The Prompt: Write about your strongest memory of heart-pounding, belly-twisting nervousness: what caused the adrenaline? Was it justified? How did you respond? A prior post meets this topic. See it HERE
Fight and Flight
Picture a woman sleeping, words wrapped close around as sheets.
Syllables slipping to the floor, loosed from their midnight feats.
A whole new world evolving as she’s lost away in dream.
All those single actions spilling from the seam
of those reveries she’s wrapped in, meaning more than what they mean.
Click
Picture eyelids opening as light begins to dawn.
See the eyelids close again, her stretching and her yawn.
See the dreams she’s had all night pulled to consciousness–
all tightly wrapped, but wriggling themselves free from all the mess
of what they’ve been bound up in to become what she’ll confess.
Click
See the words all rising from the place where they’ve been sleeping.
See her brow remembering bits it struggles now at keeping.
See her form a paper sheet into a little sack
and use her pen to prod the words back into a pack,
sparring with belligerent phrases that fight back.
Click
See her herding each into its place with little nudges,
overlooking warring words that seek to live their grudges,
making words that don’t belong together somehow fit,
forcing the recalcitrant to want to do their bit
to turn their separate strands into a story finely knit.
Click
Now see the picture on the page where words have come to rest–
stretched out vowel to consonant, best standing next to best.
Brutal words relaxing, flaccid words now showing zest.
Brought recently into the world where they have met the test,
here they stand before you, shaken out and neatly pressed.
Click
Then see the floor around the bed–the words she’s thrown away.
The words that somehow just don’t say what she wants to convey.
See them rising in the air to hover up above.
Words of anger, sadness, envy, honor, lust and love.
They jump, they float, they kiss, they spar, they hug, they joust, they shove.
Click
Tomorrow night they’ll rain back down to form adventures new.
To form themselves into the curious plots that dream parts do.
Picture them assembling into order all their own
or forming groups informally, wherever they are blown.
Ready on the morrow to once more go where they’re sown.
Click.
The Prompt: Three Perfect Shots–Take a subject you’re familiar with and imagine it as three photos in a sequence. Tackle the subject by describing those three shots. (As usual, I’ve been excessive and done seven shots instead of three.)
P.S. Yes, that’s my new Mac Air in the picture. It just arrived with friends from the States last night. I’ve been putting my coffee or Coke on the floor or a different table and hope you do the same. Better to learn from my mistakes than your own. It feels like I’m finally speaking my native language again after trying to negotiate the web in a language I’ve never spoken before for two months. Ahhhhhhhh. Relief. But, I now like my Acer PC as well. Just still more of a struggle and I was able to transfer all but the last 10 days of what was on my old Mac onto my new Mac, thanks to my dedicated backup drive. Too bad I hadn’t backed up for 10 days, but this is much better than nothing.
You would think there would be some remnant left,
but death was simple.
You were there and then you weren’t.
After one deep ragged breath
you were so gone that even your body
seemed to miss you. That stillness
so irrevocable. So not right.
Our friends all came
to see the place where you had been,
bringing offerings
to fill the void.
It was a full-packed house–
your sons, their wives, your daughter–
eight of us filling out every hollow corner.
I slept in the bed meant for two,
trying to convince myself I was enough–
trying to fill in the space you left.
That empty cup.
The Prompt: Cut Off–When was the last time you felt completely, truly lonely?
Every village has one for the saint’s day of their town.
Vendor booths spring up like grass as fireworks rain down.
Bottle rockets all day long are auditory pollution.
Newcomers often fear that it is a new revolution.
Thousands in a day explode, from predawn into night;
so gringos living in the town often just take flight
for the two weeks of fiesta that happens every year
as loud music and announcements join the assaults to the ear.
But after thirteen years, to me it’s just become a joke.
I simply plug my ears and down another Rum and Coke.
The Prompt: Write about a strictly local event in the place where you live as though it were an entry in a travel guide.
If you haven’t heard of Wall Drug, you probably have never been to South Dakota. Signs for one of the world’s oldest and best known tourist traps are spread out across the state and surrounding states as well as such far-flung locations as Antarctica, Afghanistan and Italy. For me, it was an exciting stop along the only vacation route taken by my family for most of my young life, for Wall was stationed smack dab on Highway 16 between my even smaller town of Murdo, South Dakota and the Black Hills, where our summer vacation usually consisted of an overnight stay in “The Deer Huts” after taking one of my older sisters to the Methodist Youth Camp a few miles away.
The excitement of the Deer Huts consisted mainly of the fact that the bathrooms were all outside–little wooden enclosures marked by a half moon that my mother hated and I adored. I loved the nighttime trip up the hill with a flashlight and the strangely reassuring sound of what had once been a part of my body making its dark descent down the long vertical tunnel–as though it was having an adventure of its own. I loved the threat of animals watching me in the dark as I made my way back to the log cabin. It was about as exotic as my life ever got before I finally left home for college at age eighteen and life really began. But I digress, for the true adventure that wound up at the Deer Huts always began when we got to the badlands–a series of sandstone hills and gullies that furnished the background for many a cowboy movie of the fifties. Then, shortly after the badlands, came Wall Drug!.
