Tag Archives: poem

Beauty and the Beast

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Beauty and the Beast

“You Are Well Come” the banner read,
fluttering high over head.
From tree to tree it had been hung
with vibrant ribbons, securely strung.

Feasting tables were well laid
with mead and beer and lemonade.
The wedding cake stood tall bedecked,
sugar-spun and flower-flecked.

Roast joint of flesh and wheels of cheese
were laid, the wedding guests to please.
The wedding aisle strewn with flowers,
overhead the wedding bowers.

Organ music, strong and steady,
everything was poised and ready.
Heads were turned to footsteps heard
upon the pathway. Not one word

was uttered as the maiden entered.
Her pace was slow, her steps well-centered.
An arrow shot straight down the aisle,
veiled in silk and gowned in lisle.

The bridegroom marked her progress toward
the priest, the ring, the wedding gourd.
She took his hand, their vows were coined,
they sipped the gourd and thus were joined.

That night beauty would grace the bed
of the suitor she had wed.
The ending that you might foresee,
however, is not what will be.

Our plots in life have dips and bendings.
The same starts have different endings.
She wed the prince who slewed the beast
that now comprised the wedding feast!

 

The above poem was written to fulfill these three prompts:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/19/fowc-with-fandango-steady/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/vibrant-july-19-2018/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/rdp-49-welcome/

In Search of Kerfuffles

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Chances are one of these photos depicts a kerfuffle. Click on first photo to enlarge all and view as a slide series.


In Search of Kerfuffles

What, I must ask you, is a kerfuffle?
Is it a soufflé or perhaps a ruffle?
Is it that fuzz that hides under beds
or those stubborn snarls at the back of our heads?
Perhaps they are tasty and come with whipped cream—
a dieter’s nightmare, a sweet tooth’s fine dream.
Do kerfuffles have feathers and beaks on their noses 
to fly overhead and poop on our clotheses?
Does one have to walk them or clean up their messes?
I’m no closer to knowing, in spite of these guesses.
Guess I’ll quit my job and pack up a duffle,
set off in the world to find a kerfuffle.
And when I discover it, I’ll bring it home
and finally be able to finish this poem.

The Ragtag prompt today was kerfuffle.

Unclear Agenda

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This poem, written thirteen years ago, chronicles a situation I encountered when I was trying to hire men in California to clear brush to help me ready my house for selling in the U.S.

The Daily Addictions prompt is Revenue.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Note: It has come to my attention that the setting of this poem isn’t clear.  It is set in CA, U.S.A. and the initial character is American, as are the protesters.  The men standing outside the lumber yard are Mexicans looking for work. Thanks, Marilyn and Patti for letting me know that this was not clear.

Unclear Agenda

His denims worn and torn, his hair unshorn,
he sat on a fruit crate near a stop sign
on an exit road just off the California interstate.
“Will work for food,” his sign said, so I stopped.
“Jump in,” I said, and he looked confused.
“I have a city lot taken over by castor beans,” I told him.
“I’ll give you a meal and ten bucks an hour to clear them.”
“Lady, that would take me a day or more,” he said.
“I can make more than that in a few hours, just sitting…

View original post 202 more words

U.S.A.

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U.S.A.

Have we any doctrines? Have we any rules?
Are creeds and regulations simply meant for fools?
Has our common decency been voted away?
What of our Constitution? Has it become passé?
What would our founding fathers think, and what would they say?
Will loss of their declarations be the price we pay
for taking it for granted that liberty would thrive
so long as all our citizens managed to survive?
We always saw the threat outside—all those foreign men.
We never thought our country would be lost to those within.
Tell our air and water. Tell each foreign son.
Our doctrines and our principles seem to have come undone.

 

The Daily Addiction prompt is doctrine.

Quintessential Gentleman

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Quintessential Gentleman

He was the quintessential gentleman with tie correctly knotted.
Whenever he entered a room, the women were besotted.
Every Grande Dame had him on her dining list,
while all their daughters secretly were yearning to be kissed.

Little girls adored him and their mothers preened and fussed.
When they knew he’d be there, even  grandmas showed up trussed.
Artists painted his portrait. Sculptors sculpted his form.
Everywhere he went, slavish attention was the norm.

Every woman on the subway seemed to hope he would accost her,
and every social circle had him topmost on their roster.
All in vain, for every single mother, grandma, sister
was not even in the running, for he preferred a mister.

 

Fandango’s prompt word today is quintessential.

