Tag Archives: daily addictions

Books (For Daily Addictions July 21, 2018 prompt of Obsolete)

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Books

The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
its paper sprinkled with drops-—
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory—
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.

Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.

Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages—
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink—
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.

Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial—
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us.

What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Wikipedia replacing dictionaries,
Google already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?

Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs.
Perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
Perhaps the grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them—as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages—one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.

search
search-1Yes, you are right.  These are chairs made out of books.

In response to The Daily Addictions prompt of obsolete  Of all the technologies that have gone extinct in your lifetime, which one do you miss the most?

The Daily Addictions prompt is obsolete.

In the Blood

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Image downloaded from Internet.

Remember Walter Palmer, the dentist who shot Cecil, the lion lured out of a game park in Tanzania  in 2015?  This is a poem I wrote and dedicated to him at the time. I was wondering how he is doing now and if he ever had the nerve to mount Cecil’s head in his trophy room, so checked up on him again via the link above.  I dedicate this poem again to him and to all who profit from the spilling of blood in sport, be it war games or other blood sport.

In the Blood!!!
(Dedicated to Walter Palmer)

Don’t you just love football—the running and the tackling?
The sounds of hamstrings pulling and the crunch of femurs crackling?
We sit up in the bleachers eating hot dogs, drinking beer,
comfortably viewing blood sport—the kind we hold so dear.

Aren’t dogfights lovely–the growling and the whining?
Too bad they aren’t more elite, so we could watch while dining.
So amusing watching canines being dished their due.
Dying is so entertaining when it isn’t you!

Better still are bullfights, though they’re few and far between.
The bull so lithe and dangerous, the matador so lean.
The best part of the sport is that the dying is so slow.
I feel its thrill suffuse me from my head down to my toe.

We adore big game hunting in such exotic lands–
our chance to prove our manliness with our own two hands–
handing over money to those trackers in the know
who guarantee an easy kill with rifle or with bow.

Easy on the hunter, but not the animal,
for just because he’s hit the prey’s not guaranteed to fall.
We get more for our money if he’s hard to track,
and war games are more pleasant when one’s foe doesn’t shoot back!

All these minor titillations just a prelude to
the main event and the most major way of counting coup.
Once all the good old boys are finding life is just a bore,
they round up all the younger men and send them off to war.

See how the valiant struggle, see their stripes and purple hearts–
apt pay for missing arms and legs and other blown off parts.
Lucky to be home at last and lucky to be living–
the products of that blood sport that just somehow keeps on giving.

The Daily Addictions prompt for today is dedicate.

Beauty and the Beast

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Beauty and the Beast

“You Are Well Come” the banner read,
fluttering high over head.
From tree to tree it had been hung
with vibrant ribbons, securely strung.

Feasting tables were well laid
with mead and beer and lemonade.
The wedding cake stood tall bedecked,
sugar-spun and flower-flecked.

Roast joint of flesh and wheels of cheese
were laid, the wedding guests to please.
The wedding aisle strewn with flowers,
overhead the wedding bowers.

Organ music, strong and steady,
everything was poised and ready.
Heads were turned to footsteps heard
upon the pathway. Not one word

was uttered as the maiden entered.
Her pace was slow, her steps well-centered.
An arrow shot straight down the aisle,
veiled in silk and gowned in lisle.

The bridegroom marked her progress toward
the priest, the ring, the wedding gourd.
She took his hand, their vows were coined,
they sipped the gourd and thus were joined.

That night beauty would grace the bed
of the suitor she had wed.
The ending that you might foresee,
however, is not what will be.

Our plots in life have dips and bendings.
The same starts have different endings.
She wed the prince who slewed the beast
that now comprised the wedding feast!

 

The above poem was written to fulfill these three prompts:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/19/fowc-with-fandango-steady/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/vibrant-july-19-2018/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/rdp-49-welcome/

First to the Gate

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First to the Gate

If you were born to innovate,
your one desire to create,
take care you don’t equivocate,
for if you do, I fear your fate
will be that you react too late.
Someone will beat you to the plate!
So if you don’t desire this fate,
Act boldly, friend, and do not wait!!!

The Daily Addictions prompt is innovate.

Knees

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Knees

Knees, knees, folks have knees
from Katmandu down to Belize.
In Peru, where they ride llamas
they still have knees in their pajamas.
Further north, up where it freezes,
even Polar bears have kneezes.

Knees, knees, folks have knees
to ogle, fondle, pet and squeeze.
(It’s easy when they’re under kilts.)
Some knees on roller skates or stilts
are scabbed and scaly, skinned and sore
but still they know what they are for.

Knees are great to bounce a baby,
to kick a soccer ball, or maybe
to bend in prayer when they’re in church,
or form a perfect sort of perch
for swains who fall on bended knee
to say, ‘I’d like to marry thee.’

Knees, knees, folks have knees.
In sun they burn, in snow they freeze.
Yet  knees can cross and knees can knock.
Knees can jog you round the block.
Knees are handy and dependable.
And aren’t we glad that knees are bendable?

 

The Daily Addictions prompt today is convenient.  I ask you.  What is more convenient than knees?

