Tag: poem

poetry

Love is

Sally14 Comments

Constant
Begun with sleep loss
Cleaning up bodily fluids
Listening
An umbrella of security
The gift of time
Hard work

This is my response to the W3 prompt this week given by Murisopsis.

She asked us to write a Cameo whose form is Heptastich (7 lines), Syllabic (2-5-8-3-8-7-3), and unrhymed. Also, she wanted the theme of love and added “try to incorporate some other kinds of love for a change.”

My youngest daughter called the other day because she had food poisoning or a stomach bug or some such thing. She spent the night on the bathroom floor.

Had she been closer, I would have gotten her ginger ale and saltine crackers, and taken care of cleaning out the throw-up bucket for her.

I’ve done it.

Love is cleaning up vomit.

One time, when I was taking care of my father, he collapsed on the way to the bathroom and wet himself quite thoroughly. We called the ambulance, but he wanted to be presentable when they arrived so I helped clean him up and got him dry clothes.

“You shouldn’t have to do this,” he said, over and over. “I’m so sorry.”

Love is cleaning up urine.

My oldest daughter is expecting her first child. I remember as a young mom going to a baby shower for another new mom. We were all supposed to write advice for the new mom on little cards. Everyone write things like, “Tell your child you love him/her every day,” or “Live, laugh, love.” I had just had a horrible outing with my baby, where he did one of those poopy things that up his back and down his leg and got all over me when I tried to change him. We were an hour away from home. For the baby shower I wrote, “Always have a spare change of clothes in the car for you and your baby.” I was dead serious. It drew a lot of laughter at the shower.

Love is cleaning up poop that’s everywhere.

Can I say here that love isn’t candlelit dinners? It isn’t fun vacations. It isn’t bouquets of flowers or pretty jewelry. It’s the nitty gritty stuff of life.

Is that the kind of love you were talking about Murisopsis?

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Bible Study · poetry · questions

Authorities

Sally7 Comments

What gives a
person auth-
ority?
Yes, whence doth

Command come?
A strong arm?
Lifted chin?
Wisdom? Smarm?

Who are these?
Why do their
Words carry
Anywhere?

Yet we yield
To what they
Say, believe.
We obey

And turn blind
Eye, deaf ear.
Instead of
Faults, we hear

What we want
To hear. We
nod and don’t
Disagree.

Authori-
Ty. Poo-poo.
Let me think.
Same for you.

This year for the A-to-Z challenge, I’m challenging myself to write a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire every day. I can’t pronounce it, but I can tell you that it’s an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Additionally, I’ve been collecting questions for a few years — specifically questions from the Bible. I have a big problem with people who think they know everything, especially religious people.

The more someone thinks they know God, the converse is true. I know less about God today than I did last year or five years or twenty-five years ago. I have so many questions.

Turns out the Bible is full of questions.

So, I’m using questions from the Gospel of John for this challenge. These verses inspired today’s poem.

John 7:26 …Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ?

John 7:48 Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?

When it became more and more evident that there was something different about Jesus, the common people began looking around to see what the “authorities” thought of him — hence the questions — hence my poem. But they were AFRAID to say anything — John 7:13 Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.

But, between you and me, this particular topic is a sore spot with me. Depending on what news source you watch or read, you will have very different views of what is going on in the world from those who watch the other news. We need to be a THINKING people, who investigate the truths and falsehoods of what we’re being fed.

poetry

Delilah

Sally14 Comments

My darling,
Much better than quarreling
Is this: I will stroke your hair,
Swear

Devotion
To you while you’ve no notion
(Have you?) of whose side I’m on.
Yawn

My pretty;
Sleep on my lap. I pity
Your great surprise when you wake.
Take

Care, dumb thing.
Out of the strong came something.
Sweet fool, you yielded to me
Key

Expertise
That I might put you at ease
And take from you that which God
[prod]

Had conferred
On you. Soon the deed’s occurred —
Come take the hair of this mutt!
Cut!

The W3 prompt for this week was to write an ekphrastic poem about the Rubens’ painting of Samson and Delilah.

The more I looked at the painting, the more I disliked Delilah. She’s so false. What did Samson see in her? Well, I think that’s pretty clear in the painting, too.

This is an Irish form I’ve used before: deibide baise fri toin. Syllable count for each quatrain: 3-7-7-1. Rhyme scheme: aabb. The first two lines rhyme on two syllables, and the last two rhyme on one.

