Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

The Fan Letter

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The Fan Letter

Granted, my heart did flutter at the words of adulation
in the fan letter that came while I was on vacation.
Accepted by my mother, who suffers from dementia,
yet deals with all deliveries while I am in absentia,
it said that I was handsome, clever, brave and cuddly,
with a stellar presence and a figure that was studly!
It is not any statement that stirs me to demean it,
yet if I were home I think I never would have seen it.
I am not parsimonious, yet usually eschew
these laudatory letters that come with postage due!

The prompt words are due, parsimonious, flutter and adulation. (The word wasn’t posted yet for Ragtag, so I used the other word from the 26th, when two were posted.) When I searched my media file using the word “handsome,” this picture of my friend Dave was the only photo out of thousands that come up.  The WordPress media file has spoken, Dave. You are the “it” boy of this poem!!!!

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/29/fowc-with-fandango-due/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/29/parsimonious/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/daily-addictions-2018-week-34/flutterhttp://www.inlinkz.com/new/view.php?id=795401

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/rdp87-adulation/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/29/wednesday-prompt-oeuvre/

Random Travel

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Random Travel

There’s precious little rectitude in knowing where you’re going.
Straight lines are only called for when you’re writing or you’re sewing.
I think there’s room in travel for a little ingenuity
so long as you don’t coddiwomple on in perpetuity.

The words today are ingenuity, rectitude, precious and coddiwomple. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/27/monday-prompt-coddiwomple/
(To coddiwomple is “to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination.)
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/27/fowc-with-fandango-ingenuity/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/27/rectitude/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/daily-addictions-2018-week-34/precious

The Groom has Second Thoughts

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The Groom has Second Thoughts

You say he is articulate whereas I say he’s wordy.
You think he’s intellectual, whereas I fear he’s nerdy.
Is dusk the genesis of dark or is the day just over?
I think it’s time to mow the lawn while you’re rolling in clover.
An optimist and pessimist should doubtless not be marrying.
What you see as casual I simply see as tarrying.
Time after time, we face each other o’er this widening schism.
For what to you seems happily real to me seems euphemism.

 

 

Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/rdp87-articulate/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/26/fowc-with-fandango-euphemism/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/genesis/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/daily-addictions-2018-week-34/ dusk

Anticipating Codgerdom

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Anticipating Codgerdom

Sometimes I have a feeling I’m becoming rather stuffy.
My reflexes, once numerous, are getting sort of fluffy.
Whereas shocking folks was once my avocation,
all of my bravado seems to be on a vacation.

But probably my seventies are simply a respite.
Once I become older, I can cuss and hit and bite
and create all the problems in the realm of my ability
and everyone will not blame me. They’ll blame it on senility

 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/rdp-85-fluffy/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/24/fowc-with-fandango-reflex/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/24/bravado/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/numerous

Coping

15 Replies

 

 

 

Coping

When I’m in the mood for moping,
with no energy for coping,
reticent to kowtow to
boss or parent or guru,
when I’m feeling less than zealous,
down-at-soul, depressed or jealous,
concerned with what I seem to lack,
I go and lie upon my back
in bed or hammock or in pool
in water steaming, tepid, cool.


The point is getting horizontal
on a surface that is fontal,
foam or tightly woven and hung
in a garden, loosely slung.
And there I dream or inspect trees
for butterflies or birds or bees.
I watch their habits, or I dream
joining that unconscious stream
that says the world is not my biz.
Only what is closest is.

And I pull inward to a world
where all the universe lies furled.
Then, enlivened, I get up
to write or play with dogs or sup,
rejoining that space and clime
I’m meant to live in for a time.
I do what I have power to
to civilize this human zoo.
“Think globally,” they used to say.
“Act locally.” Still true today.

 

The prompts:
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/Cope
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/rdp80-reticent/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/19/fowc-with-fandango-kowtow/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/zealous/

Peace Lily: Flower of the Day, Aug 17, 2018

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Version 4Version 2IMG_1065 2
These lilies were found in one of the seventeen gardens of the  Hacienda de la Dolores Barrera in Guanajuato.

For Cee’s flower of the day.

I Took a Picture of Your Name

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I Took A Picture Of Your Name.

After so many years, seeing it again on the screen,
I took a picture of your name.
Not written by your hand,
it had a strangeness–
featureless, revealing nothing.
It had no voice,
no breath.

