dVerse

Life’s mates . . .

lillian14 Comments

. . . some arranged
some from love at first sight.
Some wooed over coffee dates, dances,
walks in the woods, saunters through town.
Some too good to be true
and they were.

In his imagination, he pictured her
a match for his gentle soul.
Someone to color his world,
hues of happiness and hope.
Ruby red lips, dark indigo eyes,
cheerful lemon-yellow everyday dresses.

She appeared in his dreams occasionally.
Magenta velvet dress swaying,
complement to his black velvet tux.
They danced together, high in the night sky,
galaxy spinning, sparkling its approval.
Their’s was a match made in heaven.

Sadly, night’s chill always ended this folly,
waking him as he reached up,
up into the nothingness of stark reality.
His hand empty, heart aching.
Would he ever find her?
Or is his dream, simply out of reach?
Too good to be true.



Written for Tuesdayd Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Melissa is hosting. She’s given us images of 4 Marc Chagall paintings and asked to write an ekphrastic poem using one of them. I’ve selected The Promenade, oil on canvas painted in 1918.

An EKPHRASTIC poem is a poem inspired by an image.



Adrift in a Storm

lillian27 Comments

She’d wandered away again.
Rain pelted sidewise,
passersby doggedly plodded forward.
Uncooperative umbrellas flipped inside out.
She was invisible to them.

Sopping hair plastered her head,
clothes adhered to her skin
like shrink wrap over packaged chicken.
Three miles away,
her caregivers were frantic.


De is hosting Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. We’re to write a poem of exactly 44 words (sans title) and include the word “dog” within the body of the poem. We may use a form of the word or a word that includes the word “dog” within it….hence “doggedly” in my poem. AI image generated on Bing Create.

I’m Listing

lillian21 Comments

Some days I feel as though I’m listing,
weighed down by too much news.
Hantavirus, gas prices,
John Roberts resurrecting Jim Crow,
taxpayer money gilding an extravagant,
exaggerated, excessive, exorbitant,
extraneous, bawdy ballroom
for Mr. You Know Who.

Perhaps a blooming list might brighten my day.
My favorite blooms then, in no particular order:
hyacinth, cherry blossoms, tulips, daffodils,
crocus, lilacs and *panties of the week.

Listing toward eighty now,
purple veined hands, crepey knees,
fading eyebrows, expanding girth.
All changes I can live with.
I can still dance the waltz,
twist lasciviously, bunny hop ridiculously
and show off my *bloomers
doing high Rockette kicks.

So the point is, listing at my age
is more than a poetic feat.
It should tell you I am alive and well,
not planning any time soon
to take a docile back seat!


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, Bjorn from Sweden is hosting.

WORDS OF EXPLANATION:
1. The astericks on panties and bloomers. Back in the day, panties were called bloomers!

2. Panties of the Week were a very popular fad in the 1950s. You bought a 7-pack of girls underpants and each one had a day of the week embroidered on them!

3. The Prompt: Bjorn asks us to write a “list poem”. He says, “The use of lists in poetry can be very powerful. You can start with a list and expand around it. Maybe even your shopping list can be made into poetry by reflecting on what the list tells you about the season. The whole poem may be a list, but you may also use a section only as a list.”

So basically we’re to write a poem that involves listing. I had fun with this one!

Image is AI created on Bing Create.

Fences

lillian19 Comments

How do people learn to parent?
Do we learn it as we go?
Is it a task with diminishing returns?

We erect loving fences round our infants.
Envelop them in our arms,
nurture them at the breast,
cocoon them in swaddled sleep.
At varying degrees we watch, hover,
interfere or cheer, as they crawl, toddle,
run, stumble, fall and get back up again.
Fences open as we send them to school.
Teachers flick reins with encouragement
to lope, gallop, join the race, keep up the pace.
Soon fences disappear completely.
Children gone more than they’re at home.
Is parenting a conundrum?  
Love and attachment grow stronger every day
even as we encourage independence,
even as their days with us are numbered.
Suddenly they’re adults raising their own
as we look on from another place.
We hope the path they walked with us
was well tread, remembered fondly.
We relish our memories
as we wait for their muscle memory
and that thing called familial love
to occasionally nudge them
back into our sphere again.