Blind Date

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Blind Date

With an air of abandon, she threw off her clothes,
rolled up her hair and night creamed her nose.
She was sure she’d see no one ’til morning at work,
so she removed her bridge with a tug and a jerk.
She peeled off her eyelashes, creamed off her blush.
Did all  this slowly with no need to rush.
A natural girl now, her face put away
for her to reclaim the very next day.

She’s snugged up in flannel, propped up in her bed.
By the end of this evening, her book will be read.
The large bowl of chili that rests on the table
right by the bed, she’ll devour when she’s able.
In between page turns, she’ll take a big bite.
She’ll feast and she’ll read ’til she puts out the light.

Until the night’s silence is shattered by ringing.
The strum of guitars and some romantic singing
completes all the ruckus occurring outside
as she pulls up the covers to cower and hide.
For she has remembered, alas and too late
that this was the night that she had a blind date.
She springs to the bathroom to try to redo
all that she’s lately hastened to undo.

“Just a minute!” she calls, and she hears his reply.
Her beauty procedures are done on the fly.
She rips out her curlers, unwinding, unfurling
the locks she’d just put there for overnight curling.
The mascara wand flies. Rouge is rapidly swiped
across the same cheeks she has recently wiped.
She throws on her clothes, grabs her phone and her purse.
No more time to prepare, and no time to rehearse.

She opens the door to survey her date.
He has a nice face and a shiny bald pate.
She consults her watch and she scolds, “You are late!”
Her side of the tale, she’ll neglect to relate.
They’ll have a fine evening and he will take care
not to mention the curler in back of her hair.
Some things best unspoken are things her date knows—
like her one missing eyebrow and cream on her nose.
These slight imperfections he took in his stride
Which is why one year later she wound up his bride.

.

The Daily Addictions prompt is abandon.

Unclear Agenda

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This poem, written thirteen years ago, chronicles a situation I encountered when I was trying to hire men in California to clear brush to help me ready my house for selling in the U.S.

The Daily Addictions prompt is Revenue.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Note: It has come to my attention that the setting of this poem isn’t clear.  It is set in CA, U.S.A. and the initial character is American, as are the protesters.  The men standing outside the lumber yard are Mexicans looking for work. Thanks, Marilyn and Patti for letting me know that this was not clear.

Unclear Agenda

His denims worn and torn, his hair unshorn,
he sat on a fruit crate near a stop sign
on an exit road just off the California interstate.
“Will work for food,” his sign said, so I stopped.
“Jump in,” I said, and he looked confused.
“I have a city lot taken over by castor beans,” I told him.
“I’ll give you a meal and ten bucks an hour to clear them.”
“Lady, that would take me a day or more,” he said.
“I can make more than that in a few hours, just sitting…

View original post 202 more words

I Just Can’t See Infinity

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I Just Can’t See Infinity

If my life was infinite,
no doubt I’d make a mess of it.
It’s hard enough to get it right—
to be law-abiding and polite—
for eighty or one hundred years.
We need time off for shifting gears.
Tyrants must get tired of
ruling the world with fisted glove,
and perfect folks must need deflection
from their lives of stark perfection.
Reincarnation is just right
for exchanging one life’s plight
for another set of woes.
For trying out some different clothes!
For giving us another chance
to trade in Omaha for France!!!
Let us be mortal. Let it be.
We do not need infinity!!!

The Daily Addictions prompt is infinite.

U.S.A.

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U.S.A.

Have we any doctrines? Have we any rules?
Are creeds and regulations simply meant for fools?
Has our common decency been voted away?
What of our Constitution? Has it become passé?
What would our founding fathers think, and what would they say?
Will loss of their declarations be the price we pay
for taking it for granted that liberty would thrive
so long as all our citizens managed to survive?
We always saw the threat outside—all those foreign men.
We never thought our country would be lost to those within.
Tell our air and water. Tell each foreign son.
Our doctrines and our principles seem to have come undone.

 

The Daily Addiction prompt is doctrine.

Slashin’ Fashion

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Slashin’ Fashion

We used to think that what we wore in public really mattered.
No one wanted to appear in clothing ripped and tattered.
But now it seems the custom is to vintage-up our fashion
like it has been ripped apart in the throes of passion.

Everywhere we go, bare skin is brashly popping out
as though we can’t afford new jeans and it’s a thing to flout.
When we gain weight we do not have to buy a bigger jean,
we simply use our scissors to augment the space between!

Old men shake their heads in shock and nearly lose their dentures,
and yet these wanton ladies draw their looks as well as censures,
for when they rouge their cheeks, they do not deal with only two.
Now they have to prep  four cheeks for the world to view.

 

I worked on this poem for over an hour and when I tried to add an illustration, I lost it all!  Nowhere to be found. Nowhere in drafts.  Yes, a bit of cussing. I don’t know about you, but after I’ve written something, I forget it completely, so I had to start out again from scratch.  This time it went more quickly, though, and although it is generally the same idea, you know what they say about the one that got away!

This time I’m copying it into my sticky notes before I try to save and illustrate it.  This is the first time I haven’t done so in a long time and now I remember why I always did so! Image found on the internet.  No credits given.

The Daily Addictions prompt is augment.
The Ragtag prompt is vintage.