Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

Dressing for Attention

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Dressing For Attention

Purple pedal pushers and a yellow skirt.
For a hat, a fascinator, and a tartan shirt.
A fur stole that’s a relic of another age—
when they didn’t raise them in a tiny cage.

Platform shoes to raise me up in elevation
so the band will see me during their ovation.
Great big shades to block the sunlight from my eyes
and so my date can’t see me flirting with the guys.

Bright pink polish on my nails and rhinestones on my lashes.
A girl has got to dress up right for these special bashes.
I will match the music—loud and brash and brassy.
   Bands don’t notice groupies whose style is too classy!

 

Daily Inkling asks what sort of an outfit we’d wear to a concert.  Oh oh!!!!

Snow’s Epilogue

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Snow’s Epilogue

We can’t codify the snowflakes nor put them into order.
They fall to make a blanket or a pile or a border.
They come in a blizzard and leave us in a trickle. 
There’s something about former snow that is so very fickle.
It drips in drops from icicles and surges down the gutters.
Our attempts to modify it end in futile mutters.
I need not be prophetic to state the truth of snow.
It starts out in a flurry and ends up in a flow.

 

 


I’m finally in Missouri after a day on planes, airports and car. Ready to tackle today’s prompt words which are: blizzard, former,modify and prophetic. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/rdp-thursday-blizzard/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/18/fowc-with-fandango-former/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/daily-addictions-2018-week-41/modify
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/prophetic/

Bad Sport

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This photo of my hometown team was taken a few years after I graduated. It was taken in the school auditorium.  I’d recognize that floor anywhere.  I’d come in close contact with it the one year I played girls’ basketball and another time when the school principal threatened to make me scrub it with a toothbrush when I walked across it with street shoes after a school pep rally. The auditorium was named for this longtime teacher and coach, Harold Thune, but the auditorium floor was named for  Jerald Applebee, who was coach from the time I was a Freshman in high school in 1960 until a few years ago. I swear, this is true.

Bad Sport

I don’t do sports, nor watch them, either.
A one block jog? I’d need a breather.
At volleyball, I don’t excel.
Touch football is a sort of hell.
For passing time, by hook or crook,
Jog on alone. I’ll read a book!!!

 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/rdp-wednesday-sport/

Flunking Exotic

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Flunking Exotic

When I was young I had an idea I could be exotic,
but when in fact I tried, I found my goal to be quixotic.
For even though I thought that I could be like Theda Bara,
My skirt rode up, my nylons ran and so did my mascara.
I spent a fortune for “vamp” clothes, but had no place to wear them,
and they were so tight and scratchy that I could hardly bear them.
This is what finally prompted me to settle for what’s normal.
Exotic’s harder than it looks, as well as way too formal!!!

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/17/fowc-with-fandango-prompt/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/daily-addictions-2018-week-41/exotic

Serendipity

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Serendipity

Seated at the movies in the last row of the balcony,
I couldn’t hear the dialogue and the man in front of me
was so tall that captions, too, were impossible to see.
But all of this, indeed, was just a part of serendipity
that played out as I exited the door they’d marked “Emergency”
that led out to the lobby where I’d decided that I had to flee.
There I found a bench and with a paperback upon my knee,
I passed five minutes during which I read with such intensity,
I didn’t even notice a man exiting to go to pee,
until he left the Men’s room, and I looked up as he passed by me.
He was a very handsome man—the very one who  formerly
had blocked my view but who now sat beside me and delightfully
soon engaged my interest with his wit and his sincerity.
And that is how our “he” and “me” quickly turned into a “we,”
and also how, ultimately,  you two children came to be!

The prompts  today are serendipity, balcony, emergency and caption. Here are the links:
/https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/rdp-tuesday-serendipity/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/16/fowc-with-fandango-balcony/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/emergency/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/daily-addictions-2018-week-41/caption

Ill-fitted

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Ill-fitted

He dragged his feet along the floor until
his brand new bride decided she’d her fill.
She pulled his shoes off of his feet and said,
“If I had known the truth when we were wed,
I might have had a very different goal—
to find a man who had a better sole
instead of feet so swollen and so red.
I might have had a cobbler’s son instead
if I’d paid less attention to your bod
and chosen me a groom much better shod!” 

For dVerse poets iambic pentameter prompt.

https://dversepoets.com/

The Old and Unrested

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The Old and Unrested

The old and unrested return to their beds,
propping their pillows under their heads.
Pulling their blankets up to their ears,
they let up on the gas and go into low gears.

Setting their brandies or porters or gins
on their bedside tables, they settle their chins
upon their chests and watch some TV
on laptops that sit where their boobs used to be.

Life is confusing when you are too near it,
especially ’cause it is so damn hard to hear it.
Then when you’re alone, it’s entirely too loud.
These neighborhood noises should not be allowed!

They turn up the volume to drown out the noise
of the car alarms, weed eaters and screaming boys.
They lie all morning, secure in their beds.
Life is much easier lived in their heads!

For Daily Inklings, Objects at Rest.

Trouble Crossing

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Trouble Crossing

Fjords, ravines and crevasses are hard enough to cross,
but when it comes to intersections, I am at a loss.
I excel at parallel parking and my merging is just fine,
but when negotiating stop lights, I simply do not shine.

Perhaps it is the colors that I find distracting.
There’s something about yellow that I find too exacting.
Red is most definitive. I know I shouldn’t go.
And green is also clearly meant as a sign to go.

But yellow’s indecisive. Should I go or should I stay?
Should I linger or should I be upon my way?
This solitary factor is what makes me balk.
As a means of transportation, it is true I’d rather walk!!!! 

The prompt words are color, parking, fjord and solitary. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/rdp-wednesday-color/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/10/fowc-with-fandango-parking/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/fjord/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/06/daily-addictions-2018-week-40/solitary

A Sedative Soliloquy

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A Sedative Soliloquy

He was a jovial companion, but his constant burbling ways
inevitably put folks in a protective daze.
So although I’m sure his ego assured him they were rapt,
in fact it was illusion. All too frequently, they napped.

 

Prompt words today (actually, yesterday’s as I’m running late) are burble, illusion, jovial and inevitable. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/06/rdp-saturday-burble/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/06/fowc-with-fandango-illusion/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/06/jovial/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/inevitable

Futile Advice

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Futile Advice

Truck trials are enigmatic. I just can’t see their appeal.
Big boys ruining their toys? I want to say, “Get real!”
If one of your life pleasures is to buy things and deplete them,
just buy some triple-decker cones and take them out and eat them!
It’s bound to be much cheaper and it makes a lot less noise,
but I know that you won’t listen. After all, boys will be boys.

 

The prompt words today are truck, trial, enigmatic and deplete. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/05/rdp-friday-truck/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/05/fowc-with-fandango-trial/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/05/enigmatic/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/06/06/welcome-to-daily-addictions/deplete