Tag Archives: Judy Dykstra-Brown Poetry

 At Fourteen

There is a whole world out there and you’ll see it soon enough.
It is the world inside of you you’ll find especially rough.
Try to write about it, and try to tell the truth
about the things that happen that you find uncouth.

Write about what hurts you, and hurts that you have done–
all those shadows in you brought into the sun.
Ask those around you why they act in ways that might seem cruel
and try to live your own life by the golden rule.

Take chances and do not be cowed when you achieve less
than what you might have hoped for, and when you’re wrong, confess.
Don’t just do what your friends do. Don’t act before you think.
However strange the ones around you, try to find a link.

The world has enough meanness. Try not to add to it.
Try harder in environments where you seem not to fit.
People who are petty will cut you like a knife,
but the chances that you take will be what will make your life.

Other people’s rules pinch like a too-small shoe,
so don’t let other people dictate what you do.
Do not fear to step aside and go out on your own.
The fields that yield the sweetest crop are those that you have sown.

Post this advice up on your wall and read it now and then.
Use it as a means to reassess where you have been.
Then when you are older, and your life grows thin,
do what I am doing now. Consider it again.

 

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “From You to You.” Write a letter to your 14-year-old self. Tomorrow, write a letter to yourself in 20 years.

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Relax, it’s only henna! I get a Mayan tattoo on my lower leg every time I go to the beach. It fulfills all my contradictory impulses.

Change of Mind

Tattooed pierced and branded, or to be marked for life
with patterns carved into the skin with a sterile knife?
I cannot help but tell you that I find it very strange–
this trend to decorate ourselves by means that we can’t change.

When I was in my twenties, I bought a gorgeous hat
of pink and blue with colored plumes that swayed this way and that.
But what if I had had it sewn forever to my head,
so when I desired a wedding veil, I had feathers instead?

What if those chandelier earrings I found so cool in my teens
were implanted so I couldn’t take them off by any means?
So when I trekked across the jungles, weaving through the trees,
those earrings caught upon the vines and brought me to my knees?

My hair would be a helmet, and my eyes would look so queer
if worn like I did at twenty with eyeliner ear to ear.
So I cannot help but think this child with corks stretching her lobes
might regret them in her forties as she dons her judge’s robes.

Or the youngsters with the tongue studs, one day when they are men
might regret it as the shots they drink leak out onto their chin.
I’m so glad those mini skirts I wore—a poor choice even then––
are not still sewn upon my hips now that I am more Zen.

Thank God those darker outlined colors that made our lips less thin
and those psychedelic tie-dyes are not printed in our skin.
For although our taste was laughable, at least we can repent–
for the choices that we made in youth were not permanent.

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And, that hat mentioned in the poem? It really existed and still does, although no, I have not worn it in over 40 years. Here it is, a side view!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Tattoo….You?.” Do you have a tattoo? If so, what’s the story behind your ink? If you don’t have a tattoo, what might you consider getting emblazoned on you skin?

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Books

The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
its paper sprinkled with drops-—
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory—
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.

Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.

Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages—
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink—
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.

Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial—
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us.

What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Wikipedia replacing dictionaries,
Google already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?

Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs.
Perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
Perhaps the grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them—as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages—one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.

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Yes, you are right. These are chairs made out of books.

 

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Going Obsolete.” Of all the technologies that have gone extinct in your lifetime, which one do you miss the most?

Perpetual Blog

7 Replies

Perpetual Blog

Posting blogs just never stops—
in restaurants or in coffee shops,
waiting in an airport line
or in a wine bar sipping wine.

When it comes to blogging, I’m not choosy.
In the pool or the Jacuzzi,
my computer on a tiny table,
I add to blogs if I am able.

I admit that I am prone
to posting while I’m on the phone.
In the kitchen while burning supper,
posting blogs can be an upper.

Often, when I’m traveling,
my sister’s patience unraveling
past midnight, when she wants to sleep–
as she lies there counting sheep,

I take my laptop to the loo
to do what I’m impelled to do–
tapping gently on the keys
with my computer on my knees.

But I must admit, when I’m alone,
my favorite way to post is prone.
Flat in bed, from toes to noggin,
is how I usually do my bloggin’.

What’s the strangest place from where you have posted a blog?

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/blogger-in-a-strange-land/

Happily

6 Replies


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Happily

Nothing in this world can exist happily ever after.
A house is built of lows and highs: foundation before rafter.
Up and down’s the truth of it, the brilliant and the dark.
No week is composed totally of Sunday in the park.

Existence is a pendulum that sweeps across our lives.
Worker bees die every day in service to their hives.
Good seems finely balanced by a constant lurking evil.
Roses have their aphids.  Cotton has its weevil.

There is so much that’s wonderful in the world we live in,
but no one wins at every game. Sometimes we have to give in,
playing with the cards we’re given–flush or straight or fold–
sometimes in the heat of luck, sometimes out in the cold.

