Tag Archives: Daily Post

Staircase

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Staircase

I really did not mean to stare
when I saw you standing there,
but there was sunlight in your hair.
It was tangled. Your feet were bare.
It was a lovely sight and rare
as, seemingly without a care,
you stood above me on the stair.
And though I wished to, I didn’t dare
climb up to see how you might fare.

Instead, my wretched form I bore
down the staircase and out the door.
Since then, you are that thing of lore
that resides within my core.
I still remember what you wore.
I lie awake. I pace the floor––
trying nightly to restore
at one, at two, at three, at four––
the vision of you one time more.

I cannot work. I cannot eat.
I see your hair the hue of wheat,
your wrinkled dress, your naked feet,
and cannot help but feel defeat;
because even in ardor’s heat,
my courage to ascend and greet
thee, and to make my life replete,
never ascends above your street,
never accomplishes the feat.

And that is why I’m in your hall
wondering if I have the gall
to stand up brave and sure and tall
and ring your doorbell––to make the call.
I put my ear against your wall,
but I can hear no sound at all.
Indecision casts its gloomy pall.
I hesitate. I pause. I stall.
I do not shoot. I bounce the ball.

Though all my fears I seek to quell,
my words are prisoners in a cell,
and though I have rehearsed them well
and have the key to where they dwell,
my thoughts of what to say won’t gel.
I stand here in my private Hell.
A deathly dirge begins to knell.
I raise my hand. I ring the bell
and steel myself––this tale to tell.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/stairway/

Curve

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Borrowed Love Poem

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Ha!!!! Borrowed?  Perfect.  I am borrowing the poem I wrote today for NaPoWriMo to use for my WordPress Daily Post as well.  You can find it here: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/04/24/after-the-honeymoon/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/borrowed/

Froggy Weather

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Froggy Weather

Fog reaches out its fingers and reaches out its toes
to prod and follow everywhere the British nation goes.
Then when it gives up teasing them, sun does not come again.
Fog merely slips aside a bit to make room for the rain.

So button up your raincoat. Invest in rubber boots.
During rainy season, fog and rain are in cahoots
to confuse your direction and make your going tough
and dampen down your spirits if your wet clothes aren’t enough.

Pea soup in November moves in thick and tight––
not solving any hunger. Feeding no appetite.
And when rain comes to join it, they make a dismal pair––
soaking up your stockings and limping down your hair.

So if you live in London in Knightsbridge or Picadilly,
it isn’t very practical, in fact its downright silly
to go without galoshes or a GPS when walking
when rain commences soaking you and fog takes up its stalking.

If you’ve set your mind today to visit Scarborough Fair,
it will not be enough to wear some flowers in your hair.
You’d better wear a rain bonnet and tie it good and tight
So parsley sage and rosemary don’t share your soggy plight,

take a big umbrella to protect your provender
lest paper bags you carry prove too soggy  and too tender
to serve the use they’ve earlier served in months less wet and boggy.
There’s no other solution when London life turns froggy!

You’ll mow down little old ladies and run into a rector
while wandering lost through  rain and fog in an unknown sector.
So though you seek to sightsee or merely walk your Lab,
believe it when I say to you, it’s best to take a cab.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/fog/

Jake

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Jake

First thing you think of when you wake
are his fingers scraping like a rake
over your shoulder–sure to make
your toes curl up and fingers quake.

You rise to bake his birthday cake
and choose to pack it up to take
it to him there out on the lake–
your fear of water faced for his sake.

The weight of oars. The sun’s cruel bake
revealing two sure truths as fake.
And oh the pain and oh the ache
of what he’s chosen to forsake.

The boat you row to shore and tether,
foretelling wind and stormy weather.
Love vanished like a plucked-out feather
when you saw your friend and love––together

The one-word WordPress prompt was “Fake.”
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/fake/

“The Gawkey and Flaybottomist—Who Should Have Stopped When First They Kissed”

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The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a poem using at least ten terms from a specialized dictionary. I guess when I chose to use the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue  from my own bookshelf, I should have realized that at least 1/2 of the terms would involve sexual innuendo. Nonetheless, I decided to proceed. I must warn you that the following poem is a bit risqué, so please avoid reading it if rude language offends thee!