The poet of the week gave an additional challenge of including a line from Samson’s riddle: “Out of the strong came something sweet.”

poetry · prayer

Lost Prayer

Sally11 Comments

Dear Barbara,
Remember when
We used to pray
And say amen

To all of our
Troubles and cares
Passing them on –
Gone – to “One Upstairs”

Who heard our words
Read our mettle
Enclosing us
Thus to settle

And face what came–
Oh! Life was hard
Especially
Yours. See — one card

Then another —
Life dealt you crap
Death, illness, hell
Fell in your lap

Week after week
We bowed our heads
We wept, we prayed
Life frayed to shreds

Why did we stop?
I don’t recall
Did we give up?
Our cups to fall

And break, as did
Our friendship? I
Wish I knew what
Shut that door. Why?

Why do people
Move on from God,
Friends, prayers, tears?
Fears? Fatigue? Fraud?

I am a fraud
Yes, yes. That’s true
But we did pray
A day or two

I was out for a drive with a friend the other night, and suddenly I recognized the landscape, the roads, the buildings. It had been years since I had driven out there but I used to meet weekly to pray with a friend. She lived out there.

We stopped meeting rather abruptly some 20 years ago — and I don’t remember why. I don’t remember a falling out. I don’t remember a lot of things from those years. They were so stressful.

But the stresses in my life were miniscule in comparison with hers.

This poem came out of the hashing around of those memories.

I need to add that faith failures — the doubts, the fatigue — they are all MINE, not hers. Pretty sure, anyway.

poetry

Oh, to be a flower

Sally19 Comments

“Please select
Me!” She wanted to direct
The gardener as he scanned,
Hand

Already
Full of flowers, gaze steady.
He looked for one final bloom.
Gloom

Just settled
Over her. Her gold petaled
Head drooped in an oh-so-sad
Bad

Way. Downcast,
Rejected, again outcast,
Passed over. But then he stopped
Dropped

His pruner
“I wish I’d seen you sooner,”
He said to her. “You are sweet!
Meet

Your sidekicks.”
[snip!] She joined the spray, transfixed
By the beauty around her.
“We’re

Delighted
You can join us!” She sighted
A welcoming rose and mum.
“Come!”

This is for the W3 challenge this week. Heather (Sgeoil) challenged the participants to do a little personification. I had an idea for a flower being plucked from the garden for a bouquet (inspired in part by the bouquet that was on my bedside table when I stayed at my son’s house). My idea involved going in that sacrificial direction of losing life for the sake of something bigger. But, as you can see, it went in a totally different direction.

I wish I understood my own process.

AND — because I like Celtic forms, I went with a Deibide Baise Fri Toin, and Irish form with aabb rhyme scheme and syllable count of 3-7-7-1 for each stanza. The first two lines rhyme on a 2 syllable word and the last two lines rhyme on one syllable.

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
family · poetry

Ichibon – Our First Cat

Sally12 Comments

“Can I have a little kitty?” I asked my dad one day.
My mother put me up to it; she knew what he would say.
When I had first asked her, she said, “You need to ask your dad.”
The thought of having NO kitten made me rather sad –
So in my simple six-year-old heart, I began to pray.

When I first saw those kittens, much to my dismay,
The lady said to ask my mom and I knew I must obey
So I asked my mom with every ounce of sweetness that I had —
Can I have a little kitty?

My father loved to tell this tale. I can hear him now portray
How this funny freckled blonde-haired girl stole his heart away
With such a simple question — and he would often add
“How could I say no to that?” Yes, he would be a cad
To deny his own dear daughter the joy that came with one “Okay”
Can I have a little kitty?

The cat’s name was Ichibon. We lived on an army base at the time, and the family with the kittens had recently returned from a stint in Japan. Ichibon means #1 in Japanese, and she was allegedly the first kitten born in the litter.

Ichibon was first in a long long string of cats in my life. Today, I have an obese cat who doesn’t understand that he’s supposed to be a working cat and taking care of the mice in this house — but that’s probably a poem for another day.

This is response to the W3 prompt this week:

Write a rondeau inspired by a childhood memory

  • 15 lines long;
  • Three stanzas:
    • a quintet (five-line stanza);
    • a quatrain (four-line stanza);
    • and a sestet (six-line stanza);
  • Rhyme scheme: aabba aabR aabbaR.
  • Refrain: L9 and L15
    • The refrain (R) is short;
    • The refrain (R) consists of a phrase taken from L1;
  • All the other lines are longer than R and share the same metrical length.
poetry · prayer

Daring

Sally12 Comments

Staring at the starlit sky
Daring to believe in hope
Baring heart, baring soul
Swearing to do more than cope

When life throws unexpected curves
Then also adds surprising joys
Again we dare to dream and pray
Amen, amen — ‘midst all the noise

W3 prompt

This week’s prompt is to write a “lento” on the topic of dreams. Lento?

