Tag Archives: #MVB-PROMPT

Life is More Wonderful

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photobyokcforgottenman

Life is Wonderful

Concentrate on daily things—
the scent of toast perfectly browned,
new sheets gathered from the line,
this morning’s treasures spread on the ground:

a robin’s egg, inventing blue,
left on your doorstep, as though for you.
Seed of sycamore spinning down
to land with precision on your shoe.

Life is more wonderful with what
can come through serendipity;
and once we’re clothed and fed and sheltered,
what’s most valuable is free:

A child’s questing hopeful look
as he searches worlds within a book.
Heartfelt laughter dispelling pain
and friends who will return again.

Pity those for whom success
means piling gold in offshore banks;
whose quest for more will sacrifice
the health of children to buy more tanks.

They’ve gone too far to ever know
how much pain and how much woe
is occasioned by their status quo—
how much unhappiness they’ll sow.

Acceptance of their ignorant greed
will lead us down the path they’ve worn.
They’ll leave our world stripped and bereft,
her wondrous freedoms raped and shorn.

So as they pillage, ruin, and rape
an environment that can’t escape,
be glad that stubborn others insist
that we drive these bullies from our midst.

We know too much of the world’s ills
to ever fully feel at peace,
for that safe world that we have known
can not be lived without surcease.

Enjoy your happiness in each thing
that luck or your hard work might bring,
but share these things with everyone
lest all we stand for comes undone.

There is much in life that we
must learn to live with and accept;
but other things that we can change,
and leaders who are more adept

at giving us the basics for our health and happiness:
clean water, schools and health care. Never accept less.
If our quest for fool’s gold destroys what it can’t buy,
we’re simply fools caught building dream castles in the sky.

In times that are distressing,
millions of voices shout,
“To preserve simple pleasures,
drive these carpetbaggers out!”

The prompt for MVB is Wonder

“The Project,” for MVB

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The Project

It isn’t my fault that my storybook’s still
thirty-two pages piled in a hill
next to the scanner on my kitchen table.
I’ll get it formatted when I am able.
Right after I glue all this beach stuff together—
each seashell and heart stone and pelican feather—
to make a Yule tree, then to make a Yule altar.
For weeks I’ve worked on them. Never did I falter.

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Then I had beach walks to do, daily swims,
tequila to drink as the sun slowly dims.
Everyone gathered to put down the day
and bring on the night time. What more can I say?

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A Saturday writing group, dinner with friends.
Of new obligations, the list never ends.
Now it’s two days till Christmas with parties to go to.
And a party to give that no one has said no to.

And so I’m not sure how many will come
I said “bring your friends” which I fear was most dumb.
It seems that I really don’t know how to do
a party where I only ask just a few.
I don’t  know how much food or know just how many
napkins to buy. Plates and cups? How uncanny
that I haven’t planned this thing better this year.
I’m not only slipping—I’ve lost it, I fear.

My thought streams are verging on, “Hey, what the fuck!”
I don’t know how many are bringing potluck
so there may be no food and not enough booze.
This party I’m giving may be a real snooze.
And right after this one are three potlucks more.
I think that it calls for a trip to the store.
I must clear out my house once I am able.
Clear all of my art projects off of the table.

 Hide my computer, relocate my scanner,
put up more Christmas lights under the banner.
There is so much for this writer to do
that I fear it will take one more week, maybe two
to format my book both for Kindle and print,
for somehow, my time has just got up and went.
This retreat to make time for my book has been taken
once more by busy work, book tasks forsaken.

But right after New Years, I swear they’ll be done.
No more excursions and no more beach fun.
I’ll sit at the table, right there in my chair.
I’ll chew on my pencil and worry my hair
and get this book formatted. Then get it sent
off to the printer so I can say “went.”
Instead of “will go” when all my friends ask
the state of the manuscript, stage of my task.

“I’m finished!” I’ll say. “Glory be, I am done!”
And I’ll feel less guilty for swimming and fun.
Then I’ll start in on the next book or two.
It won’t be hard, for there’s nothing to do
to distract me or keep me from doing my task.
Nothing to go to. No one to ask.
Except for my writers’ group, Friday night dance,
and a trip up the coast, if we have a chance.

The art show where I said I’d show a few pieces—
a ” few” obligations? The list never ceases.
I guess the truth is that our lives are made up
of what we must do and what we give up.
The irony, though, of the whole situation
is that it’s a matter of choice and duration.
The more projects we find that we just have to do,
the more  we put off the remaining few.

I guess it’s a case of just fitting in
who we will be with who we have been.
That I keep on writing’s important because
I’d rather write “is” instead of put “was”
in front of “a writer” for the rest of my life;
but also in front of a friend, sister, wife.
For if we don’t put off living, doing and seeing,
the best stories we write will be tales of our being.

