Tag Archives: Daily Post

Compromising Situation (Shifting Stools at the Corner Bar)

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The Compromising Situation
(Shifting Stools at the Corner Bar)

It’s true that every Friday night I frequent this same station
here at the last barstool–it’s my end-of-week vacation.
Yet, what is it about partaking in a small libation
that makes the person next to me begin a recitation
about each love affair and compromising situation?
Is it that I look like I must need an education
into their tawdry lifetime of mutual masturbation?

I do not come for gossip, confession or oration,
and so it has become a fact of no small perturbation
that someone sits down next to me and with no hesitation,
proceeds to tell crass tales of lust and its eradication:
stolen passion on the subway that must end at the next station,
tales of quick encounters, stories of a brief fellation
told in spite of what must be my obvious consternation.

I swear that I don’t come here for lascivious quotation—
one after another with no time for their gestation.
I live out my own love life with no need for titillation.
My libido’s fully functioning— no need for restoration.
I have no need of sharing it via barstool relation
that would bring no satisfaction and for sure bring no elation.
So, this is my ending statement. My final protestation.

I hereby call a stop to this and issue a citation
that whereby I’ve achieved a certain state of maturation,
I do not need these schoolboy tales, these means of palpitation.
Of all those dirty magazines, I’ve taken my fair ration,
but now that I’m an adult, I’ve completed my mutation.
So while you’re all caught up in your love life’s regurgitation,
 I’ll take this opportunity to alter my location!

The prompt today was compromise.

No Longer in the Present

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jdbphoto

No Longer in the Present

Seated around the table in our favorite cafe,
attention to each other has come to be passé
We are not present here and now. We’re all in other places
as we stare at tiny screens, intent on other faces.

The friends we have around us will simply have to wait
for our interest in the world-at-large to finally abate.
The news that’s happening elsewhere is simply more amusing
than what might be happening in this space our body’s using.

Other friends are funnier in their “selfie” poses—
pooching out their lips at us and scrunching up their noses.
It won’t do to look natural, we have to look unique
in the selfsame pose that all selfie-flashers seek.

So if your friends are boring, not half so chic as you,
you always have the option to make a Tweet or two.
Check out the latest fashions available from China.
They’ll only take three months to reach you here in Carolina.

Check out the weather in Tibet and give YouTube a glance.
Companions won’t distract you if you don’t give them a chance.
Living one life at a time no longer has to do
so long as you remember to have your phone with you!

So if you’ve dropped a French fry and spilled ketchup down your dress,
you needn’t be embarrassed. It couldn’t matter less.
Intent on Twitter, Instagram, Facetiming and Facebooking,
the friends with you won’t notice, for nobody is looking.

The prompt word is present.

Cruel Harvest

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Cruel Harvest

In this middle morning,
pelicans drop like hail on the surface of the water.
This is not their usual style,
for they do not dive headfirst
and squeeze bills to necks
and swallow as before,
but merely float and dip their beaks
and raise their heads and dip again.

I hope it is not the tiny sea turtles
that we put in the water last night
that they are feeding on like hors d’oeuvres,
greedily.
But surely those turtles,
placed in to swim away 15 hours ago
are elsewhere than this,
facing other dangers, no doubt,
but at least, sad endings  I don’t bear witness to.

 We had waited until sunset
when the birds had gone
to lift the tiny creatures
from their plastic world
and set them,
confused and stunned,
upon the sand
to turn in circles
until we placed them right again
and again,
sometimes patting their tails
to encourage their voyage
to a new life shocking in its largeness.

 “What is this
lifting up and putting down?”
they must have thought,
“and then this broad expanse
that lifts us, spins us,
submerges us?”
Courageously, they lifted their  heads to swim,
only to be tumbled by waves—another  shock.
What more had life to surprise them with?
First, that bursting from the shell that had protected them,
then that thrusting into a colder world.

Children squealed with glee and were warned by elders
not to step back lest they step on the turtles that surrounded us—
all of us looking backwards as we stepped,
cameras clicking,
voices in English, Spanish, French—
all enchanted with these creatures perfectly formed
with black flippers and beautiful shells.
We saw their tiny heads like periscopes above the waves—
swarms of them at first and then separate,
swimming off to their individual fates.
Fifteen minutes later, the rising action
featured a solitary pelican that swooped for one
and then another and another
bedtime snack.
“No,” we screamed.
One woman threw a rock.
These pelicans that had enchanted me for weeks
as I watched their graceful flight and sure plummetings,
now prompted a new story
where they were villains, stopping new life,
bringing back the theme I have been so aware of here
for these weeks of my daily floatings in the sea.

Every organism, every animal, every person on this earth
lives only by merit of the death of others.
When life ends in infancy, how sad, how sad, we say;
but also say seeing the full grown pelican on the beach,
bleached to bones,
its beak sealed shut with a plastic circle from a six pack
or the needlefish, stretched on the sand and picked by carrion.
Never so obvious as here, this feeding of life on life,
and never so startling as when we placed the baby turtles
on the sand, wanting to save one for ourselves,
but knowing this action had a larger purpose than that.

