Tag Archives: Poetry

After Vespers

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After Vespers

I arrived home with much ado,
removed a small stone from my shoe,
took off my girdle, straightened my hat,
smoothed my gloves and kissed the cat!
I believe in proper things––
all the joys good breeding brings.
I do not spit, smoke weed or curse.
I carry breath mints in my purse.

I go to church. I tithe and pray.
I brush my teeth three times a day.
But when I went to watch TV,
I found a strange sight greeting me,
for there sitting upon my couch,
next to my little cat treat pouch,
were two small beings––a her and he––
the lady perched on the fellow’s knee.

They both looked up with cool aplomb
as though they hadn’t dropped a bomb
appearing with no invitation.
What’s more, to my great perturbation,
balanced on the lady’s knee
was the chocolate cake I’d meant for me!!!

She took a bite and gave him one,
then turned to me when she was done,
addressing me, though we’d not met.
(I mean, just how rude could one get?)
And what she said in a haughty tone,
perched upon her human throne?
“I’m afraid this cake is rather dry.
I wonder, have you any pie?”

I’ll tell you no more of this story,
for after that, things just got gory.
My opening words would seem most pale
compared to the ending of my tale.
Suffice it then for me to say
the uninvited didn’t stay.
Afterwards, my gloves came off.
I cleared my throat and gave a cough.

I scraped the cake crumbs in the sink,
mixed myself a little drink,
closed the drapes, unplugged the phone
and stretched out on my couch––alone.
As I settled down to Downton Abbey,
I was feeling way less crabby.
Real glad I hid the pie, y’all,
because I sat and ate it all!!!

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The Prompt: Unexpected Guests. You walk into your home to find a couple you don’t know sitting in your living room, eating a slice of cake. Tell us what happens next.  What a hilarious prompt!  I loved writing this one.
 https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/unexpected-guests/

We Cannot Surrender Her

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We Cannot Surrender Her

 Try as I might, she will not go.
She sends me on to test the water
but remains on the shore.
Ankle deep and then no more.
Fingers trailing and then no more.
Having once found a false bottom,
she trusts no foothold.

The falling is the thing, I tell her,
yet she holds back from the fall.
Let me always be the one going down, I tell her.
I will always be the one bringing you up, she answers.
This is the role we alternate being the stand-in for.
What I want she keeps me from.
What she fears I pull her toward.

 Relax, I tell her,
but she fears what relaxation brings.
She cannot surrender herself.
I cannot be content until she does.
Twin sisters, we rail against each other, then hold hands.
Comforting. This is enough, she tells me.
Nothing is ever enough, I tell her.

This poem, written in yesterday’s session, loosely meets the prompt. It is about going places––that part of one’s self that wants to let go and that part that fears risk and needs to maintain safe control.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/the-wanderer/

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/

Dakota Diction

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Dakota Diction

In the little town where I grew up,
instead of “yes,” we all said, “Yup!”
When we removed a soda top,
what we drank was called a “pop.”

When we drove off the road a bit,
we went into the “barrow pit.”
The mud was “gumbo”–rich and thick––
and every creek was called a “crick.”

Breakfast was never labeled brunch,
and “dinner” was what we called lunch.
Therefore, at night, our picker-upper
was never dinner.  It was “supper.”

Highway patrolmen were all “cops,”
and their cars were  “cherry tops.”
On movie nights, we saw the “show”
for just ten cents–which we called “dough.”

We told stray dogs that they should “git,”
and when they scampered off a bit,
the place where they commenced to wander
was what we labeled “over yonder.”

I fear it’s not spectacular,
this prairie states vernacular;
and because our listeners never balked,
we thought it was how all folks talked!

Non-Regional Diction:Write using regional slang, your dialect, or in your accent.https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/non-regional-diction/

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/

Hive

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Hive

I know the day has started. I hear them stir around.
Yet here I am sealed in my room, making not a sound.
I rarely sleep eight hours, but usually six or four.
Yet this guest room has no window. It only has a door.

With no bird songs to waken me, no sunlight and no dog,
I have gone on slumbering, sleeping like a log.
It’s a deprivation chamber—a cell, a cave, a den;
so I’ll just go on sleeping, perhaps ‘til nine or ten.

All in all, I am the perfect kind of guest.
No need to entertain me. I’ve only come to rest.
In two more days please crack the door of my little hive.
Perhaps just flip me over to see if I’m alive.

Certainly as hostess, my sister is the best,
and I am sure she has some plans for her newest guest;
but for today to leave me be is my sincere request.
After weeks of traveling, Sunday’s my day of rest!

Note: Today marks my twenty-eighth day of travel since I left home and yesterday it was thirteen hours of travel from the time I left for the airport at 3 a.m. to the time I arrived at my sister’s house. When I awoke this Sunday morning after seven and a half hours sleep—the most sleep I’ve had since I left home—I still couldn’t stir before I’d written my daily poem.

When my sister and brother-in-law built their house and made their guest room windowless, the joke was that no guest would want to stay for very long. Suffice it to say that I know how to turn the broadest hint to my favor!!! Thus, this poem.This one’s for you, Patti. Please put the coffee on.  I’m about to make an appearance.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/its-my-party/

Poetry Pays!!!

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Poetry Pays!

Quatrains for carrots, couplets for peas,
I’m writing out haiku whenever I please
for rib eyes and cheesecake and chili and cheese,
to visit the doctor whenever I sneeze,
to buy a new sweater to ward off the breeze,
to buy a new car and a ring for its keys,
to barter for kneecaps when I’m out at the knees,
and cartons of cigarettes until I wheeze.
I’m lucky to have a profession well-paying.
Poetry’s lucrative. Ignore what they’re saying.
If you are planning on going to college
for profit as well as for wisdom and knowledge,
if you want to live well in this difficult time,
be sure that you learn how to scan and to rhyme!!!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/barter-system/

The Long Road–Four Landays (NaPoWriMo day 19)

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The Long Road–Four Landays

Spent all her life looking for the man,
while the man spent his life looking at all the women.

Why doesn’t life give us what we want?
Most likely because we have never known what we want.

At the point where life starts to wear out,
ironically, life starts to be enough for us.

At the beginning of a long trip,
we hardly ever know where we are really going.

The NaPoWriMo Prompt today was to write a landay. A landay has only a few formal properties. Each has twenty-two syllables: nine in the first line, thirteen in the second.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/four-stars/

Speaking in Signs

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Speaking in Signs

Fingers skewed into exclamations,
thumbs jerking questions,
thrusting forearms moving hands to interrupt–
signs are the ballet of languages.

Graceful syllables fall
from the ovals of fingernails.
Joints flex with exaggeration.

No division of dialect or prejudice of accent–
all voices are imagined the same.
What  parts of the mind unknown by tongue,
might express themselves in gesture?

Surely these graceful movements
of words expressed in images and signs
create a language that weds all art–
the music and dance and mime of hands
sculpting  poetry.


The Prompt: Take That, Rosetta–If you could wake up tomorrow and be fluent in any language you don’t currently speak, which would it be?

For other answers to this prompt, go here:
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/daily-post-take-that-rosetta/

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/