Holding Back the Moon
Standby. I think I love you, though I’m not completely certain.
But when I see the ship of moon through my bedroom curtain,
then watch it disappear as the sky takes up its space,
as though its crew has moved it to another time and place,
I hope that you can moor yourself and stay your bullish pride
while you wait for my decision. Please stem restlessness. Abide.
Prompt words today are standby, moon, disappear, crew and pride.
Click on flowers to enlarge photos.
Every Flower
Who dares to press a flower to one meaning?
When one is in love, every flower is full of passion.
When love dies, each flower listens to your grief.
They pick up your thoughts by some telepathy,
soak up meaning through the air,
are watered by your grief or joy.
Hope, regrets, solitude?
Flowers do not signify.
Flowers only serve as balm.
Any flower head in a baby’s fist, held out to her mother.
Hibiscus petals strewn across a reunion table,
rose petals on a marriage bed.
When I die, do not look for the me in the roses
blanketing my grave or the bougainvillea
fallen to the ground in which I lie.
Look for me in the blue thunbergia,
hearty and profuse and growing ever upward,
insisting on being seen. Me, here! Me.
To read another poem on the significance of flowers and memory, go HERE.
TheNaPoWriMo prompt today is to write a poem about the meaning of flowers.
Also, for Cee’s FOTD.
This essay by Paul Duncan is both funny and brilliantly done..don’t miss it.
Global holiday experts, known as “the employed” in most countries, have today agreed that the timing of this year’s Easter weekend “is a direct and pointed insult to anyone who has in the past relied on this holiday to maintain their work-life balance, and are now left with just life, and no work. And no balance.”
“It’s like someone giving you a set of new tires to help you get over crashing your car,” said Chase Lounge, an upper-level sales manager at I’se The B’y Office Supplies, in St. John’s, Newfoundland. “I like a long weekend as much as the next guy sure, but after spending the last few weeks plumbing the disturbing depths of my addiction to human fail videos, I say no thank you sir.”
“It’s an odd surplus to be sure,” agrees Tom O’Furlough, a former bartender in Dublin, Ireland. “It’s like someone throwing you a shot…
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In this time of isolation, these hibiscus blooms decided not to comply and showed up in a group. As usual, you can click on photos to enlarge.
For Cee’s FOTD Challenge
Be sure to come back here again after you click on this link and then the link that pops up below it to see the video that goes with the below photo: https://defectivehumor.net/?p=877
I had to go out the other day to take photos but my iPhone suddenly would not respond to my demands. It took me awhile to realize that it was activated by facial recognition and I had my mask on!! Ha!
I wonder how many others have had this same thing happen and it set me to thinking that I’d like to sponsor a mask competition for decorating an actual mask worn to fend off the coronavirus in two categories.
1. In one, for a mask that is painted to actually look like the parts of your own face covered by the mask so you look as much like yourself as possible in the mask as without. This needs to be done on an actual mask you’ve been using for health reasons. In this category, the winner will be determined according to skill of execution, appeal, likeness to your own face or perhaps humor if you are using a gimmick. A $50 prize will be awarded in this category.
If you do not have a blog or website, please post a photo on my facebook page, not as a personal message . If you do have a blog or website, post in your site with a link to this blog at: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/04/09/who-am-i-under-here-mask-contest-cash-prizes/ If it is linked to another posting on my blog and it isn’t linked to this particular blog, I may not see it. Just put a comment with the URL of your blog where your photo is posted.
Two $50 first prizes will be awarded, with the understanding that you give permission for me to publish a photo of your mask in my blog. ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY APRIL 24.
Below is a collage of concrete poetry I’ve done over the past six years. Please click on images to increase the size and read the poems.
The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a concrete poem. Here are a few.
Please click on photos to enlarge.
Patchwork
I’ve put my life together
like a patchwork quilt,
and almost finished.
It is beautiful—
the lawn freshly groomed,
drawers organized,
all of the pictures straightened on the walls.
