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Off Course

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Off Course

For those who cannot fathom the changes time has wrought,
tomorrow will be better, or perhaps it will be not.
Those who have championed progress, thinking it is for our betterment
might come at last to fathom that it’s been to our fetterment.
Why do we study science and waste our time at college
only to find out that we’ve been ruined by our knowledge?
We have been so quickly smart and sadly too late wise.
All our grand inventions seem to lead to our demise.
Can we make things better? Can we veer off to the light?
Or will we blindly keep our course, attracted to the night?

The word prompts today are: better, tonight, champion, fathom and college.

Oxycontin Dream: NaPoWriMo, Day 4

Oxycontin Dream

“Eggplant,” he says, at two in the morning.
“What if I carved an eggplant
and made it look exactly the same inside as outside.”
“What would you carve it from?” I ask.
I already told you.  Eggplant.”

His eyes roll back, his mind still caught
in the penumbra of his inspiration.
He has been having artistic inspiration all night long.
Now that he suspects his last joint is welded,
his last stone drilled and carved and smoothed,
he is regretting not creating
that one last great piece.

For hours, his arms reach up

in perfect pantomime
joining wood to stone,
stitching paper to frames.

“See that shadow behind Lisa’s head?”  he asks me.
“Well, bring it over here and put it on top,
then take the bed rail off and add it to the bottom.”

When he sleeps, his lips move.
Words almost connected come out half-digested.
Hands reach out and clutch.
“Oh, it’s gone,” he says.  Over and over,
reaching out for each thing almost grasped.

 

 

For NaPoWriMo day four, we are to write a poem based on a dream.

Cool to be Square: April Square Tops Challenge

Click on photos to enlarge

ForBecky’s Square Tops Challenge

Morning Ritual

 

Morning Ritual

For NaPoWriMo Day three we are to do pretty much what I’ve been doing every day for the past six years, so I’m combining it with my usual five prompt sites, whose words of the day are: online, lackluster, help, haze and wonder. (When I tried to add five more words to use this for the NaPoWriMo prompt as well, my computer went crazy and the editor turned everything pink and started flashing off and on and erased the first line of the poem, so I guess  WP doesn’t want me to combine prompts, but I’m going to try again. I’ll pick 5 more words at random from sheets of paper scattered on my desk: beginners, solving, developed, warm and milk. Instead of using the rhyming dictionary, I’ll use the one in my head, which works better for me. Okay, here I go again…..)

If your online life’s lackluster, let me help to clear the haze.
It’s no wonder that beginners might feel somewhat in a daze.
Solving all these NaPoWriMo prompts can be a chore.
You develop one poem and next day, must write one more!
Warm wishes I send out to you and others of your ilk.
If I were your mommy, there’d be cookies and warm milk,
but, alas, I’m miles away and locked up in seclusion,
dealing on my own with this confusing ten-word fusion!

online √
lackluster √
help √
haze √
wonder √
beginners √
solving √
develop √
warm √
milk √

 

Poetry

 

Poetry

There
Is a place in all of us
Where we converse
With a different part of our mind.

Anyone
Can do it.
All it takes
Is turning off the television
Or the free cell solitaire
And bringing up a blank page on the screen
And filling it.

A poet
Is someone who chooses to go there often
And to add to the bank
Of wisdom
That comes from the part of us
Whose language is
Poetry.

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night.

A Succulent Collage: FOTD Apr 3, 2020

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ForCee’s FOTD

Closed, Shuttered and Locked: Thurs. Doors, April 2, 2020

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For Thurs. Doors prompt.

One’s Company

One’s Company

Must you put it in my mind that I will be lonely
just because my life has boiled down to just me only?
That we are not enough for us may prove to be a fiction.
Just a recent sort of fad spread by TV’s depiction
of solitude as something harsh, stressing what we lack,
yet our ship can stay buoyant with just one to hold its tack.

There are so many selves in us. Now there’s time to converse.
The you that you’ve been up ’til now may be the very worse!
Wander into your heartland and see the you’s you’ll find.
Who knows what you’ll discover now that you’re in a bind.
The mind’s a worthy raider, seeking out new plunder.
There may be hidden parts of you full of joy and wonder.

It’s hard to get inside yourself when there’s so much to do—
so many new discoveries and worlds to wander through.
We’ve plundered all the gold mines and withdrawn all the oil.
There’s barely any place on earth left for us to spoil.
But now nature’s decided to produce the biggest clue
that it’s time to mine the resources within the rest of you.

Prompt words today are lonely, fiction, buoyant, raider and heartland.

 

Midnight Safari

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Midnight Safari

Tonight when I came into my house after a swim, maybe around 11:30 p.m., I went into the kitchen and there was a snake about a foot long and a half inch thick coiled in my sink!  It slithered under a plate and for some reason I ran water in the sink and he slipped down the drain onto the blades of the garbage disposal which were about five inches below the level of the sink!! It took some time for the water to drain, and then the flaps on the drain kept me from being able to look down and see if I could see him–and if he was moving. I put my ear close, trying to hear him, but heard no movement. Finally, I went to get a flashlight, put on long gloves and got a set of long-handled kitchen tongs. When I pushed back the rubber flaps on the drain and turned on the flashlight, I could see the snake coiled and it was moving! So it hadn’t drowned.  I went and got a wastebasket with a plastic liner bag and after 6 tries, finally picked up the snake with the tongs, dropped it in the can and released it outside. What a relief!!! This is only the second snake I’ve found inside in 19 years. No, it didn’t even occur to me to turn on the garbage disposal. Ew!!!

 

P.S. No, this isn’t a photo of tonight’s snake. There wasn’t time to take a photo. This is the first snake I found in the house, coiled behind the umbrella stand. The one tonight was shades of brown.  Always a new thrill.

 

What’s for Lunch?

So I had just sat down to my lunch and Forgottenman Skyped. I described what I was eating and he said, “Photo?” So now, 35 minutes later my soup is cold and I’m down to three fried wontons, having consumed approximately two per photo shoot. In every one, the soup looked gray, the wontons greasy…so I had to keep trying. Here they are with all their warts:

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The wontons are chicken and cilantro, the homemade soup chicken, broth, onions, green beans, potatoes, corn, onions, rice, sour cream, salsa  and—that’s all I can remember. I notice an increasing amount of food being discussed since our sequestering. Do you?