Acceptance
Old age––
Can’t escape it.
We grumble about it,
but the alternative, for sure,
is worse.
The dVerse Poets prompt was to write a cinquain: 2-4-6-8-2.
See how others responded to the prompt HERE.
Helpmates
I’m the first to tell her what to do,
though each morning she pushes my button, too.
“Get out of bed,” I order her,
come back to reconnoiter her.
When she refuses to rise at once,
I sit in the corner like a dunce
and nag and nag until she’s up
to shower and dress and feed the pup.
I keep her clothing crisp and neat
with water mist and searing heat.
I’m a dangerous helper and she knows it.
Dire results if she ever blows it
and fails to heed my hiss and cough
and forgets to turn me off.
When my workday starts, I have no say.
Always ready as she greets the day,
I perk her up and fuel her drive.
She says she needs me to feel alive.
She takes me with her when she leaves.
When she kills the rest, nobody grieves.
I’m strong and flexible and black.
Cause eyes to open and lips to smack.
She holds me tightly every morning—
cussing, yelling, pleading, warning
others who get in her way
as she speeds into her waiting day.
She pushes my buttons and wheels my wheels
with clicks and groans and grinds and squeals.
I carry her inside of me
to take her where she needs to be
and wait outside until she’s done
in rain and snow and baking sun.
I wait at home in the cold and dark,
wondering when she’ll light the spark
that relieves me of my lonely plight—
chilly environs and unlit light.
I hear her footsteps across the floor,
light up as she opens my door.
She reaches in and relieves me
of can or bottle, then goes to pee
restoring me to isolation.
I don’t complain. It is my station.
She turns me on most every night
to wallow in my sickly light,
staring at dramas I provide.
Never does she go outside
to jog or run or bike or walk,
to meet the neighbors and have a talk,
to mow her grass or trim her tree—
she seems to live her life through me.
When at night she seeks her rest,
she always favors me the best.
I cushion her at end of day,
listen as she has her say
about her travails, aches and pains,
her setbacks and all her gains.
All her secrets I will keep
as she covers up and goes to sleep.
for dVerse Poets, the prompt is “I would love to know how you deal with setbacks in life. Share with us in the form of a poem, of course, are you the kind to bounce back, do you curse and rant when things go wrong or do you wallow in self pity. As always you are free to interpret the prompt in any which way.” Image by Jessica Mangano on Unsplash.
An Apologia for Poesy
My gardener’s broom goes whisking light
first left, then right, then left, then right
with touch so slight I barely hear
the bristles as they take their bite.
The birds were first up and about,
and then both dogs asked to get out.
Then that broom reminded me
of one more creature left to rout.
Searching for ideas and words,
I use the rhythm of the birds
and Pasiano’s sweeping broom
the braying burro, the bleating herds.
Noises fill this busy world
even as I’m safely curled
still abed, my senses all
alert and ready, full unfurled.
I hear the grackle far above,
the insistent cooing of a dove,
as in the kitchen, Yolanda dons
her apron and her rubber glove.
I hear the water’s swirl and flush
the busy whipping of her brush
around each glass I might have left,
careless in my bedtime rush.
Her string mop silent, I barely know
if she’s still here. Or did she go?
I find her in the kitchen still,
arranging glasses, row on row.
Then it is to my desk I trot.
Arranging glasses I am not,
but rather words I nudge and shift
here and there until they’re caught.
Glued to the page forever more––
be they rich words, be they poor––
nevertheless, these words are mine:
poems, stories, truth or lore.
We are not slothful, lazy, weak
because it’s words we choose to seek
instead of labors more obvious
like plumber or computer geek.
Words’ labors are most harrowing.
Our choice of them needs narrowing
and not unlike the farmer’s sow,
mind’s riches we are farrowing.
So blame us not if others mop
our houses or they trim and crop
our gardens for us as we write.
From morn till night, we never stop.
Poets, our lives may seem effete––
not much time spent on our feet––
but those feet are busy, still,
tapping out our poem’s beat.
