Category: poetry

poetry

A Dance for the Lonely

Sally25 Comments

He placed his right hand just back of her waist
She placed her left hand on his shoulder
They danced with hands clasped in a stiff, awkward way
Space between them? Well, it was well-spaced.
That space closed midst the dance, he leaned in and told her,
“Thank you for dancing. My wife died last year.
Today is quite hard, our anniversary day.”
Adding a hug, “Thank you for being here.”

This is my response to the W3 prompt this week: Write a San San poem.

The San San poetic form has three requirements:

  1. Eight lines;
  2. Rhyming: a-b-c-a-b-d-c-d;
  3. Repetition: Three terms or images in the verse must be repeated 3x each.

For this challenge, it also needed to be inspired by a dance or a song about dancing. The song below was my inspiration. It always gives me that ache-y feeling.

poetry

They are just boys

Sally7 Comments

They are just boys; do they understand
This greater good they’re fighting for, the issues here at hand?
What thing that draws them to this fight?
Is it some deep deep sense of right?
Or, did someone paint a picture that was golden-tinged and grand?

Ah, to fill the lists — recruitment, drafts, all planned
Each regiment, platoon, division must be manned
Focus on the good they’ll do; keep their prospect bright
They are just boys.

Send them off with pageantry — a drum and bugle band!
Remind them that they’re going to a far-off glorious land!
And never say a single word that might evoke some fright –
Pump them full of pride! Ah, ’tis such a glorious sight
To watch them while they board the ship and leave their motherland –
They are just boys.

The W3 Challenge this week was to write a rondeau on the topic of Freedom. This is less about freedom and more about war. Does it bother anyone else that here is the United States we fill our military with kids; they can fight for us but we don’t allow them to legally drink a beer!

poetry

Anxiety

Sally10 Comments

Moms tend to worry, you
know. It’s what we do
best. Especially
when a little chick
flies from the nest across
a pond — THE pond. So quick-
ly she had gone from
little girl to adult, and just
like that she flew
to London, thrust
into problem-solving far
from home where I
cannot rescue her ’cause
she must learn to fly
on her own —

To hear her voice
and see her face
— the magic of
technology —
took the worry
from my anxious
heart (thank you, God!)


Daughter #3 flew to London for a semester. While I was busy grousing about driving in New Jersey, she was boarding a plane.

We thought we had checked everything, but when she arrived at Heathrow, she found that her international phone plane with Verizon did not work. Of course, it was the middle of the night and I didn’t see her message until I got up an hour later.

I couldn’t reach her. A thousand thoughts — most of them involving disaster — raced through my mind.

When I heard her voice, I finally exhaled.

This is my response to the W3 challenge this week:

Write a jamb-jitsu. What’s a jamb jitsu, you ask?

  • Two stanzas (S1 and S2) with three rules:
    1. S1 must have more lines than S2;
    2. ALL lines of S1 must employ enjambment;
      • Enjambment is: the running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation;
    3. ALL lines of S2 must have the same number of syllables
Blather · poetry

Customer Service

Sally28 Comments

Alternate title: Smile

Customer Service isn’t that hard
Some people think that
It’s easy to smile and say hello
I understand
Your complaints — I listen and say
I’ll see what I can do about
Your situation.You’re not alone
I’ve been there. I’ve been in
Pain. I still smile
Even though I’m feeling that
The weight of life is heavy. I smile
What else can I do when
All these things hurt.

A less than stellar reverse poem — but I really wanted to do the W3 Challenge for this week which was to write a reverse poem. A reverse poem is one read forwards and backwards, line by line.

My struggle this week has been dealing with this darn shingles pain.

“Listen to your body. It’s trying to tell you something,” a friend said to me. “You’re dealing with a lot of stress.”

She’s right. I know she’s right. But I don’t know how to fix it.

The thing is that there are aspects of my job that I love. I do love greeting people — by NAME — I can’t believe how many people’s names I know now.

They stop and tell me about their lives. I LOVE that. I really do. I think I could listen to people’s stories all day every day. I heard stories about Maine and Nova Scotia, about Ireland and surprising relatives there, about knee surgeries and hip surgeries from older people who are DETERMINED not to let this hold them back but continue to live life fully.

My problem is that I am experiencing this nagging pain in my side and back from the Shingles.

And I feel like a wimp.

I don’t want anyone to come close up and hear ME complain.

So you, here, my blog-readers from afar, get to hear about it. SO SORRY!

Really close up, I’m fairly miserable. And I’m making mistakes.

I made a mistake early in the week, and my supervisor said, “But I showed you how to do that.”

Yes, she had — the previous Friday afternoon, after a full week of work and pain, she showed me this thing, which I totally forgot by Monday.

Dang.

I don’t like when I make mistakes.

I finally called my Primary Care Provider this week. I told her about this pain and she prescribed something for it. I’ve actually had two full of nights of sleep since starting it. The pain has subsided to a dull ache and I’ll live with it.

Or I’ll figure out a way to de-stress.

Any suggestions?

poetry · Uncategorized

Letter from a Yellow Pen

Sally5 Comments

Dear Writer,
I know my ink is lighter,
Sometimes hard for you to see.
Be

Fair, okay?
I can and I will display
Brightness in the words you choose!
Lose

Your bias.
I’m asking that you try us —
Lemon, saffron, mustard, maize —
Gaze!

Your choices
(Which can vary like voices
From soprano down to bass)
Grace

Your paper
In shades that play and caper
Like shards and flickers of light —
Right?

Use yellow,
My dear reluctant fellow!
You will find that you can see
Me.

Love,
Your yellow pen

This is an Irish poetic form called Deibide Baise Fri Toin. 

The poem is made up of quatrains with an aabb rhyme scheme. Syllable count 3-7-7-1. Lines one and two rhyme on a two-syllable word; lines three and four rhyme on a monosyllabic word.

