Swingers
Romance is better on the swings
for it’s true Cupid has wings
and if he inspires a kiss,
it’s clear that you don’t want to miss
that moment on your mutual ride
where your lips might coincide,
and on the teeter-totter or slide
it’s harder to go side-by-side.
For the Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge: Side-by-Side
Image by Brandon Couch on Unsplash.
Gleaning
His precipitous departure and subsequent defection
belied earlier avowals of his most sincere affection.
As usual, his action in doing so was heartless—
his cruel revelation of his apathy most artless.
The opposite of nuance, he was blatant to the bone
as he crassly left her weeping to hit the road alone.
Doing her a favor, for he left the door ajar
for another suitor who had loved her from afar
from the time that they were children, but who had never spoken
who now seized this opportunity by handing her a token
that all of his affection he hoped he might expose:
a declaration of his love— single long-stemmed rose.
Carefully, he’d trimmed each thorn, then ringed the single stem
with his mother’s engagement ring—a brilliant diamond gem.
And so her recent heartbreak of being the one left
gave way to an elation so she felt much less bereft.
For unbeknownst to him, she had always felt the same,
although she had not shown it, for she feared the shame
of unrequited love if she had revealed how she felt,
but when she saw his token, her heart began to melt.
And so they were soon married and the day their son was born,
her former love crested the hill, tattered and forlorn
to try to win the love back that he’d cast away so breezily,
only to find abandoned love was not won back so easily.
We learn from all life’s errors, both our own and those of others,
so I want to share this wisdom with my sisters and my brothers.
The moral of the story is be careful what you toss,
for a more farsighted lover may glean profit from your loss.
Prompt words today are nuance, subsequent, revealing, precipitous and heartless.
Glean: to gather leftover grain or other produce after a harvest.
Helpmate
I treasure your good nature—your kindnesses and grins.
How you do not fustigate me for my many sins.
You tackle my complexities and understand my meaning,
sort through my poor excuses and somehow end up gleaning
positive from negative, just remembering what
in any lesser person would be the details cut.
You bring out the best in me so I’m a better man—
living by not what I did but by what I can.
You help me aim for goals that without you I’d disdain,
constantly reminding me of what I can attain.
Prompt words are tackle, treasure, fustigate, category and glean
Photo by Glenn Buttkus
Concrete Poem
(Exposed Aggregate)
You cut a channel through my flat heart,
straight and sure, as though it had not already been set.
Miracle worker. Perfect craftsman,
sculpting the impossible medium.
For the dVerse Poets Pub prompt. Go HERE to see poems by other poets answering the prompt.
Love’s Blindfold
The sunset painted you and me
against a bright raspberry sea.
My eyelash pressed against your lips,
I missed the passing of three ships.
Such freedom does enchantment bring
to cancel every other thing.
to pull the wool over our eyes,
all else but love to exorcise.
Here is the NaPoWriMo prompt that led to the above poem:
And now for our prompt. This one is a bit involved, which is why I’m giving it to you on a Saturday. Today, I’d like to challenge you to make a “Personal Universal Deck,” and then to write a poem using it. The idea of the “Personal Universal Deck” originated with the poet and playwright Michael McClure, who gave the project of creating such decks to his students in a 1976 lecture at Naropa University. Basically, you will need 50 index cards or small pieces of paper, and on them, you will write 100 words (one on the front and one on the back of each card/paper) using the rules found here.
Don’t agonize over your word choices. Making the deck should be fun and revealing, as you generate words that sound “good” to you. The fact that the words are mainly divided among the five senses should be helpful in selecting words that you like the sound of, and that have some meaning personal to you. For example, my deck contains “harbor,” “wool,” “murmur,” “obsidian,” and “needle.”
Once you have your deck put together, shuffle it a few times. Now select a card or two, and use them as the basis for a new poem.
In lieu of choosing just two cards, I kept drawing more cards and choosing one of the words on it, front or back, to include in my poem.The words I chose were paint, raspberry, eyelash, lips and sea. For
Sated
Flirtation is cathartic—a furbelow of life.
Though it is mainly fictitious, still it eases pain and strife.
It sets our spirits soaring and makes us feel much younger,
but takes the edge off appetites without dispelling hunger.
A nibble here, a small bite there might set our lips to smacking,
but a deeper part of us detects what might be lacking.
Caviar on toast is fine for an initial tasting,
but what we need is turkey,
crisp and golden from its basting,
but succulent inside, or a meal that fills us up
like an egg salad sandwich or pea soup in a cup.
Flirting’s great for starters, but it isn’t real.
What really solves an appetite is eating the whole meal.
Prompt words for today are soaring, cathartic, fictitious and furbelow.
Shoe-in
Love is not contractual. It is not trite or buyable.
It’s not dependent on reason to render it as viable.
It depends on qualities more visceral than seeable—
makes one’s considerations more youable than meeable.
In its beginning stages, love may seem aleatory
as though the price of love is to squirm in purgatory.
Waiting by the telephone, in an abject state,
love wonders, “Will or won’t he ask me for a date?”
But this abject terror sometimes gives way to calm
as our object of affection furnishes the balm
that soothes our rash and fearful hopes and turns them to reality,
refining hopeful crushes into mutual love’s finality.
True love is always waiting to drop the other shoe
as “Will he? Will she? Dare we?” finally gives way to “I do.”
Word prompts for the day are visceral, trite, aleatory and abject.
A Culinary Manifesto
I cannot overlook your incredible zeal
in polishing off the remains of your meal.
I surmise as you gobble up every comestible
that you are finding it very digestible.
The suspense that I felt as I chopped and sautéd it—
all of that angst that I felt as I made it—
seems unwarranted now, for it is amazing
how contented you seem to have been in your grazing.
You devoured the potatoes and chicken and peas.
You sopped up the gravy and licked all the cheese
from your plate before sucking the grease from your fingers.
And I see that your look of contentment still lingers.
Could that expectant gleam that I see in your eye
be because you have noticed the hot apple pie
that cools on the counter? I hereby assert
I’ll complete your seduction over dessert!
Agastopia
I simply cannot reconcile that glimmer in your eyes
with any look that I’ve received from any other guys.
My friends say you’re perfidious, yet I don’t get that message.
“Danger” is an ending that your gazes do not presage.
If the frustration that I’m feeling is transmitted in my gaze,
perhaps you will decipher it while wandering its maze.
For every time you’re present, I’m a prisoner of pondering
that question in your eyes that always sets my mind to wandering
down pathways we meander, walking hand-in-hand.
So long as you are in my thoughts, my heart is in remand.
We need a kind interpreter to set our looks aright.
Perhaps there’s a happy ending for him to expedite.
Prompt words today are frustration, reconcile, agastopia, perfidious and message.
Agastopia: Admiration of or a fixation on a particular part of someone’s body.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Alfresco
This gentle little zephyr does not make a din.
We hardly know that it’s a breezy day that we are in!
We step so lightly over the smooth and green terrain
that we barely notice that it’s begun to rain.
Our bedroom’s warm and cozy. I suppose we should go home,
but nature’s made a softer bed in grass spread over loam.
You once called me nature’s child, and today it’s true.
The whole world is a comfy nest when I am with you.
The grass provides a mattress, the trees spread overhead
form a perfect canopy for our alfresco bed.
It is a perfect ending to our day of roaming
to wait here for the evening star, together in the gloaming.
Word prompts for today are din, zephyr, terrain, suppose, and bedroom.
