Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

Fame

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Fame

I don’t want to be Gwyneth, Julia or Pink,
Madonna, Shakira or Cher.
Their kind of renown is simply too much.
Much more than this woman could bear.

Though there’s no famous person that I’d rather be,
it’s not that I wouldn’t like fame.
It’s just that I want to be known for myself
and not by another one’s name.

I want to be known for my words and my art,
but not by my form or my face.
So I can dine out and walk down the street
without all the bother and chase.

I want to go out for a coffee or tea
and see someone reading my book.
And without her knowing, to study her face,
interpreting how she may look

as she reads every page, be it smile or tear,
I’d be known by my writing alone.
Like watching your child go out in the world
to establish a life of its own.

I want to stand hidden, unknown by the world,
to observe someone viewing my art.
To see if what registers there on his face
is what I’ve revealed of my heart.

Unnoticed, unphotographed and unpursued,
I could walk at my usual pace.
I’d get to the finish in plenty of time
without ever joining the race.

I wrote this poem four years ago, but it is perfect for today’s prompt word of  famous.

Modern Bride

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Modern Bride

The groom’s family was titled and a bit anachronistic.
So when they saw the bride, I fear they went a bit ballistic.
Instead of white she wore a dress of scarlet oddly draped.
The mother of the groom grew faint. Her husband merely gaped.
She wore something archaic instead of merely old—
her grandma’s feather boa—a bridal statement bold.
Around her neck, a python, and her arms were densely bangled.
Her veil pinned to a tractor hat of satin, oddly-angled.
The brim turned back as though she were an umpire at a game.
In short, the bride’s ensemble was anything but lame.

As she hip-hopped down the aisle to a tune by Kanye West,
the groom stood fondly watching her in morning coat and vest.
Her lipstick blue, her bustier was borrowed and conditional
on return to its owner in a manner most traditional.
To complete her fashion statement, her combat boots were blue,
and if you’ve paid attention, you could guess that they were new!
Her bouquet was fresh dandelions bound up with some chives.
She held it in one hand and with the other, gave high fives
to friends all up the aisle as she jerked her way on by.
The groom’s mom gave a shudder and his father gave a sigh.

So did this modern wedding  forsake the antiquated
with customs much less stuffy, less predictable and dated.
The wedding fare was tacos, Cuban sandwiches and chips,
jelly beans and donuts, crudites and dips.
No caviar or salmon. Just ribs and Tater Tots.
The toasts to bride and groom were made with jello shots.
The wedding cake was chocolate with custard between layers.
Good wishes  voiced by ministers, gurus and namaste’ers.
In place of rice the bride and groom were showered with quinoa.
In short, it was a wedding to rival mardi gras!

 

The prompt today is archaic.

The Bee Keeper

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A fine poet and wonderful man passed away a few days ago, just a few days before the private launch party for his newest book of poetry, The Alphabet of Longing and Other Poems. Today, I attended the memorial and celebration of life for Jim Tipton that took the place of festivities meant to be his book launch. In all, there were two hours of tributes and readings from Jim’s work. For my tribute, I wrote this brief poem in which I try to wed a number of the loves of his life: bee keeping, poetry and his appreciation of women.

 

The Bee Keeper

A keeper of words,
he was a tender man with fine vision
and a honeyed tongue adept at sharing it.

A man who loved women,
but not a ladies man,
his heart could stretch to fit everyone.

He was the one among us who knew how to see the other side.
A champion of the beleaguered,
when most found fault, he always had a kind word to say.

Words lived with him. He set them free and always grew more.
Poetry buzzed around him like bees.
He was a man who knew both bees and how to be.

 

 

Because Jim missed this party, I wanted to include these photos of him enjoying the last party I saw him at—last September’s awards luncheon for El Ojo del Lago. As you can see, he was a man who knew how to enjoy life to its fullest. Those of us who knew him through the poetry or music world, his neighbors and his family will feel the huge space left by his exit from our lives. Fly free, lovely man.

Jim’s earlier book of poetry Letters from a Stranger (with an introduction by Isabel Allende) may be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Stranger-James-Tipton/dp/0965715922

His newest book, The Alphabet of Longing, will be available on Amazon in June.  It is presently available at Diane Pearl’s Colecciones  and Yves Restaurant in Ajijic. 

Loud Music in the Rainy Season

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.


Loud Music in the Rainy Season

Up above me, such a din!
I feel my patience growing thin.
Cross fingers that they do not fall
as workmen scamper over all,
balancing on domes and peaks,
replacing roof tiles, sealing leaks.

They’re taking the old surface off
all my domes and drainage trough,
putting membrane down and goo
that will not let the water through
in June when rains beat hard and steady,
although, alas, they’ve come already!

The dogs are sent into a tizzy.
Looking up, I just get dizzy.
In this world that I love so,
down here in lovely Mexico,
now the grinder joins the din.
In a noise Olympics, it would win!

My thoughts all center on escaping
this chipping, drilling, pounding, scraping.
How I’d like to leave this all
for relative quiet at the mall!
But, alas, I must remain
a martyr to construction pain.

Ear plugs having no effect,
before my sanity is wrecked,
I turn up music to a SHOUT
to let Bob Dylan drown them out.
Now Caitlin Cary croons and sings
that she is “Sorry” and other things.

Eliza Gilkyson’s rough croon
is over oh too soon, too soon.
The silence that her true love speaks
replaced now by the sander’s shrieks,
I turn the iPod on again,
full force, to drown out all the din.