You can read the full story of Wall Drug HERE. If you are pressed for time, however, I will give you the shortened version. The whole phenomena of a drugstore in a small town of under 300 on a godforsaken prairie in the middle of nowhere started in 1931 with a suggestion by the wife of the owner that they put up signs offering free water. From there, the promotions grew into singing automated cowboy orchestras, stuffed longhorn cattle, a life-sized dinosaur, chapels, souvenir shops, other automated scenes, a restaurant offering such South Dakota fare as hot beef sandwiches complete with mashed potatoes and white bread swimming in brown gravy, homemade rolls, cherry pie and 5 cent cups of coffee with free coffee and donuts offered to soldiers, ministers, and truck drivers.
I have pictures of me at age eight and age sixty-six, standing by a huge stuffed longhorn steer, bravely touching the horn. The last picture was taken as my childhood friend Rita and I took our last long nostalgic trip across South Dakota. In the Wall Drug Cafe, we shared a hot beef sandwich, a cinnamon roll and a piece of cherry pie for old time’s sake, put a quarter in the slots to see the singing cowboys creak into action, still in tune after almost sixty years.
In this more sophisticated age, folks still stop at Wall Drug. It’s possible their teenagers remain in the car, texting their friends or playing computer games with the air conditioning cranked up to dispel the scorching South Dakota summer sun, but I bet the little kids as well as the bigger kids who are their folks or grandfolks still wander the block-square expanses of Wall Drug, looking for thrills from another age and time. And somewhere within its cluster of rooms and passageways, Grandma can still buy an aspirin or get a prescription filled, then get a free glass of water to swallow it down with, Grandpa can still get a five cent cup of coffee and a little kid can taste his first delicious mouthful of South Dakota Black Angus beef, swimming in gravy and surrounded by reassuring slices of Sunbeam white bread and mashed potatoes.
The Prompt: Tourist Trap: What’s your dream tourist destination — either a place you’ve been and loved,https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/tourist-trap/ or a place you’d love to visit? What about it speaks to you?
Addicted
It’s altering our planet, or so the experts say,
but I fear I am addicted, for I take it every day.
As regular as clockwork–morning, noon and night–
whenever I have need of it, I take it as my right.
I can take it when I’ve planned to or also just ad hoc
when I need to go out shopping, to the dentist or the doc.
I can take it while I’m listening or take it while I’m talking,
but the one time I can’t take it is whenever I am walking.
It’s become a real compulsion, an addiction and a crutch.
I’d try to give it up but I enjoy it way too much.
Yet I do not need to search it out in pharmacy or bar,
for the thing I cannot do without is just my little car.
The Prompt: Think Global, Act Local–Link a global issue to your personal life.
See more writing on this theme at: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/think-global-act-local/
If I could undo anything that’s happened in my life,
I would not undo enemies or illnesses or strife.
For all led up to my life now that really isn’t bad.
All given, I am happy, and frequently I’m glad.
My palm trees may need clipping and my dogs may have the mange,
but all in all there’s really only one thing I would change.
I’d undo one tequila or two or three or four.
I think that that is all I drank. I can’t remember more.
And after that, that dance I did as others ringed the floor?
I fear I chose to party when I should have chosen the door!
And that knee I rocked on back and forth, remembering the twist?
I fear I chose to overdo instead of to desist.
My friends did not remove me, but cheered me on instead.
And now I have a throbbing knee and needles in my head.
That knee I’d earlier injured when I fell on cobblestones
had healed, I thought, relieving all that aching in my bones.
But now I’m hobbling back and forth–gimpy once again,
for you gotta pay the piper when you choose a life of sin.
I know my knee will heal and that this agony will end,
but please remind me next time that tequila’s not my friend!!
The Prompt: If you could undo something, what would it be? Discuss why, potential repercussions, or a possible alternative.
The Prompt: If I were marooned on an island with only five foods, what five foods would I choose?
Potatoes, flour, hamburger, lactose-free milk, apples.
What I could make from these five ingredients?
Baked potatoes with butter and sour cream, French fries (alas, no ketchup), mashed potatoes with milk and butter, potato chips, scalloped potatoes, VODKA!!!!!
Hamburgers in a bun, shepherd’s pie (with potatoes mashed with milk and butter), hamburger and apple scrapple, cream of hamburger soup.
Apple pie, applesauce, apple fritters, sliced apples, apples to bite into, sun dried apples, apple juice, APPLEJACK, APPLE WINE!!!!
What I’d miss most: Salt (but I figure I could obtain it from seawater), onions (Might they grow wild on the island?), green vegetables, (Surely there are some edible greens on the island? More likely than wild potatoes or hamburger), and sugar (but perhaps I could sweeten with the apples?)
Although I am lactose-intolerant and do not like the taste of milk itself, I chose lactose-free milk because so many other thinks can be made from it: sour cream, butter for bread and to fry and cook with, cheese. It can be used as an ingredient in pastries, soups, casseroles, breads and drinks. And, I’d need the calcium.
