Sorry, couldn’t resist, given my poem of the day: 
The Sponsor
He’s the mafia of sobriety with eyes in every bar.
If you try to buy a six-pack, you won’t get very far.
You’ll be waylaid at the corner and he’ll confiscate your glow.
When it comes to who is tippling, he is always in the know.
His methods may be dodgy, but they seem to work.
His strategy’s to follow you—to tattle, spy and lurk.
You won’t see him in the the shadows. He is tricky and uncouth,
but your sponsor’s only doing it for you, and that’s the truth.
Do unto others only what you’ve wanted done to you.
He’s had it done to him and now he’ll do and do and do.
The path that you have taken is one he knows too well.
He knows this particular demon that you have to quell.
The bottle has long been your friend, but now here is another.
One was a two-faced comrade, but this one is a brother.
Two hands held out to you and it is up to you to choose.
Will you choose the brotherhood or will you choose the ruse?
Here are photos of the current state of the little park I am building in the lot below my house. I just purchased the carved stone snake head and will form the body out of the small bushes that are currently laid out behind it. As the bushes grow, the body will flesh out more to scale. I’ll have a stone tail sculpted later after my bank account recovers from past projects. I bought one more sculpture as well, but you just see the uncarved back of it in the photo. The four Dr. Seuss trees will be planted elsewhere in the lot, not in the positions where they currently are. Bit by bit, the neighborhood weed forest and dumping ground is turning into a thing of beauty. Stonework by Jose. Planting by Pasiano. Financing and art direction by Judy.
Climate Shift
The lady’s mood was known to oscillate season to season.
One month she was crazy and the next given to reason.
Winter, in particular, seemed to fray her nerves,
when no truffles were available to top off her hors d’ oeuvres.
She saw inclement weather as a personal rebuff.
She simply abhorred snowflakes—their frigidity and fluff.
She wrote a letter to the mayor, for she knew it was a fact
there was a ban on nasty weather that he could enact.
The letter that she wrote him finally reached him in December,
but in the rush of Christmas, he neglected to remember
that she had made demands until the New Year celebration
was over, whereupon he said he’d take a small vacation
to try to conduct research in a sunnier location—
perhaps a South American or Carribean nation—
to see just how they managed to defray this colder weather.
Then he’d fly off to another just to further study whether
just what, if anything, there might be to be done
to do away with winter and attract more sun.
His efforts were so thorough that , booking after booking,
when he didn’t find an answer, he had to go on looking.
From Belize to Barbados, Aruba to St. Kitt,
the solution kept evading him, yet he sought after it.
Then, finally, in June, the lady got her wishes.
No snowflakes on her shoulders and truffles for her dishes.
For when the mayor came back from his research in milder lands,
He brought the sun back with him, thus meeting her demands.
Prompt words today are oscillate, particular, month and rebuff.
Click on photos to enlarge.
The Return
Girded by a pressure suit, guided by skill and science,
an astronaut must learn the lessons of complete compliance.
It requires trust and backbone to travel through the dark,
trusting hands thousands of miles away to guide that ark
that speeds him through the solar system, up to regions where
his surroundings are devoid of gravity and air.
Accepting the unknown and resisting terror’s bark,
he hurtles into outer space, accepting danger’s lark.
What prompts him to accept the threat of loneliness and death—
to face an end from fire or from lack of breath?
It is exceptional valor, proving bravery and worth
to face his end so far from the comforts of this earth.
Does he face a different heaven in another clime,
his molecules merged after death to a different time?
Is he bound to spend infinity apart from worlds he’s known,
blown into the universe, forever, now, alone?
No earth he knows to go to to blend back in the world.
From his own nature’s cycle, now forever hurled.
Does he merge into a wider world, another evolution,
absorbed within the rules of a new orb’s revolution?
Will he travel back again in centuries far distant,
in an alien craft, his molecules so insistent
to return to their origins that they are drawn back home
to the soil of this Earth or to the ocean’s foam?
Or can he find his way back home again solely on his own,
intent on his not spending eternity alone?
How wide is one’s soul’s orbit? How vast its gravity?
Can it bring a shipless astronaut back from infinity?
This blog by Annie makes such a valid (and conciliatory) point–and offers hope for a solution to divisiveness in the U.S.
I am writing this piece with images of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol still very fresh in my mind. It is a huge stretch to think of those brutal, sadistic, remorseless thugs and imagine summoning an iota of compassion for them. But others of their ilk–and many psychologists and researchers–say that’s precisely what’s needed.
They call themselves the “formers”: former Klansman, neo-Nazis, or generic white supremacists or other racial extremists who are now devoted to guiding those who’d followed similar paths to come to a better life.
Christian Picciolini is one of them. As a 14-year-old, he’d joined a violent group of white power adherents who became the “Hammerskin Nation.” As he described his feelings to Dave Davies in an NPR interview, the group threw him a “lifeline of acceptance…I felt a sort of energy flow through me that I had never felt before—as…
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For Cee’s FOTD
I found this poinciana flower from the tree in my front yard pressed between the pages of a notebook given to me by Judy Reeves. Thanks Judy. (I put the flower and scribbles there.)
Brain vs Brawn
Performing ablutions and feeding the dogs,
writing to prompts and checking out blogs.
My movement these mornings is slightly curtailed
now that my circadian rhythms have failed.
With two hours’ sleep, it’s dubious that
my exercise will exceed petting the cat.
You may claim that you still can do a mean pushup,
but lately some of us just can’t get our tushup.
Good for all of you folks with perpetual youth,
although bragging of it I find slightly uncouth.
Do I blather on about crosswords I’ve done
or winning at Scrabble? It just isn’t done.
I don’t swagger around with my I.Q. in view.
Clearly, I have something better to do.
So cover that body. Put your pecs in a shroud.
That muscle shirt clearly should not be allowed.
Put clothes on those biceps, obscure that tight tush.
We know that you pump and you pull and you push,
but must you show us? We find it importunate
that you should flaunt them to all the unfortunate.
We don’t display that we’re learned and clever.
We don’t quote Chaucer. Well, not hardly ever.
We won’t humiliate your split infinitive
if you won’t show off your muscles definitive.
Those of us flabby and rotund and loose
hereby are suggesting that we call a truce.
We will not correct your split infinitive
if you won’t show off your muscles definitive.
Prompt words today are movement, dubious, claim and ablution.
