Religion and Politics Don’t Compute
Your infatuation is a blasphemy of sorts.
How could you so revere a leader who consorts
with pedophiles and listens to dictators and Russians?
Are you not aware of the obvious repercussions?
As we commence a new election, there are other people praying
that your misguided leader no longer will be braying.
Prompt words for the day are commence, blasphemy, infatuation and listen.
Wanderlust
When I was a little girl, no more than just a snip,
I longed to be up in the air or on a sailing ship.
I lusted for adventure––for travel and for more.
I brooded over my dull life––such a crushing bore.
At five I was a dreamer. A backyard visionary.
I imagined me as gypsy, tourist or missionary.
My fantasies weren’t random. In all of them I traveled.
Year after year more restless and wandering dreams unraveled.
Tarzan was my hero and Superman my crush––
their journeys through the jungle or air currents a rush.
I longed for all their freedom––to fly and move at will.
All of their adventures dreamed from my windowsill.
All night I took such pilgrimages over hills and ridges,
crossing raging rivers over extension bridges.
At sixteen I sneaked out at night in my father’s car
and drove for hours through the night, going just so far
that I could be back home before he arose at five
to snuggle back into my bed in our familial hive.
Then slowly I transitioned into who I longed to be.
I swung down from the branches of my family tree.
Trips to far-off places: Australia and Japan,
Africa, Sri Lanka, Bali and Bataan
all came true. As time passed, I ended the charade
of my stationary life and joined the grand parade.
The world one grand excursion, for many years I quested,
thinking that the life that I was born to could be bested,
until at last I learned the truth that what I journeyed for
was simply to unlock the lock and open up that door
that led me deep into myself to find that private world
that lived inside me all those years, so securely curled
that I only found it by first venturing afar.
Thus do we wander far afield to discover who we are.
Prompt words today are transition, brood, random and snip.
The Other Side of the Story
I think it’s just fair dinkum that you suffer repercussions
from the things you said to me during our last discussions.
I grant that breaking up is something that is hard to do,
but for sheer brutality, I give the prize to you.
I must say it’s unfathomable that you have forgotten
all those infidelities to which you’d never cotton.
I hate to raise old issues that we’d both rather ignore,
but before you pick your suitcase up to storm out of the door,
I feel I must remind you that the suitcase that you’ve packed
does not belong to you but is my favorite, in fact.
And the car you might intend to drive away in in a huff
packed with all “your” furniture and other handy stuff,
is registered to me, in fact, and all that’s packed inside
was paid for by my paycheck, and so it will reside
right here with me as you embark on your lonely shuffle
out into the cold with your belongings in a duffle.
Ta ta my dear malingerer, I hope that you do well
as you descend from easy street down to your private hell.
Prompt words for today are repercussions and dinkum,
and, since Your Daily Word hasn’t published their August prompts yet, I’m going to use the three prompts of theirs that I missed on the 26th, 27th and 28th while I didn’t have internet connection for three days: Raise, ignore and unfathomable.
Nostalgia Reexamined
The sublimity remembered when memory has its turn
often has beginnings in nostalgia’s timely churn.
That teenage bliss that we recall as being overjoyed
if remembered correctly would be being over-boyed.
Our adoration of the past is easier than giving
all the same attention to the life that we are living.
Prompt words today are nostalgia, overjoyed, adoration and sublimity.
Aroma Therapy
There’s a distinctive odor coming from your shoe.
I don’t know what is causing it. I’m sure it isn’t you.
An acquisitive vampire might pay big bucks for it
to augment the fetid odor in his burial pit.
When it comes to hygiene, I have very little tact,
so I have used hyperbole to illustrate the fact
that from the big toe of each foot right over to its pinky,
the fact is not debatable. Your feet are very stinky!
Prompt words today are odor, vampire, illustrate and acquisitive.
Boarding the Astral Plane
Living on the astral plane would be so very camp.
When you lie upon the ground, you never would get damp.
No one would delimit the boundaries of your soul.
Anywhere or anything could be your final goal.
If I could book a ticket on the astral plane,
I’d hop aboard and never come back to earth again.
Prompt words today are astral, camp, book and delimited. (Never heard that one before!)
Dear Son
Everything exhausts me. I’ve lost my zip and moxie,
so I’m surrendering control and giving you my proxy.
You can handle matters––earthshaking or mundane.
Having to make up my mind has grown to be a pain.
Today began my countdown for withdrawing from my life.
