Tag Archives: Poetry

If Nothing but Truth Were Possible (Day 12 of NaPoWriMo)

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“Write a poem consisting entirely of things you’d like to say, but never would, to a parent,
lover, sibling, child, teacher, roommate, best friend, mayor, president, corporate CEO, etc.”

If Nothing but Truth Were Possible

Your child is not as charming as you think he is.
Perhaps if you just said, “No!” to him now and then?

I’m allergic to dogs. Could you get your St. Bernard off my lap, please,
and lock him out of the room where we’re sitting?

As much as I enjoyed the first hundred of your family photos,
could we perhaps move on to conversation of a less familial theme?

My husband has seen enough of your cleavage for one evening. Could you cage them?

Your poem’s triteness is only equaled by its misspellings.

I can see why you would want to be a swinger. Someone as gross as you are
should not expect his wife to shoulder all the responsibility.

Walmart art does not really count as a collection.

Whether your rocks are cubic zirconium or diamonds, they are still ugly!!!

Why would you bring $100,000 worth of diamonds to Mexico
and expect them not to be stolen?

When people back away from you, there’s a good chance
they don’t want you to advance on them again.

A good way to check for bad breath is to lick your wrist.

Have you ever wondered why only beautiful women want you to ask them to dance?

If you expect things in Mexico to be just like they were in the U.S., please remember
that there is a country just north of the border that is the U.S.!! Why don’t you go there?

No I am not ill. I’ve just spent two years starving myself and spent a fortune
on appetite suppressants. Couldn’t you just tell me I look fabulous?

Be honest now. Would you ever have thought to eat raw fish if it weren’t all the rage?

Your life depends on telling the truth. Do you you really, truly enjoy opera?

Just what is it you find enchanting about Paris? Oh, right. It must be the friendly people!

Tanks or Tankas? Day 11 of NaPoWriMo–and with 11 1/2 hours to spare!

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A tanka is a verse form of five lines following the pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. This poem consists of nine tankas that deal with the question, “Does might make right or does write make might?”

Tanks or Tankas?

It is such pleasure
lying in my morning bed,
I forsake those “shoulds”––
pool aerobics and the gym––
save them for another day.

As I exercise
that switchboard of all muscles,
the marvelous brain,
ideas are pumped like barbells
to create a well-toned verse.

Iron man or sage––
which will win and which will lose?
Is it brain or brawn
that moves our species forward
to survive this crazy race?

Our laptops used for
what––as pens or weaponry?
Which serves us better
in this age’s lethal match
for survival, power, wealth?

Which moves us forward?
Philosopher? Iron Man?
Poet? Soldier? Jock?
Which insures our progress toward
a place as Darwin’s fittest?

Physical fitness
in contemporary thought
wins most of the points
to insure a lengthy life
(and a husband or a wife).

but:

They also serve who
sit and wait upon their bums,
writing out their odes
by recording just what comes.
So now you need to tell us

which of these will win:
the muscle man or soldier
or the poet’s pen?
If muscle is your power
If you think that it will win,

please now consider:
the leg may be the longest
of your muscles, but
the largest strongest muscle
is the one you sit upon!

Saving Daylight

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I live in Mexico. We just changed over to DST today—a few weeks after the U.S. did. As though DST isn’t complicated enough, countries get to arbitrarily decide when to switch to it. Obviously, this poem was written during the fall switchover, not the spring.  I’ve never been able to remember which is switching on, which switching off.  At any rate, this is not my daily NaPoWriMo poem as it wasn’t written today.

Saving Daylight

After altering the course of rivers,
moving or removing coastlines,
forests, ozone-protection,
minerals and fossil fuel,
we look for what next to change
and notice time.

(Perhaps time, a manmade concept anyway,
can be less-devastatingly tampered with?)

There are those who know
better than God or nature
when light is needed
and they have set the world right.

We are saving daylight
all over the world,
taking it from the morning’s wallet
and transferring it
to a back pocket.

Led like blind lambs,
we change our clocks,
lost in dark mornings
so games of golf or tennis
can be played well past
the natural end of day.

Gardeners and house builders
climb the hills to work
lighting their ways with flashlights,
in search of that lost morning hour of light.

Like sheep made clumsy, stumbling over stiles,
schoolchildren’s toes
feel for cobblestones in the dark
between street lamps
spaced a block apart.

as, like investors too anxious
to save up for a rainy day,
a world in the dark
makes forced deposits every morning,
withdraws them, interest free, each evening.
Her animals and birds and tribes
lost to schemes
carefully planned.

The Deadline (A Tweeted Poem) April 5 Poetry Posting for NaPoWriMo

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dogwomanallalonecomputerwindowrubberboneeyelockpleadinginvitationonethrownbonebringsjubilationfurtherbeggingisfornaughtasecondlaterfunforgot

The Gardener April 4 Post

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The Gardener

There is a story hidden
In the majolica mug
with watermelon,
pear and grapes painted
on a yellow ground
that sits on the
terraza table.

Pasiano, the man who drank
echinacea tea with honey
from this cup, coughed
loudly behind the hand
that cradled the telephone,
sly smile betraying a love story
as clearly as the small child
who sometimes accompanies him to work.

Some senora’s, he tells me,
but the child has
his eyes and solid legs,
his shy manner,
lives with his mother
and her husband,
but sits on my steps
with a sugar cookie––
betraying no more secrets
on purpose
than his father does.

“Web of Night” April 2 Post

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I’m participating in this program where I’ve taken an oath to write a poem a day.  Here is today’s poem!  I need a website to link to their website, so I’m using the only one I have–this one.  By the end of the month, there will be 30 poems here…

 

Web of Night

We have been talking online for hours
and, as usual, lost track of time.
Now, after his good-bye,
it would be easier to go to bed
than to act on his reminder
that there should be hot water
in my hot tub tonight,
pumped in earlier from the volcanic depths,
left to cool all day.

I am living in sub-tropical Mexico
where things like volcanoes are everyday things.
I drink the volcano.
I swim and soak in it.
I absorb its heat,
draw from its power,
grow stronger.

This is the fountain of youth, I’ve often said.
Too long away from it, I start to grow creaky and old––
reversing those effects only by coming home again
to lie in its steaming bath.

I look up from it now
at a night sky unlike any other––
only the major stars distinct, like light seen through
irregularly perforated steel. The stars standing out individually,
between them the remarkable floss of clouds stretched
sparse as angel hair on a Christmas tree
to reveal the ornaments
between.

No one else awake in this morning hour
so early that it is really still the night before.

2 AM. Neither a dog’s bark nor a burro’s bray.
No harsh staccato though the cool night air
of air brakes of trucks
too wide for the two-lane carretera.
down below.

Alone in my world.

The clouds, while I’ve been thinking blind,
have obscured the stars
behind a thicker web of cotton wool.

I think of love so far away,
wishing it nearer but feeling it close
as the keyboard in the room behind me.
There are many of us
caught in this Web of internet romance.
Here we need not fear
the loss of a love
that is a part of an addiction
to the mystery of absence
yet words so close
they are almost
but not quite
touch.