Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

Three Lunes / Three Loons

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Colored pencil drawing by Betty Petersen, photo by Judy

Yes, it’s April Fool’s Day, but it is also  the first day of NaPoWriMo, where participants are asked to write a poem a day.  This is the fourth year I’ve participated. Today’s prompt is to write a lune, a three-line poem with a 5-3-5 syllable count.  In addition, most days I’ll also be following the WordPress one-word prompt, which today is the word “colorful.”

Three Lunes

I search for yellow,
whereas blue
comes looking for me!

Life paints a black frame
around white
to draw our eyes there.

That fuchsia flower
in the pond
floats on life and death.


Three Loons

The crying of loons
in chill air
turns the water blue.

 

 

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

Refresh Me

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Refresh Me

If you hope to make conjunction
with me at your little function,
serve potato chips with dip
and also, I’d appreciate a sip
of Diet Coke or Seven Up
in a waxy paper cup.

No one likes a fete that lacks
sweet or salty little snacks.
Pizza, nachos and popcorn, too,
are appropriate things to chew.
Leave caviar to lords and kings.
I’d much rather have onion rings.

Refreshments are an absolute must.
Without them, parties are a bust.
And any date becomes an upper
when it includes a little supper.
So if you wish to win my heart,
my stomach is the place to start.

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

Disparity

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Disparity

The moods of blogs have verity
that ranges wide from a to zee.
From pathos to hilarity,
the mundane to rare oddity.

Some blogs practice idolatry
which some see as frivolity
when all they read and all they see
is film stars and celebrity.

But I say we should all be free
to write about whatever we
want to think about or be
without the charge of heresy.

I applaud the rarity
of blogs that flaut disparity
and flood the interweb’s wide sea
with a rich diversity.

So show yourself for what you be
as you are formed––from mother’s knee
to what the world has made of thee.
Express your angst or jollity

for all the world to share and see.
for no entrance price or fee.
This cyber world should be kept free
in thought and cost–that is my plea!

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

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

 

Nerve

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The prompt today was “nerve.” Here is where that one word led my mind.
 Version 3

Curve

I admire those who have the courage and the verve
to choose a filmy cut-out dress that shows off every curve,
for I admit I have neither the figure nor the nerve!

  There is no scale for bravery, no ruler and no gauge
for those who memorize their lines and stand up on the stage
reciting without benefit of the printed page.

Some men face off lions in the lion’s den,
and women face off dangers from the selfsame men,
while I sit home and face the dangers of the brush and pen.

Some may find their courage in the finest wine––
others at the bottom of a tankard or a stein,
but my imagination is where I go for mine.

Conviction is so easy when it’s written on a page
unhindered by imprisonment in cell, compound or cage
or the threat of facing zealotry’s cruel rage.

Some of us are lucky in the details of our birth:
our health, our parents  and our looks–our beauty and our girth,
but most of all the place that we are given on this earth.

There are others not so lucky, born to famine and to drought
or to repressive governments where those who have the clout
give no room for self-expression or enquiry or doubt.

This is where it takes pure nerve to stand up to the strong
who’ve exercised the cruelty of power for so long
to say at threat of life and limb what you feel is wrong.

I say these things in safety from a place that is secure.
I need not rage in silence.  I need not be demure
or face punishment for thoughts that others deem impure.

I’m lucky in the problems that I face from day to day,
for nothing that I want to drink or wear or do or say
is labeled with a “thou shalt not” or listed as a “Nay.”

I admire those who have the courage and the verve
to speak truth as they see it and face the cruel blade’s curve,
for I admit I have neither the valor nor the nerve!

Version 2

(For Raif Badawi–– sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashings for writing his beliefs on his blog and Ali Mohamed al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon, and Abdullah al-Zaher—all minors sentenced  to death by beheading simply for attending demonstrations.  Incredible to realize I would be put to death for what I am saying right now if I lived in Saudi Arabia or Egypt.)

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

Looking Out, Looking In

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Version 2(Click on first photo and arrows to view enlarged gallery.)

Looking Out, Looking In

Folks look in my window every hour every day
when they view my photographs or what I have to say.
It isn’t that I have a need to publicize or flout.
They are just a way to let a part of myself out.

When I’m outside the room of me, looking here and there,
it’s like I am a voyeur. I pry and prod and stare.
The window might steam over, obscuring what I see.
Then I wipe it clear again to see what I might be.

I really just write what I see as I’m peering in.
Each failure and each triumph, each kindness and each sin.
Each interior arrangement has some ugliness, some beauties.
I hold inside life’s pleasures, her sadness and her duties.

Each poem that I’ve written—be it whisper, be it shout––
is a way for me to let a part of myself out.
And if you choose to view them and see where I have been,
You’re standing at my window with permission to look in.

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

Found Poetry I

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Now that I’m hooked again on “found art” I decided to fantasize about finding shards of poetry along with the objects I find along the way.  This one is silly, and came, somehow, from the WordPress daily prompt “dirt.”

