Tag Archives: #RDP

Wrecking My Ping

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Image (This is the actual result of my speed test after I turned off the VPN.)

Wrecking My Ping

“I don’t know what to make of ping,”
he told me, simply answering
my question of the difference
and, in truth, my inference
that he would know the answer and
as usual would take a hand
in clarifying one time more
what a speed test measures for
and what they had to do with “ping”
and downloading and uploading
and whether one point twenty three
was enough download for me
and whether zero point six seven
would get me into upload heaven
and what this ping stuff had to do
with starts and stops that ruined my view
of films that I had hoped to stream
that only made me want to scream
because they came in fits and starts,
ruining all my favorite parts!

Are they adequate, I asked?
His scorn was only partly masked
as he admitted they weren’t at all.
“And ping?” I asked him this last thing.
and he was quick in answering,
“I don’t know what to make of ping,”

Ping Fact (Addendum)

These numbers are the actual,
although they aren’t the factual
upload feeds
nor download speeds,
for I forgot to disconnect
the VPN and so I wrecked
results of loading speed and ping,
but I was apt in my rhyming
which only goes to show a poet
is not a techie, so now you knowet!

 

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt, the word is Wreck

Mother’s Pocket, For RDP “Oasis”, Mar 30, 2025

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Mother’s Pocket

“Not your average peddler,” my mom was heard to say,
as she paid him for the prism that she promptly tucked away—
her pocket an oasis where my hand would go to play
when other things went wrong or on a sunless, rainy day.

In her pocket I found magic things—smooth stones that were magnetic.
Pulling them apart calmed hands otherwise frenetic.
Cherry-flavored Lifesavers and pretzels clothed in salt.
If they vanished from her pocket, it never seemed a fault.

Words written on grains of rice, hankies trimmed in lace
that I liked to hold against my lips and arms and face.
Tiny detached doll heads to put upon one’s fingers.
The memory of their spirited dialogues still lingers.

But that magic prism was the best of all her treasure.
Once I drew it from her pocket, I kept it for my pleasure.
Still it sits upon my shelf where it invites my gaze,
still transmitting mother’s light on sunless rainy days.

For RDP the prompt is Oasis

Goblins for RDP Saturday Prompt: Tiptoe, Mar 29, 2025

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Goblins

They steal into town to pillage and croon,
Invading on tiptoe, every third moon.
With fiery red hair and warts on their noses,
they cut all the tulips and pee on the roses.
Venting belches that reek of porter and scallions,
they chase all the ladies in randy battalions
and press scaly lips on unwilling misses
who scamper away to wipe off their kisses.
But still the next morning, their sickly taste lingers
on unlucky lips and unfortunate fingers
of girls who’ve attempted to purge these advances
that with lecherous hobgoblins pass for romances.
So all ye young maidens take heed of this warning.
Put off your wanderings until the morning!

For RDP Saturday Prompt: Tiptoe

Remembering Bob, for RDP

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Remembering Bob

“Wooden Heart”

He handed it to me without ceremony—a small leather bag, awl-punched and stitched together by hand. Its flap was held together by a clasp made from a two fishing line sinkers and a piece of woven wax linen. I unwound the wax linen and found inside a tiny wooden heart with his initials on one side, mine on the other. A small hole in the heart had a braided cord of wax linen strung through that was attached to the bag so that the heart could not be lost. He had woven more waxed linen into a neck cord. I was 39 years old when he gave me that incredible thing I never thought I would receive: his heart—as much of it as he could give.

It was the first handmade gift I’d ever received from a man. Inside, over the years, I have put a lock of his hair and a tiny tiny animal of indeterminate species hand-cut out of wood by his youngest son and presented to me. And, after his death, a small copper heart pin I had made and given to him two years after we married. Twenty-eight years later, this bag is all that is left of what was once my union with the man and his eight children from three different women. When he died, we returned him to the inevitable earth and all of the children returned forever to their real mothers.

The bag lies in a box with other relics of our past together: a silver heart brooch, another carved of wood with wings attached and, strangely enough, a miniature computerized hand piano. Years after his death, it struck a chord on its own, just lying on the shelf beside my favorite picture of him. One last dying gasp from the tiny gadget I’d put in his Christmas stocking but then grown tired of hearing him play and so had hidden away, only to enter our bedroom one night to find him playing it under the covers like a guilty pleasure hidden from the adults, although he was already in his sixties.

