Reasoning

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Line of Reasoning

His baleful eye and mawkish grin
reveal the sort of state he’s in.
Anybody can see he wields
an attitude that never yields
to any view different from his.
He’s up on everybody’s biz.
On world matters bacterial
and all things managerial
he knows more than the experts do
and gladly shares his point of view
with doctor, scientist or crew.
He’ll educate them all anew
by sharing truths that only he
in his superiority
has figured out. He is so clever
that even though, in truth, he never
went to university,
still, surely, all the world can see
it’s simply common sense that how
he sees things is a sacred cow.
In fact, you need not go to school.
Just listen to this puffed-up fool
to hear how science has it wrong.
He’s known the true facts all along.
How much more proof is there to get?
He heard it on the Internet!

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people’s inability to recognize their lack of ability.

Prompt words today are bacterial, crew, mawkish, wield and anybody. Image by brandi ibraho on Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Love’s Blindfold: NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 3

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Love’s Blindfold

The sunset painted you and me
against a bright raspberry sea.
My eyelash pressed against your lips,
I missed the passing of three ships.

Such freedom does enchantment bring
to cancel every other thing.
to pull the wool over our eyes,
all else but love to exorcise.

Here is the NaPoWriMo prompt that led to the above poem: 

And now for our prompt. This one is a bit involved, which is why I’m giving it to you on a Saturday. Today, I’d like to challenge you to make a “Personal Universal Deck,” and then to write a poem using it. The idea of the “Personal Universal Deck” originated with the poet and playwright Michael McClure, who gave the project of creating such decks to his students in a 1976 lecture at Naropa University. Basically, you will need 50 index cards or small pieces of paper, and on them, you will write 100 words (one on the front and one on the back of each card/paper) using the rules found here.

Don’t agonize over your word choices. Making the deck should be fun and revealing, as you generate words that sound “good” to you. The fact that the words are mainly divided among the five senses should be helpful in selecting words that you like the sound of, and that have some meaning personal to you. For example, my deck contains “harbor,” “wool,” “murmur,” “obsidian,” and “needle.”

Once you have your deck put together, shuffle it a few times. Now select a card or two, and use them as the basis for a new poem.

In lieu of choosing just two cards, I kept drawing more cards and choosing one of the words on it, front or back, to include in my poem.The words I chose were paint,  raspberry, eyelash, lips and sea. For

NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 3

Ode to My Doctor, Who Has Done Little to Curry My Favor

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Ode to My Doctor, Who Has Done Little to Curry My Favor

Each of these foods you suggest for my diet
has not one feature to urge me to try it.
The chard is too leafy, the kale makes me gag.
I will be affianced to naught in this bag.

This fluffy green spinach would be best in a dip
with sour cream and onions and served on a chip.
I have not one vestige of an urge to consume it
raw in a salad, so do not assume it

will ever pass lips as selective as mine.
I need carbohydrates and meat when I dine.
Do you get the message that I’m on the outs
with arugula, collard greens, beet greens and sprouts?

My palate’s impavid when it comes to spice.
A molé is lovely and a curry is nice,
but please put some meat in it. I’m a contrarian
when you attempt to turn me vegetarian.

Prompt words for today are sprout, vestige, impavid, affiance and chip.

 

Secondary Research

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Secondary Research

She found tales of chivalry wholly outlandish.
Her dates wore suspenders. No swords did they brandish.
She, in return, was no sexy lithe lynx,
her love-life devoid of any hijinks.

In short, she was prim and her suitors the same,
her romance as mainstream as romances came—
dates for the movies or dinner or trips
to the local tea room for crumpets and sips.

No passionate kisses. No secret elation.
Visual thrills were her sole titillation,
for secretly, she was addicted to porn.
She viewed it at midnight. Sometimes in the morn.

Although she’d never do the things that they did,
it was the single thing that she hid.
Everything else was there to be seen:
decent and wholesome and saintly and clean.

It was her belief that a life meant for viewing
should consist more of thinking of things than of doing,
and so she kept private her secret adventures,
safe from derision and gossip and censures.

As the town’s sole librarian, she was aware
that this was a side of her she’d never dare
to reveal to the world, and yet she pursued it,
knowing that no one else knew that she viewed it.

Like high adventure, such sexual fun
was best viewed from afar, but never done.
When it came to things sensual, sticky and hairy,
she preferred that her research remain secondary.

 

Prompts today are jinx, visual, prim, outlandish and mainstream. Image by Damla Azkan on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Note: While primary research involves active participation from the researcher themselves, secondary research involves the summary or synthesis of data and literature that has been organized and published by others.

Craft Maintenance

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Photo by Simon Goetz on Unsplash, used with permission.

Craft Maintenance

Love is like a speedboat, threatening disaster
as we plummet toward our fate, going ever faster.

In youth, insecurity helps to fuel the pace
as our fear of failure keeps us in the race.

Thus is our pursuit of love fueled by the chase,
but as we proceed in life, this may not be the case.

Our boats fill up with children and the race  soon ceases.
The boards begin to shrink and paint curls off in pieces.

Still, since marriage is a boat we need to keep afloat,
love is our incentive to renovate the boat!

 

Photo by Anne Nygard on Unsplash, used with permission.

Prompt words today are pursuit, renovate, incentive and boat.

Providence

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Providence

The angriest skies contain the germ of the next day’s sun.
No matter what pervades your day, once that day is done,
your prospects for a better day already have been cast,
for the material of our future is gathered from our past.

Clear skies are born from thunder clouds and summer days from mist.
Tomorrow’s field of flowers is held in the tempest’s fist.
You may call me Pollyanna, but I can attest
to the truth that oftentimes the worst is followed by the best.

 

 

 

 

 Prompt words today are clear skies,contain, angry,pervade and material.

Coup de Coeur

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Coup de Coeur

You have built a tunnel—a channel to my heart.
I should have seen it sooner, should have known it from the start.
Now you foment discord to make me feel unrest.
None of the others calm the storm. I know you are the best.
It is a sort of power. Therefore, I must not fall.
Yet I cannot resist it, for I love you most of all.
I might have wed for power. Now I must wed for love.
How can I rule somebody who fits me like a glove?
My friends find it hilarious I’ve let my defense down
to substitute a bridal veil for my royal crown.
I guess I’ll have to settle for a democracy
now that you have staged a coup on my monarchy.

Prompt words today are tunnel, therefore, hilarious, channel and foment.

Skywriting

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Skywriting

Invisible patterns are there, nonetheless,
and they are what write my poems, I confess.
That’s why they’re birthed without any strain
and what brings me back again and again
as a surrogate mother for verses and stories
that repeat life’s foibles, beauties and glories.
Varied in humor and import and skill,
they may display failure or conquest or will.
Some may tell truth and others small lies.
They instigate laughter or irrigate eyes.
But however, once birthed, my expressions may fare,
they were there all the time–right out in the air
for anyone to arrange or abuse them.
I’m just the one who elected to use them.

Prompt words today are invisible, pattern, foible, variable and strain.