Cerebral though our work may be,
we are not lazy, you and me,
for though we sit and write all day,
our writing’s labored––that’s plain to see!
The dVerse Poets prompt is “Noise.”
Where Have They Gone?
Where has it gone, that memory
that matched names to faces,
attached today
to the day of the week
by which we call it?
Where have they gone–
my favorite cape,
my car keys and my iPhone,
the lid to the butter dish
and my reading glasses?
Gone with that wind, perhaps,
that blew away last autumn’s leaves,
then snow from the sidewalk
and that errant downspout
from its final weak attachment.
Where went lost loves,
my parents
and departed friends?
Dogs, birds and cats
and other loved, once-living things?
Gone, too, with the wind?
If so, this final question:
where goes the wind
and someday,
where go I?
For dVerse Poets, the assignment is to construct a poem centered around the line “Where is?” of “Where are?
Game of Cards
I would pay a pretty tuppence
to invest in his comeuppance.
His smug assurance, his galling preening.
He’s like a babe in need of weaning,
sucking at the teat of fame.
What other mortal needs his name
written on towers around the world?
He’s Ozymandias, stone lip curled
in cruel splendor, sure in his power
reasserted on every tower.
But remember, as he counts each coup,
how all the mighty have fallen, too.
False knights wear armor prone to tarnish.
His Midas touch will lose its varnish.
We’ll laud the day when he’ll be dumped—
That day when he’ll be over-trumped!
The dVerse prompt is Power.
“J”abbertalky
Judy Jamison just jabbed Joe’s jingling jodhpurs.
“Jeez!” Joe jumped jerkily—justifiably jittery.
“Just joking, Jumpin’ Joe!” joyful Judy jabbered jejunely.
Joe’s justifiable joyless judgment jarred Judy’s jubilation.
Joyful June joint juggling junket journey just jinxed!
Jumpin’ jiminy—justifiably, jetlagged Joe just jettisoned Judy!
A Quadrille is a 44 word poem. The prompt for the Quadrille Challenge on dVerse Poets is “jabber.” Image by Zyana on Unsplash.
I must take umbrage over those words
that you have shared with all the world.
My deepest secrets, revealed, I thought, to you alone––
lie here, their magic lost,
trapped in tabloids––worthless
except as wraps for fish and chips.
A Cherita, for dVerse Poets Thanks to Matthew Reyes for use of his image on unsplash and to Forgottenman for his additional prompt “umbrage.”
See other poems for this prompt HERE.
Forest Shadows
A man is bending his wife—
melding their shadows with the green forest.
They do not listen
to the nearby cannon’s roar––
will not imagine
that their life together,
so new,
might
not
stretch
into
the
future.
When he looks at his pocket watch,
someday children
ringing a well-stocked table
vanish in
her imagination.
He lifts his musket to his shoulder,
trying to believe
in a future
and in it,
this memory:
two shadows
joined as one,
invisible against
the forest wall.
For dVerse Poets, the prompt is “Forest”. If you’d like to participate, go HERE.
(And yes, if you were wondering, the skull is actually part of the helmet of a man driving by on his motorcycle!)
Canción de México
(Song of Mexico)
This small café sits on the square,
or rather the rectangle.
The gas trucks pass by, blaring “Gaaaaas,”
their grounding chains a-jangle.
Trucks and cycles lacking mufflers roar by every minute,
accompanied by the beat of bass drums
pouring out the windows of the passing cars,
drowning out the music they were meant to accent.
The guinea fowl make such a ruckus that they sound insane,
but to complain about the noise in Mexico’s inane.
The daily garbage trucks, the water truck and all the rest
all live by the assurance that what’s loudest is the best.
I drink my coffee, eat my muffin, try to grin and bear it;
but when she sets a napkin down, I grab at it and tear it.
And even though one part of me says that I shouldn’t dare it,
I use a bit to wipe my lips. The other part? I wear it!
I stuff a wad in either ear, and though I still hear all,
I go by the illusion that I hear it from afar.
Sometimes I feel the threat of age, so quickly it is nearing;
but if I lose one faculty, dear God, please make it hearing!