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 a reblog of a piece from 11 plus years ago. And, luckily, the “project”
mentioned in this poem as well as 4 other books have been published since then.)

The MVB prompt is “Project.”

Capricious Defiance, for MVB, July 22, 2025

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Capricious Defiance

Capricious Defiance

Lately I prefer my capers
to be read about in papers.
“Been there, done that,” is my motto.
I’ll get my thrills from  Bridge and Lotto.
Amorous adventures in the past,
I’ll choose thrills that tend to last
Scrabble played with friends online
is a pleasure most divine.
Checking out my blog statistics,
talking on the phone to mystics.
And I  challenge you to tell me what’s
more sensuous than chocolates!

For MVB: Defiant

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on  by . Edit

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About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I’ve lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I’ve lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

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For RDP: Defiant

No Sympathy, for MVB, May 10, 2025

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No Sympathy

I fear I’m barely lucid, for digestion dominates.
I’ve just had a sumptuous banquet of pork shank, rice and dates.
I know it’s fairly common to gorge and then complain,
yet I’m sure that the world’s hungry would gladly share our pain.

 

For MVB the prompt is Banquet.

Theater, for MVB, May 1, 2025

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Opening Night at the Theater with a Famous Screen Legend’s Guest Appearance


photo by Jordhan Madec on Unsplash. Used with permission

Opening Night at the Theater
with a Famous Screen Legend’s Guest Appearance

There’s an air of raw excitement in the theater tonight.
The ingenues are nervous and the grand dame wants to fight.
Her makeup isn’t done right and her hairdo is a fright.
The set is way too yellow and the stage lights are too bright!

She regales them with stories of when she was at her height.
They wonder just how many great successes she will cite.
It is a frosty evening, yet they brave the cold wind’s bite
to stand out in the alley to escape the much worse plight

of the thirtieth retelling of the star’s first opening night.
The male lead finally gets here, but, alas, high as a kite.
The orchestra begins their opus, hoping to incite
the audience to wild applause as they get their first sight

of the famous lady, surrounded by pink light
that obscures those telltale wrinkles and a costume that’s too tight.
The ingenues are all in place, ready for the fight,
waiting for the star to speak, then exit to the right.

Then all their minor lines they are ready to recite.
It will be a war of words, and they’re ready to fight.
This era, it will be their turn the audience to excite.
Will they outshine the brightest star? Yes, perhaps they might!

The prompt today for MVB is “Theater.”

Obsolete for MVB

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Fast Change

This modern world has changed and changed
until I have become estranged.
These alterations make me dizzy.
I do not like my world so busy.

The young are used to change, it’s true.
They love the instant and the new.
Texts and sound bites come so fast.
Nothing’s really built to last.

But, for someone over fifty,
all this change is hardly nifty.
When at each end the candle’s burned,
when everything we’ve newly learned,

when everything that we hold dear
turns obsolete within one year,
we’re always slightly out of gear,
which makes us feel unjustly queer.

They make these changes without a clue.
Let’s start out minor, then work up to
the major things they’ve set askew:
(I will not mention Dr. Who.)

Every computer becomes its clone.
I cannot use the telephone.
My applications change so quick
that I have come to feel I’m thick.

Skype makes its changes overnight.
(Yet rarely ever improves the site.)
Microsoft Word just loves to change,
which leaves her users feeling strange.

Move this to there and that down here;
so all my mental powers, I fear,
are spent in figuring out the APP
and organizing a mental map

of how to write instead of what,
creating one big mental glut.
No room for creativity.
No safe place where our minds soar free.

We’re always “searching” for, instead,
our minds caught up in fear and dread
of where they’ve moved the enlarge bar to
in this week’s Word processing zoo!

Our e-mail servers have joined the plot.
I feel like pitching out the lot.
Just when I’ve learned most every trick
of tool and contact, every lick—

their Machiavellian, evil team
goes and changes the whole darn scheme!
But when we’re sending coast-to-coastal,
the alternative is going postal.

So though we bitch and though we frown,
they are the only game in town;
and so they have us where they want us.
Though they frustrate, ire and daunt us,

one after another, they are the same,
playing at this modern game
of change for change’s sake, it’s true.
There’s really nothing much to do.

So I submit, though in a tizzy,
I’ll relax less and keep real busy.
I’ll leave the cyber world alone
and concentrate on just one bone

I have to pick in this modern world,
and I say this with my top lip curled.
Max Factor, Revlon, Almay, please—
I kneel before you on my knees.

