Category Archives: Poetry

Curl: NaPoWrimo 2015, Day 12

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Curl

Walls are the minds of other people.
I sit in piles on the desktop–
a black sun,
the leg of a poem.

A glass eye drops
to the bedside table,
having seen enough.

My rumpled bed
is full of poems.
My closet stuffed with words
in too many sizes
that go unworn.

They are purses never used,
these poems I have departed from.
Still, I slip into their pages
day by day.

I drown in these things
I have assembled a life from.
Prehispanic bowls on the mantel.
A tiny dried seahorse
standing on a curled tail

The Prompt: Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form. Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.

In case you are curious, here is my original paragraph the poem was culled from:

Around me on my walls are the minds of other people. A black bird faces an orange sun, a leg lies suspended over a poem. Fish swim by with hands and a woman stands bare breasted holding birds on the palms of her hands. A Bedouin woman holds three roosters and there is much more of other people’s minds on other walls. My mind sits in piles on the desktop. boxes, papers, heaps of contents migrated from other rooms. A case with hundreds of different DVD’s behind a TV with VCR player. my life piled around me ..what is not nailed onto walls. A half-empty glass with soda straw and eye drops on the bedside table. I am too tired of this room to describe it more. My backboard of my bed is a file cabinet full of poems. My closet stuffed with clothes in too many sizes. Belts that no longer fit. shoes that go unworn. Purses lined up but never used. Int the bookcase, poetry books I haven’t read for years. Words of friends I have departed from or who’ve departed this world. My house my room like a giant scrapbook of my life I slip into the pages of more securely day by day. Wondering about escape but questioning whether I really want to. We are all consumed by our lives in the end. My air running out. In my mind I escape seaward. Where I drown instead of smothering. No way out of this life in the end but t drown in something: life or death. Either way, we need to leave these things we have assembled a life from. Prehispanic bowls on a mantel. A clay warrior holding a lance, a tiny dried seahorse, standing on curled tail, and a Huichol painting of curled string.

As you can see, many of the images in the above paragraph fell away, mainly because I’d dealt with them in an earlier poem. Links tto hat earlier poem and to photographs of the room are given below:

For another poem about this room go HERE.
And for images of the room described in both poems, go HERE.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/interplanet-janet/

Power Failure

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Sapphics are quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee.

As luck would have it, my power–restored after a 32 hour off-and-on outage–clicked off completely just after I received this prompt and so there was little else that entered my mind to write this poem about. A very difficult form, by the way, and not a stellar accomplishment in terms of theme, but at least I did the assignment. But, on the positive side, the electricity has been on for one hour now without faltering and I see  my internet is now streaming boldly in.

Actually, now that there is electricity again, this day is turning out to be all that it was cracked up to be, and this poem luckily also fits in with the WordPress daily prompt, as well, so here it is!

Power Failure

Would that I had power to run my life with–
turn on my computer or cook my breakfast–
charge my phone or open my own garage door.
It’s not happening!

One day stretches after another, without
help for one imprisoned within her casa.
Fridge that drips from every hinge and juncture.
Loos unflushed by any means but by bucket
hauled from swimming pool.

Other folks do not have to light these candles,
locate flashlights all in some hidden drawer,
fish out ice cubes quickly from freezer section,
hoard computer time.

Yes, I do love Mexico more or less–
more for weather mild and the constant sunlight.
Less for lights that flicker and fail at night and
do not light again.

Oh that ladder placed in the kitchen aisle,
found in darkness, when perchance stumbled over.
Glass in hand dropped, shattering to each corner.
Perils multiply.

Now I shuffle through the dark house to locate
matches, candles, dustpan and broom to sweep up
further dangers, accidents bound to happen.
All things difficult.

Here I sit just thirty-six hours in darkness.
Help will come in one hour or perhaps thirty.
Beeps from starving phones sound from every chamber.
Growling stomach groans out a matching rhythm.
Help comes haltingly.

Hours since the outage are forty-two now,
Lights flood on and do not dim shortly after.
Please, dear God, let this be the end of darkness.
Wifi? Wunderbar!!!!

The NaPoWriMo Prompt: compose a poem in Sapphics.

For the Ragtag Prompt, STELLAR

NaPoWriMo 2015: Two Abecedarian Poems: Loving Thy Enemy and Raw Savage Thoughts

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Loving Thy Enemy

Age
becomes
creative.

Don’t ever fictionalize
great heroic intimacies.

Just keep looking
major nemeses over,
proudly quieting
rash stabbing thoughts.

Under violent words,
xenophobic
yearnings
zing.

****

Raw Savage Thoughts

Zealous young
xenophobic wanderers
veer under
the sun’s rays,
quitting promenades
over nomadic mesas.

