Traveling Troupe of Players
(When Things Go Worse)
When you show up to rehearse
remembering neither word nor verse,
it does no good to rave and curse,
to wring your hands and throw your purse;
for though your cast mates might grow terse,
just remember, it could be worse.
You could be riding in a hearse!
Sport Retort
When faced with talk of games and sport,
I seldom have cause to retort.
For dribbling, sparring, touching down
raise no emotions but a frown.
The games I play are just of mind
Less physically taxing and more kind.
Using tongues and brains to spar,
I am more likely under par
than when I hit a pock-marked ball
off of the course to hit a wall,
bounce off and into someone’s car
to be transported to regions far.
I have not thought to scream out, “Fore!”
My terminology’s as poor,
I fear, as my coordination,
I will not, ever, stun the nation
with my prowess with balls or bats,
parallel bars, hurdles or mats.
Likewise, I have no interest in
watching others skate and spin,
touch balls down or thrust a fist.
When it comes to sports, I must insist
when the tube depicts each bout,
I am forgiven for running out!!!
(Thanks for the loan of the golf balls, Jan!)
The Prompt: Are you a sports fan? If not, tell us why.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/fandom/
Bad Timing
On my birthday in July, my true love gave to me
a coupon for a ski trip and a real live Christmas tree.
Chocolates when I’m dieting, sad songs when I am gloomy.
A grand piano, though my new apartment’s not too roomy.
The week that “Save the Animals” appointed me their chair,
he bought me a new winter coat of lynx and llama hair.
He brings home ice cream in the cold, hot cocoa in the summer.
When I broke my tooth, the peanut brittle was a bummer.
Though his gifts are generous, my thanks are often mimed,
for I’m speechless over just how badly all of them are timed!
The reason why we are not wed is so hard to relate.
I had the cake, the rings, the gown. We set the time and date.
The groom showed up and waited as I walked down the aisle.
My wedding dress was finest lace, my undergarments lisle.
I’d planned each detail out with care and left no stone unturned.
Just one detail left to him–you’d think I would have learned!
For when I went to say “I do” to this man I adore,
they found our wedding license had lapsed two weeks before!
The Prompt––10,000 Spoons Tell your own verse, stanza, or story of a badly-timed annoyance.
In The Dark
Lush Night
Remember that delicious walking, arms linked, down the middle of the gravel road in your pajamas at five in the morning when you were twelve? That first slumber party in your safe small town when you all stayed up all night for the first time in your lives? That eerie first sight of the sun coming up when your head had never hit a pillow since it went down?
You knew then for the first time the delicious pleasures of being a night owl— of finding time that everyone else was wasting through dreams. And you have been an aficionado of night ever since. All of your term papers and exams studied for at the last minute, all night long. Books written, poems written mostly in the dark while towns and cities around you slept. That power of having all of your time for yourself with not a chance of phones ringing. Some magic happening once you had the world to yourself so ever afterwards you have survived on as little sleep as possible.
During your party years, dancing and drinking till three, then going for breakfast with the single crowd and driving straight to school at six. You were invulnerable.
Even married, sneaking out of bed once he’d fallen asleep and working in your basement studio all night long, sometimes sneaking back to bed before he awakened, at other times caught. “It’s nine in the morning! Have you been up all night again?” Feeling that little terror, like a vampire caught by light.
Then at 54, with no more husband, no more job necessary, with a new country and a new studio above ground, guilty pleasures no longer needed to be hidden— watching light after light go out as you sat piecing art together in your studio—until suddenly,
impossibly, light after light went on again so you were going to bed as your neighbor was arising to start his day.
Then, improbably, at 62, internet romance entered your midnight-and-after world as
every night you were serenaded to sleep from 1500 miles away by an equally night-addicted lover bard at two or three or four a.m.— or whenever pillow talk led to it. Skype became your love letters and your trysting spot ––night swaddling that intimate invisible union through the dark air that had always been magic for you, but which now joined you to another instead of sending you into the single space where you united with that within you which you kept separate from the world.
