Life

Pinocchio Lives: an exercise in comparison. Fact or fiction.

lillian2 Comments

Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?
The boy cried wolf over and over again.

Lance Armstrong, Tour aficionado, stripped of medals.
Trump University. Defunct. $25 million settlement.

President Clinton: I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
Karen and Stormy who? E. Jean Carroll  –  she’s not my type.

Heard on a playground on any given day: Liar, liar, pants on fire.
As millions died of Covid he said, It’s totally under control.

Richard Nixon’s famous words: I am not a crook.
The orange guy racks up ninety-one felony counts.

The Big Lie. We won. We won in a landslide.
And Dorothy was sure
she’d meet the all-powerful Oz.

Today, NaPoWriMo ends for 2024
but before we close that door ~
note the words of Samuel Arnold,
written in 1797:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horse and all the King’s men,
couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Let it be so.


Final prompt for NaPoWriMo 2024. Apologies to my readers who do not like politically bent posts.

The prompt for today is to “write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend.”

Each stanza compares Mr. Trump to a person, character, or well-known story or rhyme. For example, the first stanza compares his stoking of the birther conspiracy regarding President Obama to Aesop’s Fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Image created in Bing Create AI.

Incandescent

lillian11 Comments

Quick-minded youth leap to decisions,
days assumed to blaze in glory.
Bright eyes focus on the glossy
blind to consequential reality.

Those with blue veined maps on their hands
contemplate the world as a Pensieve.
Luminescent vapors
teem with incandescent memories,
decisions weighed accordingly.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe where today Mish asks us to create a quadrille (poem of exactly 44 words sans title) that includes the word blaze.

Also written for NaPoWriMo Day 29 where the prompt is explained in this way: “If you’ve been paying attention to pop-music news over the past couple of weeks, you may know that Taylor Swift has released a new double album titled “The Tortured Poets Department.” In recognition of this occasion, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous yourself, but we’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title.” One of the words in the list is incandescent.

Time: the Conundrum

lillian1 Comment

The future is beginning now.
When I arrive,
I am what was missing before.

Tomorrow always becomes
a yesterday. My past
was once unknown to me.

Time is after all, a glutton.
Best to concentrate on the moment,
every time it comes.

Written for NaPoWriMo day 24.

The prompt is to “write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it.” “The future is beginning now” is from Mark Strand’s poem, The Babies, published in his Collected Poems published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2015. He is a former Poet Laureate of the United States and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Image is from Pixabay.com

Gazing at the Universe

lillian15 Comments

Look upward with me,
magnify the solar system.
Marvel at what is light years away.

Now stand in still of night,
look up with naked eye.
Millions of tiny shining lights,
star specks in ebony sky.

No matter our egos,
we are simply small creatures
alive for a millisecond of time.

All the more reason
to be humbled by the universe,
to live and love,
thankful for every day.


Posting to dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe, and noting it is day 2 of NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month.

I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics, introducing folks to John McKaveney. John is a friend from San Diego who has an undergraduate degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics, is a lawyer, and has an amazing telescope! For today’s prompt, I’ve provided four of John’s amazing photos and asked folks to use at least one as inspiration for their poem today. See information below, about the photo I’ve used here.

Photo by John McKaveney. The Orion Nebula: “This is an active star forming region about 1400 light years away, of condensing gas and dust, illuminated by newly forming stars. Our solar system formed in a region much like this about 5 billion years ago. The photons that were observed when this picture was taken, left the nebula in 624 AD.  At that time, Mohamed had just won the Battle of Badr, in Saudi Arabia, the classical period in Europe was ending and the middle ages beginning, the Mayas were just beginning to build their largest pyramids, and Europeans had not yet set foot in North America.  Throughout this entire time, those photons of light were traveling through space to be captured to form this photograph, where their journey finally ended.”

Alcoholic Alice

lillian50 Comments

I fell off the wagon tonight.
Sprite at the holiday party
just wasn’t merry enough.
Only one Cosmopolitan,
drinking with Santa
tasted so good.
then another
another

an Alice-in-Wonderland night
falling down, in to
the rabbit hole
another time
yet again.
I need
help.

Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today I’m hosting and asking people to include the word “fall” or a form of the word, within their poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Have no idea how Alice became an alcoholic….sometimes the muse just takes you down the rabbit hole! Image from Pixabay.com.

Hey you!!!

lillian8 Comments

Do not come round me
with doom and gloom,
tales of burnt toast, Trumpian despair,
woe-is-me whines about this country.
I desperately want instead,
to believe happiness lives.

Let us walk outside.
Look for children skipping rope,
sharing colored chalk,
drawing sidewalk art
that regales the urban streets.
Let us look for smiles.

You do know we can vote?
We can demonstrate.
We can share our thoughts
in poetry and blogs, letters
and chats with our neighbors.
We can choose to spread the good.

When you come to visit me,
bring into my home a jubilant spirit.
In return, I shall give you a welcome gift,
bundles of daffodils tied in crimson ribbons.
Can you see the joyfulness in that?
Together, we can concentrate on hope.


