dVerse

A Monday Quadrille at the dVerse Pub

Lillian is hosting today and prompts a 44-word poem that must include the word imagine (or a form thereof). Click here for the pub page or here to find more quadrilles.

Dip Stick

When I heard that our friend Jack
was charged by Olive
with checking Sally’s oil,

Sarcastically I said,
(with a semi-evil grin below a slow eye roll)
“Imagine that!”

I’d bet that Jack’s measure of success
was how often
Jack got that Willie wet.

Look both ways because some fools just cannot stop what they do.
Mind the gaps when you check your dip stick for fluid levels.

dVerse Poetics November 7th, 2023

This was a complex prompt, so it is best to go to the dVerse page and read about Lisa’s Time Machine Bucket List: TMBL and the subsequent prompt with options.

I think I sort of did Option 1, but this comes from my heart. I know Lisa said ten and cull out, but I can’t do that. I focused on both the stars and the venues because, seriously, I would try to go.

Coming Around Again

Forty-five (or more)
albums later, fifty years
of water under two bridges,
if we could go back.

Back to when you opened up
to your kind, to your fans,
and friends and family,
your folks, without
a care or anxiety
for either of us.

Long over now except for
the forever connection
of Ben and Sally; I still
love to hear you and James
sing duets and harmonies.

Save me seats so I can go back;
back with my beloveds
with you to concerts like:

Live from Martha’s Vineyard,
or from Grand Central,
or from aboard the QM 2.

Can we meet at the Eagles’
Sad Café? It’s been fifty years
Carly. What do ya say?

Listen,
mock, yeah,
ing, yeah—let’s sing!

Look both ways, but when the more is in the past,
we can wish for times to go back to for just a brief concert to visit,
to sit and listen, to applaud, perchance to take in a toke.
Mind the gaps until time travel is perfected. Our goals are very specific.

Click here to enjoy more TMBLs.

And Carly—

dVerse Prosery November 6th, 2023

We were to write a flash fiction story in exactly 144 words including a line from the poem, by Rita Dove called “November for Beginners.” The chosen line was “Snow would be the easy way out.” See the Poets Pub here. And other works of flash prose here.

I grew up expecting snow every winter. Sometimes crunchy—always white until later when it would die as wet, ugly, slush. I loved going outside and experiencing feelings that I only felt when I walked on a cold windless night in fresh snow.

It was always coming, and I knew that snow would be the easy way out—out of my life’s tiring and tedious problems (at least for now), as my insecurities about myself were silently made insignificant. It could never be more than one night at a time before the world’s reality marred snow’s existence and mine.

The snow didn’t know or care about my problems. I was welcome to be as I was with snow. While it made my world go silent, it seemed to hear me and to know what I needed without ever saying a word. We had secrets.

I suppose this is interior monologue rather than a story, but it works for me.

 

Monday’s Rune (Quadrille #171 w/Language Warning)

My dVerse job this week was to “pen” a 44-word poem (not incl. title, or [in my case] postscript) that includes some form of the word gasp. Then to post it and link to Mister Linky, where you can read more flash poems.

Oy, it’s you!

My latest guy wanna-be like is the British character,
AFC Richmond footballer,
From Apple’s Ted Lasso show,
Roy (Fucking) Kent.

Roy is gaspingly sensitive, loving, and caring;
pleasing to his woman,
and says shit and fuck
more than I.
Roy? What a guy! Gasp!

Look both ways and you’re safe in any country crossing the street.
Mind the gaps and keep right, or left, or whatever.

This clip is long (over 12 minutes), but not as long as I spent laughing (until I gasped). If you’re not familiar with Roy or Ted (and language is not offensive to you), give it a bit of a look. If you can, watch to the end.

Monday’s Rune: dVerse Music Quadrille

Lynda Lee Lyberg caught me at the dVerse bar today thinking of a poem about the mavens of music from the days of my time. While I must bow to the discipline of a mere 44 words, I will eventually make a much longer tribute to the quad of this week’s Quadrille. For today—this:

To Carly, Carole, Joni, and Linda

Music, Ladies! Making music was your life.
It’s been seventy years more
since you made your way writing, singing,
and playing for your sake and ours.

With Anticipation I’ll let Tapestry tell me
When Will I Be Loved since I see
Both Sides Now.

Look both ways and try, try, try to see all sides.
Mind the gaps when the beautiful ladies sing.
It’s where the love is.

Note: Maybe some young ‘uns don’t know that Carly Simon, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Linda Ronstadt were literal folk and rock stars for more than sixty years.

Click here to read more 44-word poems with music.