For our first Christmas, he gave me a large sculpture he had made that was also a musical instrument—three hand-raised copper gongs in the shape of breasts suspended over a wooden keyboard played by rawhide mallets, the gongs suspended from the long horizontal neck of a copper wind instrument with two necks and two mouthpieces, so two notes could be blown at once. When he died, it was the sculpture chosen by his youngest daughter, and I let her take it. Now, the remnants I have of him are only the leftovers that remained after eight children had chosen. I was moving to another country and could not hold onto everything he’d given.

daily life color023

Sculpture by Bob Brown,1986.  4′ X 5.5′, wood, hand forged copper, marble and hemp.

daily life color024

Miniature hand piano, 4″ X 2″

I moved away from most of those things we had collected over the years, but somewhere hidden away in the thousand objects in my studio is the small leather bag and the tiny hand piano, now forever mute, his father’s pocket watch, his biking medals and the other assorted pieces of his life that will one day wind up in a secondhand store in Mexico. All of our gifts finally melding with the parts of all those billions of other lives that strike their brief chord before blending, inevitably, back into the cacophony of the universe.

 

The prompt for RDP is “Bob.”

Rum Dumb for RDP, Feb 19, 2025

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Rum Dumb

Beer is tacky. Wine’s a joke.
My preference is Rum and Coke.
Squeeze a lime in. Take a sip
to cool your throat and wet your lip.
My favorite form of inebriation
is always Cuba Libre-ation.

The RDP prompt is Tacky. Can’t resist that one. Went back 11 years and found this ditty I wrote that just happened to contain the prompt word. I didn’t remember writing it, so perhaps you don’t remember reading it.  Does anyone???

Elastic, for RDP Wednesday

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Elastic
(Cyber Romance)

Our affection is elastic, stretching from here to there.
My nightly kisses reach you through a thousand miles of air.
We have a date at 2 p.m., another at eleven
or twelve or one. It matters not. This freedom is just heaven.
No scrambling for a lipstick. No reaching for our combs.
No need to leave the comforts of our cozy homes.
No reservations must be made, no flowers to be bought.
No rashes to be suffered and no colds to be caught.
We are so safe here sheltered each in our favorite place
without expending energy meeting face-to-face.
It is a cyber romance—the newest thing to do.
And instead of having babies—one, perhaps, or two,
emojis I will give thee—as many as you please.
Life is so much simpler  lived out via screens and keys.

 

 

RDPFor RDP Wednesday: Elastic

Beaches, Plazas, Home, Kids, Animals and Grandmas, for RDP “Photograph.” Feb. 2, 2025

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Ragtag saved saved the day! I had been looking through 2 weeks of photographs and culled out my favorites, but had no idea where I’d use them and they were cluttering up my desktop. Then, as if by magic, I saw that the prompt today was “Photograph.” Although there was no “s” on the end of it, I decided to improvise, so here they are. Thanks, Ragtag. They were mostly taken in the jardin in San Juan Cosala during an arts/crafts sale and kids art experience, at the beach and in my yard.  A couple are from my pinata party before Xmas. If I can find it, I’ll publish a link to a story I wrote about the lady in the shawl over 20 years ago. She has since moved from her house on the beach to her daughter’s house at the entrance to the Raquet Club. What is Morrie looking at in the 21st photo? Look at # 22 to see. Okay, time to go clear off my computer desktop! I won’t reveal the condition of my real desktop–as in furniture. Okay, I lied. Here it is:

Would someone send me a  prompt to deal with it?

For RDP, the prompt is Photograph.
And also, for Cellpic Sunday

Scrabble Quibbles for RDP Jan 27, 2025

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Scrabble Quibbles

Scrabble Quibbles

I move the tiles back and forth but still I cannot lick
the secret to which words may be made from my weird pick.
I cannot spell “memorial” without another “m,”
so instead I settle and simply spell out “rim.”
Before too long I find another perfect word to make,
but, alas, I do not have the “u” to spell out quake.
I spy the final “u” when my opponent shifts her rack,
and so I skip my turn to return some letters back.
And this segment of the story will prove I was to blame
when my sister drew the “q” and spelled out “quick” to win the game!

Note: the photo of the Scrabble board is of a real game, although not the one described in the poem. The reason I took the photo is because of the very unlikely occurrence of the word “urinate” showing up twice on the same board. What are the chances of not only having the right tiles to spell the same 7 letter word twice but also finding a place to play them? 

