Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

I Used to Eat Red, for dVerse Poets “Color” Challenge

23 Replies

                                                                  I Used to Eat Red

daily life color108 (1)My sister Patti and I, posed by my older sister Betty.  Those are “the” cherry trees behind us. The fact that we were wearing dresses suggests we were just home from Sunday school and church, our souls bleached as white as our shoes and socks!

                                                   I Used to Eat Red

 I used to eat red
from backyard cherry trees,
weave yellow dandelions
into cowgirl ropes
to lariat my Cheyenne uncle.

I once watched dull writhing gold
snatched from a haystack by its tail,
held by a work boot
and stilled by the pitchfork of my dad
who cut me rattles while I didn’t watch.

I felt white muslin bleached into my soul
on Sunday mornings in a hard rear pew,
God in my pinafore pocket
with a picture of Jesus
won from memorizing psalms.

But it was black I heard at midnight from my upstairs window––
the low of cattle from the stock pens
on the other side of town––
the long and lonely whine of diesels on the road
to the furthest countries of my mind.

Where I would walk
burnt sienna pathways
to hear green birds sing a jungle song,
gray gulls call an ocean song,
peacocks cry the moon

until I woke to shade-sliced yellow,
mourning doves still crooning midnight songs of Persia
as I heard morning
whistled from a meadowlark
half a block away.

And then,
my white soul in my shorts pocket,
plunging down the stairs to my backyard,
I used to eat red,
pick dandelions yellow.

 This is a reworking of a poem from my book Prairie Moths  for dVerse Poets

Christmas Rituals for dVerse Poets

6 Replies

 

Christmas Rituals

Why do we go to the trouble to do it?
Cut down the Yule tree and dig out the light strings?
Untangle extension cords ’till they’re all lit.
Set up the nativity: shepherds and kings,
then Mary and Joseph and their holy son.
Arrange all the tinsel and then place the star––
(once the balls are all hung and you’re nearly done)
––on the tree.if anyone can reach that far!
Then turn out the room lights and bask in the glow.
On the couch, the family all in a row,
then turn on the music, and you’ll surely know!

For dVerse Poets, the prompt was to write an “Eleventh Power” poem:I. Eleventh Power is an invented stanzaic form introduced by Christina Jussaume who requests the subject be uplifting. The elements of the Eleventh Power are:
––stanzaic, written in any number of 11 line stanzas.
––syllabic, 11 syllables each, per line.
––rhymed, rhyme scheme:   abababccddd or ababababccc.

Oops.. just realized I didn’t do abababab but instead did abab cdcd. Mia culpa!

 

 

A Walk up the Mountain With My Dogs During Wildflower Season, Oct 3, 2021

20 Replies

 

Pulled by my dogs, I ventured off the gravel road onto the tire tracks that forged a path up the mountain.  Lifting the hatch to a metal gate that granted access to the sloping meadows behind the high fence that otherwise would impede our progress, we ventured off the tire tracks onto a path worn only by previous feet. The heavy rains this year had created wildflowers so high that they formed an arch over our heads, belying the fact that the rains, long over, have left the hills so dry, so dense the underbrush, that where I pushed my way the giant hush was changed to soft explosion. The dogs, however, venturing farther into the great banks of flowers, found greener grass that they grazed upon like sheep, impeding my progress as I gave into their needs and let them determine our pace.

for dVerse Poets, we were to write a prosery piece of just 144 words, ithat included the line of poetry from a poem by Yver Winters that I have put in italics.

Below is a video I took during that walk!           

     HERE  is the dVerse prompt and the entire poem by Yver Winters.

“Something Old” for dVerse Poets

33 Replies

                                                                                                                              jdb photo

Something Old

Love is a narcotic that makes us think we’re wise-—
nature’s slick conspiracy for matching girls and guys.
It hangs around in barrooms, obscured in eyes and talk,
and before you know it, it makes you walk the walk
down rose-petaled aisles on your way to say “I do,”
in something new or borrowed and something old and blue.

Then love becomes a train wreck, beginning with the pastor
and continuing through daily life until the last disaster
when “I do” becomes “I won’t,” and all love’s vows once-spoken
wind up in love’s dump heap—abandoned, crushed and broken.
Blame it all on Cupid, that chubby little liar,
who never warns us that new love is likely to expire.

For dVerse Poets “Something old. .  .” Prompt

Darn. I took so long trying to find an illustration for the “Something Old, Something New”. . .’ prompt that the Mr. Linky link lapsed, so here it is. for Open Link Night.

“Transmogrified” for dVerse Poets

10 Replies

Many hats worn during a lifetime!!

Transmogrified!!

