Category Archives: Uncategorized

Reblog: Blogomania

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Hello, LifeLessons readers, OkcForgottenMan here.

Most of you know by now that Judy is at a writers retreat in Colima, and I have graciously (maliciously?) agreed to fill in for her for the next several days, reblogging some of her older poems. It’s a fun gig for me as I stroll back through her blog archive, wondering which to select. I’ve done this twice before. The first time I arbitrarily chose to look only at her oldest posts, from 2013 (her first year blogging) to 2014. Next I looked at 2015 posts. Since I’m a lazy creature of habit, I’ll look at her posts from 2016 this go-around.

Judy almost always posts early in the morning. (We’re both on U.S. Central Time.) But I rarely crawl out of bed before noon, and I’m not reblogworthy until I’ve had my Dr. Pepper (my version of coffee) and digested the day’s news. Yes, my reblogs will usually be late, like this one, so please dispel the perception that I’ve regressed into becoming ForgettingMan. (Yes, Judy has already cast a faux chagrin in my general direction for not posting yet today!) I was wondering if there was a way I could work in some of the daily prompts Judy posts to. Then I had an epiphany!

First up is something she posted in January, 2016. It’s called “Blogomania”. Feels to me like a fun title to kick off my temporary tenure, yes?

FOTD 2/21/2020

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Today’s Hibiscus

For Cee’s FOTD

TTFN

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Under the Volcano

Tomorrow I will be driving toward the volcano for a one-week writing retreat with six other women in Colima. I hope to make progress on at least one book. During that time, Forgottenman has agreed to take over my blog, so I hope you enjoy seeing what he has up his sleeve. Although I won’t be home yet, I’ll be back blogging on March 1. Give Forgottenman your full attention, because there will be a test later!!  xooxox Judy

Orchid: FOTD Feb 21, 2020

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For Cee’s FOTD

She Used to Say

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                  She Used to Say

“How many loves, Senora?” she used to say.
“Perhaps twenty,” I  would tell her.
I was forty when I married,
and I had traveled the world.

She had married at fifteen
and was a mother at sixteen.
By twenty-six, she was a mother of five.

When he drank cerveza,
he had beaten her.
She had not missed him when he left.

No more men, her children had demanded
and she’d agreed,
for the young man from El Chante who courted her now
was handsome and had money
but was not in her heart.

Still, I could see her pining
over the tall Arab
who hired the men of her pueblo.

He neither looked at her nor talked to her.
But in the night, I imagine she pined,
Arabian nights unreeling in her imagination
impossible and foreign.

One day, returning early,
I found her asleep on the divan,
a Mexican novella
rolling out of the television
into the eyeless air.

What futile dreams superseded
all these vicarious heartaches?
What magnolia-scented air
slumbered heavy in the hot layers of her sleep?

“How many loves?” she had asked me
on the road home from Guadalajara.
“Oh, many loves, “ I told her.
“I was forty when I married,
and I had traveled the world.”

 

For dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night

Bird in Paradise

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IMG_5616 2.jpegFor Cee’s FOTD

First Step

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Click on photos to enlarge.


First Step

Looking out of your front door
there is a whole world to explore.
Standing here behind the glass,
you only need to choose to pass
into that world wherein your muse
will enter you to help you choose
which world you’ll hold within your hands.
Which foreign soil. Which country’s sands.
If you falter. If you sigh,
doubt yourself and wonder why,
feel yourself less fit and spry
and fear that you will not get by,
issue yourself a reprimand.
Pack your bag and take your hand
and lead yourself outside the door.
This leaving’s what a door is for.
Gather up your courage and
set off for that foreign land.

Prompts for today are looking out of my front door, glass, muse, spry and hands.

And, for Thursday Doors.

Primavera Blossoms: FOTD 2/19/20

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The primavera trees are out in full force here.

 

For Cee’s FOTD prompt.

Hoarder

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Hoarder

There are moments caught between heart-beats that fall into crevasses where they nourish our dreams. Streaming rivulets that escape our conscious daylight world swell these moments until they become full-grown nightly adventures––what we have hoped blended with what else might be possible, tempered by fears and regrets. What part of us orchestrates these dreams has never been discovered––some grand arranger of self that does not allow itself to be controlled by any conscious part of us, perhaps. It is a cinema we construct for ourselves—a relief from or a censor of or a collector of those parts of ourselves we would otherwise not deal with. Those parts of ourselves we struggle to forget and throw away? There is no detritus in our lives. Some great hoarder within us reaches out a hand to capture and arrange them, then calls them dreams.

 

The dVerse Poets Pub prompt today was to write a 144-word flash fiction piece making use of the first sentence in my essay above.

Fern Arch: FOTD 2/18/20

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Pasiano has trimmed back the bougainvillea so this fern arch has to furnish the interest for awhile.

For Cee’s FOTD