For Cee’s Daily Flower prompt.
Five Finger Exercise
One finger isn’t typing, though I know that’s what it’s for.
It’s just that I can’t use it since I slammed it in the door.
It sliced it very neatly , not quite down to the bone,
The bleeding was profuse. I called my neighbor on the phone.
He drove me to the clinic where they stitched my finger closed.
Yes, needles in your finger hurt as much as you’ve supposed.
So now I type one-handed with my left hand in the air,
for it was the doctor who said to hold it there,
one finger pointing up as though calling for a cab,
That’s why I won’t be using it to poke or type or dab!
If any friends had come into my house while I was gone, they would have thought I’d been murdered or at the least stabbed and abducted, as there was a trail of blood from the sharp metal door to the kitchen. Very obvious against the off-white tile. I’ll spare you the photos.
Click on any photo to enlarge all.
Speechless
I’ve been thwarted in my efforts to shine at elocution,
for though I memorize the words, I flub their execution.
In short, although I’m erudite, I don’t excel at speeches.
I stammer and I blush and sweat. My words come out as screeches.
I don’t give toasts at weddings. At funerals, I am mute.
And although I am quite clever and politically astute,
you won’t find me expounding on what I think I know,
for when I seek to share my thoughts, they just advance too slow.
Even if I’ve known for years the people I’m among,
I simply do not have the gift of a silver tongue.
There are no debate trophies cluttering my shelf,
for I’m usually speechless unless talking to myself.
The prompt today is thwart.
For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.
I always thought that at some point I would have children, but by the time I finally found the man I wanted have them with, I was thirty-eight, and he already had eight living children. Four of these children were under the age of eight when we met. When I married their dad, I married them, too. This poem was written at a time when, as inept as I was at entertaining small children in an L.A. condo, I still believed in a sort of magic wherein stepfamilies could become real families.
ENDANGERED SPECIES
“When a woman is cut out of the process of creation, she becomes crazed.” –author unknown
Your daughter breaks her arm and something breaks with it.
She becomes manageable.
Her laugh, softer now sometimes.
She loves writing with her other hand.
Her broken one grows fingernails for the first time
which we manicure once a week.
Sometimes, I drive home slower
on the nights I know we’re going to have the kids,
hoarding a few more minutes alone.
My key in the lock brings them, wanting games at once.
You, exhausted, irritable on the sofa,
wanting them yet wanting them gone.
In a movie, Mary Tyler Moore saying
she can’t love the son who needs her love too much.
Can’t love on demand?
Dirty fingernails, torn knees on Levis—
the kids always looking like something your ex-wife dragged in—
driven down to our city life where they demand the mall.
Our rag-a-muffins.
Not the way I pictured it.
They call me Mom immediately after the wedding.
I scrub their fingernails,
put medicine on cold sores,
tell Jodie not to wear those torn-out pants to school anymore.
The other kids, I say, will talk—
what my mother would have said to me.
When I tell them at the office
about the homemade Easter decorations
hung on our refrigerator,
about the one that reads “to Mom,”
Jim says he prefers Elliott’s stories.
When I tell them that the littlest grabbed my knees
and hugged and said, “I just love you,”
the clever crowd around the copier groans.
I’m not a mother, they all understand,
and once a week, I barely get good practice in.
But when your daughter breaks her arm,
I try to find a spell to stick us all together—
paper, scissors, colored pens.
I say, “Try to keep the glue off the dining room table.”
I say, “Try not to drop the magic markers on the floor.”
“Take off your shoes when walking on the white sofa.”
The NaPoWriMo Day 8 prompt: write poems in which mysterious and magical things occur. Your poem could take the form of a spell, for example, or simply describe an event that can’t be understood literally.
Click on any photo to enlarge all.
For: https://ceenphotography.com/2018/04/05/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-cars-trucks-motorcycles/
On Strike
The word “inchoate” is absurd!
Does anybody use this word?
For the first time, I draw the line—
won’t use it in a poem of mine.
Guiltless in the abuse of it,
I will you all the use of it!
“a still inchoate democracy”
The prompt today was inchoate.
Poet vs. Prosaist
I make the words just snap in line.
The rules of rhyme and meter, mine.
One line suggests the next in time,
limited by theme and rhyme.
I step aside and words rule me.
I love the puzzle of poetry!
Your rhyming games are your excuse.
A form of literary abuse.
Your joking rhymes become the norms
while you eschew more serious forms.
If you would cast your poems aside,
You’d find where deeper thoughts reside.
The prompt today was to list all of your identities, then to divide them into ones that make you feel powerful and vulnerable and to have one identity from each of the different sides of your personality talk to each other.
Powerful: poet, artist, friend, pet wrangler, swimmer, art collector, traveler, gardener, photographer, driver, girlfriend, teacher, sister, advisor, beloved.
Vulnerable: Stepmother, friend, daughter, widow, wife, senior citizen, kid, dancer, guitar player, singer, sorority girl, hippie, sister-in-law, home owner, prose writer, advisee, student,patient, lover.
.http://www.napowrimo.net/day-seven-5/
This shows all the variations in color of this copa de oro vine. I think perhaps they get lighter as they age a bit. There were at least three distinct colors in this cluster, from light ping to magenta. The palest pink bloom had fallen off the vine and was lying face down on the terrace.. I showed it a few days ago.
For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.
For 
