Tag Archives: Love poem

Love Song of a Pessimistic Spouse

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Photo by Andrii Leonov on Unsplash, used with permission.

Love Song of a Pessimistic Spouse

Look before you leap. Run with scissors pointed down.
Stay away from drafts, dear, when in your dressing gown.

Careful on the the stairs, don’t hasten your descent.
Don’t turn on the gas without opening the vent.

Put alcohol on cuts and scrapes, mercurochrome on splinters.
Drive slowly during rainstorms and use chains during winters.

Death is always lurking and I fear that you are jaded
thinking life’s perpetual when in fact it’s dated.

There are way too many dangers to sweep us from our feet,
so always look both ways when you cross a busy street.

Remember, dear, you’re not alone. Your “I” turned into “we”
the day that we were married for perpetuity.

Life is a roulette wheel. Take care not to spin it.
Life wouldn’t be much fun, dear, if you were not in it.

 

Prompt words for today are splinter, jaded, death, descent and look.

Pen and Ink, Musical Version

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DSCN2148

I wrote and published this poem last year, but Christine Anfossie has set it to music and if you click the link below, you can hear her singing it.

 

Pen and Ink

The pen that stands, clipped and inert
in the pocket of your shirt
has no power on its own
so long as it is left alone,
but once held upright in your grip,
free of cap and free of clip,
it forms a partnership of sorts
that spews out pithy, smart retorts.

It snaps the present into line
with words that easily combine
in sentences that, once unfurled,
have the power to change the world.
I ask you, who would ever think
that two joined objects—pen and ink—
could form a perfect synergy
to spew out jokes or tragedy?

Guided by a hand like yours,
a pen can open many doors.
A simple point, an ink-trailed line,
could link your heart with one like mine.
Unclip it now. Uncap its point.
Let ink your paper now anoint.
Let words turn somersaults and caper.
Let words flow from your heart to paper.

Let ink flow rampant from its cage
to dance across the naked page.
No telling what it might report
as words go wild and cavort.
“I” and “love” and “you” might do
a sort of line-dance or soft-shoe.
Words just might and words just may
leak out and give your heart away.

Words by Judy Dykstra-Brown, Music and Vocals by Christine Anfossie.

Portrait of the Artist

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My husband was an artist and so it seemed fitting to write a profile/portrait of him that described him primarily in terms of color.

Portrait of the Artist

The artist in you
understood color so well.
And yet, even as you layered on
red and green,
so much of you was blue.

Your white hair,
loosened from the pony tail
and streaming down your back
in your wild man look,
prompted strangers to ask
if you were a shaman,
or declare you to be one.

But there was
that black in you
that altered it,
that shade created
by the blend
of white and black
you knew so well.

The red that flamed out from your work,
subtly put there even in places
where it had no logical purpose for being,
that red tried to make things right.

Yet all of us
who knew you well
knew the blue.
It was the background color
of all of your days.
It was the blanket
in which we wrapped
ourselves
at night,
trying to be close,
but so often
divided
by it.

For fifteen years, I tried
to paint you yellow.
There were splashes of it, surely,
throughout our lives together.
You on the stage, reading your heart,
me in the audience, recognizing
all the colors caught within you.

Finding the pictures you had taken of me
studying your work at the art show,
those pictures you had snapped surreptitiously
even before we  met,
I discovered, after your passing,
that you had recognized
me even then, when I thought
I was the only one
angling for a meeting—
sure of my need to know
those secret parts of you
that I will never know
now that you have given yourself
to whatever color your ever-after
has delivered you to.

A new life later,
I am suffused
by my own canvas
of memories of you—
every other pigment
splashed against
a vivid background
of yellow.

 

The dVerse Poetics prompt is to create a profile or self-profile in verse. Go HERE to read additional poems written to this prompt by others.

The Fix

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The Fix

They say it was just happenstance that they ever met—
she a wealthy spinster, he of the lower set.
He liked his women spicy. She was a basket case.
She, aloof and cloistered, considered workmen base.

She had notified the landlord of a problem with her plumbing.
For at least a week, he promised that someone was coming,
so by the time the plumber finally came to fix her pipes,
she was apoplectic—chock full of niggling gripes.

