Question and Answer
When all our colors fade to white
and night is day and day is night,
and I am you and you are me,
erased for perpetuity,
when spectral is our whole domain,
when death obtrudes, what will remain?
When death obtrudes, what will remain?
When spectral is our whole domain,
and all our colors fade to white,
when night is day and day is night,
we will be one—our you and me
erased for perpetuity.
Prompt words today are perpetuity, erase, spectral, obtrude and white.
Click on the photos to enlarge and read captions.
Although the subject of these photos seems to be mainly me, the actual subject is the photographer. I was just her compliant model..These are all photos taken by my sister Betty Jo, who was eleven years older than me. Her other frequent subject was my sister Patti, four years older than me. Since the photos seem to start when I was about ten or eleven months old, I think perhaps Betty Jo must have received a camera for her birthday the year she turned eleven. It was another time when cellphones had not been invented and even cameras were rare. I remember a black box camera and wonder if that was hers or if by then there was a newer model. Whatever the camera, she was a natural in choosing and composing shots. Betty passed away yesterday, Nov. 5, 2021, and these pictures and the following poem are my tribute to her.
My Sister’s Camera
Videos and photos are doorways to the past.
Without these visual triggers, how long would memory last?
The emphasis of daily life infringes on what’s done.
Memories of childhood? I fear I would have none
if my sister’s camera had not been there to snatch
every special moment that she was there to catch.
Her photos chronicled our lives, forestalling our forgetting,
capturing tranquility or happiness or fretting.
The fragrant past floods out from them in scents I now recall:
new-cut grass and wheat and dust. That tiny baby doll
I carried everywhere with me until its rubber rotted.
That smell of crumbling rubber with which I was besotted.
The cherry trees and trellis, those friends far in the past
The memories of dress-up that were never sure to last
without my sister catching them with her inquisitive eye.
She watched with care and caught them, never knowing then that I
would chart my childhood through her photos—life tumultuous or calm
caught there in the camera she cushioned in her palm
and clicked into the future with just one lowered finger,
insuring that my fleeting past was sure to always linger.
The pictures of her childhood were few and far between,
but the pictures that she took of us when she was a teen
form a history of our pasts so memories won’t fade.
I wish that I had told her the difference she made.
Why do we wait too late to take time for these reflections
that might have helped us to express our genuine affections?
The last time that I saw her, months ago, so little there.
My lips upon her dry cheek, my fingers in her hair.
Conversing with her empty eyes, my attempts to reconnect
when the time was past that she was able to reflect
on her memories of taking them. What caused her action bold
to put me in the wheelbarrow when I was ten months old
and snap that classic picture. Was her camera new that day,
a present on her birthday, the 23rd of May?
Did she take other photos that I have never seen?
Besides her younger sisters, what subjects filled her screen?
We were her willing models, accustomed to the orders
of an older sister who adjusted hems and borders
to frame the perfect photo that survives to this day
to remind us of the sister who has quietly slipped away.
In contrast, this is the only photo I have of my sister Betty as a child. Without someone like herself to take them, she was more rarely depicted in photographs.
Prompt words today are tumultuous, fragrant, infringe, emphasis and doorway of past,
Bedbound
I have pain in my back and water on my knee
and not one single friend has expressed sympathy!
I’ve called every doctor in town to explain
my aches and my ills, but it’s all been in vain.
Not one can discover what it is that ails me.
Each remedy that I’ve sought out simply fails me.
The sun hurts my eyes and the rain brings depression.
It hurts when I walk but bed rest brings compression
that freezes my spine so I’m forced to just lie here,
seeking assistance from all who walk by here.
And although I’ve no appetite, still I must eat,
so there’s one request that I have to repeat.
If you’re going to town, could you help me out, please,
and bring me a pizza? Sausage. Extra cheese.
Because I’m so thin, the doctor prescribes beer.
and since there’s a Quik Stop that’s really quite near,
could you pick up a six-pack, some ice cream and chips?
For I simply must add some flesh to my hips.
My bones are protruding so far that they hurt
from the weight of the sheets and the thinnest night shirt.
I’m under the weather, headachy and thin.
I cannot convey the bad shape that I’m in.
My offspring don’t care and my spouse says I’m making it
hard to stay with me because I’m just faking it.
I have to complain because I must confess it
is impossible when one is ill to repress it.
Although all my friends say I’ve bats in my attic,
these ills you can’t see are not psychosomatic!
Prompts today are under the weather, offspring, flush, repress and stay.
Worst Nightmare
I stood without a podium,
alone there in the odeum.
The lantern light was odious,
the theater commodious.
My stomach tied up in a knot,
I realized that I had not
even seen a single script
and therefore I was ill-equipped
no matter how hard I was driven,
to say the words that I’d been given.
And furthermore, how crass and rude
that I was standing in the nude,
center stage, in full display,
without a clue of what to say,
before an audience, all staring
at the body I was baring!
And here I brought the curtain down
and awoke to find a dressing gown
draped around me in a heap,
relieved to find I’d been asleep!!!
