Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

World Like a White Stomach

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DSC06818
Painting and photo by jdb

World like a White Stomach, Red Optional

My world does not move in circles
like your world.
It is so small I stand above it, head in space,
while a two-colored rainbow stretches in my wake—
its straight line an echo
of my unbent trajectory into the cosmos.

Three navels has my world
for the three births it delivers me to:
into this world, into myself and out of it.

Each is an adventure more easily seen
in a surreal world where things
do not behave.
Fish swim out of  water.
Birds more commonly walk.

In the distance is the mystery
of different worlds.
What if we were born next time
to a different universe?

Stop and go.
The green of earth.
The red that’s not our only option
as we look away, searching
for the countless worlds beyond.

 

 

This is an extensive rewrite of a poem I wrote and posted three years ago. The prompt today was surreal.

I.D.

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Identification

When Freud talked about the ego, super-ego and the id—
all the different parts of us within which humans hid,
(all the things that made you “you” and things that made me “me”)
he thought that he’d identified all that there could be.

But if he were living, he would add a chapter or two
to say that id, ego and super-ego wouldn’t do.
There’s a punctuation omission I fear he failed to see.
It is that vital part of us that’s labeled the i.d.!

It used to be that I possessed my own identity
and showing up was proof enough that I was really me,
but now “me” is not me enough, and I find it hard
to face that I am only me when carrying a card.

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 


The prompt word today is identity.

Trademark Quality

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Trademark Quality

My smile is not my trademark and neither is my hair.
If you check my waistline, you’ll find it isn’t there.
My clothes are not distinctive. I don’t drive a fancy car,
and if you rate my cooking, you’ll find it under par.
My figure is too stocky. My dogs are ill-behaved.
When I sang karaoke, nobody ever raved.
So my defining quality, now that you’ve thought to query,
is that I am perfect—perfectly ordinary!

 

The prompt today is Trademark.

Cacophony

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Over the years, I’ve written many pieces that make use of the word cacophony. This is one I’d forgotten, but having reread it, it is my favorite. Written more than three years ago, I’d like to share it with you again. Go HERE to see it.

 

The word today cacophony.

When is Enough, Enough?

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  When Is Enough Enough?

To want all or to want nothing are both dangerous. Those who want all are the conquerors and exploiters and power lords who have brought the world to the state it is in today. They will exploit the poor and the weak but get their feelings of the most power from exploiting those equal to them in power. The world is a game to these people and we are all pawns.

But to want nothing may lead to despair. True, in a few holy men, it has been the path to enlightenment; but for those living within the world and not to the side of it, to want nothing can lead to apathy and powerlessness.

I think the true enlightenment lies in wanting enough and then wanting enough for others as well. This doesn’t have to be done by charity. It can be done by the way we vote, the way we treat our neighbors, the way we invest our money and the way we conduct our own businesses. It can be done by the way we bargain for a trinket on the beach or handle wrong change.

Sylvia Plath was probably correct in her statement, “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” When the richest woman in the world commits suicide or the richest men in the world exploit those living hand-to-mouth, one has to wonder what great lack they are trying to fill and whether in fact they have ever discovered the secret of what the world is really about.

 

This is a rewrite of an essay written three years ago. The prompt today was enlighten. 

 

 

Cat Napped

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IMG_1990Kittens reacting to Morrie and Diego, jealousy barking at the closed gate that separates them from their arch rivals, the cats.

Cat Napped

My dear little creatures, I did not expect
that your lives and mine would intersect.
I didn’t know in the hush of my life
your antics would make such a mush of my life.

I spout silly names like “kitty” and “baby.”
Have I gone dotty? I must admit, “Maybe.”
I’m given to lying prone on my bed
letting the boy kitten claw at my head,

combing my hair with his kittenish claws
as his sisters cavort without mercy or pause,
biting my fingers and licking my knees.
I let them assault me wherever they please.

I find them adorable and entertaining.
Besotted with kittens, my interest is waning
in matters less feline. I neglect the dogs.
Leave them to possums and squirrels and frogs.

I feed them and throw an occasional ball,
but lately, obsessions more easily fall
into matters of cat, I’m embarrassed to say
it’s entirely possible one day I may

turn into that cat lady, brunt of those jokes
told by low-lifes in bars and other brash blokes
making fun of those who, although different, perhaps,
get pleasure enough from cats on our laps!!!

