Tag Archives: poem

Amused: OctPoWriMo Day 11: The Muse

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Amused       

When she enters, I’m in her thrall,
and I have no control at all.
Sometimes she carries a riding crop
and drives me on so I can’t stop.
She rides in smoothly from my dreams
inspiring reams and reams and reams
that must be written when I wake.
I’m driven onward for her sake.

If my muse should feel abused,
believe me, she is not amused.
She mounts my back and spurs me on
until all her words are gone––
released upon the teeming pages
while she rides off to join the sages
sitting there upon the shelf,
and I am left with just myself.

For OctPoWriMo Day 11

On the Road

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Remember many years ago when roads were just two-lane
and strings of Wally Byamers would drive across the plain,
swarms of silver trailers, in a never-ending chain
that made passing all of them a headache and a pain?
With oncoming traffic to take into account,
It was an endless chore of weaving in and out.

As a little girl, I’d stand beside the highway,
watching all the traffic whizzing by my tiny byway.
And once I saw a cherry top wave a trailer down
that was leading a whole caravan of airstreams through our town.
“Yada yada yada,” said their leader to the cop
when he gave the orders for their caravan to stop.

What was their infraction? They’d done not done one thing wrong!
The problem was their caravan, the cop said, “It’s too long.”
Thirty airstreams in a row was courting a disaster.
Couldn’t half of them just try to drive a little faster
to create a distance, giving other cars a break.
A little space between them before they overtake

another clump of traffic that will have them in-and-outing,
rolling down their windows and gesturing and shouting?
But, proud as any Samurai, the leader shouted, “No!”
“Without me here to lead them, they won’t know where to go!”
And that’s why thirty airstreams are parked in our back field,
waiting for their leader, who has refused to yield.

He’s camped out in our jailhouse, relieved if truth will tell—
rescued from constant wandering and cozy in his cell.

Word prompts for the day are yada yada yada, only, caravan, proud and samurai.

Biker Wedding

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Biker Wedding

Though I’m just your uncle and backward at that,
I’m exceedingly fond of my sister’s sweet brat.
I hear there’s a  biker you’re eager to wed
and though I’d suggest  a nice banker instead,
I’m here not to alienate, but advise
(since I am your kin who’s most apt to be wise.)

Instead of a veil you’ll be wearing your patches
and learning his lingo by listening to snatches
of biker bar gossip and those conversations
spawned over road talk and major libations.
You’ll be in your flannels and Kevlar-lined denim
(I’m sure that no bride ever looked better in ’em.)

You’ll whisper “I do” and then exchange your patches
before you head out for a ride down to Natchez.
But, first things being first, you have asked me to aid
in getting your wedding invitations made.
I’ve checked out your spelling. The words are all fine.
Only the printing may be out of line.

Though responsible service may not be impossible,
are you quite sure that leather is embossable?

Prompt words today are uncle, alienate, backward, responsible and service.

He

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He

would have married the girl and had children
and been less overt with his teachings
of peace and love too radical
for a world immersed in their opposite.

He would then not have changed the world, perhaps,
but  only lived in contrast
to that power popular among those who needed it
and effective in keeping those averse to it quiet.

If he had married the girl, the world would probably have ended up
pretty much how it has anyway, but he might have had a different ending.
Grown old, had his cronies over to talk about the good old days,
converted water into wine and served them loaves and fishes.

Mary Magdalene would have danced for them in their memories,
and all of his grandchildren would have listened in awe
to hear the tales of how he walked on the water,
bade Lazarus to rise from the grave.

He would shush his cronies as they started in
with tales of how he smashed the souvenir stands
and threw the money changers out of the temple.
Not stories for young ears not quite ready to learn revolution.

And all of the ill done in his name might have happened anyway,
but at least he would have had a good life.  Would have suffered less.
And some other savior might have found a way to save the world
that would have worked.

 

FordVerse Poets Pub: Write a poem about a deceased person.

 

Wheeler-Dealer

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Wheeler-Dealer

I am not sorry
for the hours I have stolen
away from your busy life.
You should have given them freely.
I was trying to teach you that.

You were such a poor student,
professing love, then
rushing off hither and yon.

Early morning flea markets
spawned caches—
rental garages stuffed with treasures
that didn’t fit into a house
 already filled with me
years before you moved in.

You picked things up
in driveways
and on curbsides,
widows in the seat next to you 
on bargain flights alone to Mexico.