Let them peel away my layers to see what is inside.
By the time they’ve finally done it, I, I will be transmogrified.
For one year I was one thing and another year another––
not just the girl created by my father and my mother.

If I were all the things I was in my former years,
my observers would get whiplash as they watched me shifting gears.
I’d be a waitress or a film-maker, a teacher or a writer.
A traveler, a publicist and a poetry citer.

A lover, wife and stepmother, an auntie, sister, friend.
A granddaughter, a daughter–my titles never end.
In each guise, what was needed–a lover or a coach,
sometimes one to blame,  at other times above reproach

I’ve lived in boats and houses, in motorhomes and more–
in huts formed  out of cow dung with swept dirt for a floor.
So if you want to find a person who can be all she can be,
you can give up all your searching, for I’m saying, “Please, choose me!”

 

To transmogrify means to transform or change completely, especially into a different, grotesque, or humorous shape or form.

For dVerse Poets, the prompt is “Let Them.”

Give Me Blue for dVerse Poets

27 Replies

Give Me Blue

If it is a blue with no sadness in it:
the blue of the sky above Colima Volcano
with no other clouds in it except one puff
of earth’s hot breath becoming visible
in the cool morning air.

If it is a blue
with no middle ground of safety,
nothing that makes it ordinary.
No hue of boredom
or gray cast of age.
No tint of ever ending––
just pure blue
holding its mood in,
letting you feel however you want to feel.

The blue of glass that reflects the sky.
Iris blue and periwinkle.
Cerulean and cobalt.

If it is a blue with not a smudge of green in it,
or yellow or white or black.
Blue-blue like my tue love’s eyes
and like the color that a blueberry Popsicle
should be––its blue dusted by nature
as though frosted, even in the heat of summer.
Like blue caught in icicles.

The color of a jellyfish
or Noxzema jar.
Bluebottle fly, tenacious,
only its color not annoying.
Blue as a shiver. Blue as blood. Blue as Hawaii.

Not the blue of a heart before forgetting.
Not that blue with a lot of
dullness soaked into it.
But if you have Blue as in Australia.
Blue as in a first place ribbon.
Sky blue,
true blue,
never blue.

Blue that if it’s ever had one gram of sadness in it,
doesn’t show it.`
If you have that blue,
and you want to give it to me,
then, sure.

 Give me blue.

for dVerse Poets, the prompt is to write an ekphrastic poem about one of the given Chagall paintings.

In The Doghouse, for Sure!!! For dVerse Poets

11 Replies

What happens when you finally get a full 8 hours of sleep after months of 2 or 3 hours a night (if you are lucky––0 to 1 if you aren’t?)  The prescription your doctor gave you says it is a none-steroidal, none-addictive mild anxiety med that may make you sleepy. I got it half right. I got a full night’s sleep, but unfortunately carried my anxiety along with me into what felt like a full-night’s dream. The further irony is that it has been years since I’ve been able to remember my dreams. (And, you are doggone right. This is waaaaay more than 44 words. You can’t get it all right!!!) And I swear, every word I have written is the truth. I was about to answer the dVerse prompt last night but I absolutely could not get on the Internet and so gave up to fall into the sleep that produced this story which after years of no dream memory and at least three months of almost no sleep, I hope you give me the poetic license to tell. Not poetry, not 44 words, but the gospel truth. Now, I guess I really am in the doghouse?

Dogged Dreams

It is 5:58 in the morning and I was just awakened by my barking dogs…all three of them. There is a good side to the story as I was awakened from a dream in which absolutely everything went wrong. In the dream, after I had waited for two hours for an interviewer to show up, the man who was to introduce me actually gave such a long intro that he ended up essentially giving all of the informmation I was going to reveal in the interview, and even then, the interviewer  did not show up. His assistant did, however, to retrieve equipment that was actually equipment that belonged to me, and no matter what I said, he refused to believe me and took it anyway, saying if I wanted to bring it up with his company later, I could.

Then a friend came by saying she was going to the liquor store to buy Scotch and did I want her to get me some? Under no circumstances, I said, I badly needed a drink, but I hated Scotch. Could she get me a bottle of gin? “Done,” she said, then showed up proudly as I began my third hour of waiting for the interviewer (who never did show.) “Here you go,” she said, presenting me with a huge bottle that included a wooden stand that proudly announced its name:  “Scotch!” I had just pointed out her error to see her march away, furious, sure that I’d ordered the damn Scotch, and was about to follow her off the interview site after telling them they were the most poorly organized outfit I’d ever seen and that I was announcing the name of the person who took my equipment to the owner of the company, who happened to be my uncle(a lie)––when the dogs began to bark, thus saving me from an additional minute more of torment.

