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Baby’s First Soda Pop
When finally a kid is poppable,
once the bottle is untoppable,
the overflow may be unstoppable.
It’s fortunate the floor is moppable!
(The WordPress prompt to day was “Unstoppable.”
Unstoppable
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Tag Archives: rhymed poetry
Reflecting Pool: (Sanctuary)
Reflecting Pool
Sacred refuge and snug haven.
A safe shelter from the swarm.
Not a temple or an altar.
Comfortable, snug and warm.
Temple to deep relaxation,
Underpinning of my dreams.
A down comforter to soothe my
Rattled nerves and ripping seams.
You may guess that I’m a loner, but
You would be just halfway right.
Refuges would have no meaning without
A journey to feel life’s bite.
Under covers is a safe world,
Total living through the mind,
Cushioning the greater pleasures
Nurtured when our pathways wind
Around problems to be conquered in the outer world we roam,
Safely leading us in a circle back to the refuge that we call home.
Stubborn
Stubborn
Some minds are so locked, they will not open to the touch.
Even “Open Sesame!” will not budge them much.
It seems their former mindsets hold them fast within their clutch,
squeezing off the access of new ideas and such.
Perhaps old ways of thinking have just become a crutch,
until they have that stubbornness oft noted in the Dutch!
I like to think my mind remains open to new thought.
For most of my life, I have been willing to be taught;
but when it comes to bigots, their efforts come to naught.
By the likes of Donald Trump, my attention can’t be bought,
and so I try to keep my ears entirely where he’s not,
for if I have to listen, I soon feel them growing hot.
I know what comes from such a man is likely to be rot,
so when I hear his puffed-up voice, my patience is soon shot.
With me his crass pontificating always comes to naught––
his words with fear and loathing usually fraught.
His hysterics reminiscent of Hitler and Pol Pot
dangle bait before a fish not willing to be caught.
A mind as closed as my mind will not open to his touch.
He never will win ingress with fear tactics and such.
Thank God my former mindsets hold me fast within their clutch,
squeezing off the access of bigotry and such.
Perhaps old ways of thinking have just become my crutch,
or maybe all my stubbornness is just because I’m Dutch!
The prompt today was “Open.”
Transformation
Tottering on stubby legs,
Reaching for the world,
Another child once nested
Now slowly comes uncurled.
Stretching out and learning,
Forgetting childhood woes,
Opening to each new thing,
Reforming as she grows.
Meet her in the springtime
And meet her in the fall.
The child you met the first time
Is no longer there at all.
One more child a woman,
Now a mother, now a grand.
Always we are changing,
Led by nature’s hand.
Libraries cannot answer
If changing has an end,
For we know not if transformation
Ends around the bend.
Old Flame (A Maiden Aunt’s Testimony of Survival)
Old Flame
“I stood and craned my neck to C
if I could make out the ID
of the one my parents chose for me.
He’d courted them from A to Z
and then proposed on bended knee,
but even though I knew that he
suited my father to a T,
I said that it was not to B.
He did not set my spirit free
nor make me want to be a “we,”
so I’m afraid that his suttee
was never fueled by such as me.”
NaPoWriMo 2016, Day 14: Mother’s Song (san san poetry)
Mother’s Song
Left in our wake, hushed water parts like wings,
leaving behind us this brief afternoon.
With every oar stroke, I feel our parting
hushed as the falling darkness brings
through the departing wings of birds, the moon.
In this hushed darkness, my thoughts are spinning,
for as the rest of your life has its starting,
you leave behind you its beginning.
Phew! The prompt today was a doozy. Here it is: Today your optional prompt is to write a seven-line poem called a san san, which means “three three” in Chinese (It’s also a term of art in the game Go). The san san has some things in common with the tritina, including repetition and rhyme. In particular, the san san repeats, three times, each of three terms or images. The seven lines rhyme in the pattern a-b-c-a-b-d-c-d.
http://www.napowrimo.net/day-fourteen-3/
Since this is a poem about leaving, which suitcases always suggest, I’m posting this on the WordPress Daily Post site as well:
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/suitcase/
Sentimental Journey
The Smell of Curry
Would that sentiment were only
positive and never lonely––
but all emotions of the world
in sentiment are tightly curled.
