Photo by Jose Moreno for Unsplash. Used with permission
All I Want for Christmas
A rash of holiday wishes have lately been extended,
and more will surely come about before this year is ended.
I wish such heartfelt sentiments were felt by those who rule,
and would lead to the impeachment of the world’s most dangerous fool!
Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Dear Elected Representatives:
(A Letter from the People of America)
We ventilate our dwellings of many different kinds,
but may not have the sense to ventilate our minds.
Perhaps we fear we’d stir up something that has died—
some milk of human kindness that’s buried deep inside.
As kids sit scared in cages and countless forests burn,
you think you’re given license to hoard all that you earn,
protecting it from others who have need of it,
flailing around in luxuries of your money pit.
Yachts and cars and mansions should not buy peace of mind
when they leave our planet in a lethal bind.
Our plastic world is flailing. It chokes on its excess.
How can you turn your backs on its extreme duress?
We elect our rulers. They are not born to reign.
In return we must demand that they share our pain
and do not profit by it with cash for legislation
leading to their betterment and our consternation.
Look at where we’re going and look at where we’ve been.
Open up your minds. Let truth and justice in.
During your term of office who’s advanced as far as you have?
It seems the teeming masses did not profit as a few have.
We’re taking back our government, abolishing each clause
that gives you the entitlement to profit from the laws
you enact for self-interest. It’s time that you were outed
and all who vote against our interests were routed.
You defend bad judgement, support your corrupt clown.
Now all who stand behind him must also be brought down.
You overlook the obvious for motives all your own.
You’ve opened up the cage and the dove of peace has flown,
stalked by a bald eagle who feeds on those for whom
it should serve as symbol of something else but doom.
We must bring back our liberty, nobility and pride.
Resuscitate a country that many fear has died.
The truth is there before you, so open up your minds
to see there’s a solution for our present binds.
If you refuse to topple that one on whom you dote,
we’ll topple you one after one–when we go to vote!!
Prompt words today are ventilate, scared, stir, licence and earn.
Little Sins
Lynnie Brost and I, washing our sins away in the bathtub
and singing of it to the strains of holy music
from The Back to the Bible Broadcast
on the radio in the living room.
My older sisters stretched out on the porch
reading Photoplay and giggling
at our penitent antics,
feeling no need
to confess the sins
of Vivian dances
and the back seats of cars.
At the age of five,
How could we articulate our sins?
The tiny plastic sword—a wingless caduceus
I’d filched from a junk drawer where hundreds resided,
rewards for the cancer drive her mother supervised.
My mother head of the Sister Kenny Polio
drive, where rewards were merely
of the conscience.
How I had wanted
one of those
tiny swords.
Why
had I not just asked for one?
We
worried most
back in our innocence—
back when our sins were the least.
Back when in our minds, the value of what we wanted
was linked as much to how much we wanted it
as to its material value.
That two-penny sucker taken from the open jar
in the Peck family’s remodeled basement.
My mother asked where I’d gotten it.
My ashamed confession,
that long trip
next door
to
confess again.
No problem. That’s what they were there for.
But my mother,
knowing the power of the little sin,
was teaching me the dangers
of its contact.
What could it hurt,
sugar packets pocketed at Starbucks,
extra ketchup and mustard scooped by handfuls into purses?
Little sins overshadowed by the big sins of this world
and yet, somehow, shameful in their pettiness.
Drenched in these small sins,
what contracts do we,
unknowing,
make?
To steal from the rich and give to the poor,
then display our generosity on our lapels
by the scarlet badge of the caduceus?
Noble Robin Hoods, we justify
by our assurance that
they’ve stolen
from us
as
well.
and thus,
those who need most to learn
become instead our teachers,
educating us that their own sins are justified—
what we ourselves would do
if only we had
their power.
Prompt words today are articulate, contacts, drench and penitent.
The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem that “involves a story or action that unfolds over an appreciable length of time, focusing on imagery, sound or emotional content.”
Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/rdp-wednesday-articulate/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/03/fowc-with-fandango-contacts/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/penitent/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/your-daily-word-prompt-drench-april-3-2019/
Balance
It is so very easy to trap wonder in a box
and to view the world around you as a sort of pox
festering and viral like a plague about to burst,
to only see the suffering, to just take in the worst.
Our news is geared to tell us the most spectacular ills.
They profit from the awfulness. It’s we who pay the bills.
It’s true we need to know about the evil that men do,
but once the right shoe drops, we need to see the left foot, too.
What beauties lie within our world like pods about to flower?
What are the kindnesses performed hour after hour?
Christmas will have Scrooges and each glory its detractor,
but as we view the acts of man, grace is also a factor.
We need to stem the violence, the cruelty and greed,
but to view the selfless acts of man is just as strong a need.
Listen to wind’s harmonies. Note tall grass’s swaying.
Find the things in life that make living worth the staying.
“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record; while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks of the river.” ―
The prompt words today are pod, easy, wonder and Scrooge. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/rdp-thursday-pod/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/12/20/fowc-with-fandango-easy/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/wonder/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/your-daily-word-prompt-scrooge-December-20-2018/
Click on any photo to enlarge all. jdbphotos
Trilling
Don’t you hear the mockingbird
trilling out the whole absurd
story of the passing year,
giving voice to shock and fear?
Listen to the mourning dove,
warning us from far above,
the starlings, wrens and birds of prey.
Our debts all nature has to pay.
How can it be that those in power
sit and ponder and yet cower,
too intent on their own needs
to enact necessary deeds
to bring a tyrant fool to task—
to do what all the sane men ask?
Shame on these godly well-heeled men
who fold their hands and say amen,
but let sick children go untreated,
tenements to go unheated,
our waterways to be polluted,
laws and edicts instituted
that benefit the filthy rich
to raise themselves another niche
while milling masses unenlightened
vote heedless as their belts are tightened,
favoring the autocrats
in fear of what the democrats
“might” do, when all around them all
democracy proceeds to fall.
Hear her there, up on the limb,
surveying all who follow him?
Simple nature mocking us?
Laughing at our furious fuss?
Perhaps more knowing than we know
when raging fires and piles of snow
assault us, it is nature’s way
to lead us and to have its say.
We cannot think of only our
needs and exercise our power
for special interests without paying.
This is what all of nature’s saying.
Mudslides, hurricanes and drought
may show us what it’s all about.
Balance, sanity and sharing
fairness, ecology and caring
will bring about a world that’s lasting
beyond our legislature’s casting.
God-fearing men, do you care
about how your children fare?
And as those whom we’ve elected,
oh so naïvely selected
pad their pockets and close their eyes,
our world around us swiftly dies.
Those are the truths clearly absurd
told to us by the mockingbird.
He sits above on swaying limb.
Why are the masses deaf to him?
The prompt today is trill.
Enlarge all photos by clicking on any photo.
Staying Afloat
The days my life is not erratic
are the days it is too static.
I need an leavening in life—
a lessening of loss and strife—
that doesn’t store me in the attic.
Retirement is not intended
to designate a life as ended.
I’d like some fun and some pizazz
aside from knitting and Shiraz.
I’d like my salad days extended.
Turn off the news. Turn up the notes.
I prefer hearing what emotes.
There is coverage enough
of Donald Trump and other stuff.
I’m tired of inane Twitter quotes!
Bring in the band and serve the drinks.
One’s only as old as she thinks.
I’ll move my body, move my mind.
(True, my brain more than my behind.)
For what is static is what sinks.
The prompt today is static.
Tenterhook: a hook used to fasten cloth on a drying frame or tenter.
The Rack
The whole world stretched on tenterhooks, suspense our daily bread.
We hardly know how we should feel until the news is read.
No gentle folds around us to cushion out our dread.
What country now in warfare? What new group fallen dead?
The sadness of the whole taut world unravels in our head.
The fabric of society loosening thread by thread.
Billionaires grow fatter as children go unfed
when politics and Wall Street are so smugly wed.
Like bleating sheep we follow. We are so easily led.
What was meant to swathe us hooks us on the rack instead.
The prompt today is tenterhooks.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 