Click on Photos to Enlarge.
for the Three Things Challenge, the prompt is “Master”
Click on photos to enlarge.
I couldn’t resist including this Purple Prose;
Purple Prose
Grandma grinds plums in her conical grinder, shredding the flesh from the pits. Under the table, my little brother sits, purple around his mouth from taste-testing the plums he no doubt earlier helped her pick. A stream of sugar on the table is a roadway for tiny black ants.
My father pushes a cooling cup of Postum closer to my grandmother as he resumes the story I’ve interrupted. It is another “Deafy Sterner” story, and he emulates the high explosive accent of this man from his past that I’ve never met, yet know so well.
I dash to my room, having just minutes to prepare for the dance before my car full of friends arrives, honking the horn. My Grandmother begins another story about the old country as I tear off my school jeans. I dress in their stories—patterned and purple as night.
For Sunday Stills, the challenge is any color of purple.
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #68” Today’s number is 189. 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 that include that number and post 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. Here are my contributions to the album.
Click on photos to enlarge.
To Do List
Shoot moonbeams at your heroes,
shoot bullets at your foes.
Sing songs of blended melodies
to exorcise your woes.
Don your hood and start a brawl.
Flick hound hairs from your sleeves.
Wear your racing stripes to prove
what nobody believes.
This present trip around the track
is not your first or last.
It’s only things we have not done
that make us feel aghast.
For the Sunday Whirl Wordle702 the prompt words are: races wear hound brawl song hood blend heroes flick shoot trip beams
Wanted to give a link for Silver Birch Press who reblogged one of my poems for their online journal. Thanks to them for including my work along with other poems on the subject of “favorite things.” Here is the link: https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2025/04/13/the-stories-held-by-things-by-judy-dykstra-brown-my-favorite-things-series/
And here are two more links for “Favorite Things” posts: https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2025/04/12/the-edelweiss-by-marieta-maglas-my-favorite-things-series/
April Showers Bring May Flowers by Karen Chappell April showers bring May flowers,
I just found this video of Zoe and Ollie, taken right after I brought her home from the beach. It was quite a surprise to me when this big male cat immediately became a surrogate mother! It’s a tender moment. Do you have one to share, as well? If so, please put a link to it in comments below.
(okcForgottenMan here. Turns out different browsers treat the link differently. This seems to work now.)
Click on photos to enlarge.
When Juan Pablo brought my car back to me after taking it for servicing, he brought a surprise––not only Santiago, but an adorable new puppy! The next day, when they came to see me, bringing the puppy, I reached out for it and Santiago yielded me his prize, but then made his usual beeline to the doggie lineup on the other side of the dining room screens. Once I put the puppy down, It took a little while for curiosity to win out and for him to actually approach the screen. Next time, perhaps we’ll take him outside.
For Johnbo’s Cellpic Sunday.
https://annegeephoto.com/2025/04/12/lens-artists-challenge344-abandoned/
Jammed-Up Creativity
Dark genius sits there pondering and staring at the screen.
His features in reflected light glow a sickly green.
He works his cyber screwdriver slightly to the right.
His only tool––the keyboard––is his weapon in this fight
as every blog on WordPress skews slightly all at once.
He’ll show his third grade teacher for calling him a dunce!
He tugs a little here and there, adjusting cyber screws.
And just for fun, he adds a few zeroes to my views.
He knows that I am watching and he senses my excitement.
He chuckles that my false success has been at his incitement.
Then he shuts down the internet––Facebook, WordPress, Twitter.
and my seconds of great happiness turn just as quickly bitter.
Bloggers the world over are turned back onto themselves.
Photos trapped in media files or stacking up on shelves.
No place to reach out for a friend for shut-ins who, once freed
to roam a universe of blogs now sit in dire need
of someone just to talk to. To realize they are there.
They sit staring at their screens, though all of them are bare.
Week after week we wait for our deliverance from this blight.
We miss the internet all day, and even more at night.
I’m thinking about former friends, now lost across the miles,
tripping over poetry surrounding me in piles,
thirsting after comments about every brand new thought.
Having no fast outlet, my brain feels like it’s caught.
Bound up in old creations that have no place to go,
with no easy outlet, the thoughts are coming slow.
Jammed up creativity is worse than constipation,
for writing with no readers is just mental masturbation.
It’s true that I have friends to call and writers’ groups as well.
But they have not the patience to hear all I have to tell.
A blog gives me an avenue to fill out a whole world
with thoughts that for a lifetime, I’ve kept inside, tightly furled.
For those of us who always have felt slightly alone,
the Interweb has seemed a placed created to atone.
In the darkened hours when others are asleep,
we live that midnight life we’ve kept within us, buried deep.
History moves ever onward despite glacier, war or flood.
We see it trailed behind us in footprints etched in blood.
So we’ll survive the cyber war when it comes to pass
by spending more time with our friends, calmly smoking grass
or sharing drinks at Starbucks, devoid of texts or apps,
but we’ll miss our midnight family filling in the gaps.
For SOCS the prompt is Jam
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 