Bigot
His doctrines are all rusty and anything but rational.
He does not know the meaning of thinking international.
If he’d rescind provincial ways to make his mind more spacious,
it might create a better man, both kinder and more gracious.
Prompts for the day are rusty relic, doctrine, gracious, rescind and international. Photo by muhmed-el-bank on Unsplash.
New Dress, Two Sizes Too Small
Once I hone my figure, this will fit me like a glove.
Not one curve will be awry. I’ll be in shape for love.
I’ll put myself in training and walk a mile a day.
I’ll pack up all my cake pans and stow them all away.
I’ll give up chips and chocolate and concentrate on kale,
and after just a month or two, be skinny as a rail.
I have such fine convictions. I know I’ll reach my goal,
and to celebrate, I think I’ll have another roll!
Prompt words are awry, hone, train, figure and glove. Dress image by Sharon McCutcheon. Cinnamon roll image by Dilyara Garifullina, both on Unsplash.
Words and the Man
The words lie pinned upon the sheet, mistress to his demands,
only brought into the light by his complicit hands.
They may want to wage battle or to stray off and meander,
but they have given power away to a new commander.
The glut of letters marches straight across the written page,
tip-toeing or stomping off in a pent-up rage.
They are but the eggs of thought contained within the shell,
but he knows how to scramble them. He’s learned the method well.
Words may portend the future or they may reflect the past.
He may hide them deep in steerage or fly them from the mast.
And whether it’s a novel, a poem or a song,
With words he weaves a cable to tow us all along.
Blossoming Creed
Life, let me be a conduit to a positive future.
Let me not be bound by tradition even though I honor it.
Let me not be deterred by the lack of success
of those who went before me,
but let me learn from their experience.
Let me take pleasure from small successes
but aim for larger ones.
Let me create my own path
in a manner pleasurable to me,
be it bulldozer or pruning shears,
drawing pencil or paint brush.
Let my world be a new one
never before seen
and let me fit within it
with joy and open arms
for those who wish to join me in it.
Prompts today are conduit and tradition. Image from Unsplash.
New Baby Blues
I rue the day my mom acquired my new baby brother.
I wish that she’d return him and come back with another.
When I first saw him, he was cute and I was rather proud,
but that’s before I knew the fact that he would be so loud.
When he cries, he makes a sort of ear-splitting sharp bleating
all the time Mom’s in the kitchen seeing to the heating
of the bottle used to apportion out his dinner.
You’d think for all the fuss he makes that he was growing thinner,
Yet I swear that day-by-day, to my great disgust
that he’s growing bigger—fatter and more robust!
And when he isn’t sleeping or drinking or deranged,
he is damp or poopie and insisting to be changed.
I think this baby’s broken and I think we need a new one.
I asked if I could go along when they go to view one,
but Mommy says there’s no return because this one is used,
while Daddy uttered not a word—just stood looking amused.
It really isn’t funny, though. In fact, I’m most annoyed
that they have less time for me now that they’re employed
taking care of baby—making sure he’s fed and well
while all this time I’ve been here too, living in baby Hell!
He’s diapered, held and cuddled, sung to and adored
while his older sister sits here feeling bored.
They say that I’ll feel different once he’s more grown up,
but if it were up to me, I’d trade him for a pup!
Prompt words today are proud, heating, apportion, damp and rue.
Hiraeth*
When I went traveling, missives from home
awaited me everywhere I chose to roam.
Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Dakar—
No matter how foreign, no matter how far,
as I traveled by boat and auto and train,
over and over and over again
at postal restante, the letters they came—
varied in handwriting, varied in name.
Neighbors and cousins and aunts in strange places—
names conjuring up familiar old faces—
Letters at each port—sometimes a small pile—
arrived as I piled up mile after mile
of distance between the places I’d known
and all the new places to which I had flown
that spectacular trip of four months duration—
that long yearned-for chance for global education.
In that time before cellphones and internet and
when communication was all done by hand,
I still felt a bond with home and my past,
no hopeless feeling that I had been cast
into a strange world where I had no place.
My mother insured that this wasn’t the case,
for note after note conjured up the warm heart
of all of the people who’d been there from the start.
Later I found that since I’d left home,
to quench that long yearning to discover and roam,
each letter home that I’d written and sent,
my mother had copied and then she had leant
to the local paper who published them all
from the time that I left in the early fall
to the time four months later when I opened my pack
to reveal all the letters folks had written back!