We surrendered them to their life apart from us,
then moments later,
saw the pelican feed on them
guiltlessly,
living his place in the world.
Oh that I, too, had acted more selfishly—
palming one tiny turtle,
putting it in my loose pocket,
keeping it safe
away from that broad sea
that has so many means
by which to claim it.

Courage is the prompt word today. This poem is a rewrite of “Putting the Tiny Sea Turtles into the Sea,” a piece I wrote four years ago when the local sea turtle reserve brought dishpans full of the tiny creatures to La Manzanilla for volunteers to assist in releasing them to the wild sea.

The Meeting

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The Meeting

A simple country rube was he,
short at the cuff and out at knee;
but standing with his hat in hand,
he made a gesture brave and grand.
He faced the richest man in town—
a brutal man of wide renown
who saw him as a simple clown—
a fool just made for shooting down.

While in his case, it was debated
whether being educated
made a fellow learning-smart
at the expense of building heart,
nonetheless, he was well-suited.
His choice in fashion not disputed.
Well-barbered, polished, buff and tan,
the epitome of a GQ man.

He stood there in his doorway wide,
framed by the luxury inside
and eyed this bumpkin, shy and dim.
What business had this man with him?
“Speak up,” he barked, “if you are able!
You’ve pulled me from my breakfast table.
Speak your piece and take you off
to plow or hoe or watering trough!”

And though the rube was shy and humble,
he did not stammer, falter, mumble.
He simply drew a folded note
from the pocket of his coat,
handed it over, and said good-bye,
facing him with steely eye,
and with no other reason to stay,
climbed in his pickup and drove away.

The great man turned upon his heel
and went in to resume his meal.
He buttered toast and spread compote
before he thought to read the note.
“Jacob,” it said, “I am Janelle—
that one that you once knew so well.
When I left, you never knew
inside I carried part of you.

But now my life is nearly done,
I think it’s fair you meet your son.
Because of my sad circumstance,
he promised to give you a chance
to reap the harvest you have sown
and meet the son you’ve never known.
But, take care that things do not go badly.
He does not suffer fools gladly.”

 

The prompt word today was rube.

Costume

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Costume

I want to be an artist, a writer and a wife—
juggling all these masks with just a minimum of strife.
A lover, mother, daughter, cousin, sister-in-law, sister.
A friend to every woman and a temptress to each mister.
A master to my canine friends and slave to all my cats.
A pal to all my blogger friends, not just to swell my stats.
As well as to some Facebook friends and email friends and Skype.
(I no longer use snail mail—I’m simply not the type!)
So, if I were being truthful and I didn’t give a fig
about what others thought of me, I’d dress up like a pig.
Why the porcine costume? The tail curled in a ring?
Because in my life choices—I want everything!

The prompt today was costume.

Debatable Edibles at the Pot Luck Dinner

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click on photos to enlarge. jdb photos


Debatable Edibles at the Pot Luck Dinner

That dip indeed looks most delicious—
one of many lovely dishes
spread out here upon the table.
I’d eat them all if I were able,
yet, I admit I am suspicious
of this and several other dishes.

I fear that they may harbor fishes—
foodstuffs far outside my wishes
of consumable provender;
for fish of any size or gender,
no matter how incredible,
I’ve always found inedible.

Tuna, marlin, salmon, cod
are flavors that I find most odd.
Clams and lobster, oysters, shrimp—
brand me as a seafood wimp.
Anything with gill or fin
I do not choose to put within.

No horseradish or mayonnaise
can shield me from the pure malaise
that befalls me when I bite into
a canape I’ll later rue.
You cannot hide that fishy flavor
to turn it to a taste I’ll savor.

Many others  have met defeat
when trying to get me to eat
anything from sea or lake.
It’s a mistake I just won’t make.
So keep your ceviche and dips.
I’ll make do with potato chips.

The prompt today is suspicious.

It is also appropriate for Smorgasbord, which is the June 13, 2018, prompt for Ragtag Daily Prompt today.

Mnemonic Phonics

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Mnemonic Phonics

Babies use clues amniotic
to deal with stimuli chaotic,
but later, memory gets thick.
In short,  it’s anything but quick.

Age slows us down and trims our wick,
fogs our recall,  slows our pick.
So I resort to many a trick
to give my mind a little kick.

This loss of memory’s demonic
and leads to fits most histrionic,
so I depend on clues mnemonic
for memory that’s supersonic:

(Can you guess what the below mnemonic devices help me to remember?)

Neither leisured foreigner
seized or forfeited the weird heights.

Every good boy does fine.
Good boys do fine always.

My very excellent mother just spewed up nine plums.

How about you?  What mnemonic devices do you use?

 

The prompt word is mnemonic.

She Always Sleeps with the Radio On

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My sister Betty, ages three to seventy three


She Always Sleeps with the Radio On

Each night,
      as I negotiate
              the squeaky stairs
                   from her attic guest room
           down to the bathroom
     one more time,
I hear the voices.

