Carpe Diem

New Day Mood Songs – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Three

My poem today was to focus on birdsong.

Melodious Mocker

I was out walking toward some goal
when at just about sunrise time,

you guys.

The day shift is here!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sing the same old soprano seven song,
so mezzos cannot
harmonize with you
like angels in the morning.

My horrible hearing
and the beats over my old ears
cannot cover
your high-pitched wakeup call.

And sheesh!
You are so impatient
with your cousin, sir mourning-rain-dove,
who does male’s coo-woo in alto-tenor to match
a mocking marking starling of Spring—
in this part of what was once, Mexico.

Thanks for waking me up!
Now, what’s for breakfast?
Since you seem so damn happy
to fly and to be alive and free to be.
Well, you know what they say.

Look both ways. They don’t call it “the birds and the bees” for nothing.
Mind the gaps because when winter ends and there is no rain,
the choir still must sing on.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 4, Of Nature

Now that I have gone several rounds with Facebook, finished every chore and honey-do I can recall, and exercised, I am ready to write a NaPoWriMo poem, to the day’s prompt.

That prompt is to poem up something natural that takes my title, some language, and/or ideas from The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of Nature, by Thomas R. Henry. It’s a cool book/Gutenberg Project. I’ll read every word when I am no longer knee-deep in trying to prove to you that I can still turn a phrase, poetic or not.

I love Nature much more than it loves me or you. I roll my eyes at things like “natural ingredients, GMOs (I mean, so what?), organic (prove it and pay for it), back to nature, and off the grid.” Dr. Scott Peck wrote: “…natural does not mean it is essential or beneficial or unchangeable behavior. It is also natural to defecate in our pants and never brush our teeth…” (The Road Less Traveled).

I decided to write a poem:

Of Nature.

I first camped out in the woods or forest
as a Boy Scout, about age twelve.

Years later, I tent camped with my wife
and I learned what chiggers are, sort of.
She had over 100 bites. I had none (that time).

I was sent to Survival Schools by Uncle Sam
to learn skills about how to live alone
with Nature (so we’re never truly alone).

I’ve hiked wilderness trails in several states;
in the mountains, sand pits, and pebble pocked paths
of the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico
(26.2 miles, four times),
and I hiked the boonies in Guam.

I swam in streams, rivers,
stock tanks, ponds, lakes, and two
major oceans. I backpacked in and days later
back out again. I pissed and shit in the woods.

I suffered from heat and nearly froze,
wild animals woke me up and threatened me.

Thunder and lightning and torrential rain
made me question my sanity.

I know the creepy crawler creatures
by first name, and I’ve been bit,
stung (once in the ass), scratched,
charged and needled.

I have taken Benadryl to recover
from the sicknesses that being close to nature
bestowed upon me.

It’s beautiful, wonderful, glorious,
and even freakishly mysterious.

Ask the first in. Ask the pioneers. Ask
the natives. Nature is not a safe place.
Most frightening of all: people!

Take Her for granted at your own peril.
Love the beauty but respect it all.
Nature can and will kill you
without fear or regret. Ask anyone
of the frozen dead bodies
of the Everest climbers.

But then again, what the Hell?
Go ahead. Be one with nature.
Stomp that fire ant den. Follow
that rabbit into the briar patch.
Play piñata with that wasp nest,
and charm or handle that snake.
Enjoy your life. It’s all you get.

Looking both ways is not good enough
in the depths and wilds of nature.
Mind the gaps, look, listen, and be careful where you eat, step, sit, sleep;
and appreciate where you decide to defecate.

Friday Fictioneers for December 29th, 2023

Rochelle is flying solo for today’s Friday Fictioneers picture. Click on the New Year ball to be dispatched over to her blog page where the timetable and schedule of how to be all-aboard the #FF bullet train to her grand central player’s squares. Just write fewer than 101 words and you’ll be riding on the City of New Orleans.

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Genre: Historical Friction
Title: Characters in Control
Word Count: 100

In 1907, Katie and William boarded the train in Philadelphia for New York City’s first New Year’s Eve Ball lowering celebration from atop One Times Square. They were excited to be part of America’s celebratory history.

They worried little about New York’s train safety, including one major crash in February.

As they stepped off the train in New York, Kate asked William if something was wrong. He looked ill and lost.

“I don’t know, Darling. It’s like some future writer started a story about us but stopped when he realized that he knew nothing about New York City in 1907.”

