Tag Archives: Judy Dykstra-Brown

Don’t Make Me!

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The Prompt:Kick the Bucket—What are the top items on your anti-bucket list — those things you never, ever want to do, places you never want to visit, books you never want to read, etc.?

Don’t Make Me

Please don’t ever make me go back to Cancun.
If I never return there, I’ve visited too soon.
Don’t make me go to church again or listen to more rap.
Don’t make me go to bed at eight or take a daily nap.
I don’t want to do those things I don’t want to do.
Don’t make me look at animals trapped up in a zoo.

Brains are meant for keeping up farther in your head.
To have to eat the things I think with fills my mind with dread.
Don’t make me eat anything only adults eat:
liver, caviar, pate, kidneys or pigs’ feet.
All of those are parts of animals I’ve come to fear,
for none of them are meant to put in human mouths, my dear.

I think that I’ll live longer without jumping from above.
For bungee cords or parachutes I have no sort of love.
Even roller coasters present uncalled-for risk.
For me a walk upon the beach is adequately brisk.
Anything that’s bumpy, jerky, swooping, fast or twirly
makes me want to arrive late and go home really early.

Please don’t make me listen to those who rant and rave.
If I meet them in the street, I’ll merely nod and wave.
Let bores much given to monologues find another ear;
because those who never listen, I have no wish to hear.
Tea-partiers, loud mouths, bigots and folks in the elite
are on my list of strangers I do not need to meet.

I hope no radiation or chemotherapy
is ever necessary to make me cancer-free.
No machines to make me breathe and no dialysis.
As little poking, pushing, testing and analysis
as possible is what I wish for on my “do not” list.
Just let me go gently into that final mist.

I’ve grown to hate the overuse of “bucket list” as label
for what folks want to do before their death if they are able.
So please be more original in thinking what to call
that list of things that you most want to do before you fall.
For the thing I don’t want as “I am” turns into “been”
Is to ever hear the phrase of “bucket list” again!

You might be able to find a list of other people who have answered this prompt by clicking on each person who has “liked” this topic here:

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/kick-the-bucket/

Twinkle

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That is just sand caught by sunlight twinkling around this perfectly-heart-shaped stone in the wet morning sand.

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Xmas lights furnish the twinkle in this detail from the palm fruiting stem I used as a Xmas tree this year, covering it with shells and stones in the shapes of hearts, other sea findings and handmade flowers I fashioned out of egg cartons and paint.

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A shot from a firework display held, coincidently, on my birthday—part of the celebration for the 100th anniversary of the town I grew up in.

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Castillo fireworks in jocotepec, Mexico.

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last night was the final procession for the 12 day celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

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My Christmas Tree/Altar. Very twinkly.

 

This is the tree in daylight. Palm fruiting stem covered in heart-shaped rocks and shells found on the beach, pelican feathers and flowers I made out of painted egg cartons.

This is the tree in daylight.

this is the challenge: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/twinkle/

Necessary Dangers

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The Prompt: Alphabet Soup. Write down one word for each letter of the alphabet and then construct a post making use of these words.

Necessary Dangers

 How did you find your way into my dreams,
ripping my comfort apart at the seams?
I barely escaped to back rooms of my self
where still I found thoughts of you stacked on a shelf
carefully obscured both in front and above
by other less perilous memories of love.

You walked nonchalantly into the room
that I had just cleared with a cloth and a broom
of other dangers and sadnesses not
knowing that I had been once again caught.
Now I hide out behind walls at the back
where all of my worst fears reside in a stack.

Cowering here as you stride through the place
that your very presence has turned dark and base.
How could I have loved such a frightening soul?
The box of my heart turned into a bowl
with all of my secrets and weakness revealed—
things that I now know I should have kept sealed?

There you sit quietly, perched on a chair,
one hand on the desk top, one hand on your hair
writing cruel words—I know about me.
I ease my way over, hoping to see,
but the paper is empty, your ink has turned clear
making improbable all that I fear.

As now I remember that I let you in,
forgetting all else in the charm of your grin.
The joy of your hand as it guided me sure
across the dance floor—all that allure
that kept me involved in the surface of you
overlooking the dangers as most of us do.

If I’d had an x-ray taken of you
when our romance was shiny and new
I might have seen sooner your dangerous zone
and taken a detour, and left you alone.
And perhaps now my dreams would be placid and calm.
so I’d sleep without worry, sleep without qualm.

I might not have moved off to the edge of the world,
might still have been sleeping, never unfurled.
Perhaps it’s these dangers that make us let go
of all of the comforts of worlds that we know
and send us out elsewhere to discover a self
we’d have never found sitting safe on a shelf.

The Sweet and Bitter Lie

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This is one of 15 creches I’ve constructed of unaltered natural items I’ve found on the beach. For some reason, I am captivated by the gentle side of Mexico best symbolized by her obsession with the Virgin of Guadalupe. I’ve seen motorcycle leathers with an image of Guadalupe on the back! I’ll publish pictures of the others soon. I know. A seeming contradiction to the words I’ve posted below, but perhaps one or the other view is just a sweet little lie!

