Category Archives: Uncategorized

NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 30

11 Replies

How to Find a Poem

Only a fool waits for a poem to come to him.
You have to call for it like a proper blind date,
knocking on its door
and seeing beauty in whatever opens it.

Take it dancing.
Twirl it around the floor,
letting words fly off in all directions.

Leave what flutters off alone.
Someone else will pick it up
and dance with it.
No word is a wallflower,
although some are chosen more frequently to dance.
Those are the words to avoid.
 
Do not always choose the prettiest words.
In the dance of the poem,
the ugliest of words acquire a charm.

Do not insist that you yourself lead.
Let the poem, instead, draw you
off the dance floor,
out the door
and down the path
to deep woods
where all the wild words live.

Gather them in bouquets
or weave them into chains
to crown your head––
that head of the poet
who follows where the poems go
and collects them by armfuls to share with the world.

 

The last NaPoWriMo prompt for the year 2021 is to write a poem in the form of a series of directions describing how a person should get to a particular place.

 

More Pitaya, FOTD Apr 27, 2021

4 Replies

 

Please click on photos to enlarge.

For Cee’s FOTD

Pitayas: FOTD Apr 26, 2021

3 Replies

 

Please click on photos to enlarge.

When I stopped to take these photos, I thought these were flowers, but on closer inspection I realized they were the fruits of the pitaya cactus that birds had evidently discovered before I did. The fruit is delicious. It can be any color inside from purple to yellow to rose to orange and has the seeds, texture and taste of strawberries, although different colors taste slightly different. Once you get the thorns off, it is worth the work of getting to the fruit. Warning, however. Even after you scrape off the long thorns with a sharp knife, there are tiny little black prickly thorns that form a circle around them. They can be very irritating to the fingers as well.

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Iconic Photo

13 Replies

I have actually met and talked to two of the five men in this photo–
the two on the far left.

Blind Fashion

3 Replies

Blind Fashion

They were a fashionable couple, noted for their dress,
attired on all occasions with a unique finesse.

She dressed up on work days in a crinoline and sash.
He even wore a coat and tie when taking out the trash.

Her shape was rather pandurate—thinner in the middle
and very broad down by the hips, rather like a fiddle.

His hair  was thin and patchy with many bald spots that
might have gone unnoticed if he had worn a hat.

So, though they dressed for fashion, they didn’t dress for shape.
He should have worn a tam and she should have worn a cape.

 

Photo from Unsplash, used with permission. Prompts today are  pandurate, work and  finesse,

NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 25: Bad Timing

7 Replies

 

Bad Timing

On my birthday in July, my true love gave to me
a coupon for a ski trip and a real live Christmas tree.
Chocolates when I’m dieting, sad songs when I am gloomy.
A grand piano, though my new apartment’s not too roomy.
The week that “Save the Animals” appointed me their chair,
he bought me a new winter coat of lynx and llama hair.

He brings home ice cream in the cold, hot cocoa in the summer.
When I broke my tooth, the peanut brittle was a bummer.
Though his gifts are generous, my thanks are often mimed,
for I’m speechless over just how badly all of them are timed!
The reason why we are not wed is so hard to relate.
I had the cake, the rings, the gown. We set the time and date.

The groom showed up and waited as I walked down the aisle.
My wedding dress was finest lace, my undergarments lisle.
I’d planned each detail out with care and left no stone unturned.
Just one detail  left to him–you’d think I would have learned!
For when I went to say “I do” to this  man I adore,
they found our wedding license had lapsed two weeks before!

 

For NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 25, we are to write a poem about a special occasion.

Old Boyfriends: NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 24

25 Replies

 


Old Boyfriends

Old boyfriends
are also known as
“cut boyfriends”
or “parasol boyfriends”.
Old boyfriends originate mainly in the USA.
They are found in eastern and south central Texas.
They also can be found in parts of western Louisiana.
Old boyfriends are not commonly found in subdivisions,
but are considered an agricultural, rural pest. 

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt today  is to find a factual article about an animal, making sure it repeats the name of the animal a lot.  Then go back through the text and replace the name of the animal with something else – it could be something very abstract, like “sadness” or “my heart,” or something more concrete, like “the streetlight outside my window that won’t stop blinking.” You should wind up with some very funny and even touching combinations, which you can then rearrange and edit into a poem.

The animal I looked up was the leaf cutter ant. Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Hopscotch Flunky

10 Replies


Hopscotch Flunky

When I hop on one foot, I am destined to fall.
Too much scotch and less hop is the cause of it all.
When they said toss the rock, I threw out my ice.
Any shock that I haven’t been asked to play twice?

The dVerse Poets prompt today is to write a poem in anapestic tetrameter

Cupping the Sun: Hibiscus for FOTD Apr 23, 2021

3 Replies

 

It was hard to capture these shots at all in the full sun. These obelisco flowers (as they are called in Mexico) just love to cup the sunlight and then to open to it.

 

Please click on flowers to enlarge the photos.

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Old Toys

10 Replies
Disheveled Dolly

 

 

For Cee’s Black and White Challenge