 

The prompt word today is expect.

Released

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Released

All night long I follow scripts written by some hand
perhaps belonging to a self that consciousness has banned.
Fresh from dreams, I feel released from tasks committed to
as I remember other jobs that I’m obliged to do.
Who knows if dreams are showing us those things we could have done—
those things we have forgotten with the dawning of the sun.
If only I remembered that world that fades away,
perhaps I’d face a very different sort of day.
Instead, I slip into the role my life has led me to,
like forcing naked feet into a more confining shoe.

 I wonder if these dreams were brought to light if they’d show more
of potential lives where I live closer to my core.
Perhaps these stories I concoct, labelling them as lore,
are simply other lives I live on a lower floor.
When I descend into my dreams, maybe I go to ponder
all those other me’s whose gifts I have chosen to squander.
Could it be in death that I’m released to find a goal
in the bargain basement of the building of my soul—
to find another path where I may once more start a quest
towards a self just one step closer to my very best?

 


The prompt today is release. Once again, I’ve edited and reblogged a poem written three and a half years ago. A fine way to find time to edit and since I never remember these poems, perhaps if you’ve followed my blog for this long, you’ve forgotten them, too.

Brave New World

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Brave New World

We must be brave to face a world
where so much pain has been unfurled,
such scathing words, such vitriol
that we’ve already built the wall
that separates brother from brother,
that keeps us all from one another.

Too many guns and too much hate
until we fear that it’s too late
to ever form a world united.
Too many creeds have been recited
based on fear and hate and greed
instead of what we really need.

True bravery is based on giving—
assisting others in their living.
Where is the leader with a belief
that there’s a way to bring relief?
One able to bring unity
to build a world community.

The prompt today was brave.

Risky Business

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Risky Business

 How have you found your way into my dreams,
ripping my comfort apart at the seams?
I thought I’d escaped to back rooms of my self
but still I find thoughts of you stacked on a shelf
carefully obscured both in front and above
by other less perilous memories of love.

You walk nonchalantly into the room
that I have just cleared with a cloth and a broom
of other dangers and sadnesses not
knowing that I have been once again caught.
Now I hide out behind walls at the back
where all of my worst fears reside in a stack.

Cowering here as you stride through the place
that your very presence has turned dark and base.
How could I have loved such a frightening soul,
the box of my heart turned into a bowl
with all of my secrets and weakness revealed—
things that I now know I should have kept sealed?

There you sit quietly, perched on a chair,
one hand on the desk top, one hand on your hair
writing cruel words—I know about me.
I ease my way over, hoping to see,
but the paper is empty, your ink has turned clear
making improbable all that I fear.

As now I remember that I let you in,
forgetting all else in the charm of your grin.
The joy of your hand as it guided me sure
across the dance floor—all that allure
that kept me involved in the surface of you
overlooking the risks as most of us do.

If I’d had an x-ray taken of you
when our romance was shiny and new
I might have seen sooner your dangerous zone
and taken a detour and left you alone.
And perhaps now my dreams would be placid and calm
so I’d sleep without worry, sleep without qualm.

I might not have moved off to the edge of the world,
might still have been sleeping, never unfurled.
Perhaps it’s these dangers that make us let go
of all of the comforts of worlds that we know
and send us out elsewhere to discover a self
we’d have never found sitting safe on a shelf.

 

This again is a rewrite of a poem written three years ago. The prompt word today was risky.

Burnt Offering

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Version 2

In some cultures, loyalty extends far beyond the fair or rational, but no one controls what happens after tradition is satisfied:

Burnt Offering
(The Virtuous Wife)

This suttee

is easier to bear with eyes closed.

She falls upon his burning pyre,

puts out his flame,

grateful for short rituals.

The pyre,

the bone,

ashes on the sheets.

He cannot touch her.

She is air.

She floats his breath.

She tracks his carbon

down the hall.

She walks

out to the Avenue,

wearing  sheerest black

with nothing but a cauldron underneath.

Her fire.

She picks a stranger

dusted by the road,

leans him against

shadows

in  the tall grass,

spills her steam,

lifts into

penumbra

above shaded hill.

The prompt today was loyal.