Objectification

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Objectification

Objects are dependable. Objects are the best.
Objects do not leave you. They remain there at rest.
They soothe the eye with beauty or operate as slaves,
for objects have served us since humans lived in caves.
Since the first stone hammer or flint carved to a point,
objects have helped to feed us or to pretty up the joint.
Carved into a cave wall, a bison or a bird.
Art lasts for millennia. That’s why I find absurd
those who say things don’t matter, for what I have to say
is that it’s art that lingers. People just pass away.

 

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Fandango‘s prompt today was object. Before you start exclaiming in protest, I’ll issue the disclaimer that this is written a bit tongue-in-cheek. Albeit, I love art. Wouldn’t want to live without it.  But I do realize people are more important.

Fandango‘s prompt was object.

Flip Flop (for DVerse Poets Pub)

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flip flop

the sound  of ease
and summer

not much to slip into
or out of

sand between toes
and other cracks

released in sleep
to gritty sheets

grinding our sleep
and clogging up washing machines

long gone the days of high button shoes
and the shoe horns that went with them.

Waist cinchers
give way to bikinis

and bikinis
to nude beaches

half of the world
flip flopping

rubber soles
and swinging breasts.

flip flops
taking the place

of gasps
as stays are tightened

the other half
burqas and Jimmy Choo

these differences
in freedom found

and freedom
found too slowly

find release in
collapsing towers

conceal, reveal.
flip flop.

 

For dVerse Poets Pub–on summer.

Black Hole

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R=(2GM)/(c^2)

As we’ve evolved from scales to skin,
growing the body we’re now in,
Did our mind grow here inside?
How did our soul come to abide
secure within this human form?
How did it come to be the norm?
Did words form here in you and me
simply because they yearned to be?
Were they put here to link us to
that in the eternal stew
that unites us all, in our unknowing
to a universal glowing?
And if so, what an irony
as words transform and set us free,
they also split us wide apart––
placing the head before the heart.
Substituting a dollar sign
for solutions that should be divine.
Can this be our ultimate goal,
in our journey toward our own black hole?
To grow our mind and freeze our heart
until it blows us all apart?
As science seeks to understand,
it holds us all within its hand.
It has the means, if it should please,
to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.
I wonder, then, can even a soul
escape the pull of a black hole?

The RDP prompt today is scale.
The Daily Addictions prompt was transform.

Some Little Bug Inside Me

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I am too sick to write a blog, I am a party hangout
for some amoeba who moved in and promptly called his gang out.
They’re having quite a time in there, yet keep wanting to leave.
Each time I have to see them out, I stumble and I weave.
My stomach feels like shattered glass, my head is slightly pounding.
I think they’re doing Zumba—flip-flopping and rebounding
against my corridors of gut. I wish that they would stop.
I can’t make it to the clinic to consult a microbe cop.
Is it a parasite or fluke ( contracted from my cat?)
When she strokes and kisses them, what cat owner thinks of that?
For now, I’m resting in my bed with electrolytes and Flagyl.
I’ve cancelled my appointments, for I’m feeling sort of fragile.
The world will demonstrate without me, and friends go out to dine
while I hang out with tiny guests, miserable and supine.

 

I had this same bug a year ago, when I had to call off my 70th birthday celebration, much-planned for, because I was so miserable. So, these pesky amoebas seem to be maintaining a schedule.  Unfortunately, I had a full day of activities planned today, as well—first of all a demonstration against Trump’s immigration policies, then a visit to my doctor, a visit to an ill friend, and dinner with another friend.  All cancelled.  Ironic that I’m too ill to go see my doctor.  Here’s another little ode to amoebas I wrote during an earlier bout named “Once Upon a Lime in Mexico.”

 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/rdp-30-fluke/

 

Ragtag’s prompt today is fluke .

Regeneration

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Regeneration

Hobbling around on the stump of a life,
nobody’s lover and nobody’s wife,
her children and grandchildren all raised and grown,
out of her life and out on their own.

Is her life over? Is it near its ending,
or has she another life that is just pending?
Has she a talent for regeneration?
Is the first sixty years mere education?

A single shoe dropped is only one shoe.
Life isn’t over until it is through.
Perhaps she’s less active removed from the past,
but wind can still fill out a sail at half mast.

The stub of a life can still get us around.
A heart can still beat and the blood can still pound.
Go after adventure for all you are worth,
for every new day is a part of your birth.

The Daily Addictions prompt is generate.