Poetry Queen
Your poetry’s great, both gripping and fragile—
your style of delivery skillful and agile.
Swathed in your gear both sexy and hip,
you have the whole crowd within your cool grip.
Those reticent types who came thinking they’d jeer
are slapping their knees and crying in their beer.
Skillful at words and for sure in your prime,
you’re our favorite reciter of meter and rhyme.
Prompt words today are fragile, reticent, delivery, swathe and grip. Image by Marcos Paul on Unsplash.
Culture Queen
She was a universal maven. Up on every trend.
Music, art and literature thrilled her to no end.
She raised no petty cavils. Her eye and mind were keen.
Her taste was impeccable. She was the culture queen.
She painted masterpieces when she was just a maid,
and though detractors said that her genius would fade,
she remained keen in her eighties and proved her critics wrong,
tackling every challenge as they came along.
She kept her zest for life until they laid her down,
and so became the object of the world’s renown.
Although this poem was written about a fictional character, when I started looking for photos of classy ladies, my friend Gloria, who luckily has not been laid down, seemed to fill the bill.
Heirlooms
Heirloom quilts, wedding veils, and Grandma’s tablecloths
are but future feeding grounds for silverfish and moths.
Since we cannot control the changes that the future brings,
we should not be flummoxed by the loss of treasured things.
Their value is more visceral than literal, it’s true,
so time can rarely mitigate their presence within you.
North and south and east and west—wherever we are cast—
within our minds and hearts, we bear the treasures of our past.
I cannot help mourning the loss of this quilt handmade by my grandmother over 100 years ago which seems to have vanished from the assisted living facility where my sister lived for the last ten years of her life, so I guess this poem was mainly written to comfort myself.
Prompts today are tablecloth, visceral, flummox, mitigate and north.
The Poet Artist
“Poltroon!” He calls out in his sleep,
caught up in words, even when deep
in dreams—those places where he goes
where fresh ideas, rows upon rows,
spreading farther, stacking higher,
crowd his brain . And now, “Pismire!”
Is he building poems or sculptures there?
What new dream, what bold nightmare
will he allow to come to light
as soon as he has finished night
and carved his way into the the day?
The worker ant come out to play?
Carving stone into a face
or moving words from place to place.
All those schemes conceived in dreams
turned into his creative schemes.
I intrude, a kiss, a cuddle,
bringing love into the muddle
of his early morning head,
still sleeping here in my warm bed.
This is no coward sleeping here.
He has no qualms, displays no fear
of any challenge of his art
or adventures of the heart.
Metal, wood, paper and stone—
no one material alone
can solve his lust. He needs them all.
No stone too heavy. No scheme too tall.
And, alas, no woman will
manage to completely fill
that questing heart. That grasping soul.
seeking to reach that final goal.
See some results of those dreams HERE.
Prompt words today are poltroon, cuddle, pismire, allow and worker.
Harridan
I’m standing at the crossroads between a saint and bitch.
Schooled in forebearance, I’ve stayed within my nitch.
But lately things are changing. I’m losing self-control.
The hounds of Hell have been released and now they’re on patrol.
They’re fluting all the pillars formerly unmarked—
scoring them with unfurled claws every time they’ve barked.
Soon I will be certified as a nagging crone—
the sort of aging harpie who prefers to live alone.
I’m sure its hard to fathom it, as perfect as I’ve been,
kowtowing to authority—especially to men.
But privilege must come to all as we come to age,
so I’m expressing sovereignty, at least here on the page.
Word prompts today are flute, crossroads, certified, bitch. Image by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash.
A Suitable Ending
He made a wild adventure out of every act
as his imagination embellished every fact.
No detail insignificant in his lackluster life,
his tall tales irked his children and perplexed his wife.
Each plash became a tidal wave. Trips to the zoo were germinal—
fomenting tales of tigers on safaris nearly terminal.
His day would come, they warned him, but he was a stubborn bloke.
He thrived on spinning yarns and on concocting his next joke.
They always said they’d do him in—those wild tales he spun.
And in the end, his kin were right. He choked on a bad pun.
Prompts today are tiger, insignificant, perplex, plash and terminal.
UFO
You made your appearance without much excitation,
probably due most of all to your orientation
poised above my housetop and slightly to the right
for almost an hour that clear October night.
It seemed no one was watching—too early or too late
for the world to witness and to start a great debate
about bizarre lights in the sky that could not be explained.
Perhaps only I watched as your brilliance flared and waned.
And who am I to ruin my integrity
by sharing with the world what was only viewed by me?
Prompt words today are: watched, orientation, bizarre, integrity and appearance. Image by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash.
Clown Face
The majority of children, in fact every kid in town
would drop everything they’re doing to get painted by a clown.