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Punam reminds us that in India, May is a month where there will be art exhibits across many cities. She provides us with several artworks that can motivate an ekphrastic poem, or we can be inspired by one of the following names of some of these art shows:
1. Nothing Twice
2. Chance Remains of Another Time
3. Open Fences

Photo is us with our granddaughter who is now 18! How time flies!

A Crisis of Faith

lillian13 Comments

Brought up Catholic in a rural town, crucifixes in every room of the house. Weekly traumatic recitations of sins to the confessional grate. Anne-Marie fled when she turned eighteen. In New York City she buried her head in anonymity: crowded streets and subways. Religion and family left behind, she savored freedom in the solitude of multitudes. Then came the call.

“Your father is dead. Don’t come home. It’s too late.”

So Anne-Marie simply went to bed . . . for days.

Until she found herself in a church. Walking down the aisle pushed by childhood memories. Muscle memory bent her knee in genuflection. At the communion rail, her hands appeared in front of her. Thin wafer received. Consumed. But then came wine? Since when? And the faint perfume from its chalice steals her resolve. She gulps as tears flow. Somehow, she’s back in the fold.


Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. BUT, today, we write flash fiction!

Prosery is a form created by dVerse. A line from a poem is provided and we must include the line, word for word, within a piece of flash fiction of 144 words or less. The line provided today is
“And the faint perfume from its chalice steals ”
from the poem Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Need Your Advice

lillian14 Comments

We have an Uncle Fester, almost eighty,
his behaviors are causing concern.
Sends out weird pictures of himself.
One day he’s a fighter pilot
dropping feces bombs,
the next day he’s Jesus Christ.

Someone made a whopper mistake,
gifted Uncle Fester a label-maker.
He slapped his name everywhere.
We’re talking street corner signs,
the neighborhood center,
and the cemetery too.

Shocked my aunt by gilding his den
then bull-dozers suddenly appeared,
tore down their living room!
Shocked beyond words she asked him why.
“We need a ballroom” he said.
“For what?” she screamed,
“You don’t even dance!”

Sits up all hours of the night
posting, posting, posting.
Posted eleven times in forty-two minutes,
then fell asleep at inopportune times.
Brings up a contest he lost six years ago.
Claims he won though facts say he lost.
Brings it up over and over and over again.

Hoists f-bombs at neighbors and friends.
Can’t stay on topic when he talks,
wanders off with grandiose lies.
According to him, he’s the absolute best
at everything there ever was.
We hear it over and over and over again.
So what do you think?  
Is there cause for concern?

Hmmmmm……do you think Uncle Fester sounds like Donald Trump? My apologies to the “real” Uncle Fester! He’s a character in the fictional Addams Family. Image is of Jackie Coogan playing the role. Image is in public domain.

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Sanaa is hosting Open Link Night AND will host a LIVE session with audio and video on Satuday, May 9th from 10 to 11 AM EST. All are welcome to join. A link is provided on Thursday’s OLN page here.

Poet’s Parisian Interlude

lillian38 Comments

Sipping bordeaux, afternoon delight.
She, the queen of hearts, oblivious.
He, her soul’s sustenance, sits restless
in the tangles of foment.
His love, her peace and windrush.
His lust, her quicksilver.

Poetry is a testament to noticing.
Journal upon the table, pen hesitates,
writing stammers, then suddenly stops.
Eyes look up, gaze high.
Sentinel Eiffel Tower looms
overlooking this changing scene.

Her hands shake, tears form.
Looking at him, she knows.
This seasonal song has no coda,
final movement complete.
He nods slowly, touches her hand,
whispers I’m sorry and leaves.
For her, the summer is done.