Written for dVerse the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Sanaa is hosting, offering up a new poetic form for us to consider called Line Messaging. “Line messaging is a poetry form created by Angel Favazza where the poet seeks to utilize the last line of each stanza to bring forth and represent an idea, a thought and notion . . . the last line of each stanza, when read separately from the poem, should deliver an independent messsage or be a poem all on its own.”

Thus the last lines of each stanza above create the following much shorter poem:
Hope Lives:

To believe happiness lives
let us look for smiles.
We can choose to spread the good.
Together, we can concentrate on hope.

Photo from Pixabay.com

Forward/Backward: Message Still Resonates

lillian22 Comments

There is good in the world,
I remind myself
collecting my thoughts.
In morgues across this country
body bags, small and large.
In churches and theaters,
in schools and grocery stores,
automatic military assault weapons kill.
To concentrate on the good,
sometimes difficult.
Scattered thoughts.

Scattered thoughts.
Sometimes difficult
to concentrate on the good.
Automatic military assault weapons kill
in schools and grocery stores,
in churches and theaters.
Body bags, small and large,
in morgues across this country.
Collecting my thoughts
I remind myself,
there is good in the world.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Laura asks us to consider “cleaving to antonyms”. One method she suggests is to write a Reverso poem: same words read backwards and forwards, making poetic sense. She also asks us to choose a pair of antonyms from a list she provides, to include in our poem(s). I chose scatter and collect.

Today, in 2023, politicians and the NRA use the 2nd amendment, ratified in 1791, to justify private citizens owning military assault weapons. Do you think our founding fathers could even fathom the power of an AK 47? Or want Mr. Joe Blow living in the cabin down the lane to own one? And Mr. Smith, three cabins away? And Mr. Jones, across the lily pad pond?

In the Newtown slaying at Sandy Hook Elementary School, twenty children were slaughtered in a matter of minutes. Bodies were so obliterated, in some cases shoes were used for early identification. Three nine-year olds were recently killed in Nashville. The state legislature in Tennessee will vote today to expel three Democrat representatives because they joined more than one thousand of their constituents, the people who elected them, on the statehouse grounds in a demonstration for gun control.

Yes, somedays, it’s hard to concentrate on the good. And there is a lot of it. But some days, with 24/7 news, it’s difficult. Politicians are concerned about taking race out of books about Rosa Parks; banning books in schools and in town libraries; forbidding girls in schools (or anyone in schools) to talk about menstruation/periods until sixth grade; want to deny children, until they are eighteen, any kind of counseling or medical help for gender issues; remove gender studies as a major in colleges and universities; outlaw drag shows; deny women any rights to their reproductive health including in some states, denial of abortions under any circumstances or, in the news yesterday, after six weeks of pregnancy.

And we have mass shootings every week it seems.

So there you have it: a message read forwards or backwards. Anyway you look at it, it gets more and more difficult these days to concentrate on the good.

Apologies for the rant today – dear Glenn would understand. I miss him.

Streaming Thoughts on “Ice”

lillian15 Comments

Toddler’s rosy ice-cold cheeks.
Zooming, bumping down icy hills
on cafeteria-trays as sleds.
Crack-the-whip flying on ice skates.
Chocolate ganache, icing supreme,
marguerita on the rocks, please.
Icicle turrets on snow castles,
I scream for ice cream.
Smiling me,
at a list like this.

Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Mish asks us to include the word “ice” or a form of the word, in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Image by annca from Pixabay

Life’s Merry-Go-Round

lillian3 Comments

They lived a merry-go-round life
senses dulled by blurred vision.
Maniacal calliope music,
mired in manufactured grooves.

She rode the blue horse
its mane gilded in gold.
hands cold on metal pole,
forever spinning ahead.

He rode two steeds behind,
eyes wild with lust
chasing her round and round,
never gaining ground.

Desperately out of synch
his up to her down
so close, but always out of reach.
Gold ring dangling in neon lights
they rode on and on and on.


Rewritten from a poem I penned in 2016. Shared at dVerse OLN LIVE, the virtual pub for poets around the globe, today, Saturday January 21st.

Come join us LIVE from 10 to 11 AM EST, Saturday, January 21st. Read a poem of your choosing aloud, or just come to watch and listen. We’re a very friendly bunch! Click join us…you’ll find the link for Saturday’s LIVE session here!

2022 in Hindsight (look at footnote for explanation)

lillian20 Comments

Time is a glutton.
Step back in time with me,
behind gardenia laden breeze.
School days, school days,
good old golden rule days.

I remember mother’s shaking hand,
she enjoyed a staccato existence.
Track my life Crayola bright.
It must be a dream
because they leave the body.

I was born to die
and so many have blood on their hands.
May you burn in hell.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. For Thursday’s Meet the Bar prompt, Laura asked us to create a “Found Poem” by using only the first lines of the first poem we wrote in each month of 2022.
We cannot add any words to the first lines, except prepositions and conjunctions to assist with the flow of the poem. I’ve added three words: “behind, because, and.” The two lines, “school days, school days, good old golden rule days” are the first line of my haibun written on August 2, 2022. This was indeed a sudoku prompt but with no choice as to the lines of our poem for today. I was quite surprised to see these first lines….some quite dark!

Image by Monoar Rahman Rony from Pixabay