Tag Archives: RDP

Mentor

10 Replies

Mentor

As an old man, he grew his hair long
and wore it unsecured, flowing white over his shoulders,
hiking it back as he walked with one sure toss of the head.
Few except himself would have judged him anything but superior.
His art, original and finely-crafted, showed him as the rogue he was,
yet he pored over art books piled around his chair—
large books rich in imagery and heavy to lift—
a laborious chore to plow through
page by page for anyone except him,
looking for himself in the pages, perhaps,
or looking for part of what he would become.

She thought he thought too much,
looking for answers in books
instead of in himself.
Religion, philosophy, art—
he searched for solutions
in Swedenborg and Picasso.
Compared his poetry to Sarton, Frost and Whitman
while others compared their art, their words to him.

Every piece he completed, he saw himself in as he created it,
but once done, it was as though he’d lost a part of himself in it
and so he started the search again in metal and wood and stone
larger and heavier each time, risking everything
to build himself ever higher.
Seven feet, then twelve, then eighteen feet—
stretching himself to the heaven
that he sought, also, through books.
Searching for what to be.

Wood, stone, metal, clay, glass, paper, words.
None quite solved the puzzle of himself.
Books on the shelf he read again and again
never had all of the answers.
He went as deep into himself as he could go.
Digging for the words he mined
from the parts of himself he most feared,
he often came up empty-handed,
as though he could not bear to see
all of the truth already revealed
in the pure instinctual lines of his sculpture
and those few fine poems he got out of the way of.

A virile man, he worked his angst out
in the shape of children—ten of them
with three different women—going through women
as he went through plasticine or wood or stone,
leaving crumbled remnants to reconstruct themselves
afterwards, as he built poetry out of their mutual pain.
He moved through the world
as most beautiful things do—unaware of his swath.

I rose from his rubble, missing him but remembering
all he taught. The scrape and cut and vibration of a fine machine,
the shaping with hands, the dip of the mold and deckle,
the power of a 20-ton press, the fine hiss of a torch.
Showing me how to get the beauty out of myself,
he formed that confidence within me that he lacked in himself.
Looking in books for what he already had,
looking in the faces of women for love
he never quite believed in,
he never fully realized that it did exist,
even during his worst rages,
right here in the heart
of one who so long afterwards
tries to sculpt his essence
through these words.

 

Bob’s gift to me our first Xmas. He made it..two mouthpieces play two different notes out of the same instrument at the same time. Gongs and a wooden marimba as well.

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Here is also a write-up and photo shoot that a gallery owner did of our home and studio during the Santa Cruz Open Studio Tours a few years before we closed down our house and studio to I move to Mexico: http://www.wmgallery.com/cruz/brown.html

And here is another blog I did on him and his art: https://judydykstrabrown.com/tag/bobs-sculpture/

Prompt words today were hike, write, original and superior.

Faith, Fame and Family

16 Replies

 

(I think I have a bit more faith than is demonstrated in this poem. What enters us to write through us is more an exploratory being than one completely sure of what we write. I do believe, however, that more evil has been done in this world by those absolutely sure of the rightness of their faith and their beliefs than by those who continue to explore, and the older I get, the more I realize that although part of a larger world and universe, we are all unavoidably alone in our existence.)

The prompt words today are solitary/solitude, alive, ephemeral and inspire.

 

Orgulous of Orgulous!

14 Replies

Orgulous* of Orgulous!!!

I’m suffering from reluctance and a bit of perturbation
that is interfering with my blog’s administration.
Embarrassed for this rhyme, I’ve no proclivity to flout it.
I’m sure my stats will plummet. There is no doubt about it.

We’ll ascribe the blame to Ragtag, for “orgulous” is the word
they’ve chosen for our prompt today—a choice that is absurd.
Who uses it in common speech, or formal speech, in fact?
Any poem I used it in, I’d afterwards redact.

I’m not a jolly blogger. I’m delaying activation.
I feel no need to add to my reader’s education
by using words requiring their use of dictionaries.
I prefer clear writing that requires no further queries.

It’s habit that demands that I find a way around this.
But now I feel no further need to otherwise expound this.
I’ve flailed around in writing this. I edit and I stumble.
Tomorrow may they choose a word that is a bit more humble!

 

*Orgulous: haughty, proud, ostentatious, disdainful!.

Prompt words for today are stats, jolly, activation and orgulous. (Good grief!)

Summer Courtship

6 Replies

Our back yard. Lots of places to hide in yards like this up and down the block, as well as in the deep ditches of the school yard across the street.

Summer Courtship

Those summer nights of hide and seek where we were willing quarry,
our efforts to make curfew were too often dilatory.
Our neighborhood adventures stretched out under the stars—
those shadowed venturings abroad, hiding behind cars,
in barrow pits or hedges, darting through the dark,
avoiding passing car lights and the dog’s insistent bark.
Bigger kids the kingpins of this nightly sequestering,
lying still as death with our fears of capture festering.
That titillating strain of remaining undetected,
somehow in our memories has made us more connected.
How we so consistently lay spread out on the ground
cowering, but secretly hoping to be found
by that special someone who, in our pre-teen flush
even then, in passing, could bring about our blush.
All this search and parrying that we called summer games
very soon would fill our lives called by other names.

 

Prompt words today are strain, kingpin, nightly and dilatory.