Let’s keep jumping
into harsh green fields,
eternally delving closer
before age accents
belligerent crankiness.

Delicious effervescence
froths gushingly homeward
in jugulars,
keeping lymphatic matters
normal or palpitating,

quickening
raw savage thoughts.
Understanding vulcanizes
woman’s X-rated,
yearnful zest.

The Prompt: Write an abecedarian poem – a poem with a structure derived from the alphabet. You could write a poem of 26 words, in which each word begins with a successive letter of the alphabet or a poem of 26 lines, where each line begins with a successive letter. I wrote one that went A to Z and a second that went Z to A and back to Z.

NaPoWriMo 2015, Day 8–Palinode Poem

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The Prompt: Write a palinode–a poem in which the poet retracts a statement made in an earlier poem. if you don’t have an actual poetically-expressed statement you want to retract, maybe you could write a poem in which you explain your reasons for changing your mind about something.

Of Stable Mind

There’s nothing I said yesterday that I’d like to retract.
Such wishy-washy thought systems leave me cold, in fact.
Those things that I believed in last week, last month, last year
are pretty much the standards that I still hold dear.
I’m not veering toward the right. I don’t like war games much.
Haven’t changed my taste for chocolate or changed to Greek from Dutch.
I still like Indie movies, the Avett Brothers and
prefer the beach to mountains as I like my walks in sand.
Though change is epidemic with apps changing every day,
when it comes to my beliefs, I think that I’m just going to stay
right here in the middle of the leftward slanting crowd–
where thinking for yourself is both encouraged and allowed.
No knee jerk either way, please, and respect for everyone
so long as they aren’t given to persuasion with a gun.
So I’ll post no apologia for anything I’m thinking.
I’ll row home in the boat I came in even if it’s sinking!

NaPoWriMo 2015, Day 7: Filthy Lucre–Dropped Bills, Three Vignettes

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Dropped Bill

It falls so easily from open purse or pocket,
unnoticed as you walk away;
and yet to the one who finds it,
such a gift.
A mere surprise, perhaps, baksheesh,
or a next meal they otherwise may have gone without.
Such a small joy for whomever finds it,
whether they pass it on or spend it soon.
Well worth letting a fiver drop by accident,
now and then, like a beneficent God
waiting to see what will happen.


Dropped Bill II

What passes more quickly or more often from hand to hand,
or has more life in it: oil from the fish and chips it purchased,
dirt from the field, lost signs of love?
Everything in life is pressed into the bills we pay
for most of what sustains us.
Yet we call it filthy lucre
as though these signs of life are bad.
Perhaps Shakespeare coined the term, regarding Shylock’s usury.
We’ll look it up after—both you and me.
But even if I’m right, now that I’ve written this verse and you have read it,
Bill Shakespeare may no longer have complete dominion
over our connotation of the term.


Dropped Bill III

King James version of The Bible (Titus 1:10-11), For there are many unruly and vain talkers and     deceivers . . . Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which  they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.

Who knew there was a book in the Bible called Titus?
Not me, though I won the prize, week after week,
for learning the most verses in Sunday School.
True, I’ve forgotten much of what I once knew;
but I was a child who loved money,
hoarding my quarter allowance
in a large blue piggy bank,
and so I doubt an allusion to filthy lucre
would have passed me by,
even without Google to look up the word.
Surely some motivated teacher would have defined the word.
Then I would have known that the term “filthy lucre” was Biblical,
and let Shylock off the hook ever after–
applying it, ironically, to those like politicians
who, for the sake of filthy lucre,
do not pass bills.


The Prompt: Write about money! It could be about not having enough, having too much (a nice kind of problem to have), the smell, or feel, or sensory aspects of money. It could also just be a poem about how we decide what has value or worth.

To find out more about NaPoWriMo, go here:  http://www.napowrimo.net/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/supercalifragilisticexpialidocious/

High Noon With Emily Dickinson

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The Prompt: High Noon–At noon today, take a pause in what you’re doing or thinking about. Make a note of it, and write a post about it later.

As it happens, I couldn’t sleep last night and so didn’t actually fall asleep until 5:30 this morning.  Therefore, high noon found me signing on to the NaPoWriMo site to get my day’s assignment. So, at high noon, that’s what I was doing.  The results you may find HERE.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/high-noon/

NaPoWriMo, Day 3: In the Market

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I had a reading to go to this morning, where I read both “At 67” and “Once Upon a Lime in Mexico,” but you heard them both here first!  “At 67” will also be published in Ojo del Lago, Mexico’s largest English Language newspaper/magazine, which is both in print and online.  Before I left at 9:30 for the reading, I got part of today’s blog post finished and I completed it in the Walmart parking lot, where I’d gone to do a bit of shopping.  Dreading the stop-and-go Semana Santa traffic, I decided to finish it so it would be ready for posting when I got home,  which it is and I am!!!  So, here goes.

