. . . remember that old song? Of course you do. Sing it with me! Skip to my Lou, my darlin’!
Let’s skip stones across a pond and then, chalk in hand, draw hopscotch on a sidewalk. Later you can pour me a Scotch and we’ll pour over old photo albums laughing at our childhood antics.
A bit puckered out and perhaps tipsy too, we’ll gawk at the stars, sitting on the stoop. Stooped shoulders with a myriad of wrinkles. Madeline L’Engle’s wrinkles in time singing Skip to my Lou, my darlin’! Oh let’s just skip the malarkey and admit it.
We’re septuagenarians in love with life!
Melissa has us zeugmatically speaking for today’s Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. She explains, “zeugma is defined by Merriam-Webster as ‘a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses.’ Zeugma is a rhetorical device that is used to emphasize, add humor, or surprise a reader.” Hopefully, I’ve done this correctly with the words skip and pour. The words Scotch, stoop, and wrinkle are played with a bit here as well. Madeline L’Engle’s famous novel, A Wrinkle in Time, is also referenced . . . sort of!
Rowan, Puss’ cousin, was the original one. He died on a cold winter’s night giving rise to number two, Tabby Tat. Nearsighted, she met her demise squinting down a busy street. Number three was Kit the Kat, catapulted to fame by a candy bar. Sugar highs and alley fights finally did him in. Mouser came next, not very smart, he followed a mouse into a trap and was last heard to say, oh crap! The next reincarnation came in a far away land. Penelope the Puma, sadly and cruelly killed by a hunter’s hand. Her ghost became the charming Ms. Cheetah, seduced to her death by a devilish Tom. Lorna the Lynx was up next. She lolled through life until her untimely death. And now if you’ve been counting with me we’ve come to the ninth penultimate life. That final reiteration, none other than Felicity Feline, intensely happy, true to her name. I am delighted to report, she found a happy home with the prolific painter, Mr. Louis Wain. Her portrait, painted in joyous colors, stands out in his collection. And so, while all those other eight are forgotten Felicity lives on in perpetuity, frozen in time, displayed on an easel, for generations to visit and see.
Written for dVerse Tuesday Poetics on prompt where Melissa is introducing us to the English artist Louis Wain. He is “best known for his drawings of anthropomorphised cats. Born in Londin in 1860…he attended the West London School of Art, where he would go on to teach for a time….In 1884…The Illustrated London News was first to publish Wain’s art. It wasn’t until 1886 that he received more widespread recognition….he was elected president of the National Cat Club….he was a prolific artist. During his lifetime, he drew thousands of cats (it is estimated that the number exceeds 150,000.” Melissa asks us to choose one of his paintings/drawings she includes in her prompt, and to “write a poem inspired by the artwork. Simple enough, right? There’s just one catch – you may not use the word cat anywhere in your poem, including the title.”
I selected Wain’s painting, Untitled.
I had some fun with this….using many different words that refer to cats: puss, tabby, kit, mouser, puma, cheetah, tom, lynx, and feline. I also had some fun with wordplay, without using the word “cat” as in the Kit Kat candy bar, and catapulted.
Yes, the dish ran away with the spoon, but Mother Goose got it wrong. She laid an egg with this one. It was not a happily-ever-after tale.
Turns out the dish was a cad. A saucer with sterling designs, and always a cups man.
Young utensil that she was, she never guessed his real intention to tarnish her reputation.
He led her past the infamous cow the one who jumped over the moon. Romancing her under cover of night, surely, he thought, she’d swoon.
But alas, there were too many stars that night, revealing what he truly was really made of. Just cheap melamine, not Royal Doulton or Spode.
Avoiding every advance he dished out, she ran back to the cat and the fiddle. She maintained her sterling reputation, after all, she was always a respectable ladle!
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe where today is Open Link Night and poets may post any one poem of their choosing.
This little diddle is an edited version of NaPoWriMo’s day 22 prompt: “to write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it. Like, maybe a comb and a spatula. Or a daffodil and a bag of potato chips. Or perhaps your two things could be linked somehow – like a rock and a hard place – and be utterly sick of being so joined. The possibilities are endless!”
For those of you not familiar with this Mother Goose nursery rhyme, it goes like this: Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon.
In Lucy’s words: Snoopy’s on a stamp? What is wrong with philatelists? Are they all dog lovers? Do they all have beagles? I’ll bet they all have at least one girl in their family! A mother, a sister, an aunt. When you look at it that way, they probably have more! I’m smart. I give sound advice for five cents a pop. I’m confident and strong. You’ll be calling me Madame President some day! So WAKE UP! It’s Lucy for the WIN!!!
Screenshot
Written for day 15 at NaPoWriMo where we’re directed to a site that includes postage stamps from many countries and asked to pick one and write about it. Not one of my better poems…..but for day 15, it’ll have to suffice.
Mr. and Mrs. Tabby Cat sat down to have a very long chat. They’d just returned from quite a sail that really produced quite a tale.
They bravely decided to set afloat in what they thought was a sturdy boat. They left at night under a harvest moon only to be met by a horrific typhoon.
The seas roiled and got very rough, they soon decided they’d had enough. Now back home, they sat in a puddle whiskers rattled, feelings a muddle.
