A blog for the midnight epiphanies and idle thoughts of a hopeless wordaholic.
Quadrille #129, and our word to consider is CURIOUS or a form thereof. Everyone who knows me knows I suffer from terminal curiosity. Submitted to dVerse May 31, 2021
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What makes boats float?
Why do airplanes fly?
No one is more anxious to know
Who What Where When and Why
What makes the bumblebees buzz?
Why do lightning bugs light?
I’m curious, and I must discover
Why do bats only fly at night?
THE SUNDAY MUSE #162, submitted May 28, 2021
MOONFALL
It appeared the moon had fallen
Leaving the blackbird, in quite a muddle
Just himself and this other fellow
Found it in a puddle
He thought “We must tell the others
They’ll be wondering why
Like us, they’ve become accustomed
To find it in the sky”
Well, what comes next, he wondered
As he pondered with a frown
T’will be a frightful puzzle
When the sun comes falling down
Open Link and Writer’s Pantry, idle thoughts on a lazy day. We all walk such diverse paths in our way through life, I suppose this poem could be endless, but mercifully I reached its conclusion! Submitted to dVerse, and to Storytellers and Poets United. May 2021
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Comers and goers
Lovers and dreamers
Slow walking fast talkers
High flyers on the down low
Losers and winners
Mathematicians and magicians
Escorts and pole dancers
Lost with nowhere to go
Architects and demolition experts
Teachers and seekers of knowledge
Risk takers and tale spinners
Those who travel alone
Tree huggers and street muggers
Each in their own way bereft
While thinking little of others
They enter stage right, exit stage left.
We wander through our lives
Some doors we go in, and some out
But there’s one common thread among us
Wondering what it's all about.
Weekly Scribblings, and Rosemary challenges us to consider the word "wait". None of us escapes it! Submitted to Poets & Storytellers United, May 26, 2021
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Poetics Tuesday, and Mish has given us a delicious list of quotes from popular movies, and suggests we choose one to be included in our poem. I'm afraid I've over-achieved. Submitted May 25, 2021
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My Precious,
Where we’re going we don’t need roads,
We’re headed to infinity and beyond.
Everything the light touches is our kingdom.
I’m your huckleberry---a glass case of emotion.
You complete me. Every time a bell rings,
listen to the children of the night.
What music they make!
You like jazz, the stuff dreams are made of ?
I don’t want to survive, I want to live. After all,
tomorrow is another day and you can’t be a
proper writer without a touch of madness.
You’ll need a bigger boat to round up the usual suspects.
Go ahead, make my day. I don’t know how to quit you.
Writer's Pantry when we choose a poem or prose of our choice. As is often the case, my thoughts turn back to days of long ago. I'm submitting my memory to Poets & Storytellers United, May 23, 2021
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When I was a youngster one of the highlights of our long summers was the Friday night free movie which was shown on a screen in the open area behind the drug store in the little town where we lived. I guess it was the prairie precursor of the drive-in movie. The parents parked along the grassy area edge, and watched from the relative comfort of their cars. After much coming and going to the drug store soda fountain for nickel cups of ice cream that had movie stars’ photos on the inside of the lid, it was time to spread blankets on the grass and settle down for the big show.
Once I’d spread my “blanket”, a denim patchwork made by my mother from pieces of my father’s worn overalls, my friends joined me, and it was time to watch for my childhood sweetheart. On a clear night, the evening star would appear just over the top of the make-shift screen. I remember gazing skyward and with all due childhood fervor thinking “I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight….I wish Willard would come to sit with me.” Most times, just at dusk as the movie was beginning, my wish would come true and he would join me. I still remember the thrill when his hand accidentally touched mine as we sat and watched “Swiss Family Robinson”!
The years have come and gone. My life journey took me to the city life, and his kept him on the prairie, farming the land he inherited from his father. On a bright summer night when I see the twinkle of the first star of evening, I think of Willard Cashmer and I wonder if he ever thinks of me.
Sunday Muse #161, submitted 5/22/2021
GEMINI
Gemini, Gemini
let me count the ways
star filled nights and sunny days
stormy weather and rainbows
just when I know who you are
you aren’t
carefree frolic and laughter
joys and happy ever after
until
dark and moody comes to call
immense displeasure over all
Gemini, Gemini
let me count the ways….
Meet the Bar Thursday and our challenge is to consider a poem with the beat of a waltz. Easy as one, two, three! Submitted to dVerse May 20, 2021
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Weekly Scribblings, and Rommy asks us to write in the form of a list. It occurs to me I need a list to remind me which musical tone in our new home is telling me what. As I compile the list, I’m wondering if any of us remember what silence is!
1. The musical beep from the stove when it has reached the heat level requested.
2. The slightly different tone from the Air Fryer when it’s reached requested level, the second double beep when it’s time to turn the food items over, and the final multiple beep when the cycle is completed.
3. The happy little tones of our Roomba leaving her station for cleaning duty, and her different little tones when she’s returned to her docking station for recharging.
4. The washing machine signaling its cycle is complete.
5. The dryer with its companion signal when drying time has expired.
6. The Ring signal from our surveillance system to let us know someone is at the door.
7. The beep of the Echo monitor in the kitchen when it has a message.
8. The sweet tone of my Alexa monitor in my office reminding me to check the washer, the dryer, the stove or whichever bell and whistle I have managed to ignore!
9. The voice of the Alexa monitor in my bedroom giving me the weather update.
10. The musical tone from my iPhone when someone has left a message.
11. The different musical tones when I have an incoming call.
12. Occasional alarming tones when scammers are alerting me my computer is going to implode if I don’t respond to their request.