I’ve been trying to combine the NaPoWriMo and the WordPress prompts each day. The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a “fourteener” poem where each line consists of seven iambic feet (i.e., an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, times seven.) This form is also called a ballad.

No topic was given, so I took a WordPress Prompt and went to a friend’s book and turned to page 11 and took the 11th word, which was “Should,”  and started a poem entitled “She Should.”  I later changed the title and the first line, so the words that started the poem no longer are part of it. The purpose of a prompt is to start, not serve as an end-all. So, here is my ballad.  Please let me know what you think.

In the Market

Her mother tells her not to talk to strangers in the streets–
to count on all her kin to provide everyone she meets.
But this man has such lovely eyes, so what could be the harm?
And she’s not often left to stray this far from father’s farm.
When he walks by, she gives a smile and looks him in the eye.
He looks away, but his shy smile still gives away the guy.
She drops her basket, but he still continues on his way.
It’s only then that she decides that this one must be gay.

The store where she is going is not so very far,
and yet she takes the longest way that leads there from her car.
Although it should be blocks away, instead it is two miles.
She only has this route and back to practice all her wiles.
Whenever gentlemen of note meet her questing glance,
Her winsome smile becomes a grin, her walk becomes a prance.
Some of the men seem to be shocked. The others move away.
She’s sure it is just married men she meets this market day.

But finally, one man in plaid does not avoid her glance.
She smiles at him invitingly, afraid she’ll lose her chance.
She sees him turn as she walks by and follow in her wake.
It seems she’s finally hooked one. It was a piece of cake.
When she arrives and goes into the store, he follows her.
It’s just so he can meet her, of this she’s fairly sure.
Aisle after aisle she meets his gaze by boldly looking up
while he pretends he’s looking for food on which to sup.

Pork and beans he passes up, chili and green beans.
He adjusts his shoulders and hitches up his jeans.
She knows that he’s not used to this. He’s not so debonair.
He will not meet her flirty glance or even her bold stare;
and yet she sees him peeking when it seems that she’s not looking.
It’s clear enough to her that something’s definitely cooking.
She’s been around the livestock so she knows the signs and causes,
yet a bull just gets right to it and a rooster never pauses.

The action quickens in the aisle where the bread shelves start.
She finally takes the upper hand and swerves into his cart.
The metal baskets scrape and crash and make an awful din.
She does not mind that people gawk. She finally has an in!
He blushes when she talks to him, and she is sure he nearly
takes her hand and flirts as he says, “Pardon,” very clearly.
He turns and walks her down the aisle. It is a date, almost.
Side by side they stroll until parted by a post

that splits the aisle in two and makes them part, then join again.
Though she is small and portly, and he is tall and thin,
they make a handsome couple. She can see their wedding stills.
She will pick the gown and flowers. He will pay the bills.
When they approach the registers, he tells her to go first.
They chat as the checker works. It almost seems rehearsed.

He asks about her family and certainly seems rapt.
The lives of mother, father, brother, sister clearly mapped.
Details others might find boring are engagingly related
and all the while his pupils stay entirely dilated.
He puts his thumb right through a peach, then grabs up a red apple,
and tells her that he’s noticed her in front of him in chapel,
sitting by her sister and wearing a blue hat.
Her sister’s hat was yellow.  He is sure of that.

When she asks him home to supper, he says, “Yes,” in nothing flat.
He talks to all her relatives and even holds the cat.
When her annoying sister talks and talks and talks,
he responds politely–he never even balks.
He finally admits that he’s engineered their meeting,
but still the news of it does not set her heart to beating.
Now it is family legend, the story of this mister,
with an unexpected ending. He was there to meet her sister!

 https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/three-letter-words/

NaPoWriMo 2015, Day 2: Stars

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                                                                    Stars

Sometimes, on an Indian blanket spread on the night-dewed grass, I became aware of them.
They were always there waiting in the ever-clear South Dakota nights.
Anything could have happened on a night like that,
Reclining with no ceiling over us,
Silence split by crickets, frogs, the chipped barks of dogs.

Summertime freed us to the great outdoors.
Traitors to our beds, we chose the long-grass cushioned backyard.
Attacks by neighborhood boys an exciting possibility,
Rescues by my bellowing dad, in jockey shorts, standing on the back porch.
Sleep not on our agenda for hours afterwards.

Slumber parties meant for anything but slumber.
Taking a walk at midnight and crossing the path of no one.
Air in the night a different elixir
Returning to roll in the grass in shortie pajamas—that pre-sexual thrill.
Stars of our own summer, we strutted our stage until the wee hours.