Now as always, united or alone, at night you know exactly what it is you want and live it, with no busy world to lead you elsewhere.
This is a rewrite of an earlier response to this prompt, and here is yet another piece i wrote on this topic: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/06/25/re-tired/
And here is another one about waking up in the morning!: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/02/25/head-shots/
The prompt today was, “Are you a night owl or an early bird?
Rating Dating
Some men seem to run their dating game like it’s a race,
whereas for their date this doesn’t seem to be the case.
If so, I must advise the guy to try to slow his pace
lest the lady feel that she must slow him down with mace!
She may be superficial, while he is way too smart;
or he may adore motocross while she’s a fan of art.
She’s olfactorily sensitive and he just let a fart.
Such opposites do not attract in the affairs of heart.
In chick flicks when a date goes wrong, it is always funny.
She runs into a former love or he runs out of money.
But no matter how things go, the endings are all sunny.
By the credits, she is “dear” and he is always “honey.”
In real life, when it comes to love, I prefer to view it.
Much easier to say you want it than to really do it.
The problem is if either of you chooses to eschew it,
then the other one of you must admit that they blew it.
So for the couplet, I’ll admit that yes, true love is groovy;
but when it comes to dating, I’ll just settle for the movie!!!
The Prompt––Third Rate Romance: Tell us about your funniest romantic relationship disaster. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/third-rate-romance/
After Vespers
I arrived home with much ado,
removed a small stone from my shoe,
took off my girdle, straightened my hat,
smoothed my gloves and kissed the cat!
I believe in proper things––
all the joys good breeding brings.
I do not spit, smoke weed or curse.
I carry breath mints in my purse.
I go to church. I tithe and pray.
I brush my teeth three times a day.
But when I went to watch TV,
I found a strange sight greeting me,
for there sitting upon my couch,
next to my little cat treat pouch,
were two small beings––a her and he––
the lady perched on the fellow’s knee.
They both looked up with cool aplomb
as though they hadn’t dropped a bomb
appearing with no invitation.
What’s more, to my great perturbation,
balanced on the lady’s knee
was the chocolate cake I’d meant for me!!!
She took a bite and gave him one,
then turned to me when she was done,
addressing me, though we’d not met.
(I mean, just how rude could one get?)
And what she said in a haughty tone,
perched upon her human throne?
“I’m afraid this cake is rather dry.
I wonder, have you any pie?”
I’ll tell you no more of this story,
for after that, things just got gory.
My opening words would seem most pale
compared to the ending of my tale.
Suffice it then for me to say
the uninvited didn’t stay.
Afterwards, my gloves came off.
I cleared my throat and gave a cough.
I scraped the cake crumbs in the sink,
mixed myself a little drink,
closed the drapes, unplugged the phone
and stretched out on my couch––alone.
As I settled down to Downton Abbey,
I was feeling way less crabby.
Real glad I hid the pie, y’all,
because I sat and ate it all!!!
The Prompt: Unexpected Guests. You walk into your home to find a couple you don’t know sitting in your living room, eating a slice of cake. Tell us what happens next. What a hilarious prompt! I loved writing this one.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/unexpected-guests/
Blogs I Love
There are many blogs I love and read every day they post. Cee, Mark, Red, Marilyn, Calen, Relax, Geek, Zombie, Lydia, Mom, Jane, Anton, Barbwit, Roger, Okcforgottenman, John, Leland, A. Swiss, Chic and a dozen others that have slipped my memory right now–you know who you are. Many I have reblogged articles or poems from, and I rave about them daily, so those are not the blogs I’m going to mention today. Rather, I’d like to mention a blog i just discovered.
“Transcribing Memory” is a relatively new blog. This URL http://transcribingmemory.com/2015/12/14/the-many-twitches-of-fate-that-bring-us-here/ is from today’s entry, but I would suggest going back to the beginning. There are just a few entries. The theme of the blog is a lifetime of journals of a 96-year-old woman, the mother-in-law of the blogger. Together, they are going through the journals that seem to begin in her teenage years. Babu, the grandmother, comments on them, as does the blogger, who does not give her name. The original statements in the journal, the grandmother’s reactions as she reads them and the blogger’s own comments are so tender and insightful. You see the blogger getting closer to and recognizing new connections with her grandmother-in-law, who has lived in the house of the blogger and her husband for their entire marriage. Who hasn’t wanted to peek into someone else’s diary? This is your chance.
