Tag Archives: poem about blogging

Blogger’s Lament

Blogger’s Lament



I do not want to bait a hook,
do the dishes, write a book.
Don’t wake at 6 or make my bed.
Most of my time’s spent in my head.
In two weeks, I’ll be seventy-one,
so when all is said and done,
I’ve earned the right to just obsess
on what I wish to. I confess
I’m up at eight or nine or ten,

with laptop or with notes and pen,

fulfilling all my blogging jobs,
and I must say that there are gobs
of prompt sites since

(and here I wince)
WordPress quit, thereby unleashing
scads of prompt sites without teaching
Mr. Linky or other ways
to try to ease our blogging days.

Now hours are spent just trying to

link up to that frog that’s blue

or finding where the prompt is hidden
even after we’ve been bidden
to come post on someone’s site.
So what was once our day’s delight

now seems more like one of those things

that paid employment always brings.
What once called out for “More time, more!”
now seems to me to be a chore.

It’s 2 p.m. and still I’m writing,


complaining, whining, jotting, citing

all the woes that blogging brings,
so why don’t I do other things?
Pot some plants or solve that pile
that’s filled the table for awhile

of bills, old poems––a dish of butter?
What’s that doing in the clutter?


Needless to say, I have a life
apart from blogging’s stressful strife.

Yet at 1:30, still at the keys,

lunch by my side, cat on my knees,
not quite through with all my griping,
but still typing, typing, typing.

Because in spite of present ills,

there is a space that blogging fills.


It’s friends for whom you need not dress

to turn to in your worst duress
to brag, to rage or to confess,

and they could never ever guess

what you look like, what you’re wearing
or that you’re slightly over-bearing.


Blogs are one great soapbox where
you don’t have to comb your hair
before you mount the stage to say
what you want to say, the way

you want to say it, every day.


And so, though I won’t eat tomatoes,
polish windows, peel potatoes,

walk the dog or trim the trees,
I will do just as I please.

Don’t do pilates. Don’t do jogging.


All I gladly do is blogging!

Dear Newepicauthor. Since I wrote this poet for all bloggers trying to fulfill all the prompts, I think it is appropriate to all. So I’m trying out your list to see if it will work for me.  Hope you don’t mind!

Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Sunday Writing Prompt – Teachers, for thehouseofbailey Destination Dreams Scotts Daily Prompt Gift, for Sheryl’s A New Daily Post Word Prompt: Languorous, for Daily Addictions by rogershipp prompt Disaster, for FOWC with Fandango – Literally, for Martha Kennedy Ragtag Community Antediluvian, for Teresa’s Haunted Wordsmith Three Things Challenge, where the three prompt words are “grandmother, daisy and wolf” and for Tales From the Mind of Kristian Word Prompt Moiety and for Swimmers the New Community Pool prompt – Clouds.

Neap Tide

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Three years ago I published this poem with no ending, asking commenters to construct an ending.  There were a number of excellent solutions, but unfairly, I never published one of my own, so I’m giving myself the additional assignment to finish the poem  since it also makes use of today’s prompt word of  “tide.” I’ve made many adjustments in the original poem and added the last stanza. 

Neap Tide

Borne, then born.
Clothed, fed, shorn.
Housed and cuddled,
Brain filled and muddled,
schooled, polished, allowed to roam,
to make the world into a home.

In my third quarter, now sedate.
Content to let my life abate.
Find worlds inside and there abide,
to let what happens be my guide.
To try to live with less precision.
To fear less the world’s derision.

Why so hard to be oneself?
Easier when on the shelf.
Now as I pull my world around me,
memories and dreams surround me—
my solitude a crystal jar
that lets me ponder from afar.

The current of my life, its tide,
reaches without and pulls inside
the things that help me try to see
where my life has taken me.
I contemplate and sometimes share
the truths that I’ve discovered there.

You come to read and judge each word
as wise, amusing or absurd.
You give new insights to what I’ve said—
poems not completed until they’re read.
Less in the world, ironically,
more of the world’s discovered me.

 

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If you’d like to see how others  ended the poem three years ago, go HERE.

The prompt today was tide.

July 3, 1947

 

July 3, 1947

The date above is notable
for reasons that are quotable.
It marks the birth of someone who
has  brought these few words into view
to put them in her blogging queue.
(True, that is what all bloggers do.)

But if there is a blogging heaven,
four thousand one hundred fifty-seven
might certainly be in the running
for snapshotting, rhyming and punning—
all those things we bloggers do
to try to get a rise from you.

In fact, in numbers I’ve been sparing
in how my blog count has been faring.
Blogs four thousand one-fifty-nine
are the numbers I claim as mine
for former blog posts that are done.
The next will end in sixty-one!

With sixty, alas, nothing rhymes
and so it is the least of crimes
that I don’t quote it as a score.
A small malfeasance, nothing more.
As poems go, this is not the best,
so please just rate me by the rest!

