For Cee’s FOTD
I Will Die Dancing
I will die dancing, falling from the arms of my last partner onto a floor scuffed by the heels of line-dancing Texans, into the fine dust left by the soles of flamenco, salsa, tango.
Before I die, I must have the ultimate smooth partner––bending me into the music, folding me neatly in predictable thirds so I can fit snugly into the envelope of death. Play for me no dirge, no sad memento of my life, but rather, “I’ve got friends in low places” or “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.”
And let those who carry my body do so in a line dance, one hand holding me above them down the street, the other clutching a margarita or a Dos Equis.
I always wanted a wild life, wild soul, but danced from the polite part of me my mother bred. Now in the second act of my life, I want to find my wild self and let it carouse me, plummet me, skid me through the ending chapters so I slide off the page just before the book slaps shut––trapped out in the cold with the fast music beating its wings, cooling my flushed face, fast-pulsing head, back sticky with the perspiration of movement to the music that has escaped from the book into the wider world. Music with breath and hands to lift me up above stumbling feet and faltering tongues.
If death is coming, I want to make love to it. Take it in and push it out, in and out, as though I have a choice. I hope it is a presence, an experience of all the senses. Smells like lime, tastes like salt, feels like orgasm, looks like a cowboy, sounds like Tom Waits barroom music, rough at the edges but overall smooth, funky.
Cool death. Be cool and fun and make me want to dance you, dance you, dance you, never stop.
Born on the 3rd of July!!!
Behold the Crab who walks on toes
to all the hot spots where he goes.
And though July is Cancer’s sign
and so the Crab is also mine,
I can’t walk up on toes at all,
for if I do, I’m sure to fall!
A 44-word poem for:dVerse Quadrille: Feeling Crabby. (The photo is copied from the prompt site.)
To see other crabby poems, go HERE.
The plant identifier calls this a Clerodendrum × speciosum W.Bull, but Yolanda calls it an Aretes, which translates as an earring plant. I think she is confusing it with a bleeding heart, which is called an Aretes or Earring Plant in Mexico but is much fancier. So, for now, I still don’t know the common name of this beautiful vine!!! Can anyone help? I have searched so many times and don’t think it is really an Aretes. In another place, it is identified as a native of Sri Lanka but given no common name…On with the search. Okay..bingo! Finally found it identified as the Java Glory Vine or Red Bleeding Heart Vine. It isn’t as showy as what I’ve always knows as a bleeding heart, but I like it better..So, since bleeding hearts of the showier variety are known as aretes or earring plants, I guess I’ll judge Yolanda as correct and go on calling it that. Search over and identified unless proven wrong.
For Cee’s FOTD
(Pun intended.) One of my favorite stops in Jackson, Mississippi was Eudora Welty’s house…now a museum. Here hanging upside down from its handle with other fans on my curtain rod in my room is a fan I bought there.
Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.
Her house seemed to be left just as it was when she passed away. On the dining room table were pages of a manuscript cut into strips and pinned to the tablecloth… like this was her method of seeing the segments together and reorganizing and editing them. I loved this!!! All of the awards and trophies she had won over the years were tucked away in her clothes closet out of sight to anyone but her. I love her stories and I think I would have loved her.
For Jonbo’s Cellpic Sunday
But, well, I guess I have to link to this prompt at well: A Fan Of
Click on photos below to enlarge:
Click on photos to enlarge.
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #29” Today’s number is 150. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find under that number and include a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.
This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below.
See Cee’s fabulous peony HERE.
For Cee’s FOTD
The Approach
The edges of my wishes wrap around my mind
over expectations of another kind
curling over “To Do” lists, jerking at their edges,
causing piled paper work to fall off bookshelf ledges,
breathing life into that void—that gap left in the middle
of all those daily tiresome tasks to leave some room to fiddle.
To look at curling banks of clouds that sail across a sky
so vast that I can’t count them, so I don’t even try.
Everything in life need not be a tiresome task.
Every day presents a time when I take time to bask
for at least a moment, or ten or twenty more,
in other natural treasures that lie outside my door.
Life seems to be speeding by, rushing toward its brink—
once stretched out before me, but soon over in a blink.
Ever conscious of those acts that I will leave behind me,
I wonder what life choices in the end will have defined me.
For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 662 the words are: jerk void breath gap vast blinked curling sky wish wrap edge ever
Click HERE to order my newest children’s book I Really Want a Puppy that has a QR Code that sings the words of the entire book as you turn the pages to look at the photos!!
What’s a boy to do when all his friends have puppies but he doesn’t? This book’s hero finds a novel way to get around his mom’s reluctance to adopt a dog. This is the third rhymed picture book written by Judy Dykstra-Brown and beautifully illustrated by Isidro Xilonzóchitl, but this one not only tells and shows you the story, it also sings the words of the book to the reader by means of a QR code on the front cover! Drum beats indicate to nonreaders when it’s time to turn the page to see the next illustration. Younger kids love to “learn to read” by singing along with the words to the song while following the words in the book. Older kids just love the story and illustrations.
Use your cellphone to take a photo of the QR code above on the cover to hear the entire book. (It takes you to Youtube and then you need to click to turn the sound on.)
Click HERE to see sample pages and to order. Just $15 during an introductory period and please remember to leave your review on the site and to let me know how you like it as well.
(In Mexico, available from the author at jubob2@hotmail.com or at Diane Pearl’s Gallery.)
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 