Tag Archives: Daily Post

Enamoured

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This poem was written making use of only the letters of the word enamoured, which was the prompt word for today.

 

Enamoured

Mere man, mere dame,
a mean red moon.
A dream remade,
a mar, a dune.
Marooned and moored
and no end near.
Me enamoré. 
Me arrear.

(In Spanish, a”mar” is a sea or ocean, but “a mar” can also mean to love. “Me enamoreé“means “I fell in love.” “Me Arrear” can mean either “I got caught,” “drive me” or “Grab me.”  It also carries the connotation for me that the object of her affection’s love might be in arrears. “En arrear” can have that meaning in Spanish as well. Since I used the British spelling of the title word to increase my choices, I guess you could say this poem is trilingual. Comes in handy when limited in the consonants and vowels one can use.

Rhyming Violation

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The prompt word today is rhyme.

 

Rhyming Violation

There is a reason and a rhyme
to the word they chose this time.
For though I am not in my prime
and don’t play tennis, do not climb
or stoop too low to conquer grime,
In any terrain, any clime,
my mind spins like a twirling dime.
If over-rhyming were a crime,
I’d probably be doing time.

 

(If you are a glutton for punishment, yes, you can click on these to enlarge them.)

 

Words Coming Together with Words

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Words Coming Together with Words

This word right HERE is copacetic.
Not rancorous, angry or frenetic,
but because it is magnetic,
other words peripatetic
suddenly become kinetic
and join it to turn epithetic.

Postscript: I can’t help rhyming. It’s genetic!!!

My mother and I wrote rhymed poems together from the time I was small. I guess she was the one who put the magnetism into words for me. Thanks, Mom.

Now I only have Kukla as a collaborator. She leaves most of the word decisions to me.

The prompt today was magnetic.

Villains of the Universe

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Villains of the Universe

Before it had been pillaged–scraped and torn and rent,
nature had a dignity everywhere you went.
A hill remained a hillside and a stream remained a stream.
This was before the elements began their silent scream—
long before the advent of smog and acid rain—
before our exploitation of the earth became inane
with our damming and our digging, our culling and our raping—
before we had created a world that needs escaping.

Now we thrust out into space to find another place to plunder
to repeat inane histories. To ruin and tear asunder.
Any new place that we find, thinking it a haven,
will soon be altered as before with acts as crudely craven.
We do not learn our lessons. We never quite atone
for messing into matters we should have left alone.
Like children picking at a scab, then worrying the sore,
we’ll frack the universe apart and crack it at its core.

 

jdbphoto

R.I.P. Mother Earth

 

 

The prompt word today was dignify.

The Divine Right of Kings

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The Divine Right of Kings
(How Politics Makes for Strange Bedfellows)

I need to know this, Mr. Trump. What world is it that you inhabit
where if you want it, it’s okay for you to reach out and to grab it
and never share with others the wealth that you’ve purloined?
Except, of course, with other rich boys in the clubs you’ve joined?

I need to know this, Mr. Thune. What God gave you the right
to draft a secret health bill that overlooks the plight
of those littlest sparrows God witnessed as they fell?
What soothes your conscience as you now consign them all to Hell?

Mister Ku Klux Klanner, once you remove your hood
and navigate in daylight your well-lit neighborhood,
how do you salve your conscience? The crosses that you’ve burned there
must surely also burn you, once they’re exposed to air.

What happened to those finer parts your mothers saw in you
that might have loved their playmates, be they black, Arab or Jew?
All that innocence and love, surely you must mourn
as you join that beast that crawls toward Bethlehem to be born.

Mr. Jung has taught us that we all have everything within us: light and shadow, male and female, good and evil, cruelty and kindness.  Those parts are not exorcised within us just because we choose not to exercise them. I wonder at the dreams of the seemingly pious souls mentioned in the poem above. Are they as completely sure they are right as they seem to be?  Are their dreams untortured, their consciences squeaky clean?