The 16 terms I used and their definitions are given after the poem. If you wish, you might want to read them before the poem, or you can try to follow context clues to discover their meaning on your own:

 

“The Gawkey and Flaybottomist—Who Should Have Stopped When First They Kissed”

I predict the cross patch and the flaybottomist
are the sort of women least likely to be kissed.
The first’s so busy grumbling that the kiss never connected,
while the second merely thinks of how the kiss may be corrected.

Now, there was an awkward village boy excessively unworldly,
that on one occasion had acted most absurdly
by planting a fast buss upon his teacher’s nearby cheek
then since he was both young and shy, he beat a fast retreat.

The following week when mellow, he thought he’d try again—
His amorous nature brought out by much congress with his gin.
He desired a bit of relish, and the gin made him a fool
So he took his gaying instrument up to the village school.

I fear he was a gawkey–the worst that you might meet,
and he tripped over his crab shells as he stumbled up the street.
The roaring boys pursued him, thinking they would later cackle—
leaking all the secrets of where gawkey stowed his tackle.

Upon his knock, the school teacher opened up the door,
attired in her negligee–and I fear nothing more.
She greeted him with Friday-face, but he took little note,
for he was practicing the lines that he had learned by rote.

The teacher was a dumplin and her suitor tall and thin,
yet when she heard his practiced plea, I fear she let him in.
But what he didn’t know then, as he quenched his carnal thirst
was that on that night of visitors, he was not the first.

The reason our flaybottomist had greeted him ungowned,
clad only in her negligee and with her hair unwound,
was because the French instructor had been there to give instruction—
a fact that I fear later led to misery and destruction.

For her tutor left her Frenchified, which she passed to the gawkey,
who took his French leave quickly, feeling a good deal less cocky.
The moral of this little tale—at least the one you’ll get?
Things are apt to get sticky when you’re the teacher’s pet!

 

Words from the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue used in this poem:

*crab shells:  Irish, shoes
*gawkey: a tall, thin, awkward man or woman
*gaying instrument: the penis
*cross patch: a peevish boy or girl, an unsocial or ill-tempered man or woman
*relish: carnal connection with a woman
*cackle or leaky: to blab or reveal secrets
*roaring boy: a noisy, riotous fellow
*flaybottomist: a schoolteacher
*mellow: almost drunk
*dumplin: a short thick man or woman
*tackle:  a man’s genitals
*Friday-face:  a dismal countenance (Friday being a day of abstinence.)
*French leave: to go off without taking leave of the company
*Frenchified: infected with venereal disease.
*Negligee: a woman’s undressed gown,
*buss: a kiss “kissing and bussing differ both in this, We busse our wantons,
but our wives we kisse! (Robert Herrick, “Hesperides,” 1648) from buss, 1570.

To see the NaPoWriMo prompt or to participate, go here: http://www.napowrimo.net/day-seventeen-2/

Although I doubt this poem will prompt much heavy breathing, I’m posting it on the WordPress site as well: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/breath/

Double Snap!

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Double Snap!

“Clap hands,” they said, “Clap hands
to the music,” and we all obeyed
that 50’s and 60’s band
that we might have followed anywhere–
out the door and across the street into the ocean
like geriatric children following a Pied Piper.

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As we had when the music was new,
we gyrated and sweated,
bumped hips, jitterbugged,
did swing and wild improvisation

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at Palapa Joe’s.
Joe himself barefoot at the keyboard,

a bookend to Denise at the drums.
And we? We are as hot
as this February night.

“Oh to be young again” is not in anyone’s vocabulary,
for we are teenagers again below the Tropic of Cancer.
In the ocean or in front of it,
sipping the sunset from tiny cobalt glasses,

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watching children move toy trucks down sandy roads
of their imagination

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and teenagers elfin in the surf.

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The sun falling falling farther northwards every day
until that March day we waited for every year when it sank
directly behind the offshore island.