You snatched me
from that singles party
before I even got my coat off.
Eye trained at the door,
you knew lonely
when you saw it.
   
Commandeering
my Ford Econoline camper van,
you drove me off to most of California,
then to Mexico,
while I tried to teach you how to be
where you were. Pouring salt on your tail,
trying to hold your gaze.

And I am not sorry— either for what I asked of you
or for throwing away the rest of you—
that busy bee, buzzing from bloom to bloom
to see what it could find.

For NaNoWriMo 2020, day 13, we are to write an apology for something we’ve stolen.

This, Too?

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This, Too?

In planning for a place remote,
considering a life afloat.
I might collaborate with friends
so we can meet communal ends
planning out a scheme for life
far away from pain and strife.

We’d set a mutual course on seas
far away from the disease
that snakes its way as it might please.

And having learned our lesson well,
we’d escape this landlocked Hell
and float in colonies off shore,
keeping at least  ten feet or more
apart until the curse was through
and we could start our lives anew.

But, alas, I have no yacht
and a sailor I am not,
So my sailing schemes are shot!

Instead, I’ll sail a sea of dreams
and face the threat landlocked, it seems!
So don’t drop in for a small visit.
A social life’s not healthy, is it?
I’ll pass my social life alone
chatting on the telephone

attired in my sleeping togs,
stroking the cats, patting the dogs,
communicating on my blogs

with all the humans I have left.
in a sequestered world bereft
of face-to-face and hip-to-hip,
let alone of lip-to-lip!!
This too shall pass, optimists say.
The world will see a brighter day.

We’ve survived aids, the plague and SARS,
global warming (so far) and cars.
We’re the universe’s superstars.

Prompt words today are remote, collaborate, lesson, course and snake.

Strangely enough, no matter how many times I center this poem, every other stanza wants to separate itself from the stanzas that precede and follow it. Strangely enough, it echoes the theme, so instead of trying to center it for the third time, I am just going to leave it as is.

Extended Family

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Extended Family

My furry raider sloshed through rain
out to the barn and back again,
but next trip was a passenger
his human cuddled close to her
so both could view the transient
new mother so intently bent
over her bounty, newly born
this blustery, rainy, wind-swept morn.

One more thing born that rainy day
around three homeless ones that lay
snuggled down within the hay
protected from the weather’s fray—
a sense of family between
an old male cat, once feral, mean—
who had been taken in himself
and these three waifs, curled on a shelf
within that barn where I’d found him.
Now both of us discovered them
and that day welcomed them, all three
to our extended family.

Prompt words today are raider,  slosh, transient, bounty, and passenger.

When First Love Expires (Not a Reblog)

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When First Love Expires

Go tell the young ladies. Go tell the young men.
Those shattered by lost love will find love again.
We recover from passion. Rarely does it kill,
and there’s plenty more of it over the hill.

That queen of your pulse, that king of your heart,
may not be your ending. It may be your start.
Don’t retire with your failure, but once more begin.
Take the leap and try love all over again.

That sweet grass dried up, we harvest as hay.
First love is a beacon that just lights the way
for your next lover—an adequate light
to create a harvest from yesterday’s blight.

Love is a virus that’s hopelessly catching—
a miraculous egg that just goes on hatching.
So do not despair if your first love expires.
Make further use of the lust it inspires.

 

The prompts for today are beacon, adequate, recover, leap and king.

Memory Games

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Memory Games

Though memories are sketchy, those that remain are vivid—
mere scraps of joy or humor or times when she was livid.
No way to tell what snips of time her memory will nourish—
current relations lost to time while past ones live and flourish.

The mind does nasty tricks when it decides to misbehave.
It may leave us abandoned within its darkening cave,
or perhaps it casts a cinema only one can see,
drawing them into a world of dreams where they are free.

No one who walks through memory’s door can return to tell
whether it is heaven or a living hell.
Another trick of life that draws us fast within it,
forcing us to play the game without a way to win it.

Prompt words for today are jive, sketchy, relations and vivid.

Torch of Liberty

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Torch of Liberty

If we could kidnap inequality and lock it safe away,
then resurrect our scruples and let them have their say,
we could acquit our consciences and set our nation right.
Then reilluminate her torch to guide us through the night.

 

Prompt words today are acquit, scruples, kidnap, inequality Photo by Juan Mayobre on Unsplash Used with Permission.