Tag Archives: The Daily Prompt

Queasy

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 Queasy

Silas Marner did not bore me. Cosines served me well.
I did not dread the tolling of the school bell.
Geography was interesting–all those maps and facts.
History a story of migration, wars and pacts.
Psychology didn’t throw me. I learned to type real fast.
I got an A in algebra, though the knowledge didn’t last.
Bookkeeping was annoying–all those columns and their sums.
I’ll admit I caused disturbances, clowning for my chums.
But all and all my schooldays were challenging and fun.
The only time I wished that all my schooling could be done
was when my Biology teacher made me blanch and squirm
by issuing me a scalpel and then handing me a worm!!!

The Prompt: Land of Confusion–Which subject in school did you find impossible to master? Did math give you hives? Did English make you scream? Do tell!
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/land-of-confusion-2/

hear and know

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I spent yesterday and last night at my friend Linda’s house.  There will be more about that in a later post.  For now, here is a simple little poem about living in the here and now.

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hear and know

water drops
from sky or hose
where it comes from
no one knows

the blinds are pulled
I only hear
water moving
very near

morning’s new
the world I wake in
has new sounds
for me to take in

open eyes
and feet on floor
morning waits
outside my door

the smell of coffee
invites me there
my friend waiting
for me to share

how can I know
until I rise
what new world
will meet my eyes

at the window
curtains billow
deer grazing
on weeping willow

window washer
rings the bell
i greet the day
this tale to tell.

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https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/write-here-write-now/
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/coming-to-a-bookshelf-near-you/

A Life in Review: Hanging Out

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A Life in Review: Hanging Out

“Interesting plot.  Could have been better cast.”

The Prompt: Four Stars–Write a review of your life — or the life of someone close to you — as if it were a movie or a book.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/four-stars/

Fealty

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Fealty

When I’m having a fine day
and good fortune comes my way:
that hundredth view, retablo sales,
party talk of special tales,
lottery winnings, publications,
plans for future great vacations,
cute things that my dogs may do,
films especially fun to view,
pounds lost, friends gained, birds I see,
a new fantastic recipe,
or, if perchance I’m feeling yucky,
first person whom I call is Duckie!
And though I know he won’t agree
in granting this last wish to me,
because of all the joy he gives me,
I sure do hope that he outlives me!

The Prompt: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious–You get some incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/supercalifragilisticexpialidocious/

(Who is Duckie? He often comments here as okcforgottenman. I wrote another poem about him here and talk about him here.)

Boy Toys

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erector-set-a - Version 3

Boy Toys

If I were a kid again,
I’d ask for an electric train,
erector sets and building blocks,
a cane to take along on walks
for fending off mean dogs and snakes,
a little oven that really bakes,
decoder rings and magic sets,
ant farms and bug-collecting nets,
a chart for looking up the stars,
paraffin and jelly jars.

The main thing that I’d want, you see,
are more forms of activity:
canvas, paints and wood or clay
to help me pass the time of day.
Instead, adventure came in books–
days spent in armchairs or in nooks
and crannies of our lawn or house,
curled up like a little mouse,
reading of the far-off places,
imaginary deeds and faces.

But I would rather have been doing–
drawing, cutting, building, gluing.
Instead I spent my days in dreams,
filling up my mind with schemes
of what I’d do when I was older–
taller, smarter, braver, bolder.
When we are young, if no one shows us,
takes the trouble to expose us
to the world of creativity,
we may never really see

all the ways that there might be
to set imagination free.
It was plain that an erector set
was not a toy I’d ever get.
With “Hello boys,” written on the front,
the message was both clear and blunt.
Girls did not ask for toys like this.
I had no inkling of what I’d miss.
Creativity was slow to dawn.
For years, I simply played the pawn,

doing what others asked of me,
waiting until I was free
to find a path I’d never seen
caught up in the small town machine.
When I was freed into the world,
a whole new universe unfurled
undivided into  girls or boys.
I finally learned to choose the toys
I really wanted: saws and pliers,
sheets of silver, silver wires,

drill presses and dapping blocks,
glues and solder guns and caulks.
I finally have the toys I want–
not toys to look at or to flaunt,
but toys to make things with and do
–things that help me build anew
each day into whate’er I wish:
a paper lamp, a silver fish.
My story boxes tell the story
of all those years in purgatory

before I learned what else there was
to make my life take off and buzz
with focus and activity–
to fill my days and set me free.
Somehow I just got off the track
before I made my own way back,
but If I did it over again,
I’d ask for that electric train.
Around the track, I’d watch it curl–
a perfect pastime for a girl!!!