Any other normal man would have been offended
when she hovered and she chattered as he soldered, wrenched and mended,
but he had an even temperament, so he maintained his cool
as she niggled over every move and questioned every tool.

Finally, as she hovered, questioning that and this,
he simply rose and drew her into a passioned kiss
that stifled all her sputterings
and muffled all her mutterings,

until she ceased her protests, surrendered to the fun
and  repaid him all his kisses, returning one for one.
It was a simple wedding with little pomp or strife.
And that is how the lady found someone to fix her life.

 

Prompt words for the day are happenstance, aloof, spicy, notify and basket.

Love Poem in a Time of Worldwide Dispute

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Love Poem in a Time of Worldwide Dispute

When other wondrous words continue to be broken,
let us still retain one word to be our token.
While all previous words just argue and discuss,
Let the only word that we require just be “us.”

Happy 9 year anniversary, Forgottenman!

Words for the day are wonder, continue, previous, broken.

Mentor

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Mentor

As an old man, he grew his hair long
and wore it unsecured, flowing white over his shoulders,
hiking it back as he walked with one sure toss of the head.
Few except himself would have judged him anything but superior.
His art, original and finely-crafted, showed him as the rogue he was,
yet he pored over art books piled around his chair—
large books rich in imagery and heavy to lift—
a laborious chore to plow through
page by page for anyone except him,
looking for himself in the pages, perhaps,
or looking for part of what he would become.

She thought he thought too much,
looking for answers in books
instead of in himself.
Religion, philosophy, art—
he searched for solutions
in Swedenborg and Picasso.
Compared his poetry to Sarton, Frost and Whitman
while others compared their art, their words to him.

Every piece he completed, he saw himself in as he created it,
but once done, it was as though he’d lost a part of himself in it
and so he started the search again in metal and wood and stone
larger and heavier each time, risking everything
to build himself ever higher.
Seven feet, then twelve, then eighteen feet—
stretching himself to the heaven
that he sought, also, through books.
Searching for what to be.

Wood, stone, metal, clay, glass, paper, words.
None quite solved the puzzle of himself.
Books on the shelf he read again and again
never had all of the answers.
He went as deep into himself as he could go.
Digging for the words he mined
from the parts of himself he most feared,
he often came up empty-handed,
as though he could not bear to see
all of the truth already revealed
in the pure instinctual lines of his sculpture
and those few fine poems he got out of the way of.

A virile man, he worked his angst out
in the shape of children—ten of them
with three different women—going through women
as he went through plasticine or wood or stone,
leaving crumbled remnants to reconstruct themselves
afterwards, as he built poetry out of their mutual pain.
He moved through the world
as most beautiful things do—unaware of his swath.

I rose from his rubble, missing him but remembering
all he taught. The scrape and cut and vibration of a fine machine,
the shaping with hands, the dip of the mold and deckle,
the power of a 20-ton press, the fine hiss of a torch.
Showing me how to get the beauty out of myself,
he formed that confidence within me that he lacked in himself.
Looking in books for what he already had,
looking in the faces of women for love
he never quite believed in,
he never fully realized that it did exist,
even during his worst rages,
right here in the heart
of one who so long afterwards
tries to sculpt his essence
through these words.

 

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Here is also a write-up and photo shoot that a gallery owner did of our home and studio during the Santa Cruz Open Studio Tours a few years before we closed down our house and studio to I move to Mexico: http://www.wmgallery.com/cruz/brown.html

And here is another blog I did on him and his art: https://judydykstrabrown.com/tag/bobs-sculpture/

Prompt words today were hike, write, original and superior.

What’s He Got Cookin’?

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What’s He Got Cookin’?

My love is not a work of art. He hasn’t any poise.
When he tries to sing a song, it comes across as noise.
He writhes instead of dancing. His rhythm’s nonexistent.
When germs land upon him, if they are nonresistant,
they get sick instead of him, for they have met their match.
He has no hair upon his head except for one small batch
that grows out of each nostril, so I really needn’t mention
that when it comes to loving him, I have no competition.
Yet in spite of all, he coincides with my fond wishes.
He may not have much cooking, but at least he does the dishes!

And for a little musical accompaniment to the poem, go HERE.

Prompt words today were sick, writhe, match and noise,

I need to issue a disclaimer for the second line, which is pure poetic license.  Most probably a number of the others are, as well.