For those of you who will ask, this is not fiction. This is a dream I’ve dreamed a number of times during my life. Prompt words for today are lantern, knot, Odeum and without. Image by Velizar-Ivanov on Unsplash.
The More the Scarier
When a single apparition tried to haunt the candy store,
they just admired his costume and gave him one treat more
than all the trick or treaters who’d appeared before his visit.
I wonder if his timing isn’t very good or is it?
When he planned his visit, he was counting on horrific,
but when the owner simply said his costume was terrific,
his esteem somehow defrayed his disappointment that
the only creature that he seemed to scare was just the cat.
He returned to the graveyard and stirred his sleeping mate,
insisting on their return—this time as double date.
And their double-haunting in fact turned out so well,
next year they’re showing up with all the denizens of hell!!!!
Prompt words today are apparition, costume, horrific, esteem and mate. Image by Kevin Escate on Unsplash.
Degrees of Possession
When a ghost is newly dead and lacking in his knowledge,
is it perhaps required of him to go to haunting college?
Does he become a boogeyman, thereby saving face
only when he’s studied hard and learned to glide with grace
up the stairs and down the stairs and way down to the basement,
polishing his scary moves and practicing debasement?
Will he then earn the esteem of every other ghoul
who passed his apprenticeship at apparition school?
Prompt words for the day are haunting, college, boogeyman, esteem and grace.
Yes, that’s me scaring my sis Patti way back when I was trying to earn my spook degree. If you can think of a better name for this poem, please suggest it. This was as good as I could do.
Tryst
The smell of his aftershave, his looks and wit,
the chemistry, passion, charisma and fit
of her putative lover had gained such renown
that his legend was spoken all over the town.
Through her bedroom window he climbed after dark
as she stilled her dad’s dogs–their bite and their bark.
With scraps of her dinner she lured them away
as her lover sneaked into the bedroom where they
would make love to the music that swelled on the breeze
of her imagination, there on her knees
playing out that wild scene in her hopes and her dreams,
through want of reality, stretched to extremes.
No passion, no music, no lover’s embrace,
her only caresses, the moon on her face
as it slowly rises, extending its beams,
and creeps through the window to enter her dreams.
Prompts today are the bedroom window, music, wit, putative and smell.
Click on photos to enlarge.
This is one of the pieces I made for a Day of the Dead show at Jesus Lopez Vega’s Gallery in Ajijic opening on November 2, 2021 on Rio Zula, one block south of the Carretera. This piece is 20 inches high and 12 inches wide. It includes a miniature I made of an actual book entitled “Noche de Muerto en Michoacan, Muestratio Portico” that is sitting on the chair. Other offerings mentioned below are on the table, along with a photo of the dear departed.
Little Altars Everywhere
There’s no pleasing the likes of a departed soul.
Take for instance the corpses out for a stroll
on Day of the Dead with their garb all in shreds
when other departed remain in their beds.
They think they’re entitled to dead bread and beer,
flowers and candles and when you come near,
they’ll say they’re entitled to sweets and tamales.
Once a year this is how they get their jollies.
All over the city, we bring them their due,
and when it comes your turn, we will bring it to you!
Prompt words today are corpse, title, pleasing, garb and city.
Trick
On Halloween, every child has faith
that if they show up as a zombie or wraith
and say “Trick or Treat!” and hold out their hand,
that simply by making this threatening demand,
the folks will produce a sugary treat.
Then quick as a whip, they’ll make their retreat.
Impelled by the promise of one reward more,
they’re off to pound on another closed door.
Without maps, without compass, they’ll all zero in
on former houses where they have been
that give the best treats, like whole Hershey bars,
their parents all sitting, resigned, in their cars,
monopolized drivers one night of the year—
giving independence, yet hovering near,
and perhaps making sure that the threat clearly stated,
if the treat’s not a good one, though surely debated,
never comes true. No car windows soaped,
no trees that are left gaily toilet-roll-roped.
Over decades, this holiday’s earned such renown,
that it’s the same in town after town.
Small ghosts and small ghouls and witches and fairies
go house-to-house restating their queries
and as though it is magic, no one can resist
a candy-filled pumpkin hung from a small wrist.
Prompt words today are: compass, monopolize, wraith, impel and hand.
Dear John
My kenspeckle lover, well-known for deceit,
you cannot resist every siren you meet.
If you’re depressed, they brighten your day.
Do you think that I’m so naive and fey
that I do not notice the scent you bring home
when you return from wherever you roam?
If I kept a notebook of all of the times
you were unfaithful and caught them in rhymes,
they would be encyclopedic in length,
devoid of affection and brute in their strength.
I’d be better off, they would prove, if alone,
for “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone,”
considering all of your dalliance and sin,
if applied to you, would be spread out so thin
that the bone left for me would be naught but a sliver,
my portion of flesh just a scrap of your liver,
the rest of you spread out so far and so wide,
apportioned to lovers you thought you could hide.
I’ve packed up your bags, keeping one of them free
to return the part of you you left with me.
Take it along with you as you depart.
I’ve already filled that part of my heart
that you have left empty these many long years
with one who’s supplied what you left in arrears.
Prompts today are: kenspeckle, better, notebook, deceit and depressed.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 