The Prompt: Gimmee–Was there a special gift or toy you wanted as a child but never received? If so, what was it?If  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/gimme/
TWIST   Twist

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/what-a-twist/

The World Is Too Much With Us

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People here are funny. They work so hard at living they forget how to live.”
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

The World Is Too Much With Us

How was life when we didn’t know everything?  Back when there was no TV and when news got shared once a day on the radio and once on the door stoop in the morning?  We were so busy with our own lives that we didn’t spend every minute of every day bound up in the ills of the world.

Violence was a neighborhood game of cops and robbers, but nobody really ever identified more with the robbers.  It was more a game like kick the can, where you were trying to keep something away from the other side.  Violence was not the point and when I look deep, I know that a game of cowboys and Indians was no more an expression of prejudice than listening to a World Series game of the Yankees against the Dodgers was.

To rephrase a quote from Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), I have to say that people of the twenty-first century are funny.  They work so hard at living they forget how to live. I include myself in their ranks.  I am so tied to my computer that I panicked recently when I spilled a Coke on it and had to go a few days without.  My day felt strangely empty even though I had an entire ocean and beach spread out before me and a small town full of people to talk to, a porch full of art materials.  But, I’d become so accustomed to my blogging world and even to talking throughout the day via Skype to a very dear friend, that I didn’t know what to do with a day that was just a day in one place with one set of people around me.

Existence has become a thing that has no value unless I can write about it and I don’t seem to be able to write anymore unless I am writing into a computer and sending experience out into the world.  I am committing, perhaps, even more of a sin than those teenagers glued to their hand devices, texting their friends. They, at least, are connected to someone,  whereas I simply talk to my computer and send out copies later.

Who is most at fault is not the point.  The point is that connection with the world at large that keeps some of us from a simple and private connection to the world immediately around us.  We know so much about so many things we really don’t have much control over, that we have become voyeurs. The entire world has become grounds for our gossip.  We are fascinated by the gory details, shocked but in a sort of fascinated daze that keeps us many times from realizing that this is more than a movie. This is reality.  Someone’s pain.  We feel it for those seconds and minutes and hours and days that the horrible action stays in the headlights of this rushing vehicle that is our world, but then we pass on and it is as though one program has ended and the next begins.  We think about world events in episodes.  Off with the old one, on with the newest slaughter or murder or coup or genocide or monster storm or hostage situation.

In the meantime the minor tragedies around us sometimes go unnoticed.  We are so fixated on the stories of major tragedies on the other side of the world that we forget the real people and small dramas going on around us.  We watch nature shows on television while ignoring what wildlife still exists around us.   We suffer the passion and pangs of romance as onlookers.  Observing the great chefs of the world takes up time we could have been baking chocolate chip cookies.  Watching Honey Boo Boo in horror becomes a punishment in comparison to  sitting in a playground, watching children living the world in real time.

Yes, what I write is hyperbole, but I think it is true, to a varying degree, of most of us connected to the technical world. It is like a horrible accident passed on the hightway that we are told by our mothers to look away from.  Who can resist?  No matter how much the gory scene may invade our dreams and turn them into nightmares, we cannot look away. And now with TV and the Internet, we could spend 24 hours a day watching such horrors. And often do.

There is such a thing as being too connected to too large a world.  This is why I disconnected the dish network and cable years ago.  The bad news still leaks through, as does the good news, but in quantities I can take and that leave time for real experience and a perhaps misplaced faith in the world and human goodness and yes, even my own goodness.  I am beginning to try to spend more time away from the computer–to simplify, if that is possible in this busy cluttered mess of a life I’ve once more collected around me.

I find the valuable elements slipping away and less energy to collect more around me.  Friends die and move away both physically or emotionally.  This is the process of life.  But it is also the process of life to stay engaged in a real way and to fight for meaning and value in our lives.  This should not be so hard.  There should not be so much to plow through to get to ourselves and what is really important.  The Mr. Deeds quote, in modern context, might be altered to read, “We work so hard at observing and being in contact with the world at large  that  we forget how to live in that world.”

The Prompt: Silver Screen–Take a quote from your favorite movie — there’s the subject of your post. Now, write!