If you are unsure who John Thune is, he is a senior U.S. senator from South Dakota who grew up the son of a born-again Christian family who happened to live across the street from me.  They broke away from the Methodist Church to form the Community Bible Church, preaching solid Christian values, eschewing the evils of movies and dance and even television.  They unsuccessfully mounted a big campaign to forbid dancing at our school prom and produced a son who now aligns himself with Mr. Trump.  What would Jesus say, Mr. Thune? Would he reaffirm that politics makes for strange bedfellows?

 

Sen. John Thune (R-SD)

What he’s saying: A common complaint about the Affordable Care Act is that the law has caused premiums to spike, and Thune told Fox News this month that South Dakota has seen premiums rise 124% since 2013. The fact that roughly 85% of Obamacare consumers receive premium subsidies to defray these increases has received less attention from critics. The House version of the American Health Care Act would switch Obamacare’s premium assistance to a flat, age-based subsidy, a change that would lower prices for younger, healthier consumers but hit some older, lower income ones with premium increases of more than 800% by 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Biggest donors: At number three and $40,246, Sanford Health is the only healthcare name among the top five donors to Thune’s campaign committee; Nextera Energy comes in first with $52,000 and Blackstone Group is next with $50,097.

 Isn’t it the main idea behind health insurance that those who can pay and who are less likely to become ill cushion the load for those who are the most ill and need it most?

The prompt today was inhabit.

Why I Dine Alone at Burger King

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Why I Dine Alone at Burger King

I’d like a single cheeseburger with pickles on the side,
cheese but no tomato—a fruit I can’t abide.
Be sure there is no pink to see. I like my burgers brown.
You can also skip the cardboard hat. I do not need a crown.

Grilled onions on the cheeseburger and easy on the goo.
Give me a diet Coke with that. I’d like some French fries, too.
I sit down at a booth to wait, my number on the table,
but if I could, I’d supervise—that is, if I were able.

My sandwich comes. I have a bite. I see no pink or red.
I start to take a drink of Coke but have a fry instead.
It’s hot and oh so crispy. Redolent of grease.
I feel a surge of appetite. My hunger pangs increase.

I alternate the bites I take between the fries and meat.
As regular as clockwork. I do not miss a beat.
For when it comes to fast food, I do not equivocate.
My ratio of fries-to-burger I must calibrate.

I plan it down to the last fry. I don’t allow for glitches,
and woe to folks who borrow one. I do not abide snitches.
If you want a French fry, please buy some of your own.
I have plans for all of mine. I am not sharing-prone.

With one more bite of burger and only two more fries,
the ratio is one-to-two. I plan to synchronize.
I have it all planned out, my friend, so if you’re chancing by,
keep your fingers off my French fries, or somebody’s gonna die!

 

The prompt today was “synchronize. (stock photo.)

That Tiny Seed

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That Tiny Seed

That tiny seed
in the garden of your being
plants itself
in a corner where you might not notice it.

Unplagued by your thousand obligations,
it gathers moisture unused by your arid life.

On that internal table,
its petals open to a visceral sun.

You can feel the flutter
feel its opening
and see it in your
dreams perhaps
or in a daydream, as a reflection in a shop window.

What you are inside of you
is something you should feel the wings of,
smell its faint aroma, be at least a bit discomfited
by that tiny annoying growth of petal
that is a message from yourself.

Sign language.
If you don’t listen,
it will whisper.
Then it will shout.

The prompt today is visceral.

J’accuse

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J’accuse

Those who meander the paths of zoos
gain exercise as they peruse
the animals by ones and twos.
Whatever pathways they may cruise
will lead them to new rendezvous:
otters as they blithely ooze
through water as if to amuse.
They watch the bowerbird as it woos
with intricate patterns it pursues,
the aardvarks, elephants and gnus.

