Finishing What God Started
Once the polar ice has melted and the animals departed,
It’s only right that we continue on with what we’ve started.
It will be the biggest news that humankind has won.
We’ll eradicate the universe, and our job will be done!
Prompt words for today are melt, news, universe and eradicate.
Touchy Subject
My soul, once slippery as an seal,
that eased as easily as an eel
to heaven and back, a wave worn path,
like slippy-sliding in the bath,
has grown rough ridges that jerk me back
into the mosh pit with the pack.
We flail with elbows, boot tips, knees—
all of us caught within the squeeze
of what we hate and knock against,
beat fist and teeth and cock against.
It’s like a cageless, viral zoo,
this rough world we’ve evolved into.
The whole world’s in each other’s viewing,
killing, ripping, tearing, chewing.
We touch the keys to tear asunder,
ravage, rape, ransack and plunder.
These same hands that could stroke the keys,
pound and punish, grab and seize.
We Tweet or Snapchat, Facebook, Skype,
barely touching as we type.
We are so constantly in touch
that we do not consider much
that in our constant online dealing,
we should give more thought to feeling.
We cannot feel a handshake’s squeezing,
warm and tender, pressured, pleasing,
when we’re too far away to touch.
We cannot feel so very much.
We feel with organs meant for thinking,
and make connections without linking.
Those of us who predate the text
tend to fear what’s coming next.
A simple touch could end the world—
all of us pulverized and hurled
into a place where nothing lingers.
No tongue, no lips, no questing fingers.
https://dversepoets.com/2018/11/13/tuesday-poetics-touch-me/
Click on any photo to enlarge all and view as slide series.
Ubiquitous networks of highways crisscross the face of Mother Earth–lines that age her fresh face. Pockmarks of potholes question their durability, whereas Earth lives on, in one form or another.
Dams crack and spill their water freshly across lake beds parched for centuries.
Bones of dinosaurs peek out from eroded banks of clay. Plants spread from potholes in gouged pavement. Somewhere in the arctic ice, the past lies thawing, ready to be reborn.
Who knows but that the
nightfall of mankind may be
a new world’s morning?
I don’t know what I did this week. I seem to have collected prompts from a different week for each prompt site. Perhaps I’ve been at it too long and should retire. The prompt words I somehow collected were highway, durable, ubiquitous and morning. The form is for dVerse Poets haibun challenge.
Darn! I now find even the comments and Mr. Linky for dVerse are closed, even though they say they are open all week. I guess this just isn’t my day, or I am as cracked as the pavement above…..Here are the “wrong” links I used:
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/01/fowc-with-fandango-highway/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/daily-addictions-2018-week-34/durable
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/ubiquitous/
https://dversepoets.com/2018/09/03/haibun-monday-good-morning/
Centering
Many folks are fearing the center will not hold.
Our unity is broken, our future has been sold.
But the ways of nature are complex and manifold.
And when the final stories of mankind have been told,
of how we “bested nature” by trying to break its mold,
when all our quests have ended, both for glory and for gold;
we won’t be its ending, but just another fold
whose exploits lay beneath the earth, written in the mold—
of how we “tamed” an environment that was too brash and bold,
wrapping it in hydrocarbons, conquering the cold.
The prompt word today was “center.”
Let’s Pretend
“Let’s pretend,” the children say,
as they hurry off to play.
But that same action has often blown
up in the face of those full-grown.
Escape is easier these days
with all the various means and ways
we have to skirt reality
by what we listen to and see.
On television or movie screen,
we might pretend that what we’ve seen
is more reality than fact,
until we find that we react
so vividly to what is fiction
that it becomes a real addiction
that deflects our full attention
from that we do not dare to mention.
Escape increasingly is sought––
deflecting us from what we ought
really to be dealing with.
Instead of truth, we choose the myth.
Global warming, poverty,
Isis, the disparity
between the classes and the use
of meth and alcohol abuse.
Children wielding guns because
it is what every game now does.
Adults displaying their frustration
at our society’s obfuscation
of the truth of what goes on
in a society gone wrong.
Wealth governs us then shields us from
how far from truth we’ve really come.
We watch pretty fantasies
that entertain or shock or please
filling us with false elation
that is not of our own creation.
So life becomes vicarious,
distracting us from various
problems where we might have acted
if we had not been distracted
by the gross banality
passing for reality
of made-up people who act and preen
on TV or computer screen.
There’s something to be said, you see
in favor of reality
when dealing with the painful facts
of what it is one’s own life lacks.
The prompt word today was “pretend.”
The Lap
Mothers with children in your lap,
snuggled safely for their nap,
or joggers slowing down their laps
so their sons can fill the gaps
and catch up to take their father’s hands,
consider parents in other lands
as well as children of your own.
Consider what seeds might be sown.
Those who assign Hillary
to whipping post and pillory
bring charges that are spurious
which is especially curious
when the other candidate
who spreads these messages of hate
has led a life luxurious,
exploitative and usurious.
When he claims to be for the masses,
how can we be such senseless asses
to vote for this self-serving fool––
misogynistic, crude and cruel?
How can you listen and not see
how dangerous this man could be?
His fake statistics, groundless rap
spewed from his seat in luxury’s lap?
Please with the election nearing,
consider what you should be fearing.
I hope that every dad and mom
pictures his finger on the bomb.
Do you want this master of derision
making that supreme decision?
This man who overlooks the facts,
and simply rushes out and acts—
could act to end the world for good
and thereby end your parenthood.
The prompt word today was “Luxury.”
Earth’s Verdict
This is the day we laud our Earth
who, from the first day of her birth
has gathered, to increase her girth
around her core, the fertile soil
that, by our labor and our toil,
helps us retain our mortal coil
by giving sustenance to all
residing on our spinning ball.
Yet, we have spread oil’s deadly pall
over this globe that gives us life
until, I fear, our home is rife
with that which cuts us like a knife,
our umbilical to sever.
Always, we deem ourselves so clever
with our improvements, but we never
seem to see the full effect––
how each gain is a defect.
It’s on this day that we reflect
on how we’ve served our mother ill.
And now we swallow that vile pill
and thereby finally pay our bill––
that fine we’re issued as we wait
for that improbable ending date
when all our poisoning will abate.
Knowing still, down in our heart
that all the evils that we start
are but that fatal stabbing dart
that will eventually bring an end
to each family member and friend
as nature’s laws we seek to bend.
Now as we wait in our human queue
to receive the verdict that we’re due,
there is one fact that’s sure and true.
As we vanish, here and yon,
and as, eventually, we’re gone,
the Earth will still be going on.
Both NaPoWriMo and WordPress gave “Earth Day” as a prompt today. I’m also using my illustration to fulfill Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt. Three birds, one stone.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/04/21/flower-of-the-day-april-22-2016-azalea/
http://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-two-2/
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/earth/
It’s Not All About Us
It’s not all about us, whatever you say.
New days will still dawn when we’ve all passed away.
Though the world that we’ve made is important to us,
We’ve made hardly a dent with our foment and fuss.
All our grand plans and writings and arts
Are not new to this world. They’re just new to our hearts.
Everything everywhere has always been.
We just refind it again and again.
So when those with the power destroy where we’ve been,
it will all just start over–beginning again!
When the last bomb has been launched, dropped or hurled,
We’ll be gone, but all will be well with our world.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “No Cliffhangers.” Write a post about the topic of your choice, in whatever style you want, but make sure to end it with “…and all was well with the world.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 