Written for Tuesay Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Merril gives us a list of names given to roses and asks us to write a poem including at least five of the names. We cannot use the word “rose” wtihin our poem. The rose names are Afternoon Delight, Bordeaux, Brass Band, Cayenne, Desdemona, Ebb Tide, Eiffel Tower, Golden Gate, Mermaid, No Surrender, Peace, Penny Lane, Queen of Hearts, Quick Silver, Restless, Sea Foam, Summer Song, Tangles, White Wings, and Windrush. I’ve included the ten that are in bold print.

Image AI generated on Bing Create.

“Poetry is a testament to noticing” quoted from Poetry Unbound, 50 Poems to Open Your World, by Padraig O Tuama, Irish poet and theologian.

Tussie Mussie Life

lillian54 Comments

She bloomed in every setting.
Rose patterned everyday dresses,
cherry cheerful flannel pajamas,
fruit speckled summer skirts.
Wisteriaed wall paper
wooed her to sleep each night.
Bougainvillea borders
bedecked her breakfast nook.
She lived up to her name,
Lily lived a lovely cheerful life.


Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today I’m hosting at the pub and asking folks to write a Quadrille (a poem of exactly 44 words, sans title) that includes the word “bloom” or a form of the word.

Image: Hopie in the Garden, painted in 2021 by Hilary Pecis, on display at Boston’s Museum of Fine art in their Framing Nature: Gardens and Imagination exhibit.

Explanation of Tussie Mussie: During Queen Victoria’s reign (1837 – 1901) a small bouquet of flowers called a tussie mussie was a common accessory. Flowers were considered more modest adornment than jewelry for young women.

On the Banks of the Charles

lillian28 Comments

I meander the riverside. Meanwhile the
globe spins frenetically, as much of the world
is amok in violent rhetoric. Walking offers
views of spring. Geese nesting, itself
testament to the season’s rebirth. To
see the female sit patiently upon her nest, your
reminder. Hope lives within the imagination.

Written for Meet The Bar Thursday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets across the globe. Today we’re asked to write a Golden Shovel Poem.

What is a Golden Shovel Poem? It’s a poetic form where the last word of each line in a new poem, when read vertically from top to bottom, creates a line from another poet.

What line from another poet have I used in my Golden Shovel Poem?
“The world offers itself to your imagination” from Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese.

Photo taken on my walk yesterday, along the banks of the Charles River here in Boston.

We Must Learn from Others

lillian18 Comments

Lessons from ancient cultures,
wisdom in Native Americans’ ways.
Guiding principles to live in harmony
passed down from generation to generation.

Debwewin is Truth.
Represented by the turtle.
The tortoise carries lessons of life on its back.
Years piled upon years.

It walks slowly,
sometimes laboriously,
feet firmly planted in earth’s reality.
Its purpose was, still is, forward movement.

Honest plodding, slogging, traipsing at times.
Memories, achievements, failures, goals.
All stored and carried through life’s journey.
No regrets. This is me. In this place. Now.

Everything past, a part of my weight,
my girth, my being, my soul.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.
Today Mish is hosting, providing us with a very special prompt that explains The Seven Grandfather Teachings, a set of Anishinaabe guiding principals for living a good life in harmony with nature and others . . . all of creation.

Mish explains: “These ancient teachings have been passed down for generations through stories and ceremonies. Many Native American organizations have adopted these sacred laws as a foundation. Because they are the basis for a worldview rooted in respecting each other and the natural world, these values are often represented by a specific animal. We’re asked to write a poem influenced by the Seven Grandfather Teachings in any way that we would like. We may choose to focus on one or embody them all.“

I’ve chosen to write about Debwewin, Truth, represented by the turtle. “The turtle carries the teachings of life on his back. Slow and meticulous. Understand the importance of the journey. Be true to yourself. Speak your truth.“