13. The chimes of the grandfather clock marking the hours of my life.
14. The tune of the upstairs clock that plays a classical tune every hour on t he hour.
Indeed, do you hear what I hear?
Poetics challenge is to feature a favorite poet, use his name in our title, and write something in his style. I’ve chosen Ogden Nash for his pithy humorous poems, specifically “A Word to Husbands” I've chosen to write a sequel. Submitted to dVerse May 18, 2021. Here's Nash's poem:
"To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it
Whenever you’re right, shut up"
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....and my sequel is as follows
OGDEN NASH ON MARRIAGE
To keep your woman happy
With love in the loving cup
The simplest rule is sacred
Don’t leave the toilet seat up
Created for the Sunday Muse, and for the Monday dVerse quadrille where Lillian asks us to consider the homograph “wound”, which we may opt to use once or twice in our 44 word quadrille. Submitted May 17, 2021.
queen of bad choices
mistress of pain
wound tightly
tried by fire
formed in ice
wounds hidden
scars forbidden
buried past
free at last
new approach
strength renewed
fist raised
victory signal
second chance
fierce resolve
peace at last
music heard
time to dance
Open Link #292 and Linda has shared with us the word euphony or a form thereof. New words are always fun, and I’ve used it in a silly, jabberwockian ditty. Submitted to dVerse, May 13, 2021
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Blue Tuesday, and Sarah asks us to write a blue poem. Submitted to dVerse, May 11, 2021
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BLUE EYES
Blue eyes....he had blue eyes
he was a daydreamer, a night schemer
a song at dawn
a risk taker, a deal breaker
here and gone
sweet talking, slow walking
midnight kiss
skip to my lou, digideroo
introduction to bliss
a sip from the horn of plenty
left me in a flood of tears
Blue eyes
he had blue eyes
Weekly Scribblings. Magaly has asked us to write from the point of viewof a character hunting or being hunted. I'm the hunter, always hunting inspiration for a worthwhile poem, usually at night when I'm trying to get to sleep. Submitted this in error at Writers' Pantry. Here is it in its proper place! Submitted May 12, 2021
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MIDNIGHT EPIPHANIES
I’m a dreamer by day and a thinker by night and,
when I lay me down to sleep, will-o-the-whispers
wander in and out of my thoughts in a rustle of
satin and silken swish, flinging words and phrases
like tangled skeins spun by some shape-shifter’s loom.
Carousels and chapel bells, cowboy boots
and vagabond’s loot, lamp shades and nines of spades,
ballet slippers and champagne sippers, smooth talkers
and sky walkers drift through my mind on their way
to some future poetic adventure. Occasionally there
springs from this abyss of word salad, a midnight
epiphany worth recording in my bedside journal, and
turning into what I hope is a poem of interest, making
for a happy hunter.
Ah, bliss!
THE SUNDAY MUSE #159
This week's image brought to mind one of my favorite books as a child..."The Girl of the Limberlost" by Gene Stratton Porter, and the legend of Jim Miller who became lost in the wetland of northern Indiana called Loblolly Marsh. Jim was known as Limber Jim, and the area became known as Limberlost in memory of Jim's fate. My poem is loosely structured around Jim's fate
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Wednesday Scribblings and we're to feature a place that is special to us. There's one place that will always hold a special place in my heart, enfolded in memories throughout a long portion of my life. In autumn, when the leaves begin to turn, my heart goes to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, and my favorite place. Submitted to Poets & Storytellers United, May 5, 2021.
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For more than 30 years, my three good friends and I spent a week every autumn in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. Creatures of habit, we stayed in the same room in the same lodge for all those years. It was our favorite place. The Riverhouse Lodge sat at the base of a mountain beside a gurgling little river called The Little Pigeon River. We spent long hours on the balcony over the river, and slept listening to the sound of its tumbling progress over the rocks below. We played rousing card games, snug by the fireplace, with the bounty of our shopping sprees lining the perimeter of the room. We shared our lives, our joys and tribulations, and marked those long hours with sometime tears, but always with much laughter.
The years have passed, and the other three of our foursome have passed on to what comes after. I was left with my memories and the hope of returning to the Riverhouse one more time, but it was not to be. A couple of years ago, a careless spark ignited a dreadful fire that swept down the mountainside and burned to the ground the lodge we loved so much. I was bereft. One day soon, I thought, I’ll follow my friends, and we’ll all be gone … the four of us, the lodge, and the balcony where we shared our lives. We’ll all be but a blip in the passage of time. A new lodge will replace the old, and new young housewives will come for their annual girlfriend getaway. But I wonder, I just wonder, if our spirits may not linger in the green hills above, and the sound of our laughter be heard faintly as the water tumbles over the rocks below.
It's Poetic Tuesday, and Ingrid is our guest host. She asks us to consider narrative poetry. In my city this week, two young people died in an auto accident who were on their way to their high school prom when they collided with another car of young people. The city mourns. No cause for the accident has been published. My poem is supposition only, submitted to dVerse on May 5, 2021.
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Writers' Pantry and I thought we might need to consider the extraneous stuff we all accumulate, and what happens to it when we're gone. Submitted to Poets & Storytellers United May 2, 2021
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STUFF
Seems we think we never have enough
When drawers are full, we yet acquire more stuff
We don’t even recognize, I guess
that our accumulation has reached excess.
We rent a storage pod to take the overflow
when we run out of places for stuff to go,
keeping this and that and those, in fear
we might need them come next year.
Yellowed letters and forgotten lockets
Forgetting caskets don’t have pockets
Gotta remember when we talk to God
Tell him we’re coming with a storage pod!
Sunday Muse #158
CHANCES
There once was a girl named Vanity
Who walked above city depravity
She took a big chance, got some implants
And lost her center of gravity