Something in the night freeing something in us.
Taken by the stars to other selves, far above us.
Aware of the mysteries laid out like a path in front of us.
Returning reluctantly to our pre-teen lives,
Safe beneath the dangerous stars.

The WordPress prompt today was to write about texting, but Since I have never texted anyone in my life, thought I’d tell you what life was like in a pre-text world. And here’s a picture to go with both the subject of texting (old-time style) and the above poem:
https://grieflessons.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/a-photo-a-week-challenge-muted-colors/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/its-a-text-text-text-text-world/

NaPoWriMo 2015 Day 1: At 67–I Guess that It’s Too Late for Me to Live A Life Of Sin.

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In case you are wondering why I have two posts, they actually gave us an earlybird prompt on March 31, so we had two prompts for April 1.  No fooling!  Here’s the first one I wrote:

At 67

I guess that it’s too late for me to live a life of sin.
I’m simply going to have to make do with the life I’m in.
Although life’s dance has furnished me with many a wild whirl,
my past is littered with false starts at being a bad girl.

It seems that dirty dancing doesn’t fit my constitution,
for somehow I just seemed to fail the sexual revolution.
Strange sexual positions never seemed to please.
They only did my back in and ruined both my knees.

It’s much too late to try to build a palate for champagne,
for experience has taught me that it’s safer to abstain.
The guilt I felt for shoplifting had just one resolution.
I felt the only answer lay in complete restitution.

Cocaine made my nose drip and pot just made me fat.
And that’s how I got into the position where I’m at.
Too chubby now for hot pants and too frigid for them, too,
I’ve found that there is only one more thing for me to do.

Rather than complete the acts that formerly I would,
it’s easier to only do the tame things that I should.
So though I must confess my bad girl days are at a halt,
I’ll admit I am a paragon merely by default!

Today’s Prompt: Lamentation for the other lives we could have led is something we probably have all felt. Today, why not try writing your own poem that begins “I guess it’s too late to live . . . .

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/fool-me-once/

My Brilliant Career: How I Found My Proper Place in Film and TV

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My Brilliant Career: How I Found My Proper Place in Film and TV

I got bitten by the film bug when I lived in L.A.
and did some sort of movie work most every single day.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, I always had a class.
The U.C.L.A. campus is where they came to pass.
I studied film production and took screenwriting, too;
but my class in documentaries was where I scored a coup.
We made a documentary.  In fact, I helped with two,
but I knew by the end of them I hadn’t found my place.
I simply didn’t have the balls to run the movie race.

Then I studied acting at an actor’s studio.
I really did the best at this, but still, it was “no go.”
When it came to trying out for parts, I didn’t have the nerve.
Once again my movie plans took another swerve.
I worked as an apprentice at a Hollywood agency.
There were so many candidates, yet they selected me.
They had me reading novels and sitting in on sessions;
and this was more exciting than my former classroom lessons.
I met some famous actors and tried to be real cool,
and writing out readers reports was easier than school,
but still I knew that in my heart it just wasn’t for me.
After all this time, I didn’t know who I should be.

I’d been in California for three years by then;
and although I hadn’t found my place, still I had the yen.
But I’d run out of money. It was time to find employment
that would involve a paycheck and not just my enjoyment!
I’d heard of a position where I thought that I could cope
as publicity assistant for none other than Bob Hope!
So I wound up in production: typing, phoning, organizing.
The  people in my Rolodex were frankly quite surprising.
I set up radio interviews with the famous Bob.
To read the National Enquirer was required in this job!
I went to filmings of the shows, sent out his Christmas gifts,
ran back and forth to N.B.C. and soothed some office rifts.

But all-in-all though it was fun to be there on the fringe,
to be completely honest, I was not a vital hinge.
And so when I was married, we decided to move north.
I left my life in filmdom and boldly sallied forth,
moving up to Santa Cruz to live by doing art–
never really finishing what I had tried to start.
I had adventures plenty and saw much of the scene
and I enjoy remembering everywhere I’ve been;
but all-in-all, the truth is that there’s one place I’m most groovy.
When it comes to all the skills that have to go into a movie,
the only place that doesn’t make me sort of tense
Is center row and half way back, in the audience!

The Prompt: The Show Must Go On–If you were involved in making a film, would you want to be the director, producer or lead actor?  You cannot be the writer.

Important note to all readers:  I’ve had four followers report that all my comments to them are going into their spam folder.  Would you please check your spam folders today and see if this is so and also check them tomorrow and tell me if this is still the case?

Also, my yesterday’s post would not link to the WordPress Daily Post Site, so if you haven’t read it and would like to, you can reach it through my blog.  Thanks, Judy

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/the-show-must-go-on/