Tag Archives: Poetry

“Girls” Night Out

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“Girls” Night Out

Mary Tyler Moore, Working Girl and I Love Lucy—
 film nights with the ladies are usually juicy.
Although we’re staying in, all that’s tucked in must be outed.
All those mumbled gripes now brought to light and shouted.
Pulling out the bobby pins to let the chignons flow.
Kicking off the heels to wiggle arch and toe.
Slipping off the panty hose, loosening top buttons.
Gorging on potato chips and dip like teenage gluttons.
Drinking margaritas, martinis and mojitos.
Pepperidge Farm and popcorn, ice cream and Doritos.
When old dames get together, pull out all the stops.
Banish all the dust cloths. Lock up all the mops.
Rip up all the lists and turn them to confetti.
Break out the lasagne. Break out the spaghetti.
Fill the crystal bowls with M&Ms and truffles.
Ban antimacassars, doilies, tucks and ruffles.
Bring out your old 8-tracks and your 45’s.
Forget that you are mothers, grandmothers and wives.
Better shake your booties while they still can shake.
Better come alive while still able to wake.
Time enough for normalcy when you’re ninety-six.
When you’re only seventy, you’ve still got some kicks.
Leave your spouses home staring at their football games—
vicariously living while you’re out being dames.
It’s your secret life, for no one needs to know
everything you do and everywhere you go.
Let the whole world think you’re in there playing bridge
while you are jitterbugging and emptying out the fridge.
It’s more fun when it’s secret, so promise not to tell
when old girls get together and raise a little Hell!!!!

The prompt today was juicy.

Where Time Goes

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Where Time Goes 

They have not vanished without a trace.
Past years are written on your face.
They web your skin like finest lace,
its former smoothness to efface,
and write a story in its place.

The prompt today was replacement.

Check List for a Budding Poet

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Check List for a Budding Poet

If you want to be prolific,
better that you be specific,
and when you choose to state each fact,
try to make each word exact.
Don’t use time-worn words or wilted.
Avoid pretentious words or stilted.

Never try to force a rhyme.
Do not fail to take the time
to make your lines scan smoothly for,
uneven meter is a bore.
Words written for effect are hollow,
but where heart is, the head will follow.

So write your poetry from the heart.
Put your horse before the cart
and let it pull you up the hill.
Let your words express their will—
you following blindly, just to see
what the next line wants to be.

Let words of different shapes and sizes
furnish pleasure and surprises.
Make your poems resemble zoos
of striped okapis and kangaroos.
Delight yourself and then your reader.
Follow words, then be their leader

by whipping them in line and order,
shaping them within your border.
It never is too late to change
an errant line that’s out of range,
but editing is not what you
initially should seek to do.

Words give hearts tongues to share their pleasure
and their pain in equal measure.
Essayists and authors strive
to make their writings come alive.
They show us where their minds have been,
but poets put the music in.

The prompt today was “specific.”

Morning Protein

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Morning Protein

Each morning when I waken, I take a little pill;
but though it is to boost my health, today it made me ill.
Before I went to slumber, I poured a glass of Coke
so it would be there in the night if I began to choke.
I know it isn’t usual, but it works for me.
Somehow it works to clear my throat and leaves the passage free.

So when I took my pill this morning, feeling sort of hazy,
I didn’t go for water, but instead I was just lazy.
I lifted up the Coke cup, filled almost to the brim,
and only had a little sip before up to the rim
something solid floated that shouldn’t have been there.
I felt something that tickled––like very coarse stiff hair.

Later, I was glad I hadn’t taken bigger sips,
for as it was, just part of it made it past my lips.
I hurried to the bathroom and spit and spit and spit,
then emptied out the cup and didn’t look at it
as a big dead cockroach went swirling down the drain.
Will I drink without looking? No. Never again.

The prompt this morning was “Clumsy.”

Promises

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Promises

When we first made our promises, our hearts were young and gay,
and all the things we had in life we thought we would parlay
from good fortune freely given for which we’d never pay.

But though the sun that lulls us with its warming ray
does not always scorch the earth, certainly, it may,
and all the tender shoots of spring by autumn turn to hay.

And so it is with promises, no matter what you say.
What I’ve noticed about promises is that they melt away,
for those who live by promising sometimes have feet of clay.

Promises lightly given sometimes start to weigh
upon the minds of those who have held their fears at bay.
Such things may cause the truest heart later to turn fey.