Look both ways and pay due diligence to how we got to where we are.
Mind the gaps in the tracks and cross-tie walkers.

Click on the New Year’s party in KC to read more stories.

My favorite New Year’s movie scene.

Sammi’s Weekender #334 (Absquatulate)

Click on the graphic for Sammi’s page and more 85-word wonders before you absquatulate.

May I Stay?

After the poetry reading
everyone prepared
for their independent absquatulation,
with coffee in their bellies
and books of poems
in their hands.

Handshakes, hugs, and
complimentary laudations
were passed around
like drinks at last call for alcohol.

Those ambivalent moments
when the emotion of wanting to stay
gets trumped by the needs of the day
tell of our human dichotomy.

Back we go into the world
of confusion, confrontation,
and hate. The place we love
too much and too little.

Reading some Reading
might help.

Look both ways but write your poems and read them to the world.
Mind the gaps wherein common sense has flat collapsed.

Note: Peter Reading (27 July 1946 – 17 November 2011) was a strong-willed English poet. His verse is described as “anti-romantic, disenchanted, and usually satirical.” Glad I’m only labeled cantankerous.

My book of poems, “Any Way the Wind Blows” was launched yesterday.
For this weekend, it is available almost world-wide on Amazon at reduced prices.

These books make great gifts, but F-word and S-word warnings.

 

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 25)

Today I was prompted to compose a love poem with three required aspects. It must name at least one flower (the Texas state flower is the bluebonnet, and they love them), contain one parenthetical statement, and have some
unusual line (like this)
breaks.

This Love

This love of ours
like bluebonnets flower
in Spring flashing brilliance
of blue, purple, white, red,
and like it knew,
maroon (if you look close)
in April then waning to green
by May. Yet,

This love of ours
thrives with
life—stronger after hard
wet Winter passes. The
flower gone
the plant lives like
our love. Fruitful.

Reliable. Dependable. This love of ours, like no
other’s (spreading, seen, felt)
cannot be trampled or destroyed (though some have tried).

Look both ways, forgive but do not forget,
let love be seen with eyes of envy.
Mind the gaps,
but don’t let them be more than
a seam on a garment, a patch in a road, or a lone weed in a glorious garden.

 

Photo by me.

 

Click this button for the NaPo page and more free poems.

Sammi’s Weekender #290 (perpetual)

Click this graphic to read more 84-word prose or poems from Sammi’s blog page.

Absurd Salt

Nothing is forever,
yet, the only thing that can never really be
is exactly nothing, that which never was,
and we can never really see.

We are here—together
only for a moment.
Then, the moment’s gone—forever!
Never to be again.
Everything
changes.

Our world is what was not before
and what will never be again.
We cannot capture time’s illusion.

There is no perpetual, everlasting life.
There is only this brief fleeting moment,
good or bad as life’s delusion would have it.

Look both ways all you want, but here and now, fear Sartre’s authentic freedom.
Mind the gaps for answers, but there is no objective truth.

Monday’s Rune: A passing moment of gloom

 

More Time, Please

It was one of those warm and humid days.
When it’s like that in LA, it is
miserably smoggy, but here
it is just moody and gloomy—no rain—
in the mid-seventies, like me.

Drove and hour to Temple, Texas,
for tests (the answers to which I thought I knew)
and to see a new PA-doc
and then to get gas
and drive another hour back home.

It’s boring sitting and waiting,
but since this is a hospital, boring and routine are good.
No, “I’m sorry, Mister Bill, but … ‘oh, no’.”

I saw nicely dressed police or correctional officers escorting
a mildly overweight bald man in an orange jump suit
and fake shoes
with handcuffs in the front,
all making it hard for others to not stare and wonder.
It was not so boring thinking about that.

Got an obit email that morning.
Another high school classmate had died
(they say he passed to be euphemistic
as though he just kept driving).
Patrick Murphy (Murph)
was an artist and philosopher
of Irish descent, and a Vietnam War vet.
His obituary was more interesting than most.

Anyway, I shall not be
characteristically pointing out problems or deficiencies today
because Murph is dead, and I am not. It’s all good, thanks.
So, I’ll just sit here trying to remember him
from art class, I think,
and be happily bored on a gloomy day
in a hospital clinic waiting area
in Temple, fucking, Texas.

Looking both ways at the days of gloom and doom.
Mind the gaps in loose cuffs and I wonder who wipes his butt.