The prompt for RDP Monday is Quibble

The Knitted and the Purled for RDP, Jan 11, 2025

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The Knitted and the Purled

Ups and downs create the whole of our amazing world,
its surface formed by contrast of the knitted and the purled.
Sometimes we’re given what is sweet, at other times the bile
as we choose moment by moment to live happily for a while.

Nothing in this world can exist happily ever after.
A house is built of lows and highs: foundation before rafter.
Up and down’s the truth of it, the brilliant and the dark.
No week is composed totally of Sunday in the park.

Existence is a pendulum that sweeps across our lives.
Worker bees die every day in service to their hives.
Good seems finely balanced by a constant lurking evil.
Roses have their aphids.  Cotton has its weevil.

There is so much that’s wonderful in the world we live in,
but no one wins at every game. Sometimes we have to give in,
playing with the cards we’re dealt—flush or straight or fold—
sometimes in the heat of luck, sometimes out in the cold.

 

For RDP Saturday: Knit

El Chupacabra, for RDP, Jan 7, 2025

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El Chupacabra
(From “chupar”–to suck,  “cabra”–a female goat)

The Chupacabra–dread goatsucker, floats in the clouds. He is waiting for the sweet girl goat who trips home over the bowed bridge behind the Three Billie Goats Gruff.

One gruff Billie “Baaaaaaahs about heartburn. One more gruff Billie “Billllllleeeeees on about taxes. And the last gruff Billie “Maaaaaaahs about greener grass on the other side of the river––which may be reached, of course, only by crossing the bowed bridge.

From our removed vantage point, we can see, crouching under this bridge,
the Troll. He is poised to catch #1 Billie, then #2 Billie, then #3 Billie, and
as fast as he catches them, he gobbles them up.

Now, he is about to grab sweet Baby Girl Goat when––out of the clouds swoops the Chupacabra! His horns are sharp, his face is green. With whiskers for eyebrows, long hose mouth with suckers, thorns extruding from the suckers, eyes the color of a poinsettia flower flashing purple fire, mouth dripping saliva, claws flashing, opening, lowering to grab up Sweet Missy Goat Girl.

“Noooo,” we scream.  “Run!” we beg. “Look up!” We groan. But sweet silly Goatgirl only pumps her tail goat-fashion and lifts one hoof to raise it up to bridge level.  She shivers flies off her tender flanks, tossing her silken goat tresses as she does, bats her baby browns and trips onto the bridge, wondering, “Where is Uncle Billie?” And then, “Where is other Uncle Billie?” And then, “Where is Uncle Billie 3?”

As she reaches the bridge apex, she peers over and sees her own shadow only. She does not see the Troll’s long arm reaching up behind her. She does not see the shadow of the Chupacabra spreading larger over the bride around her. She turns her head sideways, wondering where her grumbling Billies have gone off to, and in the water sees another pretty goat girl leaning toward her. She leans forward toward the water girl, leans farther, until one well-turned goat hoof only supports her weight upon the bridge. Then, just as the Troll’s hand tries to close upon her arm, she tumbles over into deep cool water, and the Chupacabra, reaching out his long neck to drink her, sinks his suckers instead into the Troll.

The Troll, reaching in vain for the retreating Goodie Goat shape, feels the sweet piercing hot flowing of his black Troll blood into the Chupacabra.  Then the Chupacabra, tasting the blood, stops. Sputters. Withdraws his stickers. Distends his hose mouth. Spits. Spits bitter Troll blood. Reaches down to drink the river. Then spits out, drinks again, spits out again, draining the river until, his attempts to escape the results of his own actions executed too late, the Troll blood poison pulls him down to perish on the bridge, one claw touching the shoulder of the fast-fading Troll, one arm draping over a furry Troll paunch.

And they die in a monster embrace while down below, our sodden Goat Deb rolls over in the streambed emptied by the suckers of the Chupacabra, shakes mud from her curly coat, wipes hooves on the riverbank grass, trips daintily over pebbles to the other streamside, and gallops down the path.

And, the moral of the story? According to one troll scholar, it is:
–Don’t let some old Troll get your goat

Whereas Chupacabra experts say the moral to the story is:
–Once a goatsucker, next a moatsucker.

But I, after all, am the teller of this story, and I say the true moral to the story is:
–Be you a Billie Goat Gruff or a Chupacabra, never ask for whom the bridge trolls. It trolls               for thee!

For RDP Tuesday