I imagine them as her companions,
    drowning out night sounds,
        freeing her mind from its hard task
of remembering.

Tonight, she sits on a lawn chair
on the grass. I sit on the front steps,
listening
   to a friend on the
     steps next to me, strumming, strumming,
as my sister and I sing along
in high school harmony.

The little girls across the street
       are the first to come,
       tiny lawn chairs in arms,
  to plop themselves in front of us
for the concert.

As they settle, my sister says,
“Now, back to the music.”

Moments later, their mother follows,
   bringing initial happy news
       of their upcoming trip
to a lake where last year
a teenage girl had been abducted,
         a segue to more disturbing news
of yesterday’s daylight intruder
flushed from a house a block away.

I’d noticed
    the police car
       circling, puzzled
           by his vigilance as we walked
      the neighborhood today.
 I’d smiled at the man on the bike who didn’t look
      a part of this neighborhood, wondering how he’d fare,

but now I feel the threat of him.

“House of the Rising Sun,” stops dog-walkers in their tracks
  as the litle ones
     sit on the sidewalk
         stringing beads I brought,
capturing this night
to hang around their necks:
gray plastic elephants,
            pink stars,
                   orange hearts,
                           green dolphins strung midleap
on sparkly purple cord.

This night strings us all together:
                  beads, words, music, the night sounds
of insects and frogs,
                                                 happy stories interspersed with fearful ones,
traffic from the busy street one block away.
             Hungry mosquitoes,
                    gathering suddenly,
are what break us apart.

     As we climb the stairs,
             her door
                        next
                            to the only
                                   bathroom
                     in the house
              closes.

For the first time 
    in the week I’ve been here,
          I hear no radio
                on my nightlong explorations
down the stairs.

At ten o’clock, 1:30 and 3,
          the hall outside her bedroom
                         stays silent,
          this evening’s full company
flooding over into the night.

We have exhausted her mind, filled it, worn her out.
           She stlll feels our presence.
                     
                                Four a.m.

A creaking door, and once again,
          silence becomes
        a cup for her to fill.
            Something is needed
to relieve worry—
to leave no room
    for either remembering
  or the lack of it.
I hear them then, insistent, down the stairs and in the hall.

                       Voices all night long.

 

 

The prompt word today is insist.

Deep Voice

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Deep Voice

The stranger on an airplane in the seat next to me
never said a single word, and so I let her be
until our arrival, when I prepared to stand
and she produced a paperback—put it in my hand.

“It’s time for you to read this,” she said, then went away.
I didn’t say a word to her. Didn’t know what to say.
That book, however, changed my life and attitude and choices—
encouraged me to listen close to interior voices.

Buscaglia, Jampolsky and all of Carl Jung’s books
drew my mind away from appearances and looks
and into that finer world of instinct and of mind;
then drew me westward to the sea and others of my kind.

After a writer’s function, a stranger sent to me
“The Process of Intuition,” which I read from A to Z.
I read it twenty times or so, then sent it to a friend.
Then bought up every copy left to give as gifts and lend.

I don’t remember talking to the one who sent it to me,
but if I need a proof of faith, I guess that this will do me.
For I believe there is some force that draws the next thing through me
and if I follow instincts that hint and prod and clue me,

they are the truths that guide me on the path towards the new me.
The signs are there in all our lives if we choose to see.
No, I don’t believe a God guides our destinies.
I don’t believe in lifelines or spirits within trees.

I don’t believe in any faith that has a name or church.
I do believe, however, that I’m guided in my search
by something that unites us and sets our pathways right
so long as we listen to our own interior sight

that urges us to follow the right side of our brain
even though those choices are logically inane.
I know that it takes many types of brains to run the world,
but for me it’s intuition that when carefully unfurled

guides me best—towards art and words and unplanned days and oceans
and prompts me make a Bible of what others may call notions.
And so to simplify I’d say that I must have faith in
that voice we’re all a part of that speaks to us from within.

 

If you haven’t already viewed it, Word Press would not let me link to their Weekly Photo site yesterday, so please view also: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2018/02/08/tending-house/

This is a rewrite of a post from four years ago. The prompt today was simplify.

Tending House

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Diego supervises as Pasiano “tends.”  jdb photo

Tending House

In no place I have ever lived do so many people seem to be necessary to maintain one house. On any given day, in addition to my efforts, it is likely two or more of the following caretakers will be present: housekeeper, gardener, plumber, locksmith, bricklayer, tree-trimmer, cistern-cleaner, fumigator, carpenter or appliance-repairer. Do things really break more frequently in Mexico? Do locks jam more or garage openers go on the blink with greater regularity? Do more brick pathways need to be laid? More roof tiles slide down and go boom? More solar water heaters spring more leaks? Do pools develop cracks more easily and pipes pop open just for the fun of it? Do houses cry out to be added onto? In my sixteen years of living here, it certainly seems so. I especially remember the day described in THIS POEM as being one where the entire world seemed to be directed toward the care of my house. It was the monarch. We were its slaves.

The prompt today was tend.

I think this photo also qualifies for the Thursday Doors prompt!