Friends, travel, career, family, art, writing–
a happy life that
I have stitched together,
hiding the pain under the seams.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to peruse the work of a twitter bot, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem. “Under the seams runs the pain.” is the line from a Mary Ruefle tweet that I selected as my seed. When I Googled it, it said that it was a quote by Autobiography of Red,
For some reason, my Photos system has gone crazy on my computer and I can’t preview or edit them or get them down to size, so I’m publishing this and will try to add photos later. Thanks to Forgottenman, we now have photos. I hope.
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If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here.
Al Drago for The New York Times
I didn’t expect Donald Trump to turn eloquent overnight, nor is that necessary. Strong leadership doesn’t require it.
I didn’t expect him to stop complimenting himself. Bragging is as central to his existence as swimming is to a whale’s. It’s what propels him. It’s what sustains him. At this point it’s not merely reflexive. It’s autonomic.
I didn’t expect him to start telling the truth. I’m an optimist, not a fantasist.
But what I did expect, or at least hope for, was that this once-in-a-generation pandemic would tamp down his pettiness and meanness. How could it not? How cold he behold the scale of the suffering and the dimensions of the challenge before him and not realize that he finally had to be bigger and dig deeper?
There is no such bigness in Trump, no such digging. There is just the usual martyr complex, the familiar tirades and the same old passing of the buck. I’m forced to conclude that he’s not just a man ill equipped for this moment. He’s a man whose soul went missing.
I said as much in a column published a few days ago, and I winced when I wrote it and cringed when I sent it to my editor, because I don’t want to feel this cynical about an American president, certainly not now. I want to be pleasantly surprised. I want to be forced to reassess all prior misgivings and to apologize for selling him short, because that would mean that he was ably and nobly guiding us through this nightmare. Get something this important right and you’re forgiven all wrongs.
But as I explained in the column, which assesses Trump’s behavior over the past month, he isn’t finding the grace in crisis that other presidents did. He doesn’t even seem to be trying. I can’t fathom that. And I definitely can’t swallow it.
Laments like mine won’t change him. His rot is too fundamental for that. But they do, I think, serve a purpose: They nudge us past any lingering illusions that the direst of circumstances will transform the false prophet into a benevolent god.
No, this prophet just demands an even greater magnitude of worship. And he grows all the more furious when he doesn’t get it.
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Federal Government knew about the Corona Virus breakout and what effect it would have on the U.S. as early as November. Read about it here. People, we need a head of government who knows what he is doing and who is not just a media star! Open your eyes. Your life and the existence of the world is at stake in this and other matters. Research says that pollution helped to spread the virus. Listen to the scientists, not a reality “star.”
For NaPoWriMo Day 7, the prompt is to choose a news headline as the topic for a poem. Here is the news report I chose to write about: “Researchers Discover Faraway Planet Where the Rain is Made of Iron.” I guess you might call this an ironic poem?
Metallica
Use your cook pots for umbrellas, ‘cuz it’s raining iron rain.
I don’t mind heavy metal, but as weather? It’s insane.
The drumming is excessive, and if you can’t take the pain,
you don’t want to be caught out singing in the rain.
If you plan on going wading, I’d have another think,
for the puddles that you’re ogling seem to be full of zinc.
When it snows, most of the snowflakes have crystals made of lead—
not a pleasing prospect when they’re falling on your head.
Oceans full of copper, bronze and steel and tin
may be the place you have to die for to be in.
Silver hills and valleys, rivers made of gold
are all that’s left now that our nature’s all been sold.
Does tungsten please your taste buds? Can you eat the golden calf?
With no leather, those bronze slippers aren’t as comfortable by half.
Aluminum for cooking, some folks think can’t be beat,
but what you use for cooking you cannot also eat!
Now they’ve fracked away our water and melted polar ice,
Mother Nature thinks a world of metal would be nice.
So put away your appetites, for food will be passé
once the plants and animals have all been put away.
Say thank you to our rulers. Say thank you very much
for their self-serving decisions and their Midas touch.
Some of us saw this coming but the others did not see
They were too busy getting their news from Fox TV!!!
Oh dear. I said I wasn’t going to write another political poem. Well, the prompts made me do it. Once again.
