Tag Archives: poem

An Ode to Dog Companions

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The Prompt: Literate for a Day—Someone or something you can’t communicate with through writing  can understand every single word you write today, for one day only. What do you tell them?

An Ode to Dog Companions

Darling little Frida, dearest Diego, too.
I have a little something I have to say to you.
If you’d like to go out walking every single day,
you have to start responding when I shout out, “Hey!”

That word means “Pay attention!” Its volume says “Right now!”
It doesn’t mean to take off after every passing cow
pulling me right after you, cause it is two to one,
and since my last foot surgery, I don’t much like to run!

Another little something I’d really like to tell
is that it was all your fault the last time that I fell.
When one of you runs toward the lake, the other towards the town,
your leashes wrap around me and the way I go is down!

Please don’t jump up on the screen whenever mealtime’s near.
I’ve had it mended more than once—a dozen times, I fear.
If you sit there quietly, your meal will be served fast.
I tell this to you each day, but my words don’t seem to last.

Another little something that needs badly to be said
is that it would be lovely if you’d shit behind the shed
instead of on the footpath or all over the grass,
for pooping over everything is really rather crass.

You don’t have to answer that dog across the street,
for he sets a barking record that you don’t have to beat.
The fighting cocks can crow without your high accompaniment.
(Albeit that your howls are growing quite magnificent.)

The hound of the Baskervilles was acting on a curse
and now that you have matched him, there’s no need to rehearse.
The owl will hoot hoot every night no matter what you do.
Ignore him, please. This is your mother begging it of you!

The dog food is for you dogs, and the cat food is for cats.
If you keep forgetting this, it’s going to drive me bats!
It does no good to try to knock cat dishes from the wall.
Those antics will not ever get you anywhere at all!

Diego, when I get home, please don’t drive Frida away!
You won’t believe there’s love enough, no matter what I say.
I have one hand for each of you, so let her have her share.
You are a dog and not a pig, so gluttony’s not fair.

Please don’t eat the cat bed and please don’t chase the cat.
Bullying’s not an answer. I will have none of that!
You found me on the street and did all that you could do
to make me bring you home with me to join my motley crew.

I am allergic to you dogs, and also to each cat,
although I know that you cannot be cognizant of that.
And so you want to sleep real near and have me stroke you often.
But when I do, it ends in itching, nose-blowing and coughin’.

Your species is a puzzle to which I don’t have a key.
Though it was at your insistence that I brought you home with me,
why is it every single time an open gate you see,
you’re through it, running down the street, so anxious to be free?

(for a similar prose answer to this prompt, go Here)

Less Salt in My Success Story, Please

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
–Truman Capote

Less Salt in my Success Story, Please

Is it coincidence that spice is also known as “seasoning?”
The reason for this must be (according to my reasoning)
because we need a bit of this and then a bit of that
lest our cuisine, and more importantly, our lives become too flat.
Summer, winter, spring and fall—no season dominates them all.
So this is why, then, in my view,
a pinch of failure will surely do.

The Prompt: The Spice of Success—if “failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor” (Truman Capote), how spicy do you like your success stories?

Okay, trying to link to NaBloPoMo.  Let’s hope this works!!!

The Daily Wait

For some reason, I woke up at 4:30 this morning.  Of course I knew there would be no prompt yet, but as I combed the internet for distraction, tried in vain to write to my own topic, joined NaNoWriMo and tried without success to find a photo for a cover and gave up, (who picks a cover before they write the novel?), tried to find the real website for NaBloWriMo and gave up (only to see,eventally, that they posted it with the prompt this morning).

I finally was reminded of the days I’ve sat for hours waiting for the prompt or have received a timely one only to find the link doesn’t work.  And so those other days of waiting are what inspired the seemingly unreasonable post below.  (Who for God’s sake expects a prompt at 4:30 in the morning?)  Daily Post, we do appreciate your efforts so hope you can have a sense of humor about our complaints.  One thought, though. I just discovered the feature where you can set a post to automatically publish at a certain time in the future.  Could you do this with the prompt so it would consistently be published at a certain time?

The Daily Wait

7:05, and still I wait.
Have you forgotten we have a date?
Without your promise, I might move on,
but in your game, I’m just a pawn.
You move me here and move me there.
You do not even seem to care
that I’m here online, held at the brink
as I wait for prompt or wait for link.
Daily Post, you’ve drawn us in,
addictive now as heroin.
We can’t get on with our day
until you tell us what to say!
Your hook and line is without bait,
yet still we let you seal our fate.
If you’d just post your topics sooner,
we wouldn’t have to pull a nooner!

Okay, fair is fair, so here is the real prompt for today and I promise to write about it as well:

The Prompt: The Spice of Success—if “failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor” (Truman Capote), how spicy do you like your success stories?  (My answer to this is now posted in a different post.)

