Absolution
A pen her only weapon, she brandished it at life.
From within her cave of thoughts, she used it as a knife.
Cutting out the sadness, filleting the pain,
she served them out on pages sacrificed to rain.
Let the press of water wash them clean again.
Cutting Loose
When daylight breaks, bring in the paper
and over breakfast, plan a caper.
Crazy plans are fun to bake up.
Do your nails, put on some makeup.
Call in sick. Forsake your labors
and boggle all your friends and neighbors
by doing something crazy wild.
Reconnect your inner child.
A vital element in fun
is do not stop until you’re done.
Paint your house a vivid hue.
Then why stop there. Why not paint you?
Go for a boat ride, buy a bike.
Buy hiking boots and take a hike.
Wear funny clothes. Get a tattoo.
No end to things that you could do.
Turn your hems up, cut your hair.
(No one can see what’s under there.)
Take Santa Claus out on a date.
Most months he’s bored. Don’t hesitate!
When you are letting loose, please just
only do the things you must.
It’s vital that at least just once
you dare to play the fool or dunce
and take the chance to try to binge
and do what makes the whole world cringe.
It’s fun sometimes to be unique
in what we do or how we speak—
to be that person standing out
with anything that you can flout.
Life’s too short to always do
what the world expects of you!!!
Prompt words today were daylight, paper, boggle, vital and bake.
Won by Wit
South sea island cruises do not stir up my lust.
I fear that all my passions have succumbed to mold and dust.
All that iron will to love has come to naught but rust.
To date, there is no counter urge that says, “My dear, you must!”
It never was my temperament to plot and scheme and plan
complicated maneuvers to try to catch a man,
but still I found that now and then one drifted into view
that caused me to examine my attitudes anew.
Perhaps my behavior included one or two
of the tiniest maneuvers by which I hoped to woo.
It may be that in passing, I allowed the slightest brush
of my arm and his arm and blamed it on the crush
of bodies in the elevator, even though the fact
is that the elevator was not so tightly packed.
Nonetheless, my hints were subtle, for I rarely pined
for a lustful body over a brilliant mind.
So if you want to woo me, do it over books.
For me a silver tongue will always win out over looks.
Write with wit and logic, original and kind.
Fan my imagination. Seduce my wild mind.
My upper arms are flabby, but my mind is sharp and taut.
To woo me, try to judge me not for all that I am not.
The only one to win me would be one of my own kind.
The only nuptials I seek are marriages of mind.
Prompts today are south seas, brush, lust, temperament and date.
The Scheme
By the seat of my pants I’ll accomplish my scheme
which some may consider to be too extreme.
Avoiding the bridge, I’ll have forded the stream
in the dark of the night to the moon’s guiding beam.
As I find the right path, if only by chance,
small rivulets will stream down from my pants—
evidence that will dry up in the day
with the breeze’s collusion and each dawning ray
of the sun as it shrugs off the night’s blinding hand.
Permit me to hope that by then all I’ve planned
will be finished and done. I’ll have reached the far ridge,
crossed down to the road and fled over the bridge.
Extreme measures are sometimes all that can be done
to enact revenge. In the end, I’ll have won.
The news will corroborate all of my acts.
They’ll furnish the details, establish the facts.
My crime will go down in the annals as one
that everyone’s heard of but to this day none
will have heard who accomplished it. No one will know
that I orchestrated that fabulous show.
How can I be sure you won’t let it be known
that I did the act and I did it alone?
This vengeful act that I so aptly hid?
You’ll know I did something, but not what I did!!!
Prompt words today are hope, permit, scheme, corroborate and pants.
Confluent Fidelity
It’s true that she was lusty, outlandish and gregarious,
with her behavior more or less branded as nefarious.
Her dance in life was often described as arabesque,
and when it came to marriages, her tale was Kafkaesque.
She mixed up her chronology, forgetting which came first.
Divorce or remarriage? She knew not which was worst:
bigamy or loneliness. She simply couldn’t stand
to be without a husband readily at hand.
She often stood with tearful eyes before a judge’s desk—
seemingly an angel, albeit, picaresque.
Somehow when it came to love, right and wrong conflated.
True love made her dizzy. She wound up addlepated.
A comely wrinkling of her brows, a pout, a tear, a sigh
and the judge forgave her. After all, he was a guy.
A simple tiny slap upon her unrepentant wrist
and a heartfelt promise that she would desist
from practicing plural marriage was always the decree—
guaranteeing her misdeeds in perpetuity.
So went her personal history. It seems that she was fated
to spend all her romantic life being inundated
with husband after husband—one or two at a time—
for courtships left her weak-kneed and weddings were sublime.