Click the photo of Robin Williams and Matt Damon to watch this scene from the movie, Good Will Hunting.

 

Monday’s Rune: Halloween

The Last October Night

Last night, as I sat with my extended family, a mixture of baby boomers, Gen X’s, and Millennials, we spoke of haunting experiences: fear intentionally endured for fun. Few of us said we wanted to repeat those ‘fun’ occasions. They were things that fell into the it seemed like a good idea at the time category, but now we wished we hadn’t risked them.

We have learned that Halloween can be fun and scary without doing long term psychological damage. What adrenalin rush is worth the walk into nightmarish darkness? I recall the fun: the costumes, the parties, the doors to knock on, the treats, the stories, and the songs we made up and sang. We were having fun. But when scared, boy did we run!

I recall winning a Halloween party costume contest as an adult. I was not in the best costume. Was I given an honor for courage? Was humor involved? Did my green legs catch the judges’ eyes? No one fears a giant tomato.

What I like about Halloween is that I owe no one anything for it. It has a strange history and a life of its own with unique childish traditions. It is when it is, on the last day of October, followed immediately by November. Halloween has as many bizarre religious undertones as it does silly religious rejections.

With nods to the goths and the goolies, to the vampires and fried eggs, to the ubiquitous hobos and fun folks in clever, challenging outfits, I like Halloween and I know I’m in good, scary, company.

Look both ways on those dark October nights.
Mind the gaps where memories of youth dance and sing because it is time for all of that.

 

But this Halloween tragedy was way over the top.

Friday Fictioneers for October 28th, 2022

“You may see this again,” our dear and fabulous mistress, Rochelle, forewarned me. For the final October Friday Fictioneers photo prompt, which corresponds with Halloween weekend. She has cast a photographic spell of what I’ve referred to as “Uncle Billy’s Phish Camp.”

Click on the photo to be trailered over to Rochelle’s purple blog camp and stake your claim after gettin’ all learnt up on how-to and the wherefores of pitching your own flash or micro story.

Click this pic to be taken captive at Rochelle’s blog page.

 

Genre: Pastiche Fiction
Title: Hippie Hollow Hill
Word Count: 100

***

 

When I drove up, I noticed what looked like a homeless campsite, population two. It had a Texas style Phish Donuts flag, a teardrop camper, guitar, and some random wires.

As I walked toward the site, I noticed Julie setting up an easel and blank canvas.

She sang, “Come here, Dad, sit and have a cigar.”

“This is band-tastic, baby girl. We love y’all, most sincere. Where’s Billy?”

“Hell, he’s talkin’ to the pink monster. This is the life, Dad — music, art, sunshine, and a knockout view. We’re so happy we cannot count. We call it riding the gravy train.”

***

Look both ways and try it all.
It’s your life. Live it any damn way you please.
But mind the gaps and tent stakes.
Consequences follow everything.

 

Gloss: pastiche is a work of art (literature, in this case) that imitates the work of other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche pays homage to the work it imitates, rather than mocking it. In this case, the Pink Floyd (Roger Waters) song “Have a Cigar,” (click for lyrics) which, ironically, is a parody of a record company executive. Billy and Julie are my children, and the prompt photo is of Billy’s campsite located on Julie’s West-Texas ranch.

Click on this pic of my characters, Billy and Julie, to link up with other stories based upon the prompt photo.

 

The man and his guitar playing and singing by the lake.

And finally, the pastiche song as covered by the band, Elephant Revival. If the YouTube does not work, try this hyperlink.

Monday’s Rune: The Value of Time

 

When Dad’s a Dick

I returned to your place of business, like I said I would.
A clown-man there told two jokes. At first,
I glared at him to the silent end. The other
I interrupted so I could give you my coffee order.
I allowed him to finish. I again stared
before telling him his joke was unfunny and that his
comedic skills were woefully lacking behind his
overflowing obnoxiousness. Was he your father?

You would not take my money. He paid.
I sat quietly, typed my poem, drank the
Americano and chewed the muffin.
Now I wish I hadn’t. You
did not look at me or say another word. Then,
you left.

Sorry. Henceforth, the city library
has much more to offer and
better silence, too. No jokes.
Is Divinely Beautiful your real name?
Tell your father that my low opinion
of him has declined and my vote
is not for sale.

No apology necessary.

Look both ways but think on your feet.
Mind the gaps of silence when the wind passes.

Expect the unexpected, they say. How?