I may live (or may not live, if the choices are wrong) to regret my choices, but thinking of appetite itself and a bit of nutrition as well, these are my choices. May I never have to live by them.
Here, by the way, is a funny response to this prompt. I suggest you check out this and other posts on her site: https://whoison1st.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/pop-tops-baby/
They surround me, wall by wall,
so many I can’t name them all.
Paintings of people, things or beasts–
my eyes devour this visual feast.
I sleep beneath each rendered ghost,
the lives of painters caught in most.
A shapely leg with heel inclined–
the painter lying full-reclined
watching his cousin’s shapely wife
reach in the kitchen for a knife.
His teenage mind caught fast in love,
touches the leg and what’s above.
To its side, a fish is rendered.
Its face is human, vaguely gendered.
Does it think or does it dream
as it floats at rest in a somber stream?
The colors muted, it seems at peace.
As though from the world it seeks surcease.
More fish in a smaller frame
float in water that’s not the same.
There’s movement here. The head of one
floats bodyless beneath the sun
of inspiration far above.
Does it dream of art or dream of love?
Farther right, the queen of all.
A stately woman, four feet tall
with birds on shoulders, palms and head,
she’s stood for years above my bed
reminding me that I am free
to be whatever I want to be.
To her right, a tall bookcase
holds ones I love, face after face.
And to its right, a rabbit–eyes
wide open furnish a disguise
for those for whom it is the task
to sleep behind a wooden mask.
Beneath the rabbit, a monkey sits
in landscape full of fruit and pits.
Prosperity and monkeyshine
perhaps leak in as I recline
just feet from totems such as these
to take my nightly dose of ease.
Beneath these animals again
a wide-eyed fish comes swimming in.
Its face is staring nose-to-nose
at a man with eyes closed in repose.
Just the head of man and fish.
I wonder which is dreaming which?
An angel and ex votos four
hang beside my closet door.
One in wood, the others tin,
they simply fill the spare space in.
I keep them there behind my back.
Perhaps they fill in what I lack.
How strange as I’ve said what I see,
I’ve missed the art in front of me.
The Huichole piece painted with thread
with angels floating overhead.
A deer head peering down into
a cauldron of peyote stew.
A bird and man pinned to the wall
to the right, far over all.
Beneath, a woman hung by her heart,
reveals where I both end and start.
It is a sculpture made by me
addressing creativity.
Just one more wall I’ve saved till last–
the hardest one to try to cast
my mind against, for it is hung
with fifteen pieces so far unsung.
But time, I know, is running out.
You’ve other things to read, no doubt,
and yet I simply can’t resist
mentioning them in a list.
Two nudes, a Huichole painting and
ten retablos made by my hand.
An etching plate, painted and framed,
a Victorian child, unknown, unnamed.
These are the walls I’m centered by
as nightly in my bed I lie
and in the morning as I write,
they watch in horror or delight
as my word portraits are unfurled
to grace the walls of a wider world.
You can view images to go with this poem HERE
Note: I’ve actually written today to an earlier prompt Wall to Wall that asked that we write about what is on the walls of our houses and what it reveals about us. One friend joked that this could keep me busy for years! I was at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference at the time and hadn’t time to write about anything, let alone a whole house filled with paintings and art and since I woke up before today’s prompt was posted, I decided to fill in the time writing about the earlier prompt. Three hours later, I’ve only finished the task as it describes my bedroom walls, so perhaps I’ll continue at a later date, perhaps not. I still have today’s prompt to write about, but first…I’ll post this.
Before our dad told us its real name,
we used to call it wild mustard.
What did we know about sweet clover except for its color
and that summer smell, cloying in its sugared perfume.
It filled the air and smothered the plains—
bright yellow and green where before
brown stubble had peeked through blown snow.
On these dry lands, what flowers there were
tended to be cash crops or cattle feed.
Sweet clover or alfalfa.
The twitching noses of baby rabbits brought home by my dad
as we proffered it to them by the handful.
Fragile chains we draped around our necks and wrists.
Bouquets for our mom
that wilted as fast as we could pick them.
Summers were sweet clover and sweet corn
and first sweethearts parked on country roads,
windows rolled down to the night air,
then quickly closed to the miller moths.
Heady kisses,
whispered confessions, declarations,
unkept promises.
What we found most in these first selfish loves
was ourselves.
The relief of being chosen
and assurance that all our parts worked.
Our lips accepting those pressures unacceptable
just the year before.
Regions we’d never had much congress with before
calling out for company.
That hard flutter
like a large moth determined to get out.
Finding to our surprise,
like the lyrics of a sixties song,
that our hearts could break, too.
Hot summer nights,
“U”ing Main,
cars full of boys honking
at cars full of girls.
Cokes at Mack’s cafe.
And over the whole town
that heavy ache of sweet clover.
Half promise, half memory.
A giant invisible hand
that covered summer.
The Prompt: The Transporter—Tell us about a sensation — a taste, a smell, a piece of music — that transports you back to childhood.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 