Overdone
All our schemes for summer fun now require healing.
We spent too long out in the sun and now our backs are peeling.
We need to hail a cab and find someplace in the shade
to wait for all our unplanned scarlet hues to fade.
Word prompts today are summer fun, hail, scheme and healing.
Shoe-in
Love is not contractual. It is not trite or buyable.
It’s not dependent on reason to render it as viable.
It depends on qualities more visceral than seeable—
makes one’s considerations more youable than meeable.
In its beginning stages, love may seem aleatory
as though the price of love is to squirm in purgatory.
Waiting by the telephone, in an abject state,
love wonders, “Will or won’t he ask me for a date?”
But this abject terror sometimes gives way to calm
as our object of affection furnishes the balm
that soothes our rash and fearful hopes and turns them to reality,
refining hopeful crushes into mutual love’s finality.
True love is always waiting to drop the other shoe
as “Will he? Will she? Dare we?” finally gives way to “I do.”
Word prompts for the day are visceral, trite, aleatory and abject.
Restoring Qi
Standing on the corner waiting for my qi
to recognize my face and get in touch with me.
I could use its help in restoring my zing,
for I haven’t had exuberance for much of anything.
All the troubles of the world seem to cling to me,
provoking pain and worry. I just can’t let them be.
My need for an infusion of qi has grown so dire
that I fear without it I’ll probably expire.
I hear the bells a-ringing. Could they be a clue
that my chi’s catching up to me to infuse me anew?
But since it’s the good humor truck coming into view,
I guess a double-decker cone will simply have to do.
Photo from Unsplash used with permission. Word prompts today are qi, exuberant, cling, provoke.
Chi, (Qi or Ki) is the energy of life itself, a balance of Yin and Yang, positive and negative, electromagnetic energy which flows through everything in creation. So Chi can possibly be described as an electromagnetic phenomenon, as a form of light energy, as a form of bio-electromagnetic energy or electricity.
Different Strokes
She was a paradigm of leisure, a role-model of laziness.
For her, excess mobility was just a sign of craziness.
She thought the act of exercise simply bore no credence.
In short, in her life, exercises had no antecedents.
She thought that the whole fitness craze was simply a vile plot
within which, in all her wisdom, only she had not been caught.
And so while all her neighbors put their bodies to the test,
she just exercised her option to remain at rest.
Prompt words for the day are mobility, paradigm, credence and plot.
Evolution
It is said in the beginning that light was of the essence,
as though the entire world was composed of luminescence.
Then particles of matter as the world went rogue
and cells and organisms finally came into vogue.
Evolution would not falter or heed any denial.
Eve wandered through the garden, then floated up the Nile.
Era after era, she mutated and changed,
her features and her hairstyles altered and rearranged.
The things she hung upon herself from shoulders and from ears
were revised era by era as she sauntered down the years.
Wandering down pathways or sauntering fashion’s aisles,
she flashed her varying feathers while testing out her wiles.
From grass skirts to hoop skirts, bustles to bustiers,
man has followed woman, doing what she says.
It is a grand illusion that men control the world
when the world’s whole future lies so tightly curled
within every woman, just waiting to get out,
for when it comes to reproduction, women hold the clout.
Men may seek to end the world and bring about its doom,
but woman holds the next world safely within her womb.
Word prompts today are luminescence, adept, denial and rogue.
Loner
An arresting behavior and aquiline nose
insure female attention wherever he goes,
and yet since he walks at a most rapid pace
and there’s always a new book in front of his face,
one must consider, just what are the chances
that he would see even one lady’s advances?
The literature that he daily reads
satisfies all his vicarious needs.
So though he must know what it is that he’s missing—
the adventure and romance and hugging and kissing—
and though more than one gal has chosen to tout it,
I fear he’s unlikely to do much about it.
They flutter their lashes and pooch out their lips,
flex their lithe bodies and rotate their hips,
but nary a glance does our scholar cast on them.
None of his attention is wasted upon them.
For though he is definitely romance-prone,
it seems he prefers to enjoy it alone.
Prompt words today are aquiline, arrest, literature and afford.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Grandma’s Escape Note
I’m juggling my remembrances of all you said and did
way back in the past when you were just a kid,
when I was so uptight and the scalawag was you,
causing all my looks of disapproval and of moue.
But now that I am seventy and you’re a kid of fifty,
the fact that things are changed around is somehow sorta nifty.
I’m the one who’s acting up while you are disapproving.
You registered your angst when you heard that I was moving
off to wild Mexico, away from kith and kin,
leaving far behind me all the things that I have been.
