Category Archives: Uncategorized

Meditations from My Room

Click on photos to enlarge and view captions. A poem follows.

Meditations from My Room

I share different  company in my isolation.
Dogs litter my studio floor,
and my backyard is
an in-between place for birds
passing as though at a freeway interchange,
this way and that.

A constant flutter of butterflies
stirs air around the orange and yellow thunbergia,
lush in this season that mixes sun and rain.
They soar down to the empty lot
and back again,
as though no creature can resist
collecting here in my domain.

Nature follows no rules of man.
It cannot learn obeisance or heed human leverage.
Our world, professional and polished—
how easily by nature now turned inward upon itself.

Our burnished world can hold no sway,
for nature heeds no golden cow.
Her empathy extended toward the broader view,
nature must change the things she can.

She has been patient  with us long enough. The time is now.

 

Prompt words today are empathy, leverage, patient, burnish and professional.

Succulent Bloom: FOTD May 15, 2020

I think I’ve had this succulent plant for at least 15 years, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it bloom. The bloom is small, enlarged here. Click on photos to enlarge. Click on photos to enlarge:

For Cee’s FOTD

Mr. Crow

 

I saw this beautiful fellow taking a bath a my friend Sharon’s house. If you’d like to know more about the occasion, go HERE.

For Tracy’s Corvid Challenge.

The Supervisor

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The Supervisor

He’s enamored of particulars, pedantic to the end.
Impressed by rank and privilege and rules ones can’t bend.
Though not swimming in his compliments, He’s lavish in critique—
always another detail he can find for you to tweak.
If you’re in constant contact, you have my sympathy
as well as sincere thankfulness that it’s not empathy!!!

 

Prompt words today are pedantic, rank, contact, lavish and swimming.

Old Friends

Photo by Alessandro Bellone on Unsplash, used with permission

Old Friends

We are grappling with our friendship over difference of opinions.
My beliefs are liberal. He’s one of Donald’s minions.
He won’t put up with teasing. I can’t bear his iron will.
Of faux patriotic slogans, I fear I’ve had my fill.
How can it be that all those years I thought that he had heart,
he was harboring this meanness? When did it get its start?
This virus in our populace that masks as patriotism

spreads misinformation, creating such a schism
that no bridge can be long enough to bring us all together.
The strength of our convictions seems to hold us at short tether.
When will come the end of it, and if that end should come,

what will end this great discordance and restore the hum
of democratic harmony? Are voices so distorted
that we cannot reclaim the friends with whom we once consorted?
When I walk the streets where we once walked, my former friend and I,
he crosses to the other side if he sees me walk by.
When change comes, certain evils must come to an end,
but I don’t think it will mend the hearts of me and my old friend.

Word prompts for today are tease, iron, opinion, grapple and friendship.

Visitations

Visitations

He hovers in the corner less frequently now. His face is rarely seen in clouds. He leaves no further messages as the cats walk over my computer keys. It is true that sometimes I catch the scent of him, but it’s not often and not for long. Who knows how long a spirit is tied to earth? The cats sense him sometimes, as do the dogs. The candelabra with its arms arched upwards and the carved wooden Virgin of Guadalupe statue rising up like a head in front of it, in a dark room backlit by kitchen lights, has given me a start now and then; but I soon realize it is not him. None of these places are where I keep him now. It is only long after midnight, when, exhausted, I fall to dreams, that his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream.

 

 

For the dVerse Poets Pub prompt, we are to write a 144 word prose piece that contains the quote “his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream” from Maya Angelou’s poem “Caged Bird.” Read other responses to the prompt HERE.

India Shot Lilies: FOTD May 11, 2020

 

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For Cee’s FOTD

Advisor to the Lovelorn

Advisor to the Lovelorn

Although she was a novice, she had a trenchant wit.
No matter what the problem, she had a cure for it.
With very little practice, she had soon mastered the job
of advice to the lovelorn—that suffering, confused mob.

She composed her column while sitting in the tub,
dispensing rules and practices to her admiring club
of followers who hung their lives on her guiding words
from their first fumbling kisses to the bees and birds.

She gave names to their thingamajigs and taught them how to use them.
Taught them all the body parts and how to not abuse them.
Virgins forsook their single cots for their marriage beds
with thoughts of all her wisdom swirling through their heads.

But when it came to her own life? Up that proverbial creek.
No wiser soul advised her. No counsel did she seek.
Lover after lover was given a brief chance
to try to woo this very master of romance.

But, alas, their tactics never quite took hold.
This one was too timid and the next one was too bold.
So was it that, sadly, did this mistress of romance
miss out on on her own turn at the wedding dance.

So is it that our betters tell us what to do
whereas within their own lives, they do not have a clue.

Words for today are thingamajig, practice, novice, trenchant and composed.

Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da

The prompt for Song Lyric Sunday is Couple-Together-Us. This is the song that immediately came to mind for me. It describes the epitome of happy relationships–at least for my generation!!! Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed by Paul McCartney live in Hyde Park in 2010.

 

“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”

Desmond has a barrow in the market place

Molly is the singer in a band

Desmond says to Molly, “Girl, I like your face”

And Molly says this as she takes him by the handOb-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on
Ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on

Desmond takes a trolley to the jeweler’s stores
Buys a twenty carat golden ring (Golden ring?)
Takes it back to Molly waiting at the door
And as he gives it to her she begins to sing (Sing)

Ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on
Ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on, yeah (No)

In a couple of years they have built
A home sweet home
With a couple of kids running in the yard
Of Desmond and Molly Jones
(Ah ha ha ha ha ha)

Happy ever after in the market place
Desmond lets the children lend a hand (Arm! Leg!)
Molly stays at home and does her pretty face
And in the evening she still sings it with the band

Yes, ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on (Ha ha ha)
Hey, ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on

In a couple of years they have built
A home sweet home
With a couple of kids running in the yard
Of Desmond and Molly Jones
(Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha)

Yeah, happy ever after in the market place
Molly lets the children lend a hand (Foot!)
Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face
And in the evening she’s a singer with the band

Yeah, ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on
Yeah, ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on

And if you want some fun
Take ob-la-di ob-la-da

(Thank you, uh, ha ha ha!)

For Song Lyric Sunday: Couple, Together, Us

Impotus

Impotus

He’s up there on the platform acting crass and disagreeable.
That he will bring the whole world down around him is foreseeable.
Every single day I hope and pray for his quiescence,
but, alas, refraining from brash speech is not his essence.
He opens mouth and words fall out—disjointed, vague and dense.
He’d make a great orator if only he made sense.
Good that his mother cannot see the travesty she bore—
narcissistic, senseless, and rotten to the core.
His attempts at humor only render him more silly.
His stench sickening and cloying—like an Easter lily.
He’s like a wild animal: vicious, cunning, feral.
What more can he do to put our whole wide world in peril?
No good can be said of him. He’s rotten through and through.
Daily, the world waits for him to drop the other shoe.

Prompt words today are disagreeable, platform, mother, quiescent and Easter lily. And action!