 

The dVerse Poets prompt was: Write about the dog days – of summer, of war. The dog-eared pages of your favorite novel. Tell us about a time you were sick as a dog, or give us a little hair of the dog. Make it rain cats and dogs. Put your poem through a downward-facing dog yoga pose, or let it run with the dogs. Let sleeping dogs lie, or tell the truth about this dog-eat-dog world – or anything else you doggone please. Just be sure your poem is exactly 44 words long, including some form of the word dog – or you’ll be in the doghouse. 

Image made with help of AI

“The First Day of School” for dVerse Poets

21 Replies

What demands a list more than deciding what to put in your book bag for the firt day of school..and what is more necessary than a list in relating the story of that big day?

First Day of School

In our house, a pencil sharpener fastened to a shelf
with a little handle I could turn myself.
All the curls of wood and lead safely caught within,
as I gave the pencil sharpener one more little spin.

Five newly sharpened pencils, clutched tight in my hand,
then bound into a secure bunch with a rubber band.
Dropped into my school bag with eraser, tablet, ruler.
Everything unused and clean.  Nothing could be cooler.

The school warning bell rings out as my saddle shoe––
crisp black and white, unblemished, for it’s stiffly new––
makes its first step out my door to cross across the street
and with other six-year-olds, to find my proper seat.

Lynnie, Henrietta, Sheila, Diane, Sharon.
Clevie,  Meridee and I, Rita, Linda, Karen.
Lyle, Keith, Clinton, Jeff, Georgie, Jimmie, Billie––
come from all directions, running willie-nillie

to get to school before the bell sounds its final peal.
All those years of playing school finally here for real.
We stand in lines inside the room as she calls our names.
No more days of playing random childhood games.

Reading and arithmetic, that little cardboard store
where we learned to count out change, make shopping lists and more.
Spelldowns standing up in front, facing towards the class.
Your hand up when you had to ask for the bathroom pass.

Marching all around the room singing “Charming Billy.”
Can he bake a cherry pie? Those lyrics were so silly.
Then we stomped and pointed–our volume without match
as we sent the boys out yonder  to the paw paw patch.

Are you too young to remember? Or is it that you’re old,
your remembrances supplanted, your memories grown cold?
Do you not recall  the ink wells and chalk erasers?
The recess bell, the sandbox, the swingers and the chasers?

The teeter-totters creaking and the merry-go-round?
Every playground adventure? That cacophonous sound
of shouts and jeers and teasings, the tether ball and slide.
All the joyous sounds before we were called inside

to spend time with Alice and Jerry,  and with “Run, Spot, run,”
reading words over and over before the day was done?
They swirled around in all our brains––phonics, words and numbers
stirred our active childhood minds from their former slumbers.

It was so many years ago that we set out that day
upon a road that later would carry us away
from that square white building with its tower and tolling bell
that for the first eight years of school we would mind so well.

Streaming in from all the sides of our little town––
brilliant students, dunces, class bully and class clown.
It was a collaboration that ultimately made
eighteen little boys and girls ready for second grade!

The dVerse Poets prompt was to construct a list poem.

“African Love Story” for dVerse Poets

39 Replies

African Love Story

In this day and age
Almost everyone has a tropical love story.

Show of hands–
How many here?

There was a war.  Danger.
And there were disapproving fathers
And careers.
And yes, I know that some
Love stories survive them all.
But ours didn’t.
And he didn’t.

So just for a year and a few months
We were in love in a warm climate.
A torn love story with a sad ending
With me as its only living remnant.

Imagine yourself
In that story
Full of hormones and atmosphere

It is a meditation remembering
Sand and moonlight under the Southern Cross.
Or cocks crowing before you fell asleep
Long rolling nights in a village
Where almost no one spoke your language.

Perhaps you were a prisoner of love
As I was years ago.
Non-protesting, dizzy and dumb for passion.

Would I have stayed for love if I’d known
It was the whole business of love I’d leave behind,
And not just my beloved?

Would you?

 

 

The dVerse prompt is ‘Where Does Love Go?”

A Reunion Imperative for dVerse Poets

24 Replies


Upon Running into a Former Best Friend

Don’t give me cause to regret our reunion.
Don’t bring back to mind our former disunion.
Don’t lament my career or cuss at my kids—
those actions that once put us into the skids—
dissolving our friendship and our former ties
when I’d had enough of your conniving lies.
Don’t inveigle or bemoan your lack of a pension.
Past times I’ve come through I won’t bother to mention.
And if you’ve a reaction and want to explode,
do me a favor. Take it on the road!!!

For dVerse Poets...an Imperative Poem