Every memory we cherish
is doubly edged with “live” and “perish.”
In every city, country, land––
bad and good go hand in hand.
The blend of cardamom and lentil
always makes me sentimental.
Odors of turmeric and its ilk,
garam masala and coco milk.
Curry spices being roasted,
degree of peppers being boasted,
chickpeas, carrots, potatoes, rice––
stirring in each thing that’s nice.
What do I think of when I smell
and taste that it is going well?
Bombay and wedding saris thin
sliding down my youthful skin.
Visions of a midnight ride
to cages with young girls inside
sold by their parents and then resold
nightly for a bit of gold.
Traffic, sitar music, fingers
scooping curry––all this lingers.
The beauty of that winsome song
that showed me where the world’s gone wrong.
His action, swift, unthinking, curt
of small coins cast into the dirt
to deflect those who beg and bleat,
surrounding us in every street.
Palaces and then the clash
of children in a world of trash,
the refuse of this giant city
the world they lived in—what a pity.
Back when traveling was new,
experiences were so few
that India changed my life forever.
So, will I forget it? Never.
One Word? Absurd!
One Word? Absurd!
In truth, if I may be so bold,
these one-word prompts just leave me cold.
They do not give a hint to me
of what the topic’s meant to be.
If I want a prompt so curt,
so brief, so blunt, so short and pert,
I could go to a dictionary;
but one word simply doesn’t carry
enough thought to jog my mind.
I do not like prompts of this kind.
So WordPress please just heed my plea
and send a sentence prompt to me.
Then I’ll shut up and cease my rant.
But answer one word prompts? I can’t!!!!
Sound Bites
When the daylight takes its bite
eating up the dark of night
I begin my daily rite
of finding all the words to cite
that serve to bring my thoughts to light.
I write and write and write and write–
filling up my blogging site
until my dogs begin to fight,
and finally I know it’s quite
necessary to do what’s right.
And this is when I find I might
secure my laptop lid up tight
and give my brain a small respite.
It is my second day’s delight
for they have tried to be polite
lest they disturb me or incite
words that in their haste are trite.
With an open door, I now invite
their appetites–now at their height.
Each jumps and spins–high as a kite,
and comes to have his morning bite.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Forward Drive.” https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/09/04/from-the-back-a-photo-a-week-challenge/ What is the one thing that drives you to wake up in the morning and do whatever it is you do? Is it writing, family, friends, or something else entirely?
Compulsion to Rhyme (All the Time)
Compulsion to Rhyme
(All the Time)
You may guess there are drawbacks to writing as I do,
for lately, I must find a rhyme for everything I view.
This matching up of words that rhyme has come to be compulsion.
A harmless one, but still one sometimes met with some revulsion.
When making jokes or making bread or making whoop-de-do,
I always think of words that rhyme and then I voice a few.
So when a lover bites my neck and with my hair is toying,
and the only word that I can find to rhyme is “cloying;”
it certainly gets in the way of my successful “boying!”
Or when a good friend feeds me and under-cooks the meat,
as I run through my retinue to find a rhyme that’s neat;
and she happens to hear me just as I curse the red,
wishing she had opted for a well-done steak instead,
my sincere protestations do not seem to be accepted.
If only that one choice of rhymes had not been intercepted,
perhaps she would still ask me to her luncheons and her dinners.
Instead, I’ve wound up on her list of culinary sinners!
As much as I like rhyming, sometimes it is a curse,
for what is my best habit may also be my worse.
If only long ago I’d learned how not to rhyme each word,
the last one in this poem would not need to be “absurd.”
The Prompt: Not Lemonade-When life gives you lemons… make something else. Tell us about a time you used an object or resolved a tricky situation in an unorthodox way.
As a writer, almost any bad situation may be improved by writing about it! It doesn’t always solve the problem, but at least something positive may be gained out of something negative. This poem makes light of this tendency, but the truth is that I almost always feel better after writing about something, no matter how it has turned out in reality.
(This post is dedicated to Laura and Mamta, who prompted it by commenting on my proclivity to rhyme. And because I cannot waste even a mediocre product, to Duckie!)
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 