The lives we take for granted, sure we’ll always be okay,
in the end life complicates by answering with “Nay.”
So what you want to share with me, please share by end of day.

The prompt word today was “Promises.”

At First

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At First

Days were not over half so soon
when we ate passion with a spoon.
Swirled chocolate at the Frosty Freeze
melting in the prairie breeze
hot and redolent of soil—
chaff of wheat and rattled coil.
Summer days and summer nights,
rolls in grass and water fights
with uncoiled hoses, cooking pans,
rolled up cuffs and soaked white Vans.

Passion then was not so much
a thing of kissing or of  touch
as of smells and sights and taste.
Baking beans and paper paste.
Brand new tablets, pencil shavings.
Summer nights, then autumn cravings.
Cattle lowing, school bells,
Cool spring water from deep wells.
Throats that ached from drinking it,
brought to light from ancient pit.

All these simple remembered things
that thinking about passion brings:
spin-overs on the monkey bars,
rides on bikes and naming stars.
It’s true some passion rides on night
with pressing lips and gentle bite,
or trembles on the fingertips
straying over breasts or hips.

Yet simpler loves bring lesser rations
of what adults consider passions.
Words like passion must be allowed
to be unfettered, like a cloud
and not confined in connotation,
dictionary or denotation.
Sometimes passion can be bright—
A meadowlark or soaring kite.
Sun-chapped lips just touched with mist
long before they’re ever kissed.

The prompt word today was “Passionate.”

Carrying On

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Carrying On

Were they carrying? That’s the buzz.
Was she carrying? Likely was.
In nine months we’ll know for sure,
but we’ll never know if the brothers were.

He carried the play. His voice carried well.
The truth of it they’re sure to tell
as the paper carrier carries the news––
the comics, headlines, play reviews.

Three into ten and carry one.
In long division, that’s half the fun.
Carry on and carry through,
for no one else will carry you.

Those cutter ants you love to hate
can carry 100 times their weight.
We pack 30 pounds in carry-on cases,
carry-out burgers from carry-out places.

Half our lives we carry on.
Then when we are dead and gone,
removed from all this carrying fuss,
what friends are left will carry us.

 

It is probably obvious that the prompt word today was “Carry.”

Restraint

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Restraint

Lovely one, you wink and tease.
You posture there as if to please.
And though you simply play a game,
thinking the world yours to tame,

there are animals who stalk
pretty girls with pretty talk.
Take care to guard what’s precious to you,
for there are those bent to undo you.

Have your fun.  Enjoy their stares,
but travel safely, and in pairs.
For lovely young ones, fair of face,
the world can be a dangerous place.

Maybe someday, but not now?
Too young to take that sacred vow?
Saving it for someone rare?
We cannot tell by what you wear.

Your clothes so tight, your skin so bare,
you seem to beg the world’s rude stare.
You are a plum—sweet and inviting
and there are those intent on biting.

So take heed. Protect yourself.
You are not goods set on a shelf—
a tasty morsel, a pint of booze
for anyone to pick and use.

You are a vintage sweet and rare—
smart and funny, grown with care.
Value your worth and care for it.
Wait for that match you know will fit.

Things need not happen quite so fast.
Try to hold out for what will last.
So when that stranger whispers,”Baby.”
instead of “Yes,” why not try,”Maybe.”

 

The prompt today was “Maybe.”

Emptying

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https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/empty/

Summer Evenings Turn to Fall

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Summer Evenings Turn to Fall

Back when we drank summer through paper soda straws,
we played cowboys and Indians, hiding out in draws
that we imagined wilder. Our hearts beat with fear
of fictional opponents who might be drawing near.

We had no euphemisms for our enemies.
We only knew our fear of them, silent, on our knees.
Little did we know then, during childhood games,
imaginary enemies would assume other names.

No ditch big enough to hide, and no night dark enough.
No more cops and robbers. No more blind man’s bluff.
Strange that in those peaceful times the games we chose to play
were a mere foreshadowing of what is real today.

Back when summer filled our cheeks with melons and with berries,
why didn’t we fill balmy nights with princesses and fairies?
Back when life was summer smooth, we lusted after roughness,
as though we’d gain maturity through violence and toughness.

Feigning valor not yet gained, we knew not that tomorrow
we’d have the fears we’d feigned for real––the terror and the sorrow.
Childhood evenings filled with shouts and laughter interspersed
were in reflection adult games that we just rehearsed.

 

The picture is my sister Patti and her best friend Karen.  Note the saddle placed on the makeshift “horse.”  

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/summer/