  • Two quatrains (four-line stanzas) with a fixed rhyme scheme of abcb, defe, as the 2nd and 4th lines of each stanza must rhyme;
  • All the FIRST words of each verse should rhyme; click HERE for an example.
Blather · poetry

The Broon Coo (and other cow blather)

Sally8 Comments

Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: “oo.” Find a word with “oo” in it or just use “oo” because why not?

When my granddaughter was littler (she’s now a big 4 years old), I wasn’t working full-time and would go babysit once a week. So. Much. Fun.

Anyhoo — she was just a wee little thing, and I would put on music to play in the background while we played. I had a whole playlist for her.

I pulled it up the other day because I (obviously) hadn’t played it in a long time. It was a lot of Scottish songs. My granddaughter loved Ally Bally Bee and “danced” to it — which involved running around the couch.

I loved The Broon Coo, a song about a mischievous cow that breaks oot and eats all the hay and neaps (turnips) and chases the ducks.

Cows are near and dear to my heart. The cow population is our area has significantly declined over the 50+ years since my parents bought the house I am now living in. When we first moved here, though, there was a working dairy farm next door.

I wrote a poem about it some years ago and thought that I had posted it. Maybe I had and then took it down. Who knows? It happened to be in my overfull WordPress draft folder and I’ll put it at the bottom of this post. It’s not really stream-of-consciousness, you know.

If you’ve ever experienced feeding a cow something from your hand, you’ll know that it’s an unforgettable thing. The smoothness of their nose. The tongue pulling whatever it is off your hand. The slow patient chewing that ensues.

So many people are just in a hurry when they eat. They could learn a lesson from cows.

A horse’s muzzle is dry and it will use its lips to take whatever you’re holding. A cow’s nose is slimy — but in the best of ways, if there can be a best of ways for slime.

I used to walk down the road and play music for the cows. They would walk alongside me on their side of the fence.

Then there was the year the cows stampeded up our road when the guy was trying to load them in a truck. He eventually rounded them all up, save one — and there were feral cow sightings over the winter that year as it wandered the back hills. I don’t know whatever happened to it.

But the Broon Coo song is about a cow that breaks out and gets into trouble — which is what my poem is also about (kind of) except our cow was a black-and-white Holstein.

So I’ll leave you here with a few cow pictures and a poem. 🙂

When my parents bought the farm
(literally)
Pa Jackson was over the hill
(euphemistically and literally)

He milked the cows by hand
While the barn cats tumbled in the hay
(euphemistically and literally)
I watched with wide eyes
(the milking, not the euphemistic tumbling)

The Jacksons had a bull
To do the job of the artificial inseminator
And when our pet heifer,
Sock-it-to-me-Sunshine,
Wandered over
To visit the Jacksons’ cows
The bull also got to know her
(euphemistically)

Then, our heifer
Was in the family way
(euphemistically)
She was loaded on a truck
And sent to a home
For unwed cows

The next summer
The Jackson’s cows
Were also loaded onto trucks
And sent to auction
Because Pa Jackson was
Extremely
Over the hill
(euphemistically)

A few years later
We read in the newspaper
That he had bought the farm.
(euphemistically)

poetry

Liturgy

Sally15 Comments

Lean
Into
The pained words
Uttered by men,
Repeated to the
God who already knows:
I believe in one God … I
Confess my faults; Have mercy, please,
According to all Your promises —
“Lean into the pained words uttered by men”

This is my response to the W3 prompt this week —

  • Share an emotion of yours in a “Dectina Refrain” poem.
  • Ten lines;
  • Syllabic: 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10;
  • The tenth line is comprised of the first four lines all together, as one stand alone line in quotation marks. (apparently the quotation marks are optional.)
  • This wasn’t a requirement — but mine is an acrostic as well.

This whole “share an emotion” business is for the birds in my life right now.

I told my counselor that this week. Not a fan of emotions. At all. Not even a little. Please make them go away.

But I’ve been trying to pray again. Trying is the operative word here.

This is why liturgy is so important. When words fail, we still have words — old words that have been spoken for centuries.

I’m not alone.