Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

A Culinary Manifesto

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A Culinary Manifesto

I cannot overlook your incredible zeal
in polishing off the remains of your meal.
I surmise as you gobble up every comestible
that you are finding it very digestible.

The suspense that I felt as I chopped and sautéd it—
all of that angst that I felt as I made it—
seems unwarranted now, for it is amazing
how contented you seem to have been in your grazing.

You devoured the potatoes and chicken and peas.
You sopped up the gravy and licked all the cheese
from your plate before sucking the grease from your fingers.
And I see that your look of contentment still lingers.

Could that expectant gleam that I see in your eye
be because you have noticed the hot apple pie
that cools on the counter? I hereby assert
I’ll complete your seduction over dessert!

Word prompts today are suspense, surmise, zeal and amazing.

Mall Maven

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Mall Maven

Before the next party, she’ll cut a wide swath
looking for outfits from trendy to Goth.
Choosing her next style can’t be speculation.
It’s got to be something that prompts adoration.

While stalking her merchandise, she walks the walk
that other girls emulate and the boys stalk.
Though she’ll chance being different—ahead of the herd,
if she goes too far, she might look like a nerd!

She saunters the mall looking cool and sanguine,
ignoring her minions, though she wants to be seen.
She’s nubile and nervy and lissome and lean—
a virtual attention-getting machine.

The other girls try to see what she buys,
but the pieces she chooses are not meant for eyes
that might imitate her before the reveal.
She won’t take the risk that somebody will steal

her next novel look before she has the chance
to stun her admirers at the school dance.
Until her grand entrance, she’ll feel a bit queasy,
Being a trend-setter isn’t that easy!

 

Prompt words today are swath, merchandise, stalk, speculation, different and party.

The Littlest Zombie

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The Littlest Zombie

Three small travelers, each attired in a different disguise
observe the  lambent candlelight filling the pumpkin’s eyes.
Its outside is a Jack-o-Lantern, while all its insides 
were scooped out for the candle, and then turned into pies.

A lurching small cadaver reaches out a hand,
intent on trick-and-treating, though he can barely stand.
He’s had a whiff of candy, which has made him come alive.
He’s seen the tiny Hershey bars. He hopes they’ll give him five!

Leaving, he now remembers to walk with legs unbent.
He breathes hard through his mask where his sister cut a vent.
He imitates the groans and huffs of the walking dead,
though if he’d had his druthers, he’d have been a dog instead.

But brother said a dog just barks and never moans and groans
and that barking trick-or-treaters are only given bones!
And so he screws his face up and puffs on down the block,
scaring all the littler kids with his zombie walk! 

 

Prompt words for today are whiff, imitate, cadaver, lambent and candy and also for OctPoWriMo.

 

Harvest Moon

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Harvest Moon

Peeking in the window,
blanketing our dreams,
It is a welcome harvest moon
whose straight and narrow beams
filter through our window blinds,
bathing us with light,
coming once again
to fulfill its yearly rite—
a calm and soothing presence
that  mitigates the night.

For the dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: blanket.

Creepy-crawlies in the Moon’s Eclipse

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Creepy-crawlies in the Moon’s Eclipse

They congregate at night, they do—the newts and snakes and frogs—
to discuss the art of slithering and their new pollywogs.
But if the night is moonless and the stars covered with cloud,
They start to think of evil things that can’t be voiced aloud.
And if the night gets dark enough, they’ll probably conspire
to wiggle in through door cracks, ooze in on router wire.
They’ll squirm across your carpets and right up to your bed
to snuggle down in armpits or to circle round your head.
The snake will peek into your ears and travel up your nose,
investigating your insides as he comes and goes. 
The frog will croak accompaniment to echo in your dreams.
The world when we’re asleep, you see, is not quite what it seems.
And if you dream about it during the next eclipse,
It’s just your memory of the truth you heard from these two lips.

 

 

 

My prompt from Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge is frog.

White Owl

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White Owl

In the plaza,
or lifting over the hot pool at midnight,
the white owl carries a message.
Life or death?
Joy or pain?
Perhaps the white owl knows.