Once Upon a Lime in Mexico

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Once Upon a Lime in Mexico

I was just a small amoeba living on a lime,
and though Judy disinfects her fruit every single time,
I fear that the bartender doesn’t bother to
so that is how the tale occurred that I am telling you.
She squeezed her lime above the ice, then dropped it in the drink.
The Coca Cola fizzed up and the ice began to clink.
As she took her first big swallow, I lost hold of the lime
and slid down a soft pink chute into another clime.

I’d heard of other journeys and knew how this might end,
but I decided I’d enjoy every curve and bend.
I wound up in a reservoir where I gave in to sleeping,
but woke up to a million of me jumping, kicking, leaping.
It wasn’t half so pleasant as it had been before,
so I commenced to swim around, looking for the door.
Unfortunately, though I found it, it seemed to be blocked.
The wind was brisk, the waters churned, but the way out was locked.

When I heard the one who had consumed me groan and cry and cuss,
I rued the fate to which that Cuba Libre had doomed us!
For as distressed as she must be with headache and each cramp,
I was suffering equally from jostling and the damp.
For two days she lived on Electrolit, in bed and with no food.
And I held on for my dear life, listening to my brood
tell of what we could expect, flushed to a watery hell
down in the earth with all our kin—this legend they knew well.

Two days I lived like this, just holding on for my dear life,
listening to her pleas as spasms cut her like a knife—
too ill to go for help and unable to even sit.
I wondered how much worse this grisly tale was going to get.
Then suddenly, this morning, I felt the waters swirl.
I felt myself slip-sliding right out of the girl
into a clear container where I could see the world
from prison I’d once more escaped, or rather, I’d been hurled!

I felt the jostling and the engine of the moving car
which set up small vibrations in my little jar.
Yet still my progeny and I enjoyed the five mile ride.
It was so much better now that we were not inside
that dark and windswept place where we’d resided for two days.
Though I’ll admit none of our legends accounted for this phase.
No other amoebian Aesop had written any story
that took a turning such as this. Former endings had been gory!

I heard the car door open, footsteps and a creaking door.
Other footsteps, blinding light, and I was freed once more!
Spread onto a sheet of glass, surveyed by a big eye,
I breathed a sigh of pure relief. I’m such a lucky guy.
While they weren’t looking, I slipped off and landed on a shelf
where ever since I’ve been observing others like myself
who have escaped amoeba hell at least for a small time.
While I’m in amoeba heaven, and my dears?  It is sublime!!!

So clean, well-lit and active. Just like a picture show.
I sit here so languidly and just go with the flow,
calling out encouragement to visitors like myself.
And now and then, others come and join me on my shelf.
The girl who works here likes to put her sandwich very near,
where it serves as a good cushion for those of my kind, I fear.
The moral? Take care what winds up inside you, please, my friends;
for in spite of all my warnings, this story never ends.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Once Upon a Time”—tell us about something that happened to you in real life last week — but write it in the style of a fairy tale.

Sorry, friends, this one is another groaner!!!!

A Small Adjustment at the Fairy Ball

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A Small Adjustment at the Fairy Ball

Her gold tiara, finely pearled,
came undone as she danced and whirled
and across the room was often hurled
as the hair that held it came unfurled.
Then her attendant tightly furled
her fairy hair as they fussed and girled.
For the rest of the night, she bowed and twirled,
for now that her hair was tightly curled,
all was right in the fairy world.

The Prompt: Easy Fix—Write a post about any topic you wish, but make sure it ends with “And all was right in the world.”

Near

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Near

My father went from obscurity to a sort of small renown.
He worked hard as a rancher and the mayor of our town.
He met my mother at a dance in her sister’s borrowed gown–
both of them lonely visitors to a faraway strange town.
I’ve thought about it often since we laid him down.
Why didn’t I ask more questions? Why didn’t I write it down?

Many a calf he helped to birth and many a field he’s mown.
Avoided his mother if he could–long-suffering aged crone.
Not many highways traveled,nor many airwaves flown.
He died in his angry daughter’s arms–the two of them alone.
I’ve thought of it often till regrets have turned into a drone.

His eyes were always looking further over yon.
Over a ripening field of wheat or over a fresh-mowed lawn.
Working, often, until dark and up again at dawn.
A man of camaraderie and wit and brains and brawn.

He liked to tell a story and sing a rousing tune.
Stand on the porch at midnight to piss under the moon.
He gave me a turquoise ring, a baby rabbit and a coon.

Now that he’s very gone away.  Now that I’m very grown,
I know my flesh is of his flesh. My bone is of his bone.