Snap. It is gone.
Double snap. So are we.

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Here’s more of a photo story about Palapa Joe’s if you are interested:
 https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/02/28/last-open-mike-of-the-season-at-palapa-joes/

The NaPoWriMo prompt was “double” and the WordPress prompt was “snap” so I combined them today…Here are links to those prompt sites in case you want to play along:
http://www.napowrimo.net/day-fifteen-2/
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/snap/

Lesson from the Garden of Eden––WP Daily Prompt/Writers Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge

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Lesson from the Garden of Eden

When Adam tripped on Eden’s portal,
Eve could not resist a chortle.
She found she loved this new sensation––
her first encounter with jubilation.

Day by day, she watched him jiggle.
Without clothes, he made her sniggle.
Meanwhile, he admired her wiggle
and secretly, he learned to giggle.

Day in, day out, behind their knuckles
they resorted to these chuckles
privately, not knowing the other
also had tee-hees to smother.

Where things before had made her bitter,
now they simply made Eve titter.
And when occasionally they bickered,
instead of shouting, Adam snickered.

Thus did laughter come to save
these first children of the cave,
and when they became ma and pa,
they taught their children to guffaw.

Then each succeeding generation
increased their sense of jubilation––
enjoying each others’ flubs and gaffes
with chuckles, chortles and belly laughs!

As friends and family still use humor
to solve discord and dispel rumor,
would that nations forever after
Replaced their guns and missiles with laughter.

 

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https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/giggle/

https://silverthreading.com/2016/04/13/writers-quote-wednesday-writing-challenge-laughter/

Misplaced Meandering

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Misplaced Meandering

I’m asking you who is not lost in this life––
which child or mother or husband or wife––
our direction determined by machines and signs
that know our direction, but not our designs?
I think I’d prefer a simpler way
where I could just drift through each hour and day
turning right at the blue house, then going by guesses
without Google maps or those damn GPS’s.

Remember when maps could be lifted and folded?
If you were berated, corrected or scolded,
your wife was the one who said you’d gone wrong,
not a voice from your dash interrupting the song––
“Long Way Home” on your player, crooned by Tom Waits––
as your TomTom says you’ve gone through too many gates.
No more do we lollygag, detour or amble.
We can’t program Garmin to dawdle or ramble.

Lost in our motor home, lost in our car
though we know precisely just where we are.
Lost in our lives, no direction our own
with nüvi on our dashboard and Waze on our phone.
They point us in their choice of route and direction
while never inquiring of our predilection
for scenery, museums, or byways or diners.
When spontaneity beckons, they are decliners.

Remember those trips when you were a kid
when your dad would pull over whenever you bid,
take off on a side road to see what was there
and wend this way and that way with nary a care?
Now that sort of journey is bound to excite me,
but to take off today with these systems to fight me?
The thought of their voices is bound to incite me
to turn them all off and scream, “You can just bite me!”

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/misplaced/

Mr. Green Jeans Takes on Monsanto

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Captain Kangaroo promotional postcard, 1961

Mister Green Jeans Takes on Monsanto

David confronting the giant,
he has both the hammer and the stepladder
with which to confront the colossus.
Once the school bell rings
and I have vanished halfway through
Captain Kangaroo’s lilting theme music
that signals that one last commercial––

barreling out our front door
towards the vintage wooden elementary school
that leans so close
across the gravel street that divides us
that I can start out on the first ring of the final morning warning bell
and be in my seat on the second floor
by the time the last dong sounds––

Mr. Green Jeans is going to take on Monsanto
in a wrestling match––
transformed by his color
and that ladder
into a Jolly Green Giant
who will save the world
for future generations.

Of course, this is a dream I had.
Each brave nation not our own
must take on the task for itself––
saving the world one enlightened country at a time.
Anyway, even in fantasy, any kid of the fifties and early sixties
knows Mr. Green Jeans was a handyman, not a horticulturist.
It is poetic license that wrote this poem.

See Mr. Green Jeans here:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_nrfpPcxQw