Honeymoons her speciality, she found no fault with life
until it came to living it as just one man’s wife!
Photo by Alvin Mahmudov on Unsplash, used with permission
Prompt words today are gregarious, zest, personal, conflate and desk.
Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash, used with permission
The Butler and the Upstairs Maid
The butler and the upstairs maid once freed from bed and table
resumed their hugs and kisses whenever they were able.
He wooed her in the garden shed, the pantry and the granary.
Not a place excluded from their extreme chicanery.
When traveling with her mistress, she could not help but fret.
His passions unabated, he was always in a sweat.
Within them both, the hormones were perpetually churning.
How could they do their duties with these fires of romance burning?
At last, master and mistress called the vicar of the parish.
What were they to do about this behavior most garish?
They met this couple making love at every hallway’s turning.
How were they to deal with these excesses of yearning?
The vicar in his wisdom knew the answer right away,
so the problems of their dalliance was able to allay.
Their passions once unquenchable were vanquished all too soon
as soon as they were back again from their honeymoon.
Prompt words for today are chicanery, sweat, turning, garish and table.
The Wild Life
If you’re yearning for the wild life but haven’t a clue
about how to go about it, here’s a hint for you.
Gratify your need by visiting the zoo
to ogle hippopotami and maybe get a view
of zebra or a lion or a cheetah or a gnu.
Snap photos of a reindeer or a caribou.
See monkeys in their cages or an eagle in its aerie.
Hang out at the petting zoo if eagles are too scary.
Give the lambs sweet clover and all the ponies oats.
Pat their little heads and stroke their hairy coats.
Stop by aerated pools to touch a koi’s smooth scales,
keeping a proper distance from the killer whales.
In this modern world where violence is rife,
one need not act out to enjoy the wild life.
So put away your crossbow, your rifle or your knife
and head out to the game park with your kids and wife.
You need not stalk your game through the forest or the fens.
Better to hunt your wildlife through a camera lens.
Prompt words today are aerate, scary, zoo, gratify and give.
Ablation
Time temporal drips away like ice cream from a cone.
We cannot help its melting as it leaves us all alone.
Jackpots won, creative gains, come at last to naught.
We cannot leave this world of ours with anything we’ve got.
Every appetite assuaged ends finally in thirst.
We don’t determine the final act, no matter how rehearsed.
Though we avoid the truth of it, alas, all that I say
is truth regarding what life gives and what life takes away.
Once again, thanks to my sister Betty for these images of my
childhood. Without her, fewer memories would remain.
Prompt words today are temporal, creative, jackpot, thirst and help.
Illustration by Isidro Xilonzóchitl, copyright Judy Dykstra-Brown, 2020
Doggies of the Realm
In seeking to coordinate the canines of the realm,
they formed a grand committee with a countess at the helm
to account for all the dachshunds and classify the terriers,
find greyhounds in their kennels and yorkies in their carriers,
to track down the grand pyrenees up in the highest rocks,
to record all the lapdogs and dalmatians on their walks.
At first strict in her discipline in separating breeds,
in protecting bloodlines and meeting owners’ needs,
when her helpers warned her that they’d run out of spaces,
she had to capitulate in order to find places.
Since they’d run out of kennels, she had to loosen rules.
She locked labs in the closets, tied boxers to the newels.
Put shih tzus in the cupboards and toy poodles in the drawers,
stored retrievers in the boathouse, tied Chihuahuas to the oars.
She felt she’d scored the jackpot when the prisoners all made bail
and so they handed over the former county jail.
She converted all the cellblocks into canine cages
and began to fill up rosters—pages upon pages.
At first she sorted breeds using a system alphabetical,
but later sorting systems became more hypothetical,
and as her sorting powers eroded over time,
soon she had her doggies classified by rhyme.
For example, in the cages assigned to standard poodles,
she filled the extra corners with the labradoodles.
She recorded canines of every breed and size—
dogs with every length of hair, in every shape and guise,
until at last she had them all down in black and white—
every wagging tail and every growl and bite.
So the snappers and the lickers, the yappers and the yippers
got to go back home to retrieve their masters’ slippers!!
Prompt words today are realm, coordinate, jackpot, capitulate and walk.
Mountaineers
However many acts we stage, however many innings,
we’re constantly made vulnerable by our new beginnings.
One resolution brings another problem to be mounted—
a new one starting just as soon as the last one is counted.
We ascend each mountain, and when we reach the top,
we see summit after summit and know we’ll never stop.
It may seem that for some others life is a flat plain.
We may resent our struggles, but as much as we complain,
catching sight of that new mountain, we begin the climb again.
Prompts today are new beginnings, vulnerable,resolution, ascend and stop.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 