Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

Stop and Go

10 Replies

Stop and Go

My goals in life were nebulous. I didn’t know quite what
it was that I most wanted—except out of my rut.
A picket fence and cottage were not part of my dream.
I didn’t want to produce children by the ream.
I only wanted travel and to see who I could be
if I wandered far enough to discover me.

I finally found a part of me everywhere I went,
but had to keep on traveling to know the full extent
of who I wished to grow into—that self I wished to find—
how much I could reveal of me and still have peace of mind.
But now I’ve seemed to settle. I’m content with what I’ve found.
The place where I have come to rest seems like holy ground.

Perhaps true wisdom really comes from knowing when to stop—
knowing when we’ve climbed enough because we’ve reached the top!

Michelle’s prompt today is Stop!  This is a rewrite of a poem from years ago. Thanks, Michelle, for helping me to rediscover it.

Shipwreck, for Wordle 621

11 Replies

Shipwreck

In spite of your deep dark eyes and your other charms,
I fear I won’t be spending anymore time in your arms.
Wind and rain and reckless tides have scarred our ocean’s shore,
shifting channel stones, a dead sea denizen and more
to bar our access to that place where once we calmly drifted.
Our sea of love’s grown stormy and  the sands of love have shifted.
If you had just honored that pledge you once recited,
perhaps this shipwreck of our love might somehow have been righted.
But, alas, the time is past that we can sail together.
I’ll cast my lines to mooring places safer in their tether.

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 621 the prompt words are: rainy channel stone ocean bar scar shift drift honor dark eyes charms.  Photo by Eileen Flynn on Unsplash.

Crazy Socks

13 Replies
Sock

Click on these gaudy socks to see them in more glorious detail!!!!!

Crazy Socks

Don’t feel that you must explain
a choice in socks that seems inane.
Sunflowers or checks or plaid
or other patterns in which you gad
should be nobody’s choice but yours.
Black socks are gloomy. White socks bores.
If you would please from top to toe,
choose the socks that make you glow.

Sox that glitter, clash or shock
better propel you ’round the block.
Those who balance on fashion’s fence
may well question your fashion sense
if you wear socks with chickens on them.
But go ahead and buy and don them.
You’ll start the day in mood more spritely
if you dress your feet more brightly!!!

 

 

For the Wednesday Prompts Weekly Challenge: Socks

Scorpion in the Sacristy

17 Replies

Scorpion in the Sacristy

Minuscule but powerful, it causes us to shake.
The most masculine among us have been known to quake
and to seek protection whenever one is seen,
for it is rumored that their punch is wicked mean.
They inspire colorful language from the subjects of their strikes,
because it’s understatement to simply scream out “Yikes!”
when stricken by a scorpion. The occasion calls for more,
and that is why the village priest was pardoned when he swore
as he removed the host veil and was stung upon the hand,
for though the Holy Father issued a reprimand
for the sin of taking the name of Christ in vain,
since the priest was still in shock and reeling in his pain,
not one of his parishioners, it’s said, has censored him,
for each and every one of them thanked God  it wasn’t them!

Prompt words today are colorful, minuscule, punch, quake, protection and seen.

Spring Picnic

9 Replies
Aunt Stella being silly at a family picnic. I was imitating her.

Spring Picnic

That first tidbit of food
swallowed—
that morsel of potato salad
or that sip of lemonade—
activates what April picnics
are fated to attract
as surely as ants—
afternoon rains,
predicted as a slight chance
for this vicinity,
but now diluvial
in their force.

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link. Night  and also making use of these six prompts from different sites: food, vicinity, diluvial, tidbit, activate and afternoon.

(Hover over the photo for a second to read the caption.)

Pieces of Toast

13 Replies

Pieces of Toast

They dip into
the smooth
round yolk
of a fading dream.

They interfere,
these conscious words,
an uninvited jentacular
mob that enters

without invitation,
shedding their crumbs.
I make exception
and surrender
control,

accepting
their sharp crisp corners
into the broken centers
of my smooth round
subterranean
stanzas.

For NaPoWriMo 2029, Day 29 the prompt is to write about food personified. Piece of toast!!!
And, coincidentally, for RDP, whose prompt today is food!
Photo downloaded from Unsplash

Love Letters: Body of Love for NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 28

7 Replies

 “Did you know that the parts of letters all have names — including spines, shoulders, hairlines, ears, arms, legs, tails, and crotches?” (FromThe Complete Manual of Typography, A Guide to Setting Perfect Type,” by James Felici.) Thanks to Elizabeth Boquet for this information, which prompted this poem:

Body of Love

Stiff spine
of its beginning,
the bare shoulders
of its attraction.

