Tag Archives: love gone wrong

Cold Jack Ice

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The dVerse Poets prompt was to write a poem inspired by one of these vegetable names. I’m going to try to use them all: Black Beauty, Trail of Tears, Lazy housewife, princess, purple queen, Jacob’s cattle, The Czar, Wizard, golden acre, dazzling blue, purple sword, Jack ice, Reine de Glaces, blue fire, aurora, tender and true.

Cold Jack Ice

As accomplished in his love-making as at a game of dice,
his name was John Dukakis, but they called him Cool Jack Ice
because his smile could warm or freeze, depending on the way
his luck played out or didn’t, as it changed from day to day.

When he purchased Jacob’s cattle and his Golden Acre Farm,
He thought that he would use them to impress the new school marm.
He’d be a wizard as a cowboy, a czar of cultivation.
He’d win her as his bride before the coming school vacation.

He’d heard she was an ice queen a real “Reine de Glacé.
And since he was the King of Ice, he knew the game to play.
He donned his purple sword and a coat of dazzling blue.
If he was to be her Lochinvar, he knew just what to do.

He swooped down on his Ellen at the school fete,
saved her from the stag line and took her on a date.
The aurora borealis shone down from far above
As, feigning true and tender, he declared undying love.

He called her his sweet princess for those months he sought to woo her.
It was only after they were wed that he began to rue her.
She was a lazy housewife, he said, and counted coup,
taunting her as his black beauty as he beat her black and blue.

She fled into the freezing cold, a trail of tears behind her,
taking refuge in a secret place where he would never find her. 
And as her bruises turned her into a purple queen,
she plotted out her vengeance, silent and unseen.

They say it was blue fire that streaked across that night
that both Jack Frost and Black Jack Ice took their final bite.
What footsteps there were left were so filled up with snow
that not a single tracker could tell where they might go.

Severed from its body, Jack’s face had ceased to smile
as the one who wiped it off his face sped onward, mile by mile.
on Jack’s steed, and since that day, no one has defamed her,
for to put it bluntly, not one who knew him blamed her!

And, in case you didn’t read it before, here’s another poem I wrote about an heirloom tomato: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/02/12/aunt-lous-underground-railroad-tomato-for-black-history-month/

FordVerse Poets prompt.

I Keep Your Promise

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I Keep Your Promise

Rain beats a riff on the back window
as I drive away from your familiar
promises, like lyrics of a worn-out song.
“Never again,” is made true this time,
my choice instead of your vow.

It’s only truth I take away with me:
torn buttons, bruises, broken dreams.
The empty baby carriage
you’ll find in the spare room,
one more unused space
in a house too rarely
a home.

I was the house
you entered
but never
spread out in—
the rumpus room
battered with misuse—
a refrigerator
filled with carry-out and cartons
with their “use by” dates all lapsed.

I was the melody
to that false chord
you loved to strike,
proud in your outlaw status—
that anchor that held your music to the page.

I see its strains floating after me,
as though that part of you
knows what it will miss
and even now
is trying to be found.

 

The prompt word today is riff.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Isn’t Your Face Red.”–When was the last time you were embarrassed? How do you react to embarrassment?

I have so recently written to the above prompt that I’m choosing this alternative prompt to write a “charm” poem. This was an assignment from NaPoWriMo before I started answering the WordPress Daily Prompt, so it is fresh to the WordPress prompt site.   As far as I can tell, this was written so long ago that only Tamara, Ann and forgottenman read it so perhaps they’ll humor me and let me present it again:Go HERE to see it.