Night of the Dragon

6 Replies

 

photo with permission from Lachlan Gowen on Unsplash

Night of the Dragon

Behold the dragon, how it flows
from its tail up to its nose.
Thirty feet and thirty arms
move the dragon’s sinuous charms—
its razor teeth, its threatening frown—
through the streets of Chinatown.
On its head, a golden crown.
Its many humps move up and down,
forming valleys, growing hills
while moving over rocks and rills.
Straightening out to cross the bridges
spanning between neighboring ridges.
Never flying through the air,
 rising only up the stair.
So many mortals make one beast,
 one night a year to roil and feast
 on errant spirits wandering out
their vile sentiments to flout,
chancing their ends once more to free
 those rotten souls they used to be.
 One night of all we form the back
 that otherwise the dragons lack.
 We form their arms and form their feet,
 arousing awe in all we meet.
 And thus it happens, once a year,
we become that which most we fear.

Prompt words for today are flow, behold and dragon.

Advice on the Introduction of a New Species

4 Replies

photo by Andrew Rice used with permission

Advice on the Introduction of a New Species

Lions don’t do well in a setting too bucolic.
Their herding instinct’s lethal and they flunk in ovine frolic.
Lions need to stalk and kill. They need open savannas.
They’d eat all the lambs and for dessert, eat all their nannas!
And if we shut the lions up, they’d go into decline.
Living in small cages simply isn’t leonine.
Lions need to roam the plains lest they become pathetic.
There’s nothing half so sad as a lion that’s apathetic.

Oh no. I somehow erased the pingbacks for the four prompts for this poem! Thanks to okcforgottenman for pointing this out. Well, better late than never. The prompt words were lion, apathetic, shut and bucolic.

What’s He Got Cookin’?

9 Replies

What’s He Got Cookin’?

My love is not a work of art. He hasn’t any poise.
When he tries to sing a song, it comes across as noise.
He writhes instead of dancing. His rhythm’s nonexistent.
When germs land upon him, if they are nonresistant,
they get sick instead of him, for they have met their match.
He has no hair upon his head except for one small batch
that grows out of each nostril, so I really needn’t mention
that when it comes to loving him, I have no competition.
Yet in spite of all, he coincides with my fond wishes.
He may not have much cooking, but at least he does the dishes!

And for a little musical accompaniment to the poem, go HERE.

Prompt words today were sick, writhe, match and noise,

I need to issue a disclaimer for the second line, which is pure poetic license.  Most probably a number of the others are, as well.

Dark Thoughts

14 Replies

DSCF1981 - Version 7

Dark Thoughts

At four in the morning, the old cat begins her morning crabby  high-pitched “wahhhhrrr.” The wind picks up and I go to pee. Open my laptop and with its very first light, a tiny beetle flies to the screen to wander back and forth, in search of what? Company or bugs even more miniscule? And where has it been in the interim? In what obscure corner of my world has it been waiting for light, like the old cat, barely able to restrain itself , seeking my company at my first sign of stirring?

Does the rest of the world wait for me like this, or is it death lurking in the shadows, waiting for its time? Has life slowed down to this one long communal waiting? My sick friend has left but leaves behind her some of her dejection. I cannot shake it. Return to it after each short departure into the world. I feel an eternity of the ills of the world around me. Optimist rebel in an enemy camp all my life, I now feel myself sinking into the ordinary world. My mood refuses to shift with the sunrise. Even the old cat, still unfed, leaves me alone to my dark mood.

I fear the power of sleep, not wanting to return to that half-remembered dream I woke from. Fear this new self I seem to be becoming. Suddenly, I fear eternity—feel it not my friend.

Prompt words today are camp, rebel, eternity.

School Field Trip

13 Replies

 

School Field Trip

Youth days at the aquarium are inimical to fishes,
for students feed the goldfish far beyond our wishes.
They agitate the sharks and rays by knocking on the glass.
They irritate the piranhas and terrorize the bass.
Scientific discovery is great for teens and tots,
but part of education is discovering the “nots.”
I think we’ll bring an ending to this day at the aquarium,
and for your next school outing would you please choose the terrarium?

Prompt words today were discovery, aquarium, youth and inimical.

Bloggers

5 Replies

And no fair switching to your other keyboard!!!

 

 

 

 


Bloggers

We volley bandishments about, exchanging back and forth
words sent on the Internet from east, west, south and north.
We cajole and we wheedle as we trade behests.
From district one to district two, we answer all requests.
Janet wants a recipe that Dolly can provide.
Lydia posts Trump travesties that she cannot abide.

Angloswiss , VJ and Cee and Bob from far Australia,
trading photographs of houses, flowers and regalia.
Fashion blogs and flower blogs and fantasy and news.
We write of  our journeys, our fetes and family dos.
Poems about our handbags, our fashion and our shoes,
answering each other’s queries, cancelling each other’s blues.

Derrick tells of travels and the highlights of his dinners.
Regina writes of travel life and family and sinners.
We all have our favorite schticks from India to Nome.
Marilyn writes of birds and dogs and Manja writes of Rome.
Me? I merely write the poems that the prompts demand,
and be they dumb or heart-wrenching, pedestrian or grand,
abject apologies offered if you find them bland.

Prompt words today were shoe, district, volley and abject.
There were a dozen other bloggers I would have liked to include, but I had to be ready and on the road by 9 this morning so I was rushed in getting this out. To all the other blogs I regularly follow, you know who you are.