The Prompt: Sweet Little Lies—As kids, we’re told, time and again, that lying is wrong. Do you believe that’s always true? In your book, are there any exceptions?

The Sweet and Bitter Lie

I think the sweetest little lie we tell ourselves and our children is that of a beneficent and caring God. This belief and the religion that stems from it  is our way of comforting ourselves. It is totally aside from reason. How else could we look at a baby turtle struggling to swim for the first time plucked up and swallowed by a hungry pelican, or a baby suffering with cancer or a horribly deformed child and think, “This is the product of a caring Father?” We all must conclude, if we make use of our senses at all, that nature is impartial and serves only its own cycle. There is no kindness in nature, other than her beauties and comforts; but even they all serve a purpose: to survive against all odds, and to kill or at the very least to depend upon the death of other organisms in order to do so.

I do acknowledge that Religion is probably necessary for many who do not think far enough to recognize the sweet lie. For those who use it to create more compassion for others, I applaud the end. But right now it seems as though religion is being used more as a weapon and political ploy than for the “good” side of its coin.

I don’t know how I align my agnosticism with my belief that there is some sort of incredible synchronicity going on in the world. This is a topic for another day, I guess.

For other posts on this topic, go here: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/sweet-little-lies/

Blue-footed Booby

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Blue-footed Booby

Graceful Vee of wing and curve of neck
laid out in sea foam on the beach—
it is as though you are making a final goofy move
on feet dressed up in blue first for dancing and then for love.
The means of your death is less a mystery to me
than what has left you and where it is now.
Perhaps, as I cup my hand through air above you,
I hold a part of you not soon enough departed.

Remembering those tiny sea turtles,
alone in the sea for moments,
picked off by the birds,
these mysteries worry me
like tiny flippers
resisting
that next great adventure
of the inside of a pelican
as I finally understand why anyone
would choose to have their ashes scattered at sea.
I have always dreaded descent
to the ocean’s dark floor,
when I could have been imagining
washing up on a favorite shore.


When is Enough Enough?

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This picture of the sunset a few nights ago is proof enough that the best things in life are free, but they are easier to enjoy when one is not hungry.

                                                          When Is Enough Enough?
To want all or to want nothing are both dangerous. Those who want all are the conquerors and exploiters and power lords who have brought the world to the state it is in today. They will exploit the poor and the weak but get their feelings of the most power from exploiting those equal to them in power. The world is a game to these people and we are all pawns.

But to want nothing may lead to despair. True, in a few holy men, it has been the path to enlightenment; but for those living within the world and not to the side of it, to want nothing can lead to apathy and powerlessness.

I think the secret lies in wanting enough and then wanting enough for others as well. This doesn’t have to be done by charity. It can be done by the way we vote, the way we treat our neighbors, the way we invest our money and the way we conduct our own businesses. It can be done by the way we bargain for a trinket on the beach or handle wrong change.

Sylvia Plath was probably correct in her statement, “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” When the richest woman in the world commits suicide or one of the richest men in the world gauges those living hand-to-mouth with unfair cellphone charges and policies, one has to wonder what great lack they are trying to fill and whether in fact they have any true take on what the world is really about.

Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge: Bridges

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With the estuary now open to the sea, it presents more dangers than crocodiles in the surf.

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It is also necessary to cross this scary suspension bridge to get further up the beach. I’ve tried wading the estuary, but crocs seem a bigger danger than the three cables that support this bridge.

 

 

For more fabulous pictures of bridges, go here:

Cee’s Oddball Photo Challenge

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You can see the duckie, right???

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Well, here’s the rest of the story. It is just flotsam and jetsam caught on a tree limb on the beach during high tide. At first I thought someone had constructed it, but it is a feat of nature.

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Okay. Here is one more. Hours of work on Photoshop?

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Nope, just a cropping of a simple shot I took of my niece Lainie who is standing behind some art object on a shopping trip to Tlaquepaque when she came to visit me.

 

Monosyllabically Possible?

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The Prompt: One at a Time—Today, write a post about the topic of your choice — using only one-syllable words.

Monosyllabically Possible?

I
might
just
fail,
but
I
will
try.

in
a
case
of
do
or
die,

If
I’m
caught
out
in
the
kelp,

It
will
do
to
just
cry
help!

But
if
you
want
to
cuss
and
shout,

it
just
won’t
work
to
go
that
route.

When
in
the
door
you
slam
your
thumb,

we’ll
see
how
far
that
you
have
come.

Your
girl
has
just
gone
on
the
lam,

and
you
just
have
to
shout
Goddamn!

Floating Meditation

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Floating Meditation

I don’t want to do aerobics;
I want to float the sea,
pretending that I’m flotsam
or perhaps that flotsam’s me.

I’d like to try to meditate
the half hour I’m adrift,
but I fear that between me
and my subconscious there’s a rift.

“Am I flotsam now or jetsam?”
keeps running through my mind.
I guess to tell the truth,
I’m not the meditating kind.