Tag Archives: Daily Post

Sentimental Journey

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The Smell of Curry

Would that sentiment were only
positive and never lonely––
but all emotions of the world
in sentiment are tightly curled.
Every  memory we cherish
is doubly edged with “live” and “perish.”
In every city, country, land––
bad and good go hand in hand.

The blend of cardamom and lentil
always makes me sentimental.
Odors of turmeric and its ilk,
garam masala and coco milk.
Curry spices being roasted,
degree of peppers being boasted,
chickpeas, carrots, potatoes, rice––
stirring in each thing that’s nice.

What do I think of when I smell
and taste that it is going well?
Bombay and wedding saris thin
sliding down my youthful skin.
Visions of a midnight ride
to cages with young girls inside
sold by their parents and then resold
nightly for a bit of gold.

Traffic, sitar music, fingers
scooping curry––all this lingers.
The beauty of that winsome song
that showed me where the world’s gone wrong.
His action, swift, unthinking, curt
of small coins cast into the dirt
to deflect those who beg and bleat,
surrounding us in every street.

Palaces and then the clash
of children in a world of trash,
the refuse of this giant city
the world they lived in—what a pity.
Back when traveling was new,
experiences were so few
that India changed my life forever.
So, will I forget it?  Never.

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

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

No Perfection in the Universe

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If my bedroom were to open onto the beach side of my rental, this would be my early morning scene:

(Click on first picture, then on arrows to enlarge photos and view. When you’ve viewed all four pictures, click on X on upper left of your screen to return to my posting)

The only sounds I would hear? Gulls, the wash of waves on the shore, Bobino’s mute plea to be fed. But, in fact, my bedroom window which must be kept open for circulation, faces onto the street and at 8 o’clock, my reality is this:

No Perfection in the Universe

After only four hours’ sleep,
my slumber should be sound and deep;
but very early in the day,
mufflers seem to be passé.

My window opens to the street
to try to beat the daily heat,
so the sounds of ATV’s
enter freely with the breeze.

When motorcycles rev and roar
just outside my bedroom door
and trucks come rumbling two by two––
there is nothing I can do

but grab my computer and write my blog
when I should be sleeping like a log.
It’s true I might be way less surly
if I got to bed more early,

but you see it’s not to be
for when the bars all close at three
the motorcycles are just as loud
their drivers young and motor-proud.

They shout and roar and spin their wheels.
Their music beats and thumps and peals
as they do one pass or more
right outside my bedroom door.

Outside the other side of my rental
all the sounds are elemental.
The surf’s loud roar is more relaxing,
but here the engine roars are taxing!

So when you picture my vacation,
just think of the daily ration
of engine angst that I confess
and perhaps you’ll envy less.

The parade of mufflerless motorcycles, cars and revving trucks begins at eight a.m.  Here is one minute of traffic passing in front of my house.  The blue wall with the open door and window is mine.

(Click on first picture, then on arrows to enlarge photos and view.When you’ve viewed all 11 pictures, click on X on upper left of your screen to return to my posting.)

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

One Word? Absurd!

25 Replies

One Word? Absurd!

In truth, if I may be so bold,
these one-word prompts just leave me cold.
They do not give a hint to me
of what the topic’s meant to be.
If I want a prompt so curt,
so brief, so blunt, so short and pert,
I could go to a dictionary;
but one word simply doesn’t carry
enough thought to jog my mind.
I do not like prompts of this kind.
So WordPress please just heed my plea
and send a sentence prompt to me.
Then I’ll shut up and cease my rant.
But answer one word prompts? I can’t!!!!

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

The Secret Life of Gardeners

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The Secret Life of Gardeners

My gardener of fourteen years
has a stern unsmiling wife and grown children
that I used to know well.
I set his morning coffee on the terrace table

and there is some secret
twining through the dense thunbergia vine
that causes the flowers
to nod their heads.

Later, the man who does not know I watch
drinks his morning coffee grown tepid in the cup,
coughs gently (or is it a laugh?) behind the hand
that cradles the telephone,

sly smile betraying a secret love
as clearly as the small child
who sometimes accompanies him to work.
Some senora’s, he tells me,

but the child
has his eyes and solid legs,
his shy manner,
lives with his mother and her husband,

but sits on my steps with a sugar cookie––
betraying no more secrets
on purpose
than his father does.


(This is an extensive rewrite of a poem written three years ago. Since this is the fourth time I’ve written to this prompt in three years, it seems fair to do a rewrite on this round!)

