Category Archives: Poetry

Pining for the Prompt

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Pining for the Prompt

Checking e-mails, cooking curry.
Where’s the prompt? Please hurry, hurry!
Not a mother, not a wife,
But still, WordPress, I have a life!

I need to go to buy some rice,
and a shower would be nice.
I’d like to take a swim and then
comb OkCupid for some men.

Instead, I sit like some blog glutton,
staring at my “renew” button.
Is every minute too excessive?
Every hour too regressive?

I understand this sleeping in
on Sunday’s really not a sin.
For, however, those who wait,
it feels like you’ve stood up your date!

That we adore you goes unsaid,
(We know you probably aren’t paid.)
But if all Sunday you plan to snore,
could you please prompt the night before?

(Note:  The prompt was finally posted at 11:43 PM.  Now the question is, is this today’s late prompt or tomorrow’s early one?  Always a new thrill in the world of blogging!!!  Since I’ve already written four poems today, guess I will think of this prompt for tomorrow, or not at all.  Anyway, I think with a prompt this late it was fair to choose my own, don’t you? Happy blogging.)

Sunday Morning Addendum

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Sunday Morning Addendum

I used to go to church on Sunday, natural as breathin’,
but when the Daily Prompt is late, I turn into a heathen!
I wait and wait and look and look, refreshing up my browser.
So if you know our prompter, kindly call her up and rouse ‘er?
The end result of sleeping in is one I know too well.
Though she will get her beauty sleep, it’s I who’ll go to Hell!

Gotta Gotta Greenland!!!!

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DSC07438Gotta Gotta Greenland!!!!

This is a map of all the world—of countries near and far.
I look at it to calculate where all my readers are!
But oh, alas, for 18 months, that middle space was bare.
I saw that it was Greenland where no one seemed to care
one bit about my heartfelt posts.  It was exasperating!
I guess it’s all that ice and snow that keeps them hibernating.
So finally I wrote a poem expressing my distress.
and posted it upon my blog, this problem to address.
Still no one wrote until I found a blog from someone there—
a lovely Filipina lass who seems to really care.
As you can seen above, I now have 2 views from that Isle.
Because of Dani Henrikson who went that extra mile
to view my blog and answer from where she lives in Nuuk.
As you might guess, that really makes her tops within my book.
So if you have some time to spare, please do inspect her site.
For she deserves a helping hand for dealing with my plight.
filipinaingreenland.com is where you’ll find her blog.
With luck, her viewer numbers will move further up a cog.
Her Greenland site is lovely.  You’ll find some big surprises.
As usual, reality exceeds our mere surmises!

Thanks, Dani, for giving me two views from Greenland!!!! Now I have to figure out which country to concentrate on next. Actually, I promise to give it a rest and let nature take its  course from here on out. No more recruitment!!!

 

Plus One: The Eighth Deadly Sin: (A Dating Primer for Errant Males)

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Plus One: The Eighth Deadly Sin:
(A Dating Primer for Errant Males)

Wrath and avarice and pride
can be safely kept inside.
So although we all may be them,
it is often hard to see them.

If you are a seasoned actor,
sloth will never be a factor
leading to your firing
or premature retiring.

Often envy, I confess,
is one more way that I transgress;
but even though we’re caught inside it,
almost all of us can hide it.

Lust is the sin that’s most unfurled
upon us in this modern world
in every book and magazine.
In movies? It’s in every scene.

And though sex is oft debated,
we only label them X-rated;
and though we profess to abhor them,
in solitude, we may adore them.

Gluttony’s the only sin
we cannot seem to keep within;
for everything that meets our lips,
alas, is carried on our hips!

Each is labeled “deadly sin”—
the one outside, others within;
but I’m inclined to add another
perhaps not taught you by your mother.

These deadly sins from one to seven
may be what keep you out of heaven,
but it’s transgression number eight
that will ban you as my date!

You may talk as you pour wine,
and continue as we dine;
but when I start to tell a tale,
heaven help the errant male

who utters “Me, too . . . ” then proceeds
to list more of his facts and deeds.
As music fades and lights all dim,
bringing the subject back to him!