I trace the hairlines
of your thoughts,
whisper love poems
into your ears.

Imagine you
wrapped around me:
arms, legs—
that animal remembrance
of primordial tails.

This is the womb of poetry,
giving birth to words.
I offer you a bouquet of them .

                                                                                                       –Judy Dykstra-Brown

For NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 28

If Only I Could Play Guitar

8 Replies

This is one of three guitars I decorated for the “Guitar Gallery” in Ajijic. It was covered in mirrors and silver ornamentation. It was purchased by a gallery in Montana. If you ever see it, please let me know where its new home is.

If Only I Could Play Guitar

At times when now I only hum,
I’d pull out my guitar and strum;
and by the time that I’d be done,
completing my last pluck and run,
perhaps whoever sees and hears
would be reduced to sobs and tears
by every perfect tone and note,
the sentiments that I emote,
and tender lyrics that they knew
because of course I wrote them, too.

But I would be so humble still,
(my hubris would be less than nil)
that when they laud me at the Grammys,
I’ll be home curled up in my jammies—
still unaffected by my fame,
astonished at my new acclaim!

And when Bob Dylan asks me if
I’d like to come and share a riff,
of course I will not turn him down.
In spite of all my new renown,
I’ll take the time to show him some
new ways I’ve found to pick and strum.

Mick Jagger would hang out with me
(and Leo Kottke, probably.)
We’d get together to talk and jam.
The whole world would know who I am!
My fame would spread to presidents
and queens and Knob Hill residents.
I’d be so busy that I fear
my writing would fall in arrears.
I might forget to feed my dog,
forsake my friends, neglect my blog.

So all things taken to account,
as negatives begin to mount,
and though I know that I’d go far
should I decide to play guitar,
I’ve penned a note unto myself,
“Put that guitar back on the shelf!!!”

 

The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a poem about music. I admit that this is actually a poem I wrote nine years ago so I am guessing few who now read my blog have seen it before.

To read more poems on this subject go HERE.

To Martha’s Muse

15 Replies


The muse of painting, on the Opera House in Guanajuato, Mexico

 Here is Martha’ Kennedy’s, prompt that came in response to my “Demused” poem:
“My muse got the word from yours that she’d like you to start at least ONE poem with, “Tell me O Muse” She just wants a little acknowledgement.”

I’ve never turned down a prompt yet, Martha’s Muse, so here is your poem of acknowledgement:

To Martha’s Muse

Tell me, O Muse, if it is you
telling my muse what to do
to spur me to get off my duff
and write lines that are good enough
to meet the current status quo,
instead of being just “so-so?”

If so, please let me know it’s me
penning the lines, and not just she.
So if she sickens, dies or just
loses her poetic thrust,
I can make it on my own
to write a poem that’s fully blown!!!!

This frees her and also me
from interdependency.
Frees her to leave me all alone
to find “amusement” on her own,
and once she’s off to do her roaming,
I’ll practice independent poeming!

Though in the past I’ve been bemused,
when on occasion I’ve been de-mused,
I’ll take my genius off the shelf
and write my poems all by myself.
(And though, dear muse, freedom is thine,
I’ll claim my credits as purely mine!!!!)

Though Martha’s muse probably ain’t
just one of words, but also paint,
I hope that she has room enough
for all my muse’s extra stuff,
for as she departed, slamming  doors,
she said she’s off to knock on yours!!!!

Demused

18 Replies

Demused

My muse is on sabbatical. I think she’s feeling surly
from  umpteen years of being awakened way too early
to find a rhyme for “rainbow ” that my readers judge sublime,
only to discover every single time
that I get all the credit for the work she does
each new day in succession. And why? Simply because
she happened to be sanctified and then assigned to me
to insure a steady flow of poetry
without making an agreement regarding who’d be credited
as author of the poems conceived, then written and edited.
So now I seek to rectify my decades-long misdeed
by saying that hereafter, I certify and cede
half the writing credits to my muse of inspiration,
hoping the result will be she’ll come home from vacation,
refreshed, newly-inspired and forgiving of my sin,
full of new ideas and ready to begin.

 

Prompts today are succession, surly, sabbatical, sanctify, arise and rainbow.  Image by j Jo Justino on Pixabay.