Ups and downs create the whole of our amazing world,
its surface formed by contrast of the knitted and the purled.
Sometimes we’re given what is sweet, at other times the bile
as we choose moment by moment to live happily for a while.

The Prompt:“And they lived happily ever after.” Think about this line for a few minutes. Are you living happily ever after? If not, what will it take for you to get there? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/happily-ever-after/

Stink Think

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Stink Think

Scotch broom makes me nauseous. Roses make me sneeze.
I abhor the scent of jasmine on an evening breeze.
Room deodorants should be banned, as should scented candles.
I’d rather smell my brother’s sneakers or a vagrant’s sandals.

Now that we want each thing to smell like something it is not,
there’s a different odor on everything we’ve got.
There’s perfume in detergent, in dryer tabs and soap.
Scented toilet paper makes we want to mope.

Unscented’s getting almost impossible to find
It leaves allergic folks like me in a real tight bind.
Gardenia in my hand lotion or chamomile or peach.
Hairsprays  smell as fresh as air or like a summer beach.

Floor cleaners smell like forests of freshly gathered pine,
as though without this pungent scent our floors would smell like swine!
These odors leave me gasping and running for some air.
Their vapors make my eyes run, causing much despair.

I do not want my table waxed with lemon or “fresh scent.”
I believe that everything should smell as nature meant.
I’ve done a lot of research, and  I’m fairly sure
that perfumes out-stink everything they’re meant to obscure!

The Prompt: Smell You Later–Humans have very strong scent memory.  Tell us about a smell that transports you.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/smell-you-later/

 

Cinnamon Woes

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Cinnamon Woes

When for my yearly physical I went to see my doc,
two cinnamon pills daily were prescribed to me ad hoc.
I had a premonition this solution wouldn’t work,
for prescribing condiments seemed nothing but a quirk.

With no other suggestions, she had me in a bind.
High cholesterol’s no joke.  I knew I had to mind.
I put it off ’til evening for it seemed to me so odd
to buy the stuff in capsules to put into my bod.

I took one before bedtime and it caught up in my throat.
The gelatin slowly dissolved.  The spice began to bloat.
I had cinnamon reflux. Then I had cinnamon burps.
I swallowed and I swallowed and took water in four slurps.

I coughed three times and tasted cinnamon each time.
I savored not its flavor.  Its taste was not sublime.
That throat lump then descended.  The pain was near my heart.
Then suddenly that cinnamon was expelled in a fart.

The jar of cinnamon capsules is huge and fully filled.
Tomorrow morn at breakfast, again I should be pilled.
But though I’m not the type to go against the status quo,
from now on I’ll take cinnamon with sugar, rolled in dough.

Honestly!

Though I always tell it if I can,
of the brutal truth, I’m not a fan.
(It’s the brutal part that bothers me,
and not the actual honesty.)
In fact, let’s institute a pact
to exercise the utmost tact.
When telling others just what “is,”
be gentle, be they Sir or Ms;
for though it’s not right to be truthless,
there’s no excuse for being ruthless.

The Prompt: Truth or Dare—Is it possible to be too honest, or is honesty always the best policy?

Bogged Down in Blog

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Bogged Down in Blog

It’s hard to write while traveling–
your half-knit thoughts unravelling
as they call you in to talk
or have a meal or take a walk.

You sleep in other people’s houses,
wrinkles in your unpacked blouses,
possessions jumbled in your cases,
move at unfamiliar paces.

You live a life that’s not your own–
daily walking, driven, flown
while trying to remember faces,
confused by all these different places.

In the past I adored going–
miles passing, airwaves flowing.
I loved to move like a rolling log,
but that was when I didn’t blog!!!

Now I find I’m scurrying.
Wake up already hurrying.
I’m confused and frankly dumb,
forgetting where I’m coming from

as well as where I’m going to.
I’ve lost a sock and lost one shoe.
Still, I find time to write each day,
here in some room, hidden away.

This daily writing’s an addiction
that makes real life a dereliction!
I short my hosts to do my writing.
I’ve given up my life for citing!


The Prompt: State of Your Year–How is this year shaping up so far? Write a post about your biggest challenges and achievements thus far.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/

Disinclination (Sleep Phobia)

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Disinclination (Sleep Phobia)

I hate to give the day up.  There’s so much left to do.
I like the sky when midnight black is its only hue.
No interruptions on the phone. No meetings, no last chore.
It’s days that contain all the rules.  Days are such a bore!
At night I watch Doc Martin or read the blogs of others.
It always would be dark outside if I had my druthers.

I resist sleep when first it comes knocking at my door.
I put it off and fight it, sometimes ’til three or four.
At night it seems like such a shame to waste my life in sleep,
yet in the morning I find those convictions hard to keep.
When the alarm bell rings if I could choose, I find I would
go back to sleep, for suddenly my bed feels really good!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream.”