I took a block-long walk down my sister’s street in Peoria, Arizona, and this is what I saw: (Please click on photos to enlarge.)
For Cee’s FOTD
This is the prompt:
Click on the arrow on the album to hear the song.
“To Do” List for a New Roommate
*If you value this abode,
please plan to shoulder half the load
to keep it lovely, clean and neat.
This rule, I will not repeat.
*Underwear should not be seen
on chair or floor or in-between.
(To insure I’m a happy camper,
dirty clothes go in the hamper.)
*If, on occasion, you feel you might
have a lover spend the night,
lest my ire you might incite,
please have him leave by morning light.
*No mongrels, kittens, fish or birds
or other denizens of herds
may cross my doorway, now or ever.
In short, are pets allowed? No. Never!!!
*If personal details you recite,
please insure they are not trite,
for next to messiness and snoring,
I most dread roommates who are boring.
* Don’t steal my cookies or my chips.
My food should never pass your lips.
Don’t steal my leftover knishes,
and when you cook, do your own dishes.
*If these requests you can’t abide,
just pack your bags and move outside!
Follow my rules, or it’s your loss,
for in this house, I am the boss!
Prompt words today are shoulder, underwear, mongrel, trite and love. Image by Sincerely Media on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Also, for NaPoWriMo, Day 9, Make a To-Do List
For Cee’s FOTD
Keeping Abreast
If I were made the ruler of
this universe I rue and love,
the one thing I would not let “be”
is the force of gravity
in respect to just one issue.
Namely––my mammary tissue!
For, though you may feel dubious,
each year, I grow more boobious!
I do not like them hanging there
where once they used to thrust the air.
Where once each strained against its cup,
It seems like now they’ve given up.
Listless and flat, downward they droop.
Sad Sack replaces Betty Boop.
They have no personality.
They’ve lost elasticality!
The result is truly tragic,
so this is why I need some magic.
Please, gods of nature, give a cure.
There must be some way to inure
my breasts from force of gravity.
Now that I rule, hear my plea!
Tell gravity that it is best
to loose its hold upon each breast
so they are perky once again,
thrusting out below my chin
instead of hanging in two vees
somewhere down around my knees!
Restore my pride. Dispel my frown.
I want them hanging out, not down!
Is it cheating that this is a poem I wrote six years ago? More true now than then!!!!
Unmarked Grave
The colonel raised me to be great.
As tall as was he—a giant of a man.
Handsome and clever,
a winner of confidence,
I was his favorite son.
I played the role, but lost myself
in one who broke my heart by leaving.
Then, as so many others who fled
during those dangerous times,
my best friend of a lifetime went away,
the two of them leaving me with no support.
I fell victim to the flattery of a tyrant
and chose the wrong side.
Then, knowing my end was near,
I refused to run
but met my fate—
A bullet delivered by that Surafel, a childhood friend
who himself was caught by the Derg and brutally killed.
“Hero of the Revolution” my caption read,
yet they buried us both, as so many others,
in an unmarked grave.
My father wept and grew old,
my whole family collapsing in on itself.
By what miracle,
forty years later
in a land 9,000 miles away,
did my former love
hear my whole story
and write these lines?
For NaPoWriMo Day 8, the prompt was to read a few of the poems from Spoon River Anthology, and then write my own poem in the form of a monologue delivered by someone who is dead.
Paper Star
Born to a family with great clout,
endued with fame, there was no doubt
she, too, would take the world by storm.
Yet, she went against the norm.
Coached in wit and charm and fame,
she didn’t want to play the game.
Sure of herself, without a doubt,
she felt no need to preen or flout.
She renounced usage of the name
and chose a lifestyle much more tame.
Given a choice, selected knowledge,
studied hard and went to college.
Took lifelong sabbatical
from being brash or radical.
Did not grace the silver screen.
Lived out her life private, unseen.
Avoided fame and tabloid papers,
forwent scandal, Oscars, capers.
Became a mother and a wife.
Gave up fame, but had a life.
Word prompts today are radical, coach, usage, endue and doubt. Image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Safety in Numbers
It might beseem the patriarch to forego actions radical,
forsaking them for pastimes more blandly mathematical.
Discourse over Pi and coffee a safer course, by far,
than plotting revolution at a local bar.
That there’s safety in numbers is a much-repeated platitude
much favored over taking risks with a subversive attitude.
Prompt words today are radical, patriarch, beseem and coffee. Image by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash, used with permission.
And for NaPoWriMo, Day 5
Click on images to enlarge.
Empty Cities
The ghosts of hamburgers lurk in the air,
waiting for children no longer there.
All of their voices turned empty and spare,
waiting lines empty and every chair
devoid of bodies. Each table bare.
To where have they gone? Do you know where?
If people all vanished, would the world care?
Would the lynx and the bobcat, the fox and the hare
and deer from the forests and crocodiles dare
to enter our shopping malls and broach the stair
forever silent, frozen and still?
Would they climb the escalator’s metal hill
and move into spaces filled with our things?
Jackets and towels and soup bowls and rings?
Refrigerators, bicycles and shoes,
donuts and bagels and pretzels and booze?
Tip over displays and ponder just what
we ever accomplished with all of this glut?
When we are gone will the animals wonder
what they can do with all of this plunder?
Will they swim in our pools and loll on our greens?
Will they scratch their wild backs on our mowing machines?
Leap over our cars and stream over our bridges,
enter our houses and nose through our fridges?
Will they make a nest of the socialite’s mink?
Have dozens of babies in our kitchen sink?
Remove stuffing from mattresses to create burrows?
Tunnel under our lawns to make ridges and furrows?
Will monkeys swing from our huge chandeliers?
Chimps drive our cars and strip all the gears?
Cows graze through our parks and horses run free,
no saddles inhibiting their liberty?
Just imagine our world once mankind is vanished.
Once we’ve insured we are finally banished.
Clean air and clean oceans. No traffic or noise.
No cars and no airplanes. No rush hour noise.
No traffic or crowds. No exhaust pipes or trash.
No credit cards, coupons or coinage or cash.
What we saw as improvements will all rust away,
covered with vines, to slowly decay.
Mankind just a segment of time’s stony layers,
our music and art and headlines and prayers
all just one strata within the earth’s stories,
buried like all of her other brief glories.
After we’ve suffered earth’s most recent purge,
and we’re all gone, what else will emerge?