Hard Drive

The Prompt: Buyers, Beware? The year is 2214, and your computer’s dusty hard drive has just resurfaced at an antique store. Write a note to the curious buyer explaining what he or she will find there.

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My Retablo, “Autobiography”

Hard Drive

If you long for mystery,
poems, facts and history,
long perambulations
and wild exaggerations,
recipes and letters and
episodes of Homeland,
Elementary, Sherlock, Friends,
a blogging site that never ends,

Emails, Youtube, Facebook notes,
starts of novels, copied quotes,
OkCupid pictures of
possibilities for love,
notes from nice guys, threats from creeps,
notes from guys who play for keeps,
friends who only write when drunk,
chain e-mails, jokes and other junk,

two hundred drafts of my third book,
(each one different, have a look),
kids stories and their illustrations,
the Christmas plans of my relations,
photographs of my whole life—
its happiness and pain and strife—
some successes but also follies,
fireworks, insects, gardens, dollies,

travel snaps and friendly faces,
rooms at home or foreign places,
birds and children, beaches, skies,
the camera lens is true and wise
and not as given to fraud and lies
as writings filtered through the eyes
of one who feels the joys or pains
of what she witnesses, then deigns

to try to change her reader’s mind
to accord with the type or kind
of thoughts she carries deep inside:
pride’s cutting edge, love’s waning tide—
things lovely, funny, jarring, rare.
So read this hard drive if you dare,
but if you fear a life laid bare,
I have one word for you. Beware.

HALLOW E’EN

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The Prompt: Trick or Trick—It’s Halloween, & you just ran out of candy. If the neighborhood kids (or anyone else, really) were to truly scare you, what trick would they have to subject you to?

Hallow E’en

They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall.
One climbs a tree to peer within. I hope he doesn’t fall.
I cower here within my house. Perhaps they’ll go away.
Though I am not religious, eventually I pray.

Their little voices raise a pitch. They start to bay and howl.
There’s a flutter in my heart region, a clutching in my bowel.
I purchased Reese’s Pieces and miniature Kit Kats
just for all these masked and costumed little brats.

My motives were unselfish. The candy was for them,
for I don’t eat much candy in efforts to grow slim.
And yet that bag of Reese’s, those small Kit Kats and such
called to me from where they were sequestered in my hutch.

It started with a whisper, hissing out their wish:
“We would look so pretty laid out on a dish!”
I knew that they were evil. I knew it was a trap.
I tried hard to resist them, my hands clenched in my lap.

I turned up my computer, listening to “The Voice.”
Those candy bars would not be seen till Halloween—my choice!
My willpower was solid. No candy ruled me.
(If that were true, no kids would now be climbing up my tree.)

Yes, it is true I weakened. I listened to their nags.
I took the candy from the shelf and opened up the bags.
Their wrappers looked so pretty put out for display
in one big bowl so colorful, lying this-a-way

and that-a-way, all mixed and jumbled up together.
No danger of their melting in this cooler weather.
I put them on the table, then put them on a shelf,
so I would not be tempted to have one for myself.

When people came to visit, I put them by my bed.
Lest they misunderstand and eat them all instead.
Then when I was sleeping, one tumbled off the top.
I heard it landing with a rustle and a little “plop.”

I opened up one eye and saw it lying there
just one inch from where I lay, tangled in my hair.
Its wrapper was so pretty—foiled and multi-hued.
Some evil force took over as I opened it and chewed!

This started a small avalanche of wrappers on the floor
as I ripped & stuffed & chewed & swallowed more & more & more!
This story is not pretty but has to be confessed.
My only explanation is that I was possessed.

They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall,
but I have no candy for them. No treat for them at all.
Surrounded by the wrappers, bare bowl upon my lap,
I think I’ll just ignore them and take a little nap.

I hear them spilling o’er my wall and dropping down inside.
I try to think of what to do. Consider suicide.
They’re coming in to get me. Beating down my door.
They are intent on blood-letting—the Devil’s evil spore.

I guess it’s not the worst death a gal could ever get.
I’ve heard of much worse endings than death by chocolate!

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Midnight Light

Midnight Light

I wear darkness like a second skin.
It is the cloak that hides my midnight sin
as I make my way, barefooted, through my house.
Silent, lest I wake my dogs or spouse.

This way I know most well and so I bridge
in seconds that long gap between my bed and fridge.
Pull open that snug door and hear the plop
first of the rubber gasket, then the top

of the carton that has been my goal.
Spoon out its richness without benefit of bowl.
This darkness both of me and of the night
something the fridge dispenses with its light

as tears of joy and guilt and pleasure stream
down cheeks distended with this chocolate dream.
For minutes, I stand caught up in the hold
of this trio of pleasures: chocolate, creaminess and cold.

