On the Subject of Cracking Knuckles
Please don’t snap your bones at me.
I cringe, I plug my ears, I plea.
If you must make noise with body parts,
please stick to burping, coughs or farts.
Since popping sounds tend to astound me,
Do not crack knuckles when around me!
I do not like that brittle sound,
so please don’t crack your bones around!
For the dVerse Poets prompt “crack.” For Quadrille Monday.
Image by JJ Jordan on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Grossed Out by Liver
Have you ever seen the quiver
of a plate of raw red liver?
Shake it and you’ll see it shiver.
Blood runs right out and forms a river.
If mom cooks it, I won’t forgive her.
I will not eat a gol darn sliver!!
For Whimsygismo’s dVerse Quadrille (exactly 44 words) prompt of Quiver. Phew!!!
jdb photo
Today I read a story about a man who led big game hunting expeditions whose claim was that he could guarantee a kill with one hundred percent surety. Ironically enough, after shooting a water buffalo and posing with his kill, he was fatally gored by another water buffalo. This was perhaps on my mind as I wrote this poem on the subject of extinction for the quadrille challenge. Please note that I am not in favor of big game hunting. In the last lines, I’m talking about luck in a general sense, not in terms of big game hunting. I took this photo in Kenya in 1967.
Extinction
If we all were always winners, winning would lose distinction.
Every hunter bagging game would lead to their extinction.
So to qualify my wishes, I guess that I’ll just say
I hope when it’s your turn for luck, that it will come your way!
for dVerse Poets
Slow Motion
After the fuss and bother, the acquiring and attaining,
somehow life seems better without the extra straining.
Now observing takes the place of doing and of showing.
Tranquility has won out over partying and going,
with “Hold your partner” filling in for former “do-si-doing.”
The dVerse Poets prompt requires that we write a quadrille–a poem of 44 words––making use of the word “steep.” To do so, I rewrote an earlier poem so it became a 5 stanza poem, each stanza forming a quadrille. I wonder how many other poets share this experience as they are awakened from dreams by one means or another:
The Dogs Are Barking
They break the morning––a daily rite.
It’s just a warning. The dogs won’t bite.
Two strangers talk but pass unseen.
I doze, they walk, with a wall between.
I try to sink back into sleep,
once more to drink of waters deep,
trying to slip between the seams
of the surface of my dreams
but the dogs still bark. They leap and pace.
My dreams, not ready for this morning place,
lie dark and deep and intertwined,
wanting to creep back up my mind.
But its steep slope is much inclined
and provides small hope that I will find
once more that world well out of sight
where truth lies curled, still holding tight––
as an oyster cleaving, loath to unfurl
and reveal to light the priceless pearl
of that mind of dreams that slips the knife
beneath the rind of daily life.
Time is a brew of present, past
and future, too—all tenses cast
to bring to light those grains of sand
made pearls of wisdom by nature’s hand.
Dreams are stories we tell ourselves
and share, perhaps, on bookstore shelves.
Pinned to pages, they reach their height
and bring our sage self to the light.
But the dogs are barking. They’re hungry, cross.
When I rise feed them, the poem is lost
dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt is steep.
The Perfectionist
Change not a hair of thy fair head if it be for me.
I like you just as you are now from pate to chin to knee.
Your shins, though, are too shinny. Your ankles too well-turned.
Your heels? Shockingly callused. Consider yourself spurned.
For the dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge.
Rechanneling Cheer
Scribbling Christmas cards, messaging cheer
is surely the norm for this time of year,
but I think there’s something that is more seasonable,
touching more lives, and also more reasonable.
Hold back petty arguments. Cease the derision.
Why not put Christmas in every decision?
For dVerse poets quadrille prompt, Cheer.
Oblivious Seduction
You’d completely
won me over
by your second stanza,
even before you knew
I was the one
you were writing it for.
You had me
in the wink of an eye, even
before you knew
it was me
you were meant
to wink at.
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The scrape of your chair.
The gentle tap of keys
as you, rhythmic early riser,
rouse the day.
I burrow deeper,
trying to ignore
Icicles
beating
your accompaniment
as
o
n
e
b
y
o
n
e
touched
by
sunlight,
they
loose
their
h
o
l
d
on the
frozen, silent
night.
For Quadrille Monday on dVerse Poet’s Pub
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 