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Bucket Listless: NaPoWriMo 2019, Apr 16

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Bucket Listless

Please don’t ever make me go back to Cancun.
If I never return there, I’ve visited too soon.
Don’t make me go to church again or listen to more rap.
Don’t make me go to bed at eight or take a daily nap.
I don’t want to do those things I don’t want to do.
Don’t make me look at animals trapped up in a zoo.

Brains are meant for keeping up farther in your head.
To have to eat the things I think with fills my mind with dread.
Don’t make me eat anything only adults eat:
liver, caviar, pate, kidneys or pigs’ feet.
All of those are parts of animals I’ve come to fear,
for none of them are meant to put in human mouths, my dear.

I think that I’ll live longer without jumping from above.
For bungee cords or parachutes I have no sort of love.
Even roller coasters present uncalled-for risk.
For me a walk upon the beach is adequately brisk.
Anything that’s bumpy, jerky, swooping, fast or twirly
makes me want to arrive late and go home really early.

Please don’t make me listen to those who rant and rave.
If I meet them in the street, I’ll merely nod and wave.
Let bores much given to monologues find another ear;
because those who never listen, I have no wish to hear.
Tea-partiers, loud mouths, bigots and folks in the elite
are on my list of strangers I do not need to meet.

I hope no radiation or chemotherapy
is ever necessary to make me cancer-free.
No machines to make me breathe and no dialysis.
As little poking, pushing, testing and analysis
as possible is what I wish for on my “do not” list.
Just let me go gently into that final mist.

I’ve grown to hate the overuse of “bucket list” as label
for what folks want to do before their death if they are able.
So please be more original in thinking what to call
that list of things that you most want to do before you fall.
For the thing that I don’t want as “I am” turns into “been”
Is to ever hear the phrase of “bucket list” again!

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to write a poem using a list to defamiliarize the mundane. This poem fulfills part of that prescription.

Moss Rose: FOTD Apr 15, 2019

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For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Hibiscus: Flower of the Day, Apr 14, 2019

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For Cee’s FOTD

Cat and Mouse

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Earlier today, I wrote about an inventive new idea I have recently had concerning a new concept in cat food.  If you didn’t read that post, you can do so HERE. Since that time, I have actually developed the concept, designed a label and gone into production. There is still some time to invest in what I’m sure will be a competitive product on the cat food market.  Just the first of a line that will eventually also include squirrel, garter snake, rat, lizard and cockroach flavors.  Here is the inaugural product:

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And HERE is the final refinement of the product.

Disclaimer: Fancy Feast does not indeed make a “Mouse” flavored cat food. I have altered and used their can design only as a means to illustrate my earlier poem. This is a joke, folks!!!!

Camarón Flower, FOTD Apr 13, 2019

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Camarón (Shrimp) Flower

For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt. See her gorgeous yellow tulip HERE.

Flooded Brazilian Forest Creates a Magical Experience

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Charles Pierce on Donald Trump

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From Charles Pierce, in Esquire:

“In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall overcome.” I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

“And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

“The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

“Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don’t have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.

Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn’t he a funny man? Isn’t what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.”

You can read the full text of Mr. Pierce’s article, along with a video of Trump’s speech HERE.

UPDATE 08/13/2025. I posted this in 2019, and it’s been getting many views each day since. Now, 6 years later, I have a new poem of my own to bookend Mr. Pierce’s piece. I hope you’ll read it HERE.

Coasting

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Coasting

When our lives are at their heights,
cyclone days and strung out nights
seem to be what is expected,
each possibility inspected—
participating fully in
obligations, jobs and sin.
Copying the rush of life,
living through its joys and strife,
acting out life’s pantomime
at super speed and double time.

After rushing here and hurrying there,
experiencing everywhere,
at last most of us come to rest
in the place we want to nest.
We fall into the comfort of
a place that fits us like a glove.
Feeling ill-at-ease at first,
we fear that we have done the worst.
Moving less surely and less fast,
we fill the role in which we’re cast.

Seeing options, making choices,
heeding inner wiser voices,
shedding tasks and taking time
to contemplate the great sublime.
Doing what we most want to do—
pastimes old, compulsions new.
Each cycle has its own rewards.
Escaping all the busy hordes
and having no big loads to shoulder
are the perks of getting older!

 

Word prompts today are cyclone, pantomime, participate and copy. Here are their links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/rdp-friday-cyclone/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/12/fowc-with-fandango-pantomime/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/your-daily-word-prompt-participate-april-12-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/copy/

Cat in the Window, April 11

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This fat cat had installed herself amongst my friend’s art supplies, perhaps a hint that she herself was worthy of becoming art, and so I assisted in this feat.

One more cat in the window photo, and we’ll have 25 and a guaranteed payoff to the charity of choice of whomever’s name is drawn, but the challenge goes on all of April, so I’ll keep adding to the ‘kitty” up to the amount of $100.  Okay to enter more than once! When the count hits 25, I’ll republish the list of entrants, so check to make sure I got your name on the list. Please establish a link to the site given below:

Here is the challenge site to link to: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/04/07/cat-in-the-window/

 

Crown of Thorns, FOTD Apr 10, 2019

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For Cee’s FOTD.