This song is in jest, for in truth, I love Mexico, even her sounds, for in spite of this poem, not all of them are loud. Go HERE to read another piece about the music of Mexico.
The prompt for dVerse Poets was to write a poem about music that is meaningful to me. Go HERE to read poems others wrote to this prompt.
Brooch and pins by Judy Dykstra-Brown
Chewing the Train
A metaphor is a freight train
that gets us within 30 miles
of our final destination,
but we still have to catch a taxi to get all the way there.
And a simile is just a metaphor whose brakes have failed.
If we know that peanut butter
is like a circus on a tired tongue,
does it bring us any closer to the smell of peanut butter?
Elephants and sawdust
and sequined camisoles flavored
with the sweat of 100 performances?
Is that what peanut butter smells like?
Does it taste like candy apples
and too-bitter mustard
on stale buns
and hot dogs turned too long
upon the rollers of their grill?
Does peanut butter feel
like the unoiled bump of the Ferris wheel?
Does it sound like a calliope
or look like an ice cream cone?
Peanut butter is peanut butter.
I rest my case.
So how am I going to write a poem
without metaphors and similes?
How can I write verse
while telling the pure unadulterated truth?
How can I make you taste a poem
that is only itself?
How can I be Janis Joplin
when I’ve been taught to be Joni Mitchell?
A Rose is a Rose is a Rose,
said Gertrude Stein,
predating my insight
by a generation or two.
But this isn’t Paris,
and folks in Mexico
want a dollop of figurative language
in their poetry.
So let me say
that my mind is a busy beaver,
trying to fulfill this impossible task
of twenty little things.
I’m expected to imagine
how peanut butter sounds.
The sucking gumbo sound
of South Dakota mud
or thick mucus of a cold?
Anything but appetizing.
Ay, Caramba! you might say,
but if you were Australian,
you would say, “Don’t come the raw prawn on me, mate,”
and you would mean
“Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes,”
or “Don’t try to con me, man.”
So let me just say that peanut butter is made
by grinding peanuts so finely
that all the oil comes out
and it acquires the consistency of butter.
It isn’t like butter
nor is it butter.
It acquires the consistency of butter.
This is literal fact.
But to know the taste of peanut butter,
you will need to spread a bit upon a cracker
and have a taste, or grab a finger full.
What you will taste will be peanut butter.
The truth of it. Its reality.
And only then will I tell you
that literal truth doesn’t always tell
the whole truth.
My friend says
it is the peyote leached into the soil
the corn grows from
that gives Mexicans
such a remarkable sense of color.
The bright pigments of imagination
flood his canvasses.
His peyote dreams leak out into the real world
and wed it to create one world.
“Peyote dream” becomes its opposite—
a freight train taking us into the universal truth.
A larger reality.
This stalk of corn, this deer,
this head of amaranth,
all beckon, “Climb aboard.”
So when you bite into a taco
or tamale, when the round taste of corn
meets your tongue, and pleasure tries to flow
like a lumpy river down your throat,
look up at the poet standing in the shadows.
She’ll call herself by my name if you ask,
but do not ask. Instead, look deeper
into the shadows she wears around her like a cloak
and see that it is light that creates shadow.
See the many colors that create the black.
Follow where the corn beckons you to go––
into the other world of poetry and paint
and dance and music. Hot jazz with a mariachi beat.
Chew that train that takes you deeper. Hop aboard
the tamale express and you will ride into your
new life. It will be like your old life magnified
and lit by multicolored lights and the songs of merry-go-rounds
and when you bite into your taco, it will taste
like cotton candy and a snow cone
and your whole life afterwards will be a train that takes you nowhere
except back into yourself—a Ferris wheel
spinning you up to your heights and down again, with every turn,
the gears creaking “Que le vaya bien.”
I hope it goes well with you
and that you see the light
within the shadow
and the colors
in the corn.
For dVerse Poets synesthesia poem. You’l have to sift through this poem for the synesthesia, but I promise you , it is there.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 