Leave the lipstick colors that we hold dear
alone! Don’t change them every year.
Each time you cancel one that’s zesty,
to find another makes us testy!!!

For My Vivid Blog, the prompt is “obsolete.”

Permanent Bond for MVB

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Permanent Bond

Today as I walked by a shelf in the studio, I read the glue label marked, “Permanent Bond,” and my mind flashed back to when my niece gave birth. It was very important to her that she and her husband be left alone for a few days to bond with their child. My mother, who raised three girls without once hearing the b-word gave the sidelong look but said nothing.

Then my mind flashed back further. I had been called from the porch by the wild cat I had adopted two months before and sat with her as, like a ditto machine, she pumped out three small copies of herself. After these two most intimate hours of my life, how could I have given any of the kittens away? Of these four cats, two are now long dead, but the others have been with me for 11 years and I now have a name for the warm fullness I felt for the three tiny gray kittens.

These cats who leave small piles of organs in doorways—who insist on curling up on my hip or my shoulder as I lay reading, in spite of my allergic reaction to them—who meow insistently at  closed doors and shower cubicles. “Now, now, now, “ they insist. These cats who bring in baby rabbits, fleas, ticks, and the disembodied tails of salamanders to wriggle out of sight under the sofa—who bring me their infected cuts and  ears torn half-way off in cat fights—who, as kittens, could curl up three to a flower pot leaving the flower intact . These cats who know how to form a beautiful still life each time they come to rest—these cats to whom, I must admit, I have become bonded.

When I try to imagine where I will be in ten years, I see myself living somewhere wild, getting to know the local animals, getting wiser. I know that much of what I’ve learned about humans, I’ve discovered through living with animals. You have to be calm. Quiet. Let them come to you. Don’t grab and don’t make swift movements.

Some might call people with the temperament to calm animals boring. But if you look closely, you might see through to the quietness that fills out their beings. They have let the calmness take over. They have ceased fighting it.

I feel what might be this calmness, but wonder if it is instead numbness. And my mind works out the answer. Numbness is filled with emptiness whereas calmness is filled with small details. The line of blue bottles on the shelf. The red leaves at the very tip of the otherwise green plant. The curl of the cat’s head thrown forward onto i’s stomach. The outflung paw. The dear face of this most beautiful cat that I saw being born.

The MVB prompt today is Permanent

Picking Your Pieces for MVB, Feb 25, 2025

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Picking Your Pieces

Invest in possibilities and bifurcate your worries.
Soon enough these balmy days will change to winter’s flurries.
But why let future problems intercede today?
Best enjoy the present and put future woes away.

Being in a smaller pond makes you a bigger fish,
so whatever your situation, exercise your swish
and live your life with flair and joy. Wring all the zest from life.
It does no good to drown yourself in thoughts of gloom and strife.

Sometimes I find that in this life I get what I expect,
so when life hands you troubles, why don’t you just object
and turn those woes to prospects and insist on being chipper?
Why choose to be a pessimist when optimism’s hipper?

You might call me a dreamer, but that’s okay with me.
Why be imprisoned by your doubts when you could be free?
Life needn’t be a puzzle. It can be a quest.
Pick out the parts that you prefer and throw away the rest.

The prompt for My Vivid Blog today was “Flurries.”

Incandescent Insect Insomnia for MVB, Feb 16, 2025

5 Replies

 

                        

Incandescent Insect Insomnia

When nature made the  glow worm glimmer,
would that she’d installed a dimmer;
for when I put out the light,
what I expect is total night.

When it puts itself in action,
I fear it sets up a distraction.
Little glow worm on the shelf,
please keep your glowing to yourself.

 

For My Vivd Blog, the prompt is Glimmer. Photo gleaned from the Internet.

Dumbfounded for MVB, Jan 18, 2025

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It’s never too late to experience growing pains. If it is our onus in life to grow and to change, with no cutoff point after which we are absolved of this duty, then why are we dumbfounded when those pains of adolescence occur again and again at each stage of life? We perhaps grow more serious over the years, but need we become less sensitized? Does the snub, the willful wounding, the being overlooked, the derision become less important? If so, why? Perhaps it is a mark of self-worth, and that is good, but if it is merely the building of a cocoon around ourselves, except in the direst of circumstances, it becomes more of a punishment than a defense.

We are born into this world to experience and therefore, are given defenses to deal with the negative, but when those defenses grow to isolate us, then they become more than protective blankets. They become walls which become our prisons. We were meant to experience and to be vulnerable to changes. And lest we atrophy, from the cradle to the crematorium, we need to fight to keep ourselves open to those experiences that invite change.

For MVB the prompt is “Dumfounded.”
I wrote this advice to myself four years ago on my birthday, but decided to remind myself again of its message.