Its dropped feather,
on pavement or the surface of water,
may be a hint of what’s to come.

Once I flew,
a white owl
frozen in place in the winter air.
Once I roasted, too warmly dressed,
more accustomed to fir tree than palm.

The white owl
may know its place or may not.

We are the ones
who bring him here,
out of his climate,
off his familiar branch.

Who?
Who has brought him?
What, what is the message?

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge

On the Night of the Blood Moon

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On the Night of the Blood Moon

Last night I rose to watch the full eclipse––
a blood orange moon, full in the dark night sky,
around it, scattered stars and tall palm tips.

It was as though in this world, only I
watched the last fingernail of glowing moon,
chewed at by shadow, slowly wane and die.

And then the night birds with their lonely croon
gave timbre to this darkened night soon joined
by lonely burro, braying for the moon

as though they mourned for vision now purloined
or simply sang for joy of adding to
the beauty of this dark moon newly coined.

Then once again the moon’s edge came to view.
Earth moved aside in favor of the sun
and for an hour, I watched as moonlight grew.

Then sought my bed, the pageant not yet done,
as light increased and shadow slowly waned.
Inevitably, once more light had won.

The ending known, no mystery remained.

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Blood

Last Dance

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Last Dance

It’s taxing my limits, this spirited dance.
I’d like to sit down if he’d give me a chance.
If I were more candid I’d say it’s enough,
but finding an opening to do so is tough.

He spins me and whirls me and then grabs my hips
as though he is plotting some aerial flips.
Ensconced in the music, he hasn’t a clue
that my hair’s come undone and I’ve only one shoe.

He seems not to notice that I’ve grown more frantic
as each new maneuver grows more corybantic.
I’m so exhausted, I fear I might drop,
and I pray for the band to finally stop.

I’m tired of following, tired of dips.
I can take no more swirls, no maneuvers or flips.
When I land on my feet, I bolt from the floor,
I retrieve my shoe and I make for the door.

I sprint down the street, and when I find my ride,
I lock all the doors once I’m safely inside.
And since that day, I’m relieved to report,
I’ve vowed to make dancing a spectator sport!

 

Prompt words for the day are tax, ensconced, corybantic and candid.

“Far from the Madding Crowd”:

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Solitary Confinement

My world is a clam with me gathered up in it.
With no one else to arrange it or spin it.
I do not deviate, wander or travel.
No complications for me to unravel.
Life proffers no parties and no invitations.
No drop-in guests and no visitations.
Gatherings are not my present domain,
so if I were invited, I’d surely abstain.
I’m sealed in my world— happily, sublimely,
for group celebrations are simply not timely.
Lately for me, the crowds are not madding.
It’s taken a virus for me to stop gadding.

Prompt words today are clam, deviate, timely, proffer and gather.

School Reunions

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School Reunions

Entangled in the distant past, we recall and illuminate
those fifty-year-old stories as we gather to ruminate.
Pranks, first loves and scandals so far back in our past,
it’s as though it was a movie in which we all were cast.

That thumbtack “someone” placed upon our history teacher’s chair.
Will the scoundrel confess at last? But no, he doesn’t dare.
And in our sixties, will we snitch? No, there is not one.
Not one of us reveals the answer to that smoking gun.

The raided slumber parties, the trips up England’s hill,
we tell the stories of our past until we’ve had our fill,
then jump to doleful stories of tragedies and sorrows—
the few of those lost in their youth, deprived of all their morrows.

Hayrides by the river, pep rallies and school dances,
boys passing girls in cars on Main, pondering their chances.
Wild Homecoming raids on barns where we were building floats,
whisperings in Civics class and furtively passed notes.

Both schools we passed those years in have been felled by wrecking crews,
replaced by newer buildings, erasing all the clues
of years we spent within them, the carvings on the desks,
all our various antics as we lived out youth’s burlesques.

Our memories getting dimmer, each five years, we choose to meet
to reminisce and chew the fat. To drink and dance and eat.
We don’t discuss the present. It’s as though it’s in a haze
as we go back to live our half-remembered yesterdays.

Prompt words today are entangle, doleful, ruminate and jump.