Until some motion jolts me from their grip.
I feel its pressure at my shoulder and my hip.
My spouse rolls over, shattering my dream
of midnight tryst with frozen cream.

Its chocolate savor is one that I try to keep
as I roll over once again to seek my sleep.
Whatever course my next dream serves, I’ll try it.
For I’ve already been one long day on this diet!

The Prompt: Trio No. 3—Today you can write about anything, in whatever genre or form, but your post must mention a dark night, your fridge, and tears (of joy or sadness; your call).

Home Repeat Home

The Prompt: Doppelgänger Alert—You step into an acquaintance’s house for the first time, and discover that everything — from the furniture, to the books, to the art on the wall — is identical to your home. What happens next?

 

Home Repeat Home!

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
be it ever so humble, there is a place like home!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WAZ60xA9wo

 

 

Saved

The Prompt: Local Color—Imagine we lived in a world that’s all of a sudden devoid of color, but where you’re given the option to have just one object keep its original hue. Which object (and which color) would that be?

Saved

If all at once, all color were bleached out from the world
and suddenly a universe of whiteness were unfurled—
the rainbow, flowers, trees and art all newly bleached and pearled—

I know what single object I would choose to retain
in all its colored glory, in every hue and stain,
in sun and shadow, snow and hail and dust storm, drought and rain.

Its natural color changes every day we see revealed
over every continent: forest, city, field—
over every place from which the colors will be peeled.

This one glorious object would retain its vivid hues.
It would be the whole world’s canvas and every poet’s muse.
Every lake and river, its reflection would infuse

with all the colors nature has selected for that day:
blue or gold or purple, salmon, orange or gray,
according to whatever whim of moisture, dust or ray.

If I select the sky as the object that I’d choose
to retain its myriad pigments that only start with blues,
there are a thousand colors that we wouldn’t have to lose!

And the whole world could see them in the daytime or the night.
All the colors of the rainbow would not be lost to sight,
as every day and every hour, a new one’s brought to light.

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photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown, On the road to Ajijic.

I’ll Have to Go

The Prompt: Finite Ceatures—At what age did you realize you were not immortal? How did you react to that discovery?

I’ll Have to Go

This journey of our lifetime is a one-way ride.
I realized the truth of this the day my father died.
But in the living of it, I forgot again—
concentrating on the present and where I had been
instead of thinking of the future and mortality.
There’s something in a busy life that sets the spirit free,
convincing us that we’re immortal. That we’ll always be.

The many times that I was made to see I might have died:
the time I was abducted and taken for a ride,
the time he held the gun up to my head and pulled the trigger,
as I fell to the street, somehow my life seemed to get bigger;
and I saw all of it at once, spread out there below me,
and somehow though I wasn’t dead, I felt that I was free,
and for awhile, I found it was enough to simply be.

There have been other times when death has had me in its clench:
the time not long ago when that limb missed me by an inch,
the time I nearly drowned when I knew I was gone for sure,
yet somehow, death rejected me—released me from its lure.
It’s just at night when I’m alone that all comes tumbling back
and I begin to calculate all that my life might lack,
and life becomes a tempting peddler opening his pack.

The places never visited, the loves I let pass by,
and all the other things I thought to do before I die
all tumble out to tempt me and I think perhaps I still
have some things to do before I climb that final hill.
I think, perhaps, there’s one more love. One journey yet or two.
So many things that I have left I always thought I’d do.
So I am getting ready—only waiting for my cue.

That’s why at night I lie awake, sometimes remembering.
At other times just wondering what this next year will bring.
If I am lucky, I have thirty years or more till death
takes away these memories and stills my final breath.
Until then, I’ll live life fully and go where I must go.
I’ll follow my own pathway and ignore the status quo.
Instead of drifting lazily, I’ll row and row and row!

You’ve Got Mail

lead pencils in metal cup isolated on white(stock photo)

The Prompt: Fourth Wall—You get to spend a day inside your favorite movie. Tell us which one it is — and what happens to you while you’re there.


You’ve Got Mail

That bouquet of sharpened pencils? They had me from the start.
Who knew that Mr. Hanks had that effect upon my heart?
I know it was the writers. I’m a writer. I’m not dim!
And it was just a role he played—it really wasn’t him!
Nor was it his main character that penned those words so fine.
It was his alter ego that he only used on-line!

Suspending disbelief is what we writers count upon.
In another lingo, we might call it a fine con.
We take our readers from themselves into a new dimension,
where we create a world that’s purely of our own invention;
and there we spin a fantasy that catches them within it—
offering a prize so rare that readers want to win it.

And films use music, too, to try to capture our emotions,
wiping out our common sense and filling us with notions.
The track to “You’ve Got Mail” was as romantic as could be!
If little birds fly oe’r the rainbow, why, indeed, can’t we?
We all identified and put ourselves into the tale,
and when it ended happily, we all read, “You’ve Got Male!”