 

The prompt today is notable.

Keyboard Athlete

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Keyboard Athlete

Not a great sportswoman—champion of none.
I sport a camera when having my fun.
My skill is not measured in baskets or bases.
I score my points while clicking at faces.

Though I’m not the most physical person you’ll meet,
I do exercise caution when crossing the street.
My main lack of muscle tone’s merely because
My pushup experience is mainly in bras.

As you vault over hurdles and excel at tennis,
the extensions I do are less of a menace.
Though I’m not an expert at sprinting or jogging,
my fingers are well-toned through everyday blogging.

 The prompt word today was “champion.”

Leftovers

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Leftovers

New words fly at me in a swarm.
They do not mean to do me harm,
but still I feel beaten and battered.
They might feel they haven’t mattered
if I do not use them all,
and yet I feel the beach’s call.
The dog is clamoring to be fed
while I am writing this instead.

The guilt of it cuts like a knife.

I’ve got to go and have a life!
I save the words already used,
and lest the others feel abused,
I leave them on the page as well
to tell the stories they might tell
If I had the time to use them.
I hope you’ll take time to peruse them:

fife  strife excel tell bell yell cell

The prompt today was swarm.

Crossings

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Crossings

A river between us, each high on a ridge.
If we’re ever to meet, we must build a bridge.
But it’s hard to accomplish unless we take hand
to collect the cement, the gravel and sand.

So those of us tired of  manual labors—
not given to chitchatting much with our neighbors—
can go on our blogs to find our own kind,
constructing bridges purely of mind.

Blogging is great to bring folks together
on separate continents, in any weather.
We can be lazy, me here and you there,
building our bridges with ease, through the air.

Not over yet! Now click on this URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_8KpR49bFI

The prompt today was “bridge.”

Natural Girl

(Photos above? Before I was a natural girl! Poem below? Fifty years later.)


Natural Girl

Underneath this hairpiece, I am a natural girl.
It’s just that blogs are waiting, and I haven’t time to curl.
I haven’t put on makeup for a month or so, but still
there’s no one here to see me as my daily prompts I fill.

I don’t need any lipstick, for my lips have grown too thin
to find a place to put it, plus I don’t know any men
around to help me kiss it off and so why put it on?
That’s why when my friends see me, they think I’m looking wan.

I no longer wear foundation, for it clogs up in the cracks.
And that’s not the only makeup that my face so lately lacks.
I cannot wear mascara, for my dry eye medication,
every time I use it, sends eye makeup on vacation.

I’m growing out my bangs and so no need to shape and pluck.
My eyebrows don’t show anyway, so I say what the fuck!
Without the rest, why take the time to make eyelashes curl?
Lately, by default, I am a totally natural girl!!!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/natural/

Blog-out

 

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Blog-out

Dark genius sits there pondering and staring at the screen.
His features in reflected light glow a sickly green.
He works his cyber screwdriver slightly to the right.
His only tool––the keyboard––is his weapon in this fight
…………………………………………………………as every blog on WordPress skews slightly all at once.
He’ll show his third grade teacher for calling him a dunce!

He tugs a little here and there, adjusting cyber screws.
And just for fun, he adds a few zeroes to my views.
He knows that I am watching and he senses my excitement.
He chuckles that my false success has been at his incitement.
Then he shuts down the internet––Facebook, WordPress, Twitter.
and my seconds of great happiness turn just as quickly bitter.

Bloggers the world over are turned back onto themselves.
Photos trapped in media files or stacking up on shelves.
No place to reach out for a friend for shut-ins who, once freed
to roam a universe of blogs now sit in dire need
of someone just to talk to. To realize they are there.
They sit staring at their screens, though all of them are bare.

Week after week we wait for our deliverance from this blight.
We miss the internet all day, and even more at night.
I’m thinking about former friends, now lost across the miles,
tripping over poetry surrounding me in piles,
thirsting after comments about every brand new thought.
Having no fast outlet, my brain feels like it’s caught.

Bound up in old creations that have no place to go,
with no easy outlet, the thoughts are coming slow.
Jammed up creativity is worse than constipation,
for writing with no readers is just mental masturbation.
It’s true that I have friends to call and writers’ groups as well.
But they have not the patience to hear all I have to tell.

A blog gives me an avenue to fill out a whole world
with thoughts that for a lifetime, I’ve kept inside, tightly furled.
For those of us who always have felt slightly alone,
the Interweb has seemed a placed created to atone.
In the darkened hours when others are asleep,
we live that midnight life we’ve kept within us, buried deep.

History moves ever onward despite glacier, war or flood.
We see it trailed behind us in footprints etched in blood.
So we’ll survive the cyber war when it comes to pass
by spending more time with our friends, calmly smoking grass
or sharing drinks at Starbucks, devoid of texts or apps,
but we’ll miss our midnight family filling in the gaps.