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

Leapin’ Lizards

12 Replies

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Leapin’Lizards

Iguanas, lizards, gekkos, turtles, toads and frogs and snakes
are not the things that we should fear in life, for goodness sakes.
These creatures in their own domains present no awful threat.
Just leave them where they are, for none were made to be a pet.

Our tame lives seek to steal the wildness from such natural things,
but wildness is not what curtailing wildness ever  brings.
We must learn to leap ourselves––by entering our lives
and breaking free from prisons–our cages, pens or hives––

to buzz the world around us and see what we can find
to release us from our lethargy and the ties that bind.
If you do not know the way, just go and find a child
and follow him or her to places where they keep the wild.

The beach or any sandpile may serve to be your clues
of how to color your own life with more vivid hues.
A thing as simple as wet sand can take a child to
places where you had forgot you could be taken to.

Castle moats or rivers, dams, mountain tops or caves
huge mansions that are sacrifices to that evening’s waves.
Our wild imaginations are where we all should go
to find a little wildness when our lives are slow.

Go find a dog to walk with if you need a pet
then take him out to some wild beach–and both of you, get wet!
Wildness is for doing, not for sitting on a shelf.
So free the creatures pining there and find some for yourself!

(Click on first photo to enlarge and view gallery)


Those baby sea turtles are being set free, not being collected. Happy Leap Year!!!
(If you want to know more about the release of the baby turtles, go HERE.)

This poem was written partially in response to this strange strange news from my home town that was sent to me by two friends yesterday. Read about it here:  http://www.chapala.com/webboard/index.php?/topic/60430-tiger-in-la-floresta/

It was also in response to the prompt “Leap,” in honor of this being the extra day in this leap year!  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/leap/

Packing Light

11 Replies

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Packing Light

On a desert island, abandoned but alive,
with aids to my survival numbering only five,
I’d need a contraption to desalinate water.
Then a tent to sit under once the day got hotter.
But while I’m in the shade, a solar panel would be nice
to plug in my computer and also a device
to connect it to a satellite so I could Skype my friend
to send fast transportation to bring this to an end!

The Prompt––Five Items: what are the five items you must have on a deserted island? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/five-items/

Chillin’

11 Replies

(Click on first photo to enlarge and arrows to view all images.)

Chillin’

If I were the queen of time, in charge of all its flow,
I’d speed it at the dentist, while dessert would progress slow.
Each bite of pie, with me in charge, would take at least a minute.
An ice cream cone would last an hour while I enjoyed what’s in it.

If I controlled the seconds, the hours and days and weeks,
a hummingbird’s flight would slow way down to afford us peeks.
A fine ballet would then commence whenever they flew by––
each move so delicate and slow––detectable by the eye.

House work would vanish quickly as the clicking of a finger,
while footrubs, hugs and kisses would be the things that linger.
The time between waking and sleep would flow as swift as water
If I were grandmother of hours–time passing’s favorite daughter.

If I could slice time thick or thin and serve it out in portions,
I’d speed up each painful death as well as birth’s contortions.
I’d slow down bullets leaving guns and thus destroy their power.
I’d slow how fast the ice cube melts, the lifetime of each flower.

Sunsets would last for hours and time with friends for days,
so we’d enjoy together each evening’s parting rays.
Plane rides with their narrow seats and no room for our knees
would pass as fast as possible–as quickly as you’d please.

Time before a party would go slow to afford time
for the cleaning of the house, the cutting of each lime.
And once each flower is put in place, the buffet table done,
time’s pace would be restored again and revelry begun.

When we need more or less of it, time would be there for us.
Our favorite songs would be strung out. Braggarts would never bore us.
There’d be more time for writing, for eating and the arts.
Headaches would pass in seconds. So would  anger, angst and farts!

If I controlled the hours,  the world would be run smoother.
Instead of causing us much angst, time would be our soother.
If I could dole out time so it was spread on thin or thickly,
perhaps I could have managed for this poem to end more quickly!

The Prompt: Pace Oddity––If you could slow down an action that usually zooms by, or speed up an event that normally drags on, which would you choose, and why?https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/pace-oddity/

Proud Flesh

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Proud Flesh

If pride cometh before a fall,
it’s best if we aren’t proud at all.
Without pride, we’ll scale the heights––
take all the medals, win all the fights.

Hubris seems to be passé–
a quality that ruins our day.
So lest you wish your luck to crumble,
best practice how to be more humble!

 

Proud flesh is an excessive growth of granulation tissue that has the appearance of cauliflower. It usually develops over an open wound, and most often occurs in areas of excessive tension and motion. The swollen flesh surrounding a healing wound.http://www.doctorramey.com/proud-flesh/

The Prompt: Pat on the Back–Tell someone you’re proud of just how proud you are.