Out there sharing itself with the world,
it has formed a wall around
that intimacy it birthed when you took my hand in yours,
using your name to pull me closer,
powerless against its strength on your tongue.

Everyone wanted to share a part of what made you you,
but I only wanted to be with you, back when,
scrawled in your careless hand,
you were written on my soul.

Wanting to be perfect for you,
remembering that tattoo you traced across my back.
Your name and mine.
“Always,” you wrote.

My trip to Guanajuato with my nephew Ryan was wonderful–just about as perfect as it could be.  Since I was 49 when he was born and living two thousand miles away, we had never really spent any time together, other than 4 short overnight visits I’d made to their house enroute to other places or for graduations or other celebrations, and he was always a kid with the other kids, I an adult with the other adults.  This was our first meeting as adults and with an entire week to get acquainted, we walked and looked all day and talked all night. Ryan did fine taking in the sights with people about fifty years older than him and formed a particular bond with one member of the group–a bit of a rascal at 76–really a kid who never grew up.  Ryan was actually better behaved than this man who could serve as the pattern for a trickster.

As our tour bus pulled into Ajijic at the end of our four-day tour, Ryan asked for his name and information so he could send him this photo I’d taken of the two of them. I pulled out pencil and paper, but the man had his own phone in his hand with his contact information on it  as he was spelling out his name so I could copy it , so Ryan merely reached over, clicked his phone over his, and said, “I’ll just take a picture of your name and look you up on Facebook.”

“I Took a Picture of Your Name” popped into my mind as a wonderful beginning line for a poem and although the resultant poem  is not about them and has nothing to do with our trip, here is a photo of them in recognition of the fact that their overheard conversation was really the prompt for the first poem I’ve written in five days.  My Internet-less vacation is over, but I’m going to try to remember the lesson it taught. Less time on the computer.  More time out in life.  Ryan and I are already planning our next adventure. I’ll show some photos later after he’s gone.

Ryan and friend about to descend into a silver mine in Guanajuato.

Intergalactic Anthropology

1 Reply

 

jdbphoto, badlands, South Dakota

Intergalactic Anthropology

Our world may be the nucleus of a constellation
viewed elsewhere in the universe, and to their consternation,
they may not be able to determine if we’re able
to support a life form both intelligent and stable.

They’ve watched as we developed fire and the wheel,
the industrial revolution , the ability to heal.
They’ve watched the growth of tyrants and they’ve watched our revolutions—
all our massive problems and our tries for the solutions.

But as the rich get richer, they’re more heedless of the poor.
The more that they accumulate, the more they lust for more.
Heedless of our artful world with beauties unsurpassed,
the practices that they pursue assure that they won’t last.

Should they contact and help us or leave us as we are—
an anthropological study of another distant star?

The prompt words were: contact, nucleus, constellation, practice

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/rdp-70-contact/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/09/fowc-with-fandango-nucleus/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/constellation/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/practice

The Naming of Gassy Dan

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The Naming of Gassy Dan

I’ll tell you of a man I knew by name of Gassy Dan.
It’s true he was a glutton—a mountain of a man.
A sopper-up of every bowl, a scraper of each pan.

He wasn’t the most pleasant guest to ever grace one’s table,
for his appetite was something of legend and of fable
as he gobbled up more than his share whenever he was able.

Once seated at the table, though, he never had enough
of pork chop and of gravy, still he’d commence to huff
and puff about some gossip with language rude and rough.

With his slanderous assertions, his posturings and brayings,
his sanctimonious protests and all of his trite sayings,
he punished all our eardrums with incessant oral flayings.

Thus the rumblings at our table as we commenced to sup
were not his gastric gasses growling like a pup.
His borborygmus rumblings came from farther up. 


The Ragtag prompt for the day is borborygmus. bor·bo·ryg·mus (a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines.)

Hand-Me-Down Advice

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Hand-Me-Down Advice

May I speak with candor? It may be that those pants
looked fine on your mother, your grandma or your aunts;
but drawstrings are for knapsacks and snaps are to call waiters.
And it’s been 50 years or more since fashion sanctioned gaiters.
I know that they are comfortable but another thing
is that they’re lacking in panache. They haven’t any zing.
And just to finally seal the deal, dear, men just don’t make passes
at girls in baggy bloomers that exaggerate their asses.

 

The prompt words were comfortable and candor.

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/30/fowc-with-fandango-comfortable/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/30/candor/