dVerse

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/.

dVerse Quadrille #142 (tinsel)

Thanks to Mish for hosting (and sucking me into this post which I did not plan to do).

Back in town

tinsel tensing nuts in town
leaders, all bozos

and clowns,

suky tawdry for a.g,
macheath and mackie messer,

for all the world to see

liars swear another judge jackleg

threepenny opera

death was healthy,

good is bad, bloodsuckers’ protagonists,

what do you want now?

Look both ways to tell the good guys from the rest.
Mind the gaps in a saint’s past and the sinner’s future.

Click on my cigar for more wonderful poems.

dVerse Poetics : Passions Stamped on Lifeless Things

Click on the tractor for link to dVerse post by merrildsmith in Poetics.

Old tractors can’t retire with much dignity.
Ours rests over yonder, near the barn.
With winter’s cold, snow, and ice,
or dry poundings of hot summers,
she tries to show well, just a little rust,
peeling paint, heavy worn tires.

Made to plough and cumber a heavy beam,
an ox of steel and rubber, she carried men to work,
sowed seeds, and tilled the soil.

A mammoth farm and ranch hand, she
pushed and pulled cultivators and harrows,
drug fertilizer wagons,
pulled mowers, rakes, and bailers
with tires heavy with water and mud.

I still remember the day I first grabbed ahold
of her wheel learning to drive and work hard.

Thank you, my friend, for teaching me
so much about life, work, sweat, tears,
and the weather. But mostly about how
to age gracefully and with dignity.

Look both ways but history teaches more.
Mind the gaps, find the truth, keep your pride and dignity until a tractor retires.

dVerse—Prosery Monday—Lost/Found/Lost Children (12/06/2021)

From the bar at dVerse, Lisa pitched me the Prosery Monday poem, “When We Sing Of Might,” by Kimberly Blaeser (see it here).

From the poem, Lisa lifted a line for me to fold into a piece of prose of fewer than 145 words of my own making but including the line, “I dress in their stories patterned and purple as night.”

I had to use every word of the entire line. I was allowed to change punctuation and to capitalize words, but I was not permitted to insert words in between parts of the sentence.

But for the Grace of What?

I walked the muddy road through the depressingly disgusting homeless camp. There was nothing but mud everywhere; muddy tents and muddy mad people totally demoralized and pissed off at the world that had put them here. They were angry about being in this place and they refused to come to terms with what they themselves had created, not just a camp, but a metaphor for their lost lives, an intractable bog of stink and decay. The city provided piss pits and shit pots smelled to hell and back. These lost souls were in the grips of unshakable petulance. It was in their eyes, posture, and the way they walked. To report on this homeless debacle, I knew what I had to do. I would be in Rome and do as they did. Briefly, I dress in their stories—patterned and purple as night.

Look both ways to see all that’s there.
Mind the gaps, but spare judgement.
There, but for the good grace of random fortune, go I.

Access other prosery pieces here.