The prompt today asks us to list three blogs we’ve read this week that we have loved and to say why. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/press-it/
Crunchy, Soft and Piquant
Potato chips, ketchup and cottage cheese! I imagine this pairing came about by accident one day at a school or church picnic on a too-small plate, and some flavor memory insists there were baked beans and a hamburger on the same plate; but somehow the vital ingredients came to be the salty-crunchy chips, the creamy-soft cheese and the piquant perfection of Hunts Ketchup. (For the uninitiated, the process is to dip the chip in the ketchup and then scoop up the cheese.)
I don’t usually keep potato chips in the house anymore because I can’t be trusted with them, and cottage cheese is so expensive in Mexico that I don’t usually buy it; but when I make a trip to Costco in Guadalajara, invariably I’ll come home with one of their huge containers of cottage cheese and somehow, magically, potato chips appear (If you buy it, they will come) and the house echoes with the strains of some culinary Indian Love Call coming from the heart of my fridge, “When I’m calling you u u u u u u.” And so it is that the unlikely trio are reunited once again, probably late at night when even the dogs are fast asleep and no one is looking.
(This is a rerun of a posting on the same subject two years ago.) And, in case you missed it, potato chips seem to figure predominantly in my postings about guilty pleasures. Here is a different one. Potato chips are so versatile, aren’t they? : https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/11/09/old-sins/
The Prompt: Tell us about a guilty pleasure that you hate to love.https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/hate-to-love/
Stuffed
I lose my glasses, cuss and mutter,
but my worst quality is clutter!
I have a drawer just filled with socks
I never wear. And pans and woks,
old dishes, fondue pots and skewers,
a fourteen-year-old bottle of Dewars
not one friend drinks, much less myself,
sitting there upon my shelf.
Everything I buy just clings.
I can’t seem to part with things!
In boxes on my garage shelves
are all my former castoff selves.
The slides from art shows long ago?
I dread sorting them and so
they remain in plastic crates,
labeled with their types and dates.
Old letters, class notes, tax returns?
I’ve heard that paper easily burns
as well as shreds, yet still I wait.
Years pass as I equivocate.
They might be needed someday so,
get rid of them? I just say no!
My studio is filled with things.
My jewelry drawers with bracelets, rings.
My closets stuffed with different sizes,
shelves stacked with future gifts and prizes.
Snow boots although it never snows
anywhere this woman goes.
A safari hat with veil
hangs upon a closet nail
along with wet suit, snorkel, fins,
and other useless hoarding sins.
My kitchen is a spice museum.
So many spices, I can’t see um.
Fenugreek and capsicum
that I was given by my mum
so long ago they have no taste,
green olives and tomato paste
well past the date they should be used.
Yes, my house should be perused
and sorted out, I must admit,
instead, I sit and write of it!
I know some folks clear out their closets,
but me? I only make deposits!
The Prompt: Flawed––What is your worst quality? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/flawed/
Where did they go? I think they headed south!
This poem was written during a Skype conversation with my longtime friend Marti, as I tried to describe my earlier post about my (ahem) breasts! I started penning it and then just had to continue. If you haven’t already, you should read the poem in the below URL first, then come back to this one!
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/12/11/keeping-abreast/
Flopped Selfie
I did a selfie of my boobs—clad most decently.
The problem is I’m 68 and did it recently!
I only had two-dozen views—not many. Even worse,
only eleven “liked” them! Perhaps I should rehearse
the proper angle I should use, and maybe use a filter.
What’s more, I have just noticed that my right boob is off-kilter.
I’ve not the right equipment to star as fashion’s slut,
for my boobs will never measure up to Kim Kardashian’s butt!
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/if-i-ruled-the-world/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 