I know that sinning is the fate
of many couples on a date.
So lust may now and then corrupt me,
but no one gets to interrupt me!!!!

Luddite (Within Reason)

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Luddite (Within Reason)

Resurrect the Luddite gene!
Raise the axe! Kill the machine!
Its use is seldom credible
in products that are edible.

A bread machine for making bread?
Ban that idea from your head.
Bread manufactured should be banned.
The nobler loaf is shaped by hand.

Lasagna, too, it is a fact,
is better manually stacked.
Those frozen ones from Costco? Toss ‘em!
For no machine knows how to sauce ‘em!

Torillas handmade pat by pat?
You simply can’t improve on that.
But I admit I’m not that keen
on ones that come from a machine.

South of the border, arts abound
on almost every wall they’re found.
All over town, the artists stand
creating murals there by hand.

Art that’s produced digitally?
It will simply never be
as satisfactory to me
as this handmade artistry.

The stately dome, even and round,
in Mexico is often found.
With bricks, cement and lime and sand—
it’s true that they are made by hand!

I admit that a brick wall
is hardly any view at all.
The only worse thing in a town
is when you find one tumbled down!

But Mexico excels at walls.
Hand-stacked, a stone wall rarely falls.
And they are things of beauty, too,
and add, not detract, from the view.

I find that I can best assuage
my aches with a hands-on massage.
Our massage chair bought for beaucoup bucks?
Truthfully? It really sucks.

And yet, I know that many lean
in preference to the machine.
I must admit, though I am wary,
that certain ones are necessary.

Elevators beat the stairs.
Electric shavers best cut hairs.
(Those signs extolling Burma Shave
belong outside a caveman’s cave.)

And I admit the movie sector
clearly needs its film projector.
Doctors? X-rays. Dentists? Drills.
Pharmacists? Machine-made pills.

And I am sure I’d really balk
If I were forced to always walk,
so cars and trucks would make my list
of machines that should exist.

I could live if forced to brave
this world without my microwave,
but take my Wifi? Don’t you dare!!!
Some things are better sent by air!

The Prompt: Handmade Tales—Automation has made it possible to produce so many objects — from bread to shoes — without the intervention of human hands (assuming that pressing a button doesn’t count). What things do you still prefer in their traditional, handmade version?

Lame

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Lame

It’s been three months since first I came
to make these daily posts my aim;
and though I do not seek to maim,
to damage, libel, slur or blame
the reputation or the name
of the guy or of the dame
who promised they would fan my flame
(increase my fans and spread my fame)
if I would join this posting game,
I fear the prompts have turned too tame.
Do any of you feel the same?
These prompts are getting pretty lame!!!!

Daily Prompt: 190 Days Later—Back on January 21st, we asked you to predict what day #211 would be like. Well, July 30th is that day — how have your predictions held up so far? If you didn’t reply to the prompt at the time, is this year turning out to be as you’d expected?

Away

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Away

Written in the morning, long before the day
sneaks in like an intruder, intent to have its say,
words born in the nighttime flower on their own,
bursting into bloom as soon as seeds are sown.

Truth is there behind us before it ever shows—
in words before they’re spoken, in wind before it blows.
Once recognized, I free these words to flow over the world—
off on their own to have a life wherever they’re unfurled.

Sent swiftly to their different spheres to live a life apart
from one who followed after, like a horse without its cart—
I like to set my words loose to canter on their own,
to feed upon wild grass that also roots where it has blown.

The Prompt: After an especially long and exhausting drive or flight, a grueling week at work, or a mind-numbing exam period — what’s the one thing you do to feel human again?

Do You Know Someone from Greenland?

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400px-Coat_of_arms_of_Greenland.svg

Do You Know Someone from Greenland?

Do you know someone from Greenland? Please write them if you do
and tell them that I need someone from Greenland who will view
my blog for me so I can get it lit up on my map;
for on my statistics page it leaves a shocking gap.
Italy is lit up and the rest of Europe, too.
Mexico and Canada and Poland and Peru.
(But not, I fear, Afghanistan or Chad or Katmandu.)