In his coat of many colors and his distinctive rubber nose,
his ruffled baggy pants and his other funny clothes,
he’s bound to probe your funny bone and catch you in a smile.
He’ll paint your face like his if you’ll stand quiet for awhile,
and then the whole best part of it is up and down the street,
every door you knock on will provide you with a treat!!!!
Prompts for today are coat, probe, majority, distinct and drop.
Tofurky Asafoetida Blues
My brother’s new wife has the whole family curious.
Her allegations seem New-Age and spurious.
With the result that grandma is furious.
She turns family gatherings into a podium
where she expounds on the dangers of sodium.
Meanwhile, the whole family is on Imodium .
Off to the bathroom, each one in a hurry
after imbibing in her saltless curry.
Will grandpa recover? We all share the worry.
Her asafoetida and cumin and dahl
have certainly cast an ominous pall.
We hardly enjoy family dinners at all!
She stuffs us with pita and gags us with bulgur
because she thinks regular rice is just vulgar.
But macrobiotic and Christmas don’t mix.
We miss all the old foods she’s certain to nix.
No turkey, no dressing, no cranberry sauce.
And no Christmas pudding, ’cause she is the boss!
For years, family dinners went by with no glitch,
but not so since bro married this tedious bitch.
So Santa, this year it would be very pleasant
if you gave us all just one communal present.
Please, Santa, deliver us from her tofurkey
and restore us to pudding and dressing and turkey!!!
Note: Asafoetida is a strong spice with a pungent smell, often used in Indian cuisine. It has been known to cause burping, farting and swelled lips.
Words of the day are ditch, insist , spurious, vulgar and sodium.
Unruly Behavior
His mat of curly snow-white hair his most distinctive feature,
he wore his pelt upon his head like some lanigerous creature.
A trial to this innocent lamb was that daily battle
with his unruly students who milled around like cattle,
and because he was a gentle man who never used the belt,
they never knew precisely how horrible he felt.
Still, tongues can drub as lethally as bludgeons or as bats
to destroy a weak opponent. So, without a doubt, that’s
why he walked out on eighth period, and what he did instead
was to resolve the problem with a bullet through his head.
In the early seventies, with its schools grossly understaffed, the Australian government started recruiting abroad, offering airfare and a “settling in” allowance to any chosen foreign teacher willing to emigrate to Australia. I jumped at the chance and days after my graduation from college, I flew to Sydney for a week-long orientation session, then went on to Wollongong where I finished out the school year as a supernumerary teacher in a special school for the top students in the area, taking over a few classes from each overburdened teacher until I could be assigned to my own schedule the following semester. What happened, however, was that after a few months, I was reassigned to replace a teacher who had been fired for smoking pot with his students at a school in a government migrant housing district in the middle of the steel mill area.
The classes were not only overfilled, with 38 students per class, but they were also ability-grouped, with top students in the A group and the lowest-performing students in the D through F groups. As a new teacher, I was assigned mainly to these low-performance classes which in truth meant that I was also teaching the classes with disruptive students who displayed the most behavior problems.
So it was with Charles, another teacher recruited from the states—an older man who after flying to Australia and furnishing his apartment, one day in the middle of an especially confrontational class session with his 3F class, walked out the door, packed his bags and flew back to the states that night, leaving off the keys to his apartment at our apartment on his way to the airport, directing us to dispense with its contents as we saw fit.
I was reminded of this on Facebook today when a fellow-teacher marked the 50th anniversary of that wild year by sending me a photo of kitchen utensils they had culled from Charles’s apartment—which they use to this day. My roommate and I scored his dining room table, a single mattress which we put on the floor in our living room to use as a couch, and a woven tablecloth we hung on the wall above the “couch.”
Although some of the details have been changed to allow the prompts to be used, (our Charles was bald and thankfully figured out a less-violent solution to his problem) this poem was inspired by the memory of his action. I, on the other hand, finished out that year and re-upped for another, completing that year as well before becoming one of the notorious “Berkeley 14,” who prompted a district-wide walk-out in protest to teaching conditions. But that is a story for another day, another prompt.
Here are the only photos I have of my Australian crew of friends, all of whom taught at the school where I taught as well. You can see Charles’ table, his mattress (floor couch) as well as his bedspread we hung on the wall in our dining room. My friends did not always dress this strangely. This was a Bazza McKenzie party–and guests were to come dressed in the worst possible taste to reflect Bazza’s stereotyped Australian personality. The guy in the “revolutionary” outfit complete with steel-wool beard and pineapple grenade (compiled by us, to reflect his anti-Bazza personality) is Chuck–one of the instigators of the Berkeley 14 protest. Can’t remember how many others in this group were part of it. I think I’ve explained it in another post. If so, I’ll include a link.
Prompts today are lanigerous, belt, innocence, drub and battle. The photo of the sheep is by Sulthan Auliya on Unsplash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 