 

The prompt: Life after Blogs– Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/life-after-blogs/

Okay, I must add a comment here, where everyone can see it.  See that fifth line in the first stanza, where the line is skewed over to the right?  WordPress doesn’t let you do that.  Every time I put spaces in to make that happen, they erased them.  So, as usual, I prevailed upon my tech expert/volunteer co-blog-administrator okcforgottenman to find a solution.  As you can see above, he found one and I’m not surprised.  What I am surprised about is his solution, that was nothing short of genius!  His solution was to put in a line of periods in front of the line until it was out where I wanted it and then to CHANGE THE COLOR OF JUST THOSE PERIODS TO WHITE!!!!  Tell me that isn’t genius.

How to Write a Blog with Bite!

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How to Write a Blog with Bite!

Have you ever had a hot dog without mustard, onions, relish?
What is a hot dog, after all, but something to embellish?
The same is true of blogging. It has to have some spice––
an interesting title is my opening advice.
Remember your first sentence should invite us in.
An opening poorly stated? The worst blogging sin.
Don’t start you blog apologizing you have naught to say.
If you have nothing for us?  Just don’t write today.
Make your first line snappy, original and clear.
Don’t show your indecision, for you’re the expert here!!!
Nobody else can possibly know where you’re going to go
if you write about a topic where you are in the know.
Hook them with your opening–confident or funny.
Your readers are the buzzing flies. Give them a little honey!
Start right in with your topic with no wandering around.
We shouldn’t have to search for where the real message is found.
A blog is like a fine-tooled belt that you have carved from leather––
not just a pile of sentences that you have heaped together.
Do not use tired comparisons that you have heard before.
Each sentence that you write should be like opening a door
and finding yourself in a world that’s fresh and new and bright.
And then you’ll have a hot dog blog that we will want to bite!!!


Here are some links to just a few of the exceptional blogs that never give short shrift.  Read them every day and their excellence will pull you along with them. Set your standards high and you will soon have a readership that will make you want to excel,  just to keep them happy!! (photo is a stock photo from shutterstock.)

https://redswrap.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/the-old-days-of-big-wine/

https://alotfromlydia.wordpress.com/

http://teepee12.com/

https://momshieb.wordpress.com/

okcforgottenman.wordpress.com

https://ourrumblingocean.wordpress.com/

https://yournibblednews.wordpress.com

https://helenmeikle.wordpress.com/

http://thegadabouttown.com/

 

 The Prompt: What’s the key advice you would give to new bloggers:?

Internet Infraction: Bogged Down in Blog

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Internet Infraction: Bogged Down in Blog

The only way I’d ever stop
is flagged down by a cyber cop
who says my blogging cannot last
if I continue to go so fast.
He’d give a lecture and a ticket
and then he’d actually stick it
across my screen with strict instruction
to cease this method of destruction.

If life had meant us to go on line
hour after hour––eight or nine
hours or more day after day,
with always one more thing to say,
why would it give us legs to go
and feet to walk on, heel to toe?

Day after day, it’s grown obscene––
my eyes plastered upon my screen,
my fingers stiff with my attention
over what I might next mention––
fingers drumming, tapping, bending
all the while sending sending––
typing out, first fast then slow
my life as a reality show.

Until I wonder if I log
its details daily on my blog
because I want to recall life––
its joys and sorrows, pleasures, strife––
or do I only move about
to give me something to write about???

My friends all say this can’t go on.
I’m growing flaccid, weak and wan.
I need some exercise and sun––
some movies, dancing or other fun
aside from snapping pictures of
each bougainvillea or mourning dove.

Life’s meant to live, not to record.
It should be shouted, screamed or roared––
not typed out softly on the keys
of a laptop spread out on my knees!
The truth of this I’ve clearly seen
now that this sticker obscures my screen.
“Do not remove” it clearly reads,
“Go live your life! Go do some deeds!”

I’ll put on sneakers and do some laps.
I’ll exercise ‘til I collapse,
then do more laps around the pool
‘til I’m an exercising fool.
I’ll call twelve friends up on the phone.
I’ll never ever be alone.
I’ll live my life until its end
without a single blogging friend!

My dedication will never lapse;
and yet, how temptingly it gaps–
that sticker, unstuck at its edge
so easy now to pick and wedge
my fingernail beneath and tug,
to drop its shreds upon the rug
and free my screen of its obstruction––
this taboo not of my construction.

To push the button, light up the screen––
to see its colors from red to green.
Black words on white, Cee’s daily flower––
no longer do I pine and cower.
I peck the keys, upload some pics––
once more getting my daily fix.
The truth of modern life leaks in.
To blog is not a major sin!
I’ll give up blogging, become a rover
precisely when Hell freezes over!!!

 

The Prompt––Bloggers, Unplugged: Sometimes, we all need a break from these little glowing boxes. How do you know when it’s time to unplug? What do you do to make it happen?