I have fans in India, in England and in China.
Readers in the States from Oregon to Carolina.
Africa, The Emirates, in Russia and Japan,
and even in Australia, I have one loyal fan.
But no one from that Island has ever viewed my blog.
It seems that my well-oiled machine is missing that one cog.
I know that Greenland’s icy—that it’s Iceland that is green,
and perhaps that oxymoron may make Greenlanders mean.
Yet I’d think in winter, when there is so much snow
the Internet’s the sort of place that they would want to go!!!
My blog may not be noted for being really hot,
and if they want X-Rated, my blog is not the spot.
But if you’ve friends in Greenland, please tell them this for me:
my blog may not be steamy, but it’s guaranteed frost-free!

(And while you are at it, please have them stop by Shawn Bird’s blog at shawnbird.com/blog She’s missing Greenland as well!)

The Prompt: Road Tripping—‘Tis the season for road trips — if time and money were out of the equation, what car-based adventure would you go on? (If you don’t or can’t drive, any land-based journey counts.) . . . I interpreted the prompt loosely this time, more as a road trip of the mind. After almost 18 months of blogging, I keep noticing that very big block of the world called Greenland that still sits blankly staring at me, resisting my blog. When Shawn wrote to me after reading my blog about statistics, (read it here) saying that she was waiting for a viewer from Greenland, I knew that was my cue. So although I doubt anyone from outside has ever taken a road trip there, if you’ve journeyed there by some other means, please drop a clue to any friends you may have who live there to take a mind trip to our blogs and shut us up!!!!

Pressed for Words

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lifelessons-stats

Pressed for Words

9:22 on a Thursday night,
keeping my MacBook screen in sight.
I agree, it’s superficial.
I should do something beneficial;
but instead, I sit and count
as my blog views slowly mount.

Today, so far, one hundred four.
(Yesterday’s count and then one more.)
With some hours left , I do not know
how much higher it might go.

Yesterday I took great care
to write an essay on my hair.
(About my hair, I should explain,
to write “on” hair would be a pain,
for in the shower or under rain,
my words would go right down the drain!)

Judy, stop!!! Get back on track!
(I’m turning into such a hack.)
Today I sluffed off all day long—
just posted Leon Redbone’s song.
Yet here I am at 10:03
with three more viewers viewing me.
Two more hours and then no more
to tally up this blog day’s score.
Already, though, its clear to me
what the lesson learned must be.

It’s clear this truth I must compute.
My viewers like me better mute!!!

Unstarched

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Unstarched

My ladies writing group is classy—never crass or gaudy.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I found they can be bawdy!
Just one impromptu potluck and a few bottles of wine
turned their metaphoric minds to matters far less fine.
For Jenny had just mentioned that a friend had lately lent her
a rather naughty film that nonetheless had really sent her
off into the paroxysms of unbridled laughter—
the kind that take you wave-on-wave and leave you aching after.
I’d been needing that for months—my life had been sedate
since my old gang had moved away and left me to my fate
of no last-minute games of train and late-night jubilation,
for though I still have good friends here, I lack that combination
of friends that I enjoy who all enjoy each other, too,
enough to create silliness to make my nights less blue.

“Bad Grandpa” was the film we watched, and though I must admit
I watched behind spread fingers for at least a fifth of it,
still the antics had us all just rolling on the floor
—starting with a snicker and then ending with a roar.
Scatology is not my thing, nor are pratfalls or shtick,
yet still I must admit to you, I got a real big kick
from this film filled with all of them, and so did all the others;
so as we watched, it felt like we were all sisters and brothers.
And as they left, I think we knew we’d shared a priceless treasure,
for there’s nothing that unites us like a mutual guilty pleasure!

The Prompt: When was the last time you watched something so scary, cringe-worthy, or unbelievably tacky — in a movie, on TV, or in real life — you had to cover your eyes?