One-sided
I’m tempted by your zaniness and your eclectic charm,
but I’m not reflected in your eyes, although I have your arm.
And though you yield umbrella to shield me from the drizzle,
when I look into your eyes, I don’t detect a sizzle.
So though I hang on all your words—mind everything you quote—
and though I laugh and coo and preen and blink my eyes and dote,
I know it is just habit, your attentive chivalry.
I know that I am into you, but you aren’t into me!
Former
We follow different orbits. We dislike each other’s friends.
When we are together, the confusion never ends.
Though I respect your choices, I fear they’re never mine.
I’ve strolled a crooked pathway. You’re rarely out of line.
You have a place within my heart but we rarely phone.
We each chose a direction and wandered off alone
collecting lives around us where the other does not fit.
We’ve analyzed our friendship and found the end of it.
Have we made the right decision, or should friendship never end?
Is it wrong to leave old friends behind as we round the bend?
It’s hard to keep momentum when pulling a long train,
and holding onto everyone we’ve once loved is inane.
When you’ve somehow lost the trust that you thought would last forever,
and when you’re simply bored by one you once found fun and clever,
sometimes we have to face the fact we’ve loved someone in vain
and all the joys we shared are ones we will not share again.
jdbphoto
Balm of Gilead
There may have been a balm of Gilead, but all my perseverance
cannot restore it to a world where it has gone on clearance.
I try to gather peace of mind, but still I cannot sleep.
I have too many troubles given over to my keep.
I need to take a gap year away from every worry.
Perhaps there is still time for it if I really hurry.
My niece gave me some fairy dust and maybe it will do.
I’ll sprinkle it in place of that legendary goo.
Concerning soothing miracles of body or of mind,
I’ll accept proffered magic of assorted types or kind.
I’ll resort to anything, be it dust or balm,
accepting any magic that simply restores calm.
image from Austin Ban on Unsplash, used with permission
As a point of interest, in case you think the “balm of Gilead” is just a Biblical allusion, go HERE to see a video on an old native American balm of Gilead that makes use of the buds of a common American tree. For the fairy dust? Go see your niece.
The prompt words today are balm, gap and perseverance and fairy.
Denouement
Flight and fear and chaos may make our dreams too gory,
but things may turn out better by the ending of the story.
I revel in surprises at the edges of my dreams—
as though their happy endings are captured at the seams.
So though we may be terrorized by dreaming’s dips and bendings,
prior to awakening, thank God for happy endings.
Yes, you can make the images larger by clicking on the photos!!
Fertile Fashion
She had a verdant sort of glamour unabated by machine.
Thus all of her garments were a vibrant shade of green.
Her bodice made of leaves and her skirts all made of branches
interwoven with fresh grass from her father’s ranches.
She knew she would inherit all his forest land and grass
which would be sufficient for covering her ass
for throughout her lifetime except for those long winters
when the grasses withered and the branches turned to splinters.
That’s how she came to following the sun to warmer places
where grass was always greener and with no wintry traces.
She had a fleet of weavers and they developed followings
that started up a fashion trend based on nature wallowings:
women picking grass and leaves for home-woven duds.
Embellishing with tiny bees that burrowed in the buds
that they wore for earrings and the sheep and cattle that
followed them in twos and threes to feed on purse or hat
woven from green grasses and embellished with fresh leaves.
They nibbled on their hemlines and fed upon their sleeves.
And this is how the world came to accept the final crudity
of fashionistas who evolved from verdancy to nudity!!!
Today’s prompts are glamour, following, verdant and inherit. All illustrtions harvested from the internet.
Query for a Backseat Driver
Your directional demands are wearing rather thin.
They’re wearing out my eardrums. Getting beneath my skin.
Must you demand in public? Must you always nag?
Have you all the answers in your Mary Poppins bag?
Must you simply always be so self-sure and so stolid?
Is there no effervescence in your dependably solid?
You always quote statistics, so I would like to hear
what is the percentage of the facts you know, my dear,
that you think would fit if you stuffed them up your rear?
Prompt words for today are directional, percent, stolid and public.
Photo by Josh Coleman on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Side Effects
Why does all that’s happening continue to astound us?
We’re doing penance for the plenitude that is around us.
Plastic on our beaches, pollutants in the air,
temperatures grown so extreme that we can hardly bear
the world we’ve grown around us. The hurricanes and flooding
that are just the start of things—the poison flower’s budding.
All the miracles of science with which we seek to heal
bring along their opposite as payment in the deal.
We dabble in our nurturing while majoring in our skills
of what we manufacture that ultimately kills.
Cancer in our Teflon and all the poisonous chrome
building up around us everywhere we roam.
Mercury and fluoride, lead and styrofoam
contribute to our comfort but construct a lethal home.
Science often cures us. It comforts and it saves,
but all its buried side-effects may finally dig our graves.
Prompt words today were nurture, dabble, plenitude and penance.
Rope
They’ve dispelled my excitement with a coiled line of rope—
imprisoning my fantasies and murdering that hope
that fairies really do exist with dragons and magicians.
Using scientific words and proofs of the tacticians,
they’ve put the rope around the neck of childhood and jerked
and I admit the strategy of reason really worked!
I don’t believe in Santa Claus. I don’t believe in fables.
They’ve ruined Cinderella and lynched Anne of Green Gables.
Pure reason is my only friend now that they’ve slain the rest.
They’ve installed stark reality but murdered all the zest.
I’ll welcome second childhood when silliness again
replaces stark reality to cushion the world’s pain.
Prompt words for today are line, dispel and rope.
The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a quadrille (44 words only) making use of the word dragon.
Retirement?
My future is amorphous. It has no shape or plan.
Up the creek without a paddle, I have no job or man.
My freedom? It is ludicrous. I’m well out of the chase.
All my time is leisure time. I live a slower pace.
Who named this phase re-tirement? There’s nothing that is tiring.
If they want to tire me out again, they’d best replace my wiring.
Prompt words today are chase, ludicrous, amorphous and paddle.
First Love
That frisson of excitement that I once knew so well—
that doubling of my pulse rate that rang me like a bell.
Back when there was no contest over which would win
when impulse clashed with custom. Back when passion was no sin.
The sum of all that feeling sent us crashing into life—
before you were a husband, before I was a wife.
Remember how exciting those first love wanderings were?
Those first stirrings of passion that made us stretch and purr
like felines on that blanket stretched out on the grass?
Our love was a religion and each touch a holy mass.
Our loving was eternal up until the time we parted
and each became a memory of when loving first started.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 