Dare I Tell How I Excel?

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                                                judy 3

                                                     Dare I Tell How I Excel?

No matter how much we might admire ourselves, there is something off-putting about revealing the fact. For some reason, by pointing out our own good points, it makes others less likely to admire them.  The one place where this fact of life is not true is in the resume,  where we can revel fully in revealing to the world how absolutely wonderful we are.

Some of us exercise our right to brag by the family wall.  Here we can display our successes as well as the successes of the families we have raised and  dynasties we have sired via photographs that show us at our most beautiful and successful periods of our lives.  Pictures with presidents or other celebrities,  awards and impressive vacations may all rub shoulders on this family wall.  By placing them in a prominent place–in entryways, offices, studies or staircases––we insure that they call attention to themselves without having to actually do so orally.  Thus we retain our humble natures while more subtly revealing to the world what superior human beings we really are.

The Christmas letter is another invention wherein we seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to toot our own horn.  The result is probably a lot of mail that, once quickly scanned if read at all, is quickly relegated to lighting the Yule Log. How much good news goes up in conflagration during the holiday season has never been calculated, but I can imagine that a good many gain a bit of satisfaction by sending these notices of how well their friends’ lives are going up in smoke.

So, when given the opportunity by WordPress to extol my own virtues, I must demur.  Luckily, in this cyber age, we need not call attention to our own virtues, for Google is always there to do it for us.  If we are lucky enough to sport an uncommon name, both the laudatory and shameful facts of our lives are there for all to see for the price of a few moment’s time and a little patience in sorting through the hundreds of thousands of bits of information available when our names are typed into the subject bar.

It is true that most of these bits of information probably do not apply to us at all, but the search for the ones that do can be as satisfying as a scavenger hunt, and the prize is, that in addition to all the good bits, we get to dig out the little bits of scandal or failures as well.  And who doesn’t like a little bad news sprinkled in with the good?  It gives a certain flavor to a life, as well as comfort that perhaps our own life–as boring, humdrum and plain as it may seem in comparison––isn’t quite so bad after all.

The Prompt: Toot Your Horn–Most of us are excellent at being self-deprecating, and are not so good at the opposite. Tell us your favorite thing about yourself.

 

Belly Talk

16 Replies
Version 2

(Abdominal areas  in shadow appear much larger than they actually are. Really!)

Belly Talk

Stomach, darling, first of all I’d like to tell you how indispensable you are.  Literally, you are irreplaceable in my life.  Aside from digesting my food, you separate my waist from my chest and keep my belts from straying.  You warn me about absolutely revolting subjects as well as food and are handy for nudging ahead in tight crowds.

That said, I need to bring up one large touchy matter.  For all the good you do in this world, do you need to be quite so large?  Lately, for instance, I’ve watched you extending your territory–venturing out into one plump donut extending around my back.  This makes looking at my rear view in the mirror extremely distressing.  “I never look at myself in back,” one friend told me years ago, but darling, that had been evident for years–testified to by the tight snarl of hair in the middle of her head.

But I digress.  You’re  awfully quiet.  I’m a bit worried that I might have offended.  But, the topic of magnitude of sound being brought up, I’ll continue.  Were you aware that you have taken to communicating with me at inopportune times?  A small growl after midnight to remind me of today’s brownies hiding in their microwave storage space safe from ants and marauding family members and friends?  That’s fine…and probably the real reason you were given a voice in the first place. But that long low rumble increasing in volume in the middle of the significant pause in the dialogue of the movie playing in a hushed movie theater?  Totally unacceptable. Other times your voice is uncalled for?  At the dentist’s office and in the throes of a long passionate kiss.  In teachers’ conferences and at ladies bridge afternoons.  No. No. No.  You are not invited in this capacity.  Yes, digest the margarita, the popcorn or the rich dessert.  Comment upon it? No.

That’s it, dear stomach.  I appreciate you. I know you are vital to my health and happiness.  You provide me with countless pleasures–those pleasures increasing with the years.  But, sweet middle of mine, if you could see your way clear to not increasing at a rate commensurate with my pleasures, I would appreciate it very much.  Oh.  Talking again, I see.  And probably not listening.  Oh well.  I hear your message loud and clear.  A pint of triple chocolate extra fudge gelato in the freezer?  Well, honey, this time you are speaking my language.  No one is around.  And it is totally acceptable!


The Prompt: Shape up or Ship out–Write a letter to the personality trait you like least, convincing it to shape up or ship out. Be as threatening, theatrical, or thoroughly charming as is necessary to get the job done.

 

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/shape-up-or-ship-out/