Did Mother Nature simply choose
to create hippos and kangaroos
with the intention to bemuse
these interlopers in tennis shoes?
Does our curiosity excuse
and give us license to abuse
koala bears and caribous?

We see it nightly in the news—
the ways that all of us misuse
the wonders of nature. We refuse
to stem consumerism, excuse
pollution, fracking and more taboos.
Imprison animals in zoos,
then honor them with our reviews
of fascinated ahhhs and ooos.

The prompt word today was ooze.

Family Vacation

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For my friend Mary who is touring the Black Hills right now, a rerun of this poem:

Version 2My dad and I at the Deer Huts when I was about 3.

Black Hills Reverie

My dad is coming with us–he doesn’t have to work.
Corn muffins in the oven, and coffee on the perk.
It’s orange juice for sis and me.  I take a little sip.
We woke up really early to start out on a trip.
We’re going to the Black Hills where we will spend the night.
We’ll start out just as soon as we have had a little bite.
We’ll stop to pick up my best friend who will go along
They’ve let me plan the whole long day, so nothing will go wrong.
En route we’ll stop at Wall Drug and have an ice cream cone,
then drive on through the Badlands, as dry as any bone.
My dad will sing a song for us–“Lonesome Mountain Bill”–
and let up on the gas petal as we crest the hill
to give our stomachs all a lurch and a little flutter.
My mom will say “Oh Ben!” and then my older sis will mutter.
But Rita and I love  this trick and we will urge another–
an action nixed first by my sis and then by my mother.

We’ll stop at Petrified Gardens and see the fossils there,
buy rose quartz and mica and other rock chips rare.
Then on to Reptile Gardens where they wrestle crocodiles,
to ride on giant turtles and view other reptiles.
We stop next at the Cosmos where gravity’s gone amuck.
We’re doing everything I wish. I can’t believe my luck!
On to old Rockerville Ghost town where we have our dinner.
If I resisted cherry pie I know I would be thinner,
but with a scoop of ice cream it really is delicious.
Just try to keep it from me–I’m likely to turn vicious!
Next we drive the pigtails, where the road just curls and curls
passing over and over and thrilling three small girls.
We’re going to see Mt. Rushmore–those giant perfect faces.
Perhaps we’ll buy a souvenir if we’re in Dad’s good graces.
Then on to drive Custer State park with the begging burros.
We’ve saved some treats from Rushmore–some peanuts and some churros.

Back to Rockerville we go for supper and a show.
The “Mellerdrammer” (sic) is the place where we’re going to go
to hiss the villain from the crowd, throw peanuts at his back
as he ties the heroine to the railroad track.
Then drive the seven miles to my favorite sleeping place,
though mother doesn’t like it, and she makes a funny face.
“The Deer Huts” are just cabins right up in the trees
and we have to use the outhouse to take our bedtime pees.
We get to walk with flashlights and pick our way with care,
through the ponderosas, where perchance we’ll meet a bear!
I love the moonlit shadows and the night bird calls,
being extra careful to avoid stumbles and falls.
Sometimes we fake the need to pee to take another walk,
and on the way my friend and I walk slowly as we talk
of all the things my parents have let us do today.
We both agree that this has been a perfect sort of day.

 daily life color076 (4)My sister Patti and I in the Black Hills, age 7 and 11.

 In South Dakota, lunch was dinner and dinner was supper.  For the sake of authenticity, I’ve maintained the custom in this description of a child’s perfect day.

The prompt word was lurch.

Burning Your Journals

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Burning your Journals

Who knew fidelity’s even stance
could be mitigated by circumstance?
That a subtle smile, perchance,
exchanged between you at her advance
would wind up in a swift romance
that flourished in that small expanse
between us and her winsome glance.

Who knew that you would go freelance
when love became our ritual dance?
And that I, still in loving’s trance,
would only learn it later, by chance.
Reading your words, caught twice askance.
First by your death, then grief enhanced
as I suffered loss anew
with this further death of you.

 

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The prompt word today was trance.