 

dVerse: Quadrille #169 (A Star [Poem] is Born)

The dVerse challenge was to write a poem of precisely 44 words, not counting the title, including some form of the word star. I used the plural form.

Celestial Navigation

Way back,
before cell phones, Google,
moving maps,
and satellite navigation.

At Mather Air Force Base
near Sacramento,
I studied
stars, planets, the moon, and Sun
using a sextant, books, and computations.

The Planetarium was our classroom.
Navigators are no longer taught. It’s sad.

Look both ways looking at the night sky.
Magellan did.
Mind the gaps in the sky as you learn the names of stars, planets, and constellations.

dVerse Quadrille #162: Cowbell Fever

I wrote this silly, nonsensical poem for the dVerse Quadrille #162 – “For whom the bell tolls” (a 44-word poem) where any meaning or form of the word bell was to be included. Click here to find more awesomely ringing poetry.

 

More cowbell!
Cowbell fever
removes reaper fear.
Play more cowbell.
Cure your Oyster.

This poem needs more cowbell.
Walken wanders and wonders,
Is there more cowbell out there?

Play the saw or rub your washboard,
a cowbell makes music from hell—
needs more cowbell!

Look both ways when you hear a cowbell because you are not the bull.
Mind the gaps to beat the raps.
Some skits and actors shall live forever.

The cowbell skit from SNL that took a life of its own. Since my previous link did not work outside of the USA, maybe this one will.

 

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/more-cowbell/3506001

If that doesn’t work and you still want to see it, try this: https://vimeo.com/425939085

 

 

 

dVerse ~ Poets Pub Poetics: The good and the evil

This poem was rendered to meet today’s dVerse challenge offered by Paeansunplugged from Delhi. We are to write about the good and evil in mere mortals, the good in evil and/or the evil in good. For me, at no time is that enigma more profound than in times of war and battle.

Conundrum War

One story I’ve never told,

a confession…

if evil were evil enough,
if good were good enough,
I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage…
but courage, too, has finite quantities,
yet it offers hope and grace to the repetitive coward.

I can’t fix my mistakes.
Once people are dead, I can’t make them undead…
killing and dying are not my special province.

Am I too good for this war?
Too smart, too compassionate, too everything?
I’m above it. It’s a mistake, maybe.

Look both ways at good and evil or take Hamlet’s advice and think it so.
Mind the gaps between and within our perceptions of what is better and what is truth.

 

Click the soldier for more good and evil poems.

A Haibun of Shelter

Written for dVerse Haibun Monday: Give Me Shelter, 8/26/22.

Competitive Cooperation

Soldiers, farmers, and lovers all seek the same shelter. Protection from nature’s miseries is ubiquitously sought and taken. Adapt or die. Respect not given wisely results in lessons learned only for brief periods.

Her glorious beauty shows in the warm sunrise that follows the night’s frightful, unsheltered story. The singing bird allows for the climax of thunder as from lightening, all seek cover. Even snakes warm in the sun.

Rain or dry seasons, Nature judges the foolish lover, the seeker of warmth without cover, harshly. Live and learn; learn and live.

respect nature first
awesome beauty is the beast
take cover or die

Look both ways when seeking escape or shelter.
Better to mind the gaps and wait for the storm to pass
than to win the latest Darwin Award.

Click here to find more Haibun.

dVerse – Prosery:“How many more will it take?

This Prosery is written around a line/sentence from a Facebook poem called, Notes on Uvalde. The dVerse line chosen by Lisa was, “These are the things they don’t tell us.”

To read other prose responses, click HERE.

My First Experience

I was barely 20 years of age and newly married when on August 1st, 1966, Charles Whitman, after killing his mother and wife, packed three rifles, three pistols, a shotgun, 700 rounds of ammunition, food, coffee, vitamins, medicine, earplugs, water, matches, lighter fluid, rope, binoculars, a machete, three knives, a radio, toilet paper, a razor, and deodorant. He went to the observation deck of the Main Building Tower at the University of Texas at Austin.

Whitman killed 14 people and injured 31. He was shot dead. For 18 years, it was the deadliest mass lone gunman shooting in U.S. history. It was unthinkable.

Whitman had sought professional help for “overwhelming, violent impulses;” fantasies about shooting people from the tower. He told them what and where. These are the things they don’t tell us.

“I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”

Look both ways. To the beginning and to the end (if there is one).
Mind the gaps as you live in this moment of grave concern with sadness or anger. 

To see the Notes from Uvalde poem and Prosery rules, follow this link: https://dversepoets.com/2022/06/06/dverse-prosery-how-many-more-will-it-take/.