dVerse – lillian the home poet

Time’s Conundrum

June 23, 2026lillian17 Comments

Time is constant. Determined mathematically,
a fundamental dimension.
Time zones and watches set. Seconds tick by.
But can time be relative? Can it have voids?

Does time stop, race ahead, appear, disappear?
Can it be measured differently?
Through distance, visual changes, mental acuity,
ambulatory ability, skin texture, hair color.
Can it be lost in sepia toned photo collections
missing documentation of a generation?
Obituaries, birth announcements
perennial blooms, seasonal shifts.
Age appropriate gifts packed away,
idioms of the day, skirt lengths
and medical advancements –
all measurements of time.

Time gifted me memories.
Stripped me of loved ones and muscle tone.
Encouraged gratitude and forgot rebuffs.
My mind often dreams at night. I am the ingenue
leaping freely across the divide of time.
At sunrise I awaken, stand up, bend down,
groan a bit, shove dry cracking feet
into well worn slippers. Shuffle to the coffee pot.
Time keeps ticking and I’m still in the parade.
Who knows what’s round the next bend?
Time ticks one tock at a time, or does it?
All we can do is lean in.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Today Mish asks us to consider the literary devise of juxtaposition. She writes
“the contrast between subjects, settings, ideas or moods not only highlights their differences but can also uncover unexpected similarities or connections.” One example she provides is from Dickens in Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness.”

In addition, Mish provides us with a series of images. We are to choose two (I’ve chosen three) that we “feel could create a contrast” and then “use them as a foundation to build your poem.”

I must add here, lest you wonder. This is not all me in this poem. I’m still kicking up my heels, traveling, enjoying family and life with the love of my life.

Summer Fare

June 16, 2026June 16, 2026lillian17 Comments

Summer’s peach, sensory delight.
Fingers leave light impressions
on delectably ripe fruit
blushing to the touch.
Peach skin’s palette presents palest reds
blurring into sunset shades of lightest orange,
blending into golden yellow.
All these shades, a gentle swirl of color
so appealing to the eye.

One bite and juice dribbles down the chin.
Moisture stains fruit’s soft velvety surface
where our mouth has been.
Colors remain the same
on dry intact outside of fruit.
Inside colors brighter than outside.
Pinkish bronzed red merges into
lemon and orange sherbet shades,
temptation for another taste.
Summer’s peach,
visual and sustenance delight.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today I’m hosting, asking folks to write a “colorful” poem. No required length, form or rhyme scheme. Only requirement is that it must include colors! Images from Pixabay.com

Icarus Revisited

June 15, 2026June 15, 2026lillian18 Comments

He feigns strength,
gilds his world golden.
His name. His visage. His way.
Trumpian mythology
built lie by lie, threat by threat.
Its depth unimaginable,
bottomless pit of greed, racism.
So self-consumed is he,
blind to his wax wings melting.
Truth’s flame is invincible

Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today De asks us to include the word “myth” or a form of the word in a poem of exactly 44 words sans title.

Reference is made to mythology’s Icarus whose wings were made of wax…which led to his demise when he flew too close to the sun.

Living in a Run-On Sentenced World

June 10, 2026lillian6 Comments

how did we get to this place
where journalists are called piggy and stupid
and the one before is called sleepy joe while the one now
who was also before the one before
nods off in televised meetings but wakes up
demanding cabinet members sling odes of praise
while hiding their genuflecting knees below the conference table
refusing to speak against indulgences given to insurrectionists
as others under his spell fund masked men
not Zorro types
accosting individuals who by the way are not eating your pets
rather paying taxes to raise their children who are US citizens
being good neighbors attending church
working jobs that need bodies who show up and care

we need Martin and Jesse
John Lewis and Barbara Jordon
to be here again
we need their spirited tenacity to rile up cowardly sycophants
to grow backbones and finally say enough is enough

meanwhile he’s playing feral tom cat lifting his leg all over DC
leaving his mark so future felines and species of any kind
will know he was here in his gilded age of narcissism
adding his name atop JFKs and on towers and arch de trumps
even as he paints the Reflecting Pond blue
in the image of Mar-a-Lago’s swimming pool
which as he explained with posters as visual aids
is taller than any of the tallest buildings in the world
never mind it’s a pool of water lying prone on the ground
not a building actually standing tall reaching to the sky

he’s become an AI Master in the wee hours
evidenced by his creations
something no other president has or ever will be
see Donald the pilot dropping shit bombs everywhere
while JD warns Leo to be careful talking about theology
his boss created himself in the image of Christ
and it goes on and on and on like a run-on sentence
with no stops no resets no commas
just implicitly felt exclamation marks slung everywhere
until we the people add our own exclamation mark
and say NO in November

let the reckoning come

Written for Tuesday’s Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Melissa asks us to write a poem with no punctuation.
Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay

Life’s mates . . .

May 19, 2026lillian14 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

May 18, 2026lillian27 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.

Fences

May 12, 2026lillian19 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

May 11, 2026lillian13 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

May 7, 2026May 7, 2026lillian14 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.