I’m hiding from decisions, the news and other strife,
compressing the world’s problems into a tiny ball
and hiding it someplace obscure that I will not recall.
I’ll binge-watch old TV shows like Dynasty and Friends
from their initial episodes right up to their ends.
I’m sleeping in ‘til ten o’clock, going to sleep at eight,
throwing away my calendar. I need not know the date.
Here are my credit cards and checkbook. Do with them what you will.
Run away to the Bahamas or pay my water bill.
I’m relying on your character and inborn need to please.
If you don’t pay the light bill, I guess that I’ll just freeze.
Please don’t report your payments. Don’t bother me at all.
Do not text or Facebook. Don’t tweet or Skype or call.
From here on in my life, as planned, is going to be a breeze.
No cooking or dish-washing. I’ll eat takeout Chinese
for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’ll just do what I please––
I’ll rock for hours in rockers, my cat upon my knees.
I’ll have no need for intercourse. I’m cancelling the phone.
I’ll fill my life with pastimes that I can do alone:
Sudoku and Solitaire, crosswords and jigsaw puzzles––
no lady friends, no social sites. No kisses and no nuzzles.
Type two Agoraphobia is what they’ll say I’m suffering.
But only you and I will know that I am simply buffering.
I’ve been without phone and internet for two days.I’m posting this at a local restaurant.
Prompts for today are proxy, mundane, countdown and compress.
Premature Delivery
I can’t defend or explicate the reason for my ardor
for that triple-decker cake residing in my larder.
Tomorrow was its due date, the delivery premature.
Now I have a compulsion for which there’s just one cure.
My love is unrequited. That torte has neither lips
nor anything but calories to slip around my hips.
At this extravaganza they’ve planned to celebrate
my forty-second birthday on my birthing date,
there must be a cake to eat. I must be resolute
to not pre-sample one small bite. I am of fine repute
and do not want it known that I’m unable to resist
cake with chocolate icing, and so I must insist
that you call a locksmith to secure the door
with deadlock and with padlock and perhaps with one lock more.
If my cake survives past midnight and a few hours tomorrow,
I will defray embarrassment and a good deal of sorrow.
For minute after minute and hour after hour,
I fear resisting chocolate cake is far beyond my power.
I was born to greatness—to talent and to fame,
but when chocolate comes up missing, it’s likely I’m to blame.
Prompt words for today are extravaganza, resolute, unrequited and explicate.
Transmogrification
All our rites of passage wherein we choose a route
different from our life before–a new way that will suit
the person that we will become in the bye and bye—
a way that’s calculated to stump and mystify
those who cannot understand how we might want to switch—
why we have that need to change—to scratch that travel itch.
We scout out new horizons, travel uncharted roads.
Change our occupations, alter our abodes.
Thus does our universe expand and thus, so, do our lives.
In variety perpetual, evolution thrives.
Prompt words for the day are passage, switch, scout and mystify.
Lady in Waiting
He was the best creation of the queen and king.
and when she held him in her arms, he cancelled out the sting
of all the ladies in waiting who, noting well her shyness,
spent more time in waiting for his royal highness.
Neither naive or clueless, she tended to her tallying.
As he maneuvered his affairs, she noted the king’s dallying.
And as the young prince gained in years, growing more coherent,
she was his fond protector, his loving, loyal adherent.
One-by-one she noted the ladies, one and all
slip away—no longer there at her beck and call.
And as each lady in waiting went into her gestation,
another lovely maiden appeared to fill her station.
And so young princes flourished, on both sides of the blanket.
The velvet cord for service, when she had cause to yank it,
brought new faces yearly, or monthly at the worst.
Daily, as she faced the mirror, she patiently rehearsed
fond loving glances that she’d use as she addressed her ruler,
all the time retaining thoughts that were surely crueler.
Living every day the charade only for her son,
determined from his day of birth that he would be the one
chosen for succession—the legal royal heir.
She watched him with devotion, with tender lover care.
She’d create a king more loyal. More loving and more tender.
One less bent on conquering the more gentle gender.
By using his royal talents in pastimes much less crass,
perhaps a much more glorious age would come to pass.
More time spent in reigning and less time spent in bed.
More prosperity for all with him in charge instead,
and, in fact, her dreams came true once the king was dead,
her son declared the monarch and securely wed,
with prosperity for all and every subject fed,
this is the happy ending with no more to be read.
Prompt words today are prince, coherent, sting and creation.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 