And I wish that I’d asked more questions. That we’d both been less alone.

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The form of this poem is one consisting of six stanzas, the first with 6 lines and each thereafter one less line.  Each line in each stanza rhymes with all the other lines in that stanza and each stanza’s rhyme is a near rhyme to the last. The name of this form is Sylvestrian Near Rhyme and since “Near” describes both the theme and form of my poem, it is also the name of the poem.  And yes, I did make up the form!  I’d love it if poets given to rhyming and meter would attempt the form and send me the results as comments or a link to this blog.

Update: Here is Sam Rappaz’s response to my challenge.

The Prompt: Fireside Chat—What person whom you don’t know very well in real life — it could be a blogger whose writing you enjoy, a friend you just recently made, etc. — would you like to have over for a long chat in which they tell you their life story?

Sunset Story

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The Prompt: A Moment in Time–What was the last picture you took? Tell us the story behind it.

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Sunset Story

A year ago, friends from our old neighborhood in Boulder Creek, CA, had come to visit me.  I hadn’t seen them in the twenty or so years since they had decided to retire early, sell their house and take off to sail around the world in their boat.  They’d asked us several times to come visit them on the boat, but we’d put it off for too long.  By the time we, too, retired and bought a house in Mexico, thinking we’d meet up there, they had sailed on to more southern climes and then very quickly, Bob took the biggest journey of all and I ended up moving to Mexico alone.  Twelve years later, Lach and Becky had moved back to land, to her old home town in Washington.

When they emailed to say they’d like to come visit me, I was happy to renew the old bonds, happier still when they liked my new home town so much that they decided to buy a house in a nearby small town, and did—on that first visit.  They had returned to the U.S. to wrap up old business and now they had returned.  As they awaited the arrival of boxes of necessities, they were once again staying with me, newly arrived home after two months at the beach, where I’d watched 60 magnificent beach sunsets in a row—each uniquely beautiful.

But home sunsets had their own glory: the magnificent Mt. Garcia with Colima Volcano peeking over its side, the lake below reflecting the colors of the sunset, the domes of houses down below giving foreground interest.  As I glanced up from my dinner preparations, I knew this was yet another of a thousand unique sunsets I had previously captured.  I even knew where my camera was—a wonder after days of unpacking and putting away piles of the car full of home necessities I’d lugged with me to the beach.

I snapped dozens of pictures from three different levels of the terrace and garden. Then, spying the hammock in the gazebo on the lowest level, I decided to swing for awhile and watch the progress of the sunset.  Since my house is on a mountainside, I was still far above the lake with lots of sky to view as well.  As I neared the hammock, I saw Diego—my youngest and blackest and most mischievous dog—gnawing on something that sounded like a bone.

I tried to see what it was, but he moved off quickly.  I knew the crunch of bones, however, and was sure one of the friends who used my house while I was gone had supplied him with a bone which he had promptly buried.  Then I remembered that the dogs hadn’t been there while I was gone, but had stayed with a friend in his house.  But occasional uprooted flowers or succulents give testimony that my yard is in fact a graveyard for buried and un-resurrected bones.  Diego had probably just unearthed one he’d been dreaming of for the two months he’d been separated from it.

I had my swings in the hammock, a little shut-eye if not sleep, supervised the sunset, and then decided Lach and Becky would soon be back from a foray to their house, a few miles away in Chapala.  It was to be our farewell dinner tonight as they were moving to their own digs tomorrow.  I climbed the short pathway up to the house, noting as I approached it, that both the grillwork and screen  between the terrace and living room were open, even though I remembered very distinctly having shut them on my way out of the house.  I slid both shut behind me as I moved to the kitchen to finish dinner preparations.  Two pans of veggies stood in their steamers on top of the stove, mashed potatoes were covered and ready to heat up in the microwave, apple cake covered on the counter, six pork chops —(not) nestled in the skillet ready to be browned.

It became immediately clear what Diego had been munching down below.  As I snapped photos (including these) he had slid open the slider and deftly purloined six raw pork chops without even moving the skillet, which stood in exactly the same position on the stove where I had left it.  Bad dog!  I shouted off into empty space, as he probably lay on the dome of the house—both dogs’ favorite spot in the house—accessible by first a set of stairs that ran up the side of the house and then a small leap to to ledge around the dome and a fast scramble up its smooth sides.  I imagined him up there, licking his chops (literally, in two regards,) enjoying the sunset.

That night, we dined on chicken.
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