The prompt on January 4 from the 64 Million Artists creativity challenge was to write a short letter to yourself from the perspective of an object that you use, or maybe misuse everyday. Honestly, I NEVER use my yellow pens. I have a basket full of a variety of pens in a variety of colors.

My favorites are brown, green, grey, and blue — earth, ocean, sky.

My least favorite is red. It feels too corrective — probably going back to my school days.

I like yellow. I just can’t always see what I’ve written when I use yellow.

Did I use yellow on January 4? Heck, yes, I did!

My pen basket
poetry

Judgment

Sally17 Comments

I seen what they are
I ain’t been where they been
But I ain’t gonna lie —
When they look at my skin
And see all my tats
I seen judgment begin —
But, God, they don’ know
Diddly zip nothin’

‘Cause they’re full o’ themselves
And full o’ shit too
They can’t lend a hand
To help me or you
They just bitch about this
And bitch about that
I ain’t got no patience
For those miserable prats

The W3 prompt for this week:

Write a contemporary poem inspired by Robert Burns on one of his three themes: love, nature, and the human condition. Also, try to include some local dialect.

This is based on my many conversations with one of my co-workers. He is one of the most genuine people I know — comfortable with himself, willing to help anyone in need, judged frequently by those who don’t know him.

Sad, but true — I don’t hear his dialect anymore and had to pay attention to it yesterday as he leaned on the counter and told me about his dogs (one of his loves) and the current bourbons he is considering (another of his loves). He and I share a frustration with the way people complain and complain and complain, but do nothing to make anything better.

Grief · poetry

Of Memories Gone

Sally15 Comments

The W3 prompt for this week is to write a villanelle on the cycle of life and death.

I love villanelles (in theory). I especially love when other people write good villanelles. I’ve decided, though, that I don’t like writing them.

I wish I was Dylan Thomas and knew how to not go gentle. Instead I found myself monkeying around with a ton of bricks. Such an overused cliche.

My father died in 2019 and my memory is so blurred. I have very few clear recollections of that day.

I went for a walk. I DO remember doing that — more, I remember my own NEED to do that. There were too many people in that one room and one of them was dead. I needed to get out.

Now, when I look back at that time, there’s a pandemic in the way. It’s like a wall that I can’t see over.

Something significant happened in September 2019. I have vague memories of it.

In my attempt at villanelle-ing, I ended up with two, neither of which I’m terribly happy with —

Here’s the first:

My father’s death hit me like a ton of bricks
It happened late September but the day’s a blur
And then we had a pandemic thrown into the mix

I was his care-giver, but I couldn’t fix
The inevitable. Yes, we knew it would occur!
My father’s death hit me like a ton of bricks

A gastric bleed that would totally eclipse
The dementia to which I had begun to defer
And then we had a pandemic thrown into the mix

When I look back on that time, nothing sticks
Nothing stays in order, no memories pure
My father’s death hit me like a ton of bricks

I went for a walk — yes, that clicks
But after that? I fear it’s all a whirr
And then we had a pandemic thrown into the mix

I know I have good reason for the memory skips
How did I make it through? I am not sure
My father’s death hit me like a ton of bricks
And then we had a pandemic thrown into the mix

And here’s attempt number two:

Enough with all this talk
Words are a garbled mess
I need to go for a walk

The night we hear death’s knock
We gather to pray, witness, bless
— Enough with all this talk

The hospice nurse notes the clock
Done? Begun? Your guess —
I need to go for a walk

To walk and walk — the shock
— I can’t express —
Enough with all this talk

Dear God, I need sound blocked
I need so so much less
I need to go for a walk

Trite, kind, angry words interlock
Into some noisy distress
Enough with all this talk
I need to go for a walk

family · poetry

Bruce the Spruce

Sally4 Comments

I asked myself, Is it possible to write a rhyming poem in stream-of-consciousness?

Hmm… First I chose a structure: a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire, an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Then I opened a tab in Rhymezone and typed in “spruce” — the Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday prompt for this week.

Here goes:

Christmas tree
Little spruce
I hereby
Name you “Bruce”

Quite a name
For a tree
Many folks
Would agree

Bruce the Spruce
Tall and green
Sparkling lights
Lovely scene

You may come
See my tree
Or this pic


Or these three –

poetry · prayer

Reflection (a prayer)

Sally20 Comments

Lord, let me be a full moon
I fear I am but a crescent
May my actions
Reflect You

This is in response to the W3 prompt this week:

Write a Naani poem — “Naani is one of India’s most popular Telugu poems. Naani means an expression of one and all. It consists of 4 lines, consisting of 20 to 25 syllables. This form is not bound to a particular subject.”

Reena, the poet of the week, also provided the image as inspiration.

poetry

Hindsight (regarding the Shingles Vaccine)

Sally10 Comments

Pain that is hard to express –
Distress! I cannot measure
This constant dull ache and itch;
It’s a bitch, not a pleasure.

After I came down with this —
Yes, I was remiss, and more,
I pooh-poohed getting this shot!
I know it now — not before

This is in response to the W3 prompt this week:

Compose two verses according to the following specifications:

  • “Opposites”:The first and last word of each stanza must be opposites of one another;
    • The two stanzas must use different opposites.
  • No restrictions on form, length, meter, or rhyme;
  • Thematic: Write about emotions, attitudes, and/or moods;

I chose to try again at a Welsh form: Awdl Gywydd

  • Four lines
  • Seven syllables per line
  • The final syllable of the first and third lines rhyme with the 3rd-5th syllable of the following lines
  • The second and fourth lines rhyme.

This is also in response to having Shingles — which aren’t an emotion, attitude or mood, but they sure do provoke a lot of those.