Past teachers and uncles that I’d never known,
wrote insuring that I’d never feel all alone.
And each time I opened one, glad as I was
to be out in the midst of the the world’s alien buzz,
nonetheless I felt hiraeth raise its warm head
and for a time felt nostalgia instead.
Thus with one hand did my mother let go
to allow me the freedom that I needed so
while with the other she created a tether
that bound my two worlds securely together.
Prompt words for today are hiraeth, *a deep longing for home, hopeless, spectacular, missive and train.
True story.
Air Conditions
Grandma was neither meek nor mild and she was not abused.
The thought of any man ruling her makes me most amused.
But she was parsimonious when it came to waste,
scraping each bit of cookie dough to give us all a taste.
The weather could be sweltering before she used the fan.
“No need to run the light bill up just because I can!”
she’d quip when we expressed our feeble pleas for cool air,
but she allowed no wasteful behavior in her private lair.
Though she was far from venal, one tactic seemed to work,
for along with penny-pinching, my grandma had one quirk.
Her appetite for sugar was beyond compare,
so we’d produce the chocolate and then flip on the air!!!
She’d rifle through the chocolate box for caramels and nuts,
for when it came to favorites, she expressed no ifs or buts.
For summer after summer, this was Grandma’s rule.
So long as supplies lasted, everything was cool.
Prompt words today are sweltering, parsimonious, meek, venal and abused.
Masked Truth
In every other species, there are rules taken as law.
No mouse chances facing the cat’s cruel stalking paw.
Pandemonium would result if honeybees ceased to sting.
Protection is made use of by every natural thing.
Why then this garrulous argument and strutting satisfaction
displayed by anti-vaxxers and others in that faction
electrified by ignorance—Fox News misinformation.
How far it’s come in dumbing down a portion of our nation.
How can they be terrified of measures meant to save?
What is it about simple masks that causes them to rave?
Why do they rail against science and label it as treason?
Like lemmings streaming to their death, they do it against reason.
Those natural solutions that nature seeks to give
so every single species has recourse to live
includes the many wonders of the human brain
to isolate the enemies of our human strain
and provide protection—the body’s tooth and claw—
vaccines and medicines to deflect the viral maw.
So why this mounting violence with which our world is riven
against the chance to save mankind that we have all been given?
What God gives with one hand and withdraws with the other?
What Father creates children that he’s content to smother?
What animal strolls defenseless amongst this human zoo
and demands that others forsake protection, too?
What human stupid genome has Science failed to detect
that is blind to these precautions simply made to protect?
Those who revile the masked ones and refuse the simple truth,
picketing and threatening with epithets uncouth
perhaps are the next faction meant to become extinct,
drawing with them all of those unfortunately linked.
Our hospitals will fill with them, protesting all the way,
as all of those who care for them are also made to pay.
There comes a time, when a good man must wear a mask. Johnny Depp
A mask tells us more than a face. Oscar Wilde
Make sure you have your own mask on, before helping others with theirs. Daniel Handler
Prompt words are pandemonium, electrifying, terrified, garrulous and satisfaction.
Reconnections
What has been severed can be reconnected.
Stitches can stitch up what has been dissected.
Humans are fallible. All make mistakes.
Thus we are given a chance at retakes.
When we strictly label an act as “The End,”
we only signal our refusal to bend.
When a solution’s offered and we refuse it,
we’ve been offered a chance and chosen to lose it.
We’ve denied a lesson and chosen defection
in lieu of a chance to learn reconnection.
Consider the paperclip—invention most clever
that helps to rejoin what we once chose to sever.
Granted, some things may be better off parted,
but things we think ended can still be restarted.
Some things are clearly better off righted,
and after small partings should be reunited.
Prompt words today are paperclip, fallible, strictly, sever and lesson.
To Bee or Not to Bee
Busy little honeybee adhering to each flower,
collecting all their nectar for hour after hour.
Will exhaustion stay your flight, your rubbing and your nuzzling
so there will be less honey to fulfill our need for guzzling?
Your antennae look disjointed, your hairs are slightly grizzled,
but I’m waiting for my crumpet with its honey lightly drizzled.
Do you find it pertinent that we are debating
whether you’re aware that your consumers are all waiting?
Prompts for the day are honeybee, adhere, grizzle, pertinent and exhaustion.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 