The stuff stored in the attic? I’ll leave it all to you.
I don’t have time to deal with it. I’ve still so much to do.
The house is up for sale, so you’ll want to get right to it.
I’ve planted a surprise up there. You’ll know it when you view it.
I’ve cashed out the investments that your dear dad and I
saved up for the future—he was such a frugal guy.
But now that he is gone, I want to be off, too,
so I split up all the money, some for me and some for you.
My part is for my future—a small sweet hacienda
and provisions and comestibles I’ll buy at the tienda.
Your dinero’s in the attic, some tucked here and some tucked there
to insure that you look closely and make sure that you take care
in examining the past and all those years I cared for you
so you do not dispute what I’m about to do.
If I have twenty years left, I’ll be lucky, so it’s fair
that I have another chance at letting down my hair.
I want to go out dancing and drink shooters and get wild.
I’m tired of a life that is grandmotherly and mild!
And so I don’t embarrass you, I’m moving farther south,
away from prying eyes and away from word of mouth.
I’m doing you the favor that you didn’t grant to me
all those years you got in trouble and I was there to see.
Now I’ll be the adolescent and you can click your tongue,
for I’ve waited all these years for me to be the one who’s young.
Kiss my grandkids and your grandkids and tell them it’s from me,
but that I can’t stick around because I’m off in search of me!!
Prompt words for today are moue, scalawag, juggle and remembrance.
Click on Photos to Enlarge.
Failure to Launch
When it comes to doing tasks promotional or clerical,
I find that I’m becoming increasingly hysterical.
It’s tough for me to concentrate. I would rather plot
the next word of a poem. A promoter I am not.
I find that my mind wanders when it comes to drafting
queries and proposals. I prefer to spend time crafting
poems, books or stories; but I find it tough
after creative efforts, doing that extra stuff
to place them or to sell them. Though I do not mind the working,
when it comes to the rest of it, I simply end up shirking.
Words pile up around me. My file drawers burst apart,
for when it comes to their dispersal, I find I’m weak of heart.
It’s not that I am hoarding words. I’d gladly send them out
into the world to find their place. That’s not what it’s about.
The fact that such acts bore me is a fact that’s inescapable.
I’d like to hand them over to a person who’s more capable.
I delight in going inwards and seeing what is there,
then putting it on paper for everyone to share.
It would be an equal triumph, I have not a single doubt,
if I could find a person I could pay to send it out;
but, alas, I’ve found a new way in which I am resistant,
as I keep putting off locating an assistant!
Word prompts today are tough, hysterical, capable and triumph.
Mantrap 101
(Grading on the Curve)
What quantity of your allure
is due to a fine manicure?
What woman ever won a date
by means of being Latinate?
This tidbit I am drawn to share.
What guy was ever known to care
whether your purse matched your shoes?
No sane man has been known to cruise
shoe stores as a place to lure
a conquest, and you may be sure
that when he’s waiting at your gate,
no man is going to berate
the fact that you aren’t wearing Prada.
If your shape rates “Yadda yadda,”
I’d say that you will be successful,
and all the other stuff’s just stressful.
If you want to flummox him,
just skip the rest and hit the gym.
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash. Used with permission. Word prompts today are tidbit, berate, lure and quantity.
Voting Our Destruction
Some birds will still sing and flora abide
no matter what human might reside
in the colorless house with the POTUS inside.
But not so for those that have already died.
In the past year, seven more
have ceased to run or swim or roar.
The outcome of our land and sea,
each animal , insect and tree
depends on policies they make.
Will Earth survive or will we bake
on the spit of reckless choices,
protests made by unheard voices?
Will we find, at end of day
we’ve voted our kids’ lives away?
These are the species lost to us
in last year’s sparring, useless fuss:
What new denizens will perish
from this Earth we say we cherish?
Yet we vote its life away
And we’re the ones who’ll have to pay.
Today the loss of species is estimated to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times than that of the natural extinction rate. WWF reports that between 0.01% and 0.1% of all species go extinct every year. Considering the fact that there are around two million species on the planet, it means between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year. And note, we are talking about species of which humans are one.
As per the 2018 report of World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), there’s a 60% decline in the population of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians in just 40 years. As per the IUCN Red List, more than 30,000 species are threatened with extinction, which means 27% of the nearly 1,12,000 species accessed so far are under grave danger.
In the past ten years, 33 plant species have become extinct. The species listed above in my poem all vanished in 2019. I was unable to find a list for 2020.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 