Black Sheep

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Black Sheep

Your baseball cap conspicuous among the Easter hats,
you intersperse beatitudes with sounds of batting stats,
and when you are not muttering, you whistle or you hum.
Everywhere we’ve gone, you have stuck out like a sore thumb.

I try to introduce you to acquaintances or friends,
but your chatter never ceases. Your prattle never ends.
These one-end conversations are getting rather dry.
We cannot get a word in, so in time we do not try.

Last year you kidnapped Grandpa and took him to a bar,
then left him in an upstairs room—teeth floating in a jar.
Once we had reclaimed him, we gave thanks that you had vanished,
and this note is just to tell you we’ve decided you are banished.

You’ve embarrassed us at Christmases, at Easters and Thanksgivings,
so we have decided that we have certain misgivings
regarding future visits. In short, we hope you’ll never
seek to reattach past family ties we hereby sever!

Prompt words today are sound, carriage, conspicuous and baseball.

On the Subject of Cracking Knuckles

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On the Subject of Cracking Knuckles

Please don’t snap your bones at me. 
I cringe, I plug my ears, I plea.
If you must make noise with body parts,
please stick to  burping, coughs or farts.
Since popping sounds tend to astound me,
Do not crack knuckles when around me!

 

 

I do not like that brittle sound,
so please don’t crack your bones around!

For the dVerse Poets prompt “crack.” For Quadrille Monday.

Morning Hibiscus: FOTD Nov 18, 2019

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For Cee’s Flower Prompt.

Letter from the People of America

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Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dear Elected Representatives:
(A Letter from the People of America)

We ventilate our dwellings of many different kinds,
but may not have the sense to ventilate our minds.
Perhaps we fear we’d stir up something that has died—
some milk of human kindness that’s buried deep inside.

As kids sit scared in cages and countless forests burn,
you think you’re given license to hoard all that you earn,
protecting it from others who have need of it,
flailing around in luxuries of your money pit.

Yachts and cars and mansions should not buy peace of mind
when they leave our planet in a lethal bind.
Our plastic world is flailing. It chokes on its excess.
How can you turn your backs on its extreme duress?

We elect our rulers. They are not born to reign.
In return we must demand that they share our pain
and do not profit by it with cash for legislation
leading to their betterment and our consternation.

Look at where we’re going and look at where we’ve been.
Open up your minds. Let truth and justice in.
During your term of office who’s advanced as far as you have?
It seems the teeming masses did not profit as a few have.

We’re taking back our government, abolishing each clause
that gives you the entitlement to profit from the laws
you enact for self-interest. It’s time that you were outed
and all who vote against our interests were routed.

You defend bad judgement, support your corrupt clown.
Now all who stand behind him must also be brought down.
You overlook the obvious for motives all your own.
You’ve opened up the cage and the dove of peace has flown,

stalked by a bald eagle who feeds on those for whom
it should serve as symbol of something else but doom.
We must bring back our liberty, nobility and pride.
Resuscitate a country that many fear has died.

The truth is there before you, so open up your minds
to see there’s a solution for our present binds.
If you refuse to topple that one on whom you dote,
we’ll topple you one after one–when we go to vote!!

 

Prompt words today are ventilate, scared, stir, licence and earn.

Night Heron at Quinta San Carlos: Bird of the Day, Nov 17, 2019

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For Granny’s Bird of the Day prompt.

Palm Fruiting Bundle in the Flowering Stage: FOTD Nov 17, 2019

3 Replies

For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.

Memory Tree: Sunday Trees, Nov 17, 2019

6 Replies

 

Click any photo to enlarge photos. For Sunday Trees

Advice to the Wife of a Man-child.

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Advice to the Wife of a Man-child

Every man-child needs to be returned to his mother.
That might be punishment enough for their having created them!

Escape from the Day Spa

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Photo by Adrian Motroc on Unsplash, used with permission

Escape from the Day Spa

Our hair is neatly coiffed and our fingernails are lacquered,
but they’ve been at us for hours and, frankly, I am knackered.
They’ve elevated eyebrows and plucked chin hairs at random.
Two people worked an hour, massaging me in tandem.

This day trip to the beauty spa once seemed a good idea,
but I’ve found it as annoying as a junket to Ikea.
Everything goes on and on. There simply is too much.
First there’s this and this and this and then there’s such and such.

And though it’s meant to calm me, I find I’m feeling goaded.
When it comes to things and services, I’m simply overloaded.
“I know” I tell my friend, “I should be finding it relaxing,
but I feel the opposite. I find the process taxing!”

I need to steer us out of here before she finds another
way for them to soak us or to pluck or curl or smother.
Before this spa day started, she’d assured me it was fun,
but now its time for me to declare that it is done!!!

I need a gin and tonic and perhaps a wild dance
to loosen all the hairpins and give my hair a chance
to escape the close confinement of gel and goop and spray.
I’m tense with relaxation. I need wildness in my day!

Give me a seedy roadhouse and some honky tonk guitar.
Some cowboys with their cowboy boots propped up against the bar.
Some line dances and two-steps to work up a little sweat,
and I’ll be about as relaxed as I’m ever going to get.

IMG_1017jdb photo of the Mint Bar, Sheridan, Wyoming

It

Prompt words today are trip, knackered, random, elevate and steer.

A Garden Walk with my Mother on her Birthday: FOTD Nov 16, 2019

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Two of my favorite people share today as a birthday. One is Forgottenman, who has, I hope, already received his photo tributes via Jibjab, but now I’m thinking about my Mother, who would have been 110 today if she had lived.

Recently I read a letter where she mentioned how when I was a baby I used to pick the heads off flowers and bring them to her. Misguided then, as I still am now in some matters, I have nonetheless learned to leave the flowers where they grow. I took a little walk in my garden today, Mother, imagining you were here with me, seeking out the flowers that are less profuse now than they were a few months ago.

Winter comes to Mexico as well, and although it cuts a less-wide swath, our cold snap seems to have inhibited the hibiscus and even the poinsettias, that should be fully in bloom by now. This is what you would have seen if you had been able to take my walk with me. If you click on the first photo, all of the photos will enlarge and you can go through them as a slide series and also read their captions:

 

Click on photos to enlarge.

This little begonia is easily overlooked.
Berries on the heavenly bamboo not for human consumption
This orange thunbergia is beautifully invasive.
The lipstick plant seems to bloom year round but is hard to photograph.
I almost missed these papaya blooms. In another month I hope to be eating the fruit beneath them.

 

 

For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.