(Click on first picture and arrow to enlarge both photos.)

 

Thirst

(This poem found fastened to a pail
by a spigot on a desert trail.)

When he retired, he bought a yacht
to go and see the things he’d not
seen those years when he’d been caught
behind a desk, perusing naught.

Sailing for years under the mast,
his fishing line he cast and cast––
happier than in the past,
roving over oceans vast.

But when he’d perused all that he
could see of oceans and of sea,
he yearned to visit family
to see once more dirt, hill and tree.

He visited his daughter Sue
to try to see what they could do
their former closeness to renew
while walking out to see the view.

As the day got hot and hotter,
this roving nomad and his daughter
began to reel, began to totter
as they searched for signs of water.

And when they saw the faintest traces,
they quickly livened up their paces,
and falling flat upon their faces,
they drank and drank at the oasis.

The moral of this little tale?
If you choose to furl your sail
to wander over hill and dale,
carry some water in a pail.

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

Cornered

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Cornered

When on some strange and lonely night
the choice is whether to take flight
or stand and face off for a fight,
I hope your soul turns still and white
and that you gather strength and might

to try to find that inner light
and conquer elements of fright.
Muster all your inner sight
and draw you to your furthest height.
All your inner truths recite.

Feel the solution’s tender bite,
your inner armies to incite.
Cast off the threat that holds you tight,
and lift off, soaring like a kite––
free once more for life’s delight.

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

SELF ON A SHELF

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SELF ON A SHELF

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On my soul like a shelf
sits my own self
small as an elf
all by itself.

These four lines have popped up in my mind at various times in my life, but they are unpinned to any further memory.  Where did I read them?  Perhaps in a poetry anthology used when I last taught poetry 35 years ago, or perhaps in college. Google fails me and I can’t find its author.  I try various portions of the poem, but still, no cigar.  Google takes the poem apart and shows me dozens of posts that contain all these words,but none where they are stuck together in order.

Finally, in an article from Southern Review, I find a piece by John Montague that references his last communication from Theodore Roethke, but it seems that once again my memory has failed me, for his version is:

In a hand like a bowl
Danced my own soul,
Small as an elf,
All by itself.

Since my favorite college writing professor was a student of Roethke’s, it makes sense that this is why I remember these lines and that it was Roethke who wrote them; but since Montague describes the lines as “Blakesian,” I have to make sure that Roethke wasn’t just quoting William Blake.  I feed the correct lines into Google and finally, win success.  They are the opening lines of the poem “Restored” written by Theodore Roethke!

So, the first two lines are my own, the second two Roethke’s–a sort of nonofficial collaboration that actually makes me think more than the original.  Could “the soul” actually be our real authentic self and the rest of us just experimentation?  If there is a ruling hand in the universe, is it playing games with us–sending us out lifetime after lifetime to see how we’ll do in various situations? Like cans of Campbell’s soup lined up on a shelf, our present life is merely the flavor of the day.  Another reincarnation, another flavor.

As I grow older,  I increasingly think of life as a game–the entire universe the amusement park of a colossal mind keeping itself entertained. If we call that mind God and profess that he sees even the smallest sparrow fall, it is a testament to both the intricacy and the incredible efficiency of that mind and the interconnectedness of nature as the organizational structure by which he keeps it all straight.

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

Envy

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                                                                           Envy

I need to leave within the hour to drive back home so no time to write a new poem on the subject of envy, but here is one I wrote  while ago on the subject. Please go here to read it:  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/05/08/the-dance/

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

Drop It!!!

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Drop It!!!

Drop a hint or drop your jeans.
This word sounds like what it means.
A little word both curt and short
that seeks to tell dogs to abort
their plans to hoard the stick we’ve thrown.
“Drop it, boy,” we all intone
when it’s time for them to stop it,
bring the stick to us and drop it!

I’ve dropped a cake and dropped a name
now and then.They’re not the same.
We’ve all dropped––and been dropped as well.
The first? Relief. The second? Hell.
Eye drops soothe an aching eye,
To drop’s to cease, or fall or die.
“Dew Drop Inn” is a timeworn name
for a motel that’s rather lame.

To drop someone a line is nice,
but dropping in on me’s a vice.
So call ahead, if you are able––
Email, Skype or Tweet or cable;
but do not show up at my door
no matter how much I adore
you, for I do not like to drop
what I’m doing to have to stop

to talk or buy or give direction.
“Dropping in” is an infection
endemic to a smaller town
where neighbors given to plopping down
daily might enact the sin
of dropping by or dropping in–
bad habits that when they aren’t stopped
result in those friends being dropped.

In short, I’ve dropped this hint enough.
Enough of subtlety and fluff.
I will state clearly this one set truth.
“Dropping in” is just uncouth.
If my house is on your route,
just wave or give your horn a toot.
That is sufficient for you to do.
If you drop in, I might drop you!

You haven’t had enough?  Here is another sillier poem on the subject of dropping in.

(The one-word prompt today was “Drop.”)