Boots came off, dropped with a plop. “What can we do so our spirits don’t flop?” “I’ll bake a pie,” said Mrs. Cat. “We’ll savor its scent then eat, until we’re quite content.”
Tummies full, their dreams so sweet and now this prompt is finally complete!
Image created in Bing Create.
This was quite a prompt for day 13 at NaPoWriMo! Yes, April is National Poetry Writing Month and the challenge is to write a poem every day.
Today’s involved prompt: create a word list that includes 5 words related to the senses, two concrete nouns, and two verbs. Then come up with a rhyming word for each of those 7 words! See my list below. And then, of course, write a poem using all those words, trying to include the rhyme in the poem! It’s what I call a sudoku prompt!
5 sense words chosen with they rhyming word sweet : complete for taste scent : content something you smell rough : enough for touch plop : flop a sound you can hear puddle : muddle something you can see
Two concrete nouns and their rhyming words cat : chat moon: typhoon
Two verbs and their rhyming word sail : tale float : boat
Sporting a Gibson girl hairstyle, always the first to beguile. She artfully arched her eyebrows, never intended for marriage vows.
Expelled from finishing school because she’d broken many a rule. Back at home with daddy dear, all his money was temptingly near.
She arose very early that particular day, absolutely not allowing any kind of delay. Murder weighed heavily on her crafty mind, the perfect crime, she’d cleverly designed.
Poison added to daddy’s cornflakes, doused all over his yummy pancakes. And wouldn’t you know, one glorious week later she was named the estate’s sole curator.
Grinning, she thought, no need for a suitor, and there’s no one that would possibly suit her. Now she’s contentedly ensconced, happily rich, fully independent and a liberated bitch.
Written for Day 10 of NaPoWriMo. Also using at OLN Thursday at dVerse.
I had so much fun with this one!
The challenge today was to “write a poem based on one of the curious headlines, cartoons, and other journalistic tidbits featured at Yesterday’s Print, where old new stays amusing, curious, and sometimes downright confusing.” The image above is from The Buffalo Times, New York, June 12, 1910. I think it might be an ad for breakfast cereal?
In the Good Ole Summertime . . . corn-on-the-cobify me . . . tomatocize me. Plop raspberries on my fingertips only to pop them one by one into my eager mouth. It’s garden fresh summerliciousness time!
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…and the palinode, written today…..
In the Crappy Fickle Spring . . . frozen dinner me or . . . chilly me with stewed tomatoes and black beans poured from tin cans. I love eating yet another chili supper, spoon by spoon, dripping on my well worn flannel shirt. I’d much rather nosh on bruised banana slices than fresh raspberries, tastebuds screaming their disappointment. Longing for summerlicious times? Not me. I absolutely adore this crappy fickle spring.
Written for dVerse today, where today, in the spirit of April 4th being National Tell a Lie Day, we’re to write a Palinode: a poem that contradicts or retracts something the poet has previously written. Today, in Boston, we’ve had snow, hail, and/or cold sleety rain all day. I imagine the daffodils are frozen in shock. And I for one, am tired of this year’s fickle spring!
What names be known, for groups benign to get, to go; to roam, to grow.
Porcupines in groups are prickles. Wild geese do gaggle, soar in glee. The bees all bumble, swarms the buzz, while murder, mischief crows do make.
(And now excuse my poetic license)
A pile of purses we name a pursuit. A nosh of neckties, a collar’s noose. A group of grown-ups, known as grumps, a trickle of teens, they call a twit. A poet’s pub is fancied a pword.
*pword – Think of it as a plosive before “word” – not to be mistaken for pee-word!
Written for dVerse, Meet The Bar Thursday. Today, Bjorn asks us to write alliterative verse. He defines the form: 1. The alliterative verse has four stressed syllables per line. 2. The three first syllables alliterate, while the fourth does not. 3. There is a caesura (pause) between the first two stressed syllables and the last two. 4. If you want to, you may put a line break or some punctuation to make the caesura clear.
* I handled the alliteration and the syllables; in a few lines, I did not add the caesura. I did have fun with this….prickles, gaggles, swarms and murders. And then some made up group names: pursuit, noose, grumps, twit, and power! Phots from Pixabay.com
I am but a home poet. Prompts dog me, thrown out as commands with treats. Sit. Roll over. Shake. Go fetch. Bring it to Mr. Linky. Drop it. Drop it.
Heel. Heel. Find the rhythm, don’t jerk the leash. Words come to mind with expectations, arrange them in a meaningful way. Pen pants, drools, runs left to right, left to right . . .
. . . circles round and round, this way, that way. Veterinarians call it the zoomies. Poets call it frustration. Suddenly it’s done. And me? I’m doggone exhausted.
APOLOGIES to those of you who read this post earlier, when for some reason, WordPress deleted all the line formatting and it came across as prose.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Dora asks us to use an animal of our choice (real or imaginary) as a metaphor for how ideas and words take shape for us on the blank page. I had a bit of fun with this one, after having recently spent four days with my daughter’s family, including their almost two year old rambunctious dog!Image created on Bing Create.
lillian the home poet 