Tag Archives: Poems

Lucky???

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Lucky Duck riding the wild turkey off to a new adventure!

Lucky???

The first person I talked to today was myself, awakening from a dream and answering aloud whatever question the person in the dream had asked.  So, I’m going to reblog a poem of my own that I wrote three months ago.  When I look back at even something I wrote last week, I barely remember it; so perhaps this will feel fresh to you as well, even if you read it before:

“You’re So Lucky!”

 Too often those described as lucky
are actually only plucky.
It’s the decisions that they make
that make their lives a piece of cake.

If they have a cushy job,
far above the teeming mob,
it is because they chose to go
to college, so they made it so.

Or if they traveled after school,
when others said they were a fool,
and tell of their adventures young,
some people tend to come unstrung

and say they wish they’d had the chance
to participate in life’s wild dance
when they had the energy,
but, you know, traveling’s not free.

The truth is that most anybody
can go to college if they study
or travel anywhere they wish.
Life’s feast is a communal dish.

There is work that you can do
from Broken Hill to Timbuktu
if you are willing to do the tasks–
whatever the situation asks.

It’s true that there are places where
life is not equitable or fair–
places where a woman’s lot
keeps her chained to stove and cot,

or places where sheer poverty
limits all that you can be.
Yet  many who bemoan their fate
simply needed to leave their gate

and take the chance to see the world–
allow their lives to be unfurled.
But, lacking courage, they remained
in the place that fate ordained

was their lot in life and so
just maintained the status quo.
Many are happy where they are
and have no wish to roam afar,

but for those who moan and fuss,
saying all the luck’s with us
who have chosen to live in paradise
(and say it more than once or twice,)

I just want to say once more,
“Here is your suitcase, there’s the door.”
Luck is more often made than won,
and is, I fear, too quickly done.

So even if you’re old and gray,
do what you want to do today.
If you feel caught in the muck,
break free from it and make your luck!

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/the-luckiest-people/

Next

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Next

To live in yesterday’s a sorrow.
From the past I need not borrow.
All I need is my tomorrow.

The Prompt: One More Time–What day from the past year would you like to live over again? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/one-more-time/

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Books

The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
its paper sprinkled with drops-—
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory—
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.

Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.

Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages—
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink—
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.

Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial—
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us.

What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Wikipedia replacing dictionaries,
Google already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?

Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs.
Perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
Perhaps the grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them—as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages—one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.

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Yes, you are right. These are chairs made out of books.

 

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Going Obsolete.” Of all the technologies that have gone extinct in your lifetime, which one do you miss the most?

Bug Obit

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Bug Obit

Just a slug
come undug,
this greenery thug
stuffed his mug,
then gave a tug
and ate the rug.
Climbed up a jug.
Ooops! No plug.
Glug-a-lug.

Linger

It is those times
over dinner
when we have lifted a glass
or two–

those times
without husbands, who are home
watching a game
or out with gun and skeet–

those times
with long-ago college schemes
or scandals
remembered–

when, although no longer hungry,
we nonetheless order a dessert
with three forks
as an excuse to linger.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Linger.” 

Bogged Down in Blog

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Bogged Down in Blog

It’s hard to write while traveling–
your half-knit thoughts unravelling
as they call you in to talk
or have a meal or take a walk.

You sleep in other people’s houses,
wrinkles in your unpacked blouses,
possessions jumbled in your cases,
move at unfamiliar paces.

You live a life that’s not your own–
daily walking, driven, flown
while trying to remember faces,
confused by all these different places.

In the past I adored going–
miles passing, airwaves flowing.
I loved to move like a rolling log,
but that was when I didn’t blog!!!

Now I find I’m scurrying.
Wake up already hurrying.
I’m confused and frankly dumb,
forgetting where I’m coming from

as well as where I’m going to.
I’ve lost a sock and lost one shoe.
Still, I find time to write each day,
here in some room, hidden away.

This daily writing’s an addiction
that makes real life a dereliction!
I short my hosts to do my writing.
I’ve given up my life for citing!


The Prompt: State of Your Year–How is this year shaping up so far? Write a post about your biggest challenges and achievements thus far.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/

If A Poem Could Speak for Itself: NaPoWriMo Day 15 and “Mentor Me” WordPress Prompt

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“Ganesha” by Judy Dykstra-Brown, 11″ X 5″ Ganesha is the Hindu god who watches over writers and intellectuals and makes things go smoothly in life–something we could all use a bit of. The open books all contain real stories and poems or mathematical formulas.

The WordPress and NaPoWriMo prompts worked well together today. The Prompt from one was to write a poem that addresses itself or some aspect of its self, and the other prompt was to write on the subject of mentoring, so this poem fulfills both prompts.

If a Poem Could Speak for Itself

In me, your thoughts are broken into lines—
the cadences as vital as breathing.
At my best, June never rhymes with moon
and if there are flowers, they are never roses.
Peonies, perhaps or ranunculi.
No daisies, ever, and no bluebirds or honey wine.

