Intimations of Mortality
Though I am still active, for sure I’m not my best.
Whereas once I boogied, now I find I’d rather rest.
I know I’m winding down for sure but I feel I must
achieve those things I said I’d do before I bite the dust.
While I’m waiting to be cancelled, I’ve agreed that I’ll be wise.
My finale bears no stigma, for everybody dies.
Prompt words today are wise, agree, finale, stigma, active and cancelled.
And for NaPoWriMo
For Cee’s FOTD
Generation
My ration of the genes meted out to my family has, I admit, been wasted. I’ve had no children linked to my ancestors. I have helped raise my husband’s children and been a loving aunt to nieces and nephews, but my only creations have been stories and poems written on paper or a computer screen, handmade paper lifted from molds and deckles, jewelry formed from metal cut, patterned, forged and soldered and retablos constructed of the found fragments of other people’s lives. They are what I offer to upcoming generations: a brooch, a lamp, a retablo, a poem, a vignette or a book—these are the things i’ve given birth to that will perhaps live after me.
The prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “start with gen.”
Other prompts for today are trip, mumble, incapacitated, hale, draw and taste.
I very rarely reblog a post, but I love this Checklist by Xan. It’s very short so unfortunately it is all viewable here. Please go to Xan’s post to make comments as well as here so the author knows you appreciated it, too.
Pet the cat
Feel the sunshine on your face
Stop and smell the flowers
But move with your brothers and sisters
Toward justice
Welcome new souls
And celebrate lost ones
Be troubled when you’re young
and troublesome in your age
and make good trouble all your life
Fill up your hungry belly
And someone else’s too
Love your neighbor as yourself
Honor your gods
However you see them
Raise your children
To love life
And mourn death
And make good trouble
In a new day
NaPoWriMo Day 7, prompt: a list
My friend Brad took us to Teocintle Restaurante for dinner earlier this week and my dish was almost too pretty to eat, as were all the others. Is this close enough, Cee?
For the CMMC Challenge: Macro or closeup
Disclaimer: John Donne wrote “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.” This is not that poem!!!
A Valediction Forbidding Morning
When the moon is at its peak
It is the nighttime’s time to speak
words worthy of our full attention
yet this is a mere audition.
Another speaker’s coming soon
who has hopes to debate the moon.
The sun will soon commence to snivel
that moon’s sentiments are drivel.
Thus day and night both ebb and flow
informing us by what they show
of light and dark and sun and moon,
all of their phases gone too soon.
Each noonday sun flashing its warning,
every moon forbidding morning
while warning the ladybug
to check her babies are all snug,
for as the sun climbs ever higher,
it might set her house on fire.
Prompts for the day are valediction, drivel, audition, worthy, peak and ladybug.
Burning Books
Harry Potter tied to the stake,
the “Holier than Thou” ones light the pyre, stringing marshmallows
on limbs snapped from the burning bush
shortly before its point of ignition.
They toss The Handmaid onto the pile
and the flames lick up high enough
To Kill a Mockingbird on an overhanging limb.
Hidden deep in the woods,
in the shadows Where the Wild Things Are,
The ghost of Ray Bradbury views the flames,
guesses their temperature at Fahrenheit 451.
The Holy Ones brave The Power and the Glory of the flames
to squeeze the molten marshmallows
from their sticks onto Hershey-Bar layered
(ironically named) Graham crackers.
They swat at The Lord of the Flies
risen from the flames
to rest upon each gooey mess
created by the heat from all the ignited words.
Long after 1984,
still ignorant of its warnings,
they lift their arms heavenward
in thanks for the holy communion
they are about to partake in.
And thus,
Their Eyes Were Watching God
even as they overlooked
the coincidence of its immolation.
For Sadje’s What Do You See prompt.
Time Temporal
by Judy Dykstra-Brown
Shall I contrast thee to a winter’s night?
Thou art less lovely and more tempestuous.
The lack of wind doth still November’s empty stalks,
Oe’r which the winter hath too long a power.
Sometimes the too-cold moon hides ‘neath the clouds.
Then rarely doth it’s pitted face shine forth;
And dark from dark can sometimes rise,
Spurred on by fate or providence’s static plan.
But thy short winter shall soon pass away,
Restore to thee the homeliness of death.
Nor shall that birth that brought you forth to light
Still claim thee when temporal time shall stop thy growth.
As men lose breath and eyes lose sight,
So dies this poem, and draws thee with it to thy grave.
Sonnet 18
by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
For NaPoWriMo Day 3, they wanted us to write an “Opposite Poem” based on a famous poem. Mine is above.
The Professor Joins E Harmony
On his first round of internet daming,
sure he was intent on shaming,
his blind date stirred up such a fuss
when he called her pulchritudinous,
that it proved a barrier to fun
as she announced their date was done!
His mistake was simply ’cause he
didn’t know her brain was fuzzy
and unaccustomed to such words
that more literary birds
might realize were a compliment
in fact, a word meant to augment
the chance that he might marry her
instead became a barrier
of misunderstanding that
made her think he’d called her fat!!!!
The lesson learned from this brief story
is that blind dating can be gory.
What a guy has got to do
before he makes a swipe anew
is to ascertain his date’s I.Q.
before he chooses words to woo!
Prompt words for today are rambunctious, augment, fuzzy, pulchritudinous, shaming and barrier. Illusration from the Nutty Professor Site. No attribution.
Influencer
By what are you influenced? What triggers you?
Do you stand at attention for the red, white and blue?
Are you of the first nation or Apache or Sioux?
Do you bask in the limelight, awash in your fame.
Hoping that everyone’s seeing your name?,
aware of the problems, but you’re not to blame!
Or are you sedulous, loving and caring,
more concerned with your heart than what you are wearing?
Wanting justice for all, intent on the sharing
of all the riches of the land of your birth,
looking for solutions for the ills of the Earth,
considering everyone of equal worth?
Prompt words for the day are influencer, bask, first nation, sedulous, wash and triggers. Image by Laura Chouette.