I’ve no sympathy for the neighbors’ plight.
Their damn dog kept me up all night,
and if my eardrums are to be shot
I would rather that it’s not
by machines like those above,
but rather by a sound I love.

The prompt word today is “thin.”

Mongrel Maven

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Mongrel Maven

My bloodline’s scattered here and there—
a genealogist’s nightmare.
Racially, I’m broadly mixed.
The KKK would have me fixed.
My lineage being under-par,
I cannot join the D.A.R.
I have no claims to royalty,
so my name is title-free.
Who I am is merely me.
For this I need no pedigree!

 

The prompt word today is pedigree.

Pen and Ink

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Pen and Ink

The pen that stands, clipped and inert
in the pocket of your shirt
has no power on its own
so long as it is left alone,
but once held upright in your grip,
free of cap and free of clip,
it forms a partnership of sorts
that spews out pithy, smart retorts.

It snaps the present into line
with words that, effortless, combine
in sentences that, once unfurled,
have the power to change the world.
I ask you, who would ever think
that two joined objects—pen and ink—
could form a perfect synergy
to spew out jokes or tragedy?

Guided by a hand like yours,
a pen can open many doors.
A simple point, an ink-trailed line,
could link your heart with one like mine.
Unclip it now. Uncap its point.
Let paper now that ink anoint.
Let words turn somersaults and caper.
Let words flow from your heart to paper.

Let ink flow rampant from its cage
to dance across the naked page.
No telling what it might report
as words go wild and cavort.
“I” and “love” and “you” might do
a sort of line-dance or soft-shoe.
Words just might and words just may
leak out and give your heart away.

The prompt word for Tourmaline’s One Word Photo Challenge is pen.

Core Identity

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Judy's new haircut and thin lips

Core Identity

Whoever really gets to see
what is at the core of me?
Neither my mother nor my lover
gets to see beneath my cover.
No surgery has extracted it.
It’s not exposed in ire or wit.
It’s in a corner still unlit,
buried in identity’s pit.

Even I have not exhumed it, for
I’ve never found my very core.
Some say it’s found in meditation,
prayer or true love’s exaltation,
but I have journeyed into each
merely to wind up on the beach
of what I know must be the sea
of my soul’s identity.

Perhaps it is the world’s distractions––
all its toys and fine abstractions,
its petty jealousies and fears
regarding family and careers
that get me lost while searching for
that ladder, passageway or door
that will lead me to the root of me––
that seed of my identity.

Perhaps in death we’re rejoined with
the part of us that is our pith.
Could it be what life is for—
this striving toward identity’s core?
Perhaps the lonely death I fear
will finally serve to bring me near,
away from all those things I’m not
to that whole self I’ve always sought

 

The WordPress prompt today is core.

 

Shut In

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Shut In

No longer is there any need
to leave my house for drink or feed.
Costco delivers, as does the son
of one I used to join in fun
to dance in bars and flirt with men,
but now those times are what has been.

Now I prefer my company
to what I used to do and see.
I hope to circumvent all trouble
By living here within my bubble.
I lay out solitaire alone
and socialize by screen and phone.

I’m done with yoga. Zumba is out.
I do not flounce myself about.
Here with myself, I pass my life
sealed off from politics and strife.
Though the world’s pleasures I don’t forget,
I choose to turn my back on it.

Safe in my bubble, I peer out
and I’m content, without a doubt.
Behind these shutters and barred doors,
I’m safe from robbers, rapists, wars.
I let in nature, and that’s enough.
It’s human nature that is too rough.

 

The prompt today is bubble.

Neap Tide

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Three years ago I published this poem with no ending, asking commenters to construct an ending.  There were a number of excellent solutions, but unfairly, I never published one of my own, so I’m giving myself the additional assignment to finish the poem  since it also makes use of today’s prompt word of  “tide.” I’ve made many adjustments in the original poem and added the last stanza. 

Neap Tide

Borne, then born.
Clothed, fed, shorn.
Housed and cuddled,
Brain filled and muddled,
schooled, polished, allowed to roam,
to make the world into a home.

In my third quarter, now sedate.
Content to let my life abate.
Find worlds inside and there abide,
to let what happens be my guide.
To try to live with less precision.
To fear less the world’s derision.

Why so hard to be oneself?
Easier when on the shelf.
Now as I pull my world around me,
memories and dreams surround me—
my solitude a crystal jar
that lets me ponder from afar.

The current of my life, its tide,
reaches without and pulls inside
the things that help me try to see
where my life has taken me.
I contemplate and sometimes share
the truths that I’ve discovered there.

You come to read and judge each word
as wise, amusing or absurd.
You give new insights to what I’ve said—
poems not completed until they’re read.
Less in the world, ironically,
more of the world’s discovered me.

 

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If you’d like to see how others  ended the poem three years ago, go HERE.

The prompt today was tide.

Impromptu Gallery

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Impromptu Gallery

This tennis fact you might observe
when a certain lady goes to serve:
each man who passes tends to swerve
to watch neither her skill nor verve,
but her body’s line and curve––
(each one a visual hors d’oeuvre.)

They keep their thoughts well in reserve,
for no observer has the nerve
to risk the censure he might deserve
in revealing  himself as a perv.
And thus can Mel and Chuck and Irv
their conjugal harmonies conserve.

 

The WordPress Daily Prompt is observe.