Being in love is as common as work boots
or stilettos with one heel broken off.
Hearts in good poetry do not ache, pine, yearn or pound.
They are not worn on the sleeve but remain
inside. Alone. Running the same maze
hearts everywhere run every day.

What makes a good poem?
Avoiding tired words and familiar phrases.
Rhyme, if you use it,
must be impeccable.
Words should follow their natural order
and not be inverted just to force a rhyme.
And remember that just because it rhymes
doesn’t mean it is poetry.
Never take the easy way out.
Never settle.

Use one-tenth of the words
that it is your impulse to use.
No pretty language, flashy language, trite language
or language plagiarized from Valentines
or song lyrics  or others of my ilk.

And most of all, remember that
the thing you are really talking about
is rarely mentioned.
Do not over-explain.
Let me have my mysteries,
and have faith in your reader
to try to solve them.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/mentor-me/

NaPoWriMo 2015, DAY 14: The Holy Apewoman of Mexico

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The Prompt: Write a poem that takes the form of a dialogue. My dialogue takes place between my 7 year old self and my 67 year old self who, ironically, is writing this in Mexico.


Childhood Dreams

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The mysteries
of Grandma’s barn
and basement–
whole lost worlds down there.
Our own attic–that door held down
by a gravity never challenged.

I wanted to see
the hanging gardens of Babylon,
Mexico and Africa–
all these places from books,
their pieces jumbled together
like puzzle pieces
in the deep recesses of my closet,
scattered,
but ready for assembly
some day
when I would
make my future memories
happen.

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I crouch with myself at seven–
sharing imagined dangers
in deep closets,
trying to conjure the world.
So many small town stories
overlooked
while I dreamed of living
in those fairy tale places
of Bible stories
that stood on a shelf
sandwiched between
the Bobbsey Twins
and Tarzan.

Some of us spend our lives
trying to be like books,
then spend our old age
trying to remember childhood,
mainly remembering
childhood’s dreams.

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Sand Castles

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Sand Castles

Under the sand are palaces, I’ve seen them in my dreams.
Vast halls and empty chambers smooth rounded at their seams.
Every wall is made of sand. Each ceiling, archway, floor
carved by master craftsmen–each digging at its core–
so magnificent, you’d think they were the stuff of lore.
You, too, are free to see them, but you must provide the door.

For the chambers are filled in, though they are there without a doubt.
You are the one creating them by what you will scoop out.
The beauty’s hidden in the sand, waiting in your sleep
for you to dig the castles out from where they’re buried deep.
All your day’s exhaustion your dream labor will abort,
for what you build in slumber is work of a different sort.

Sand brought to the surface is what you get to keep
of subterranean palaces dug out in your sleep.
As you build above ground castles in the world that we all know
you reveal the outward structure of the inner rooms below,
furnishing the magic that the world will see through you,
showing what’s inside of you by what you choose to do.

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The Prompt:  Just a Dream

See also: This!!!  (This video may be one of the most remarkable things you’ve ever seen in your life.  Don’t miss it!)

Fault Lines

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Fault Lines

She lives up on a hillside far from the busy town,
and every year she lives there, she’s less likely to come down.
Her dog sits on her house’s dome and barks at all that pass.
One day she’ll likely join it, but for now she feels it’s crass.
Besides, she’s not that agile.  She seems to fall a lot–
merely due to clumsiness. A drinker, she is not.

She spends too much on artwork. The results hang down her halls,
sit upon her furniture and cover all her walls.
Her closets? Full to bulging with sizes large to small.
Her friends keep telling her there is no need to keep them all,
but to toss the ones that do not fit would cause her great duress.
She cannot throw any away, for next year she’ll weigh less.

Her refrigerator is her favorite scenic spot,
though entering’s an adventure with dangers amply fraught:
dog food barely balanced on a small sweet pickle jar
she has to brush against to get to where the short ribs are.
I’ve said that she is clumsy.  She doesn’t take her time.
This really isn’t new, for she was like this in her prime.

Her elbow strikes the pickle jar, the dog food comes out spinning.
They crash upon the tile floor. Our heroine stops grinning–
her thoughts no longer on the food but on the awful mess
of dogfood, pickles, broken glass–the rest you’ll surely guess.
The exercise that she will get mopping all this glop up.
will surely compensate for all the ribs she’ll later sop up.

And so she’ll lose her weight again and fit in that size eight.
As soon as this feat comes to be, he’ll ask her for a date.
Her dog will come down from the roof and she’ll come down the hill.
Her fridge and all her closets will suddenly unfill.
She’ll sell the art and cease to fall and fulfill all her scheming.
For the sixth thing true about her is that she’s prone to dreaming!

The Prompt: Far from Normal–Take a step back and take a look at your life as an outsider might. Now, tell us at least six unique, exciting, or just plain odd things about yourself.

For more writing on this topic go here: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/far-from-normal/

Today’s prompt was really “Plead the Fifth” about a question we hate to answer.  We were given the choice of an alternate prompt, which is the one I chose, but ironically, it was one I didn’t want to answer so my post really fulfills both prompts.  Tricky.  If you want to see today’s prompt and other answers to it, you will find it:  HERE.