Family

The Aggie Band – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Eight

Today I was to author a poem that involves music at a ceremony or event.

Moved

The big deal yells when yesterday ends and today begins—
at midnight.
Some folks think it’s a myth,
but for most Texas Aggies, when the band plays
at a football game halftime, at the game or on TV,
it is a major emotional experience.
An impressive spectacle. Feelings
well up inside, a spirit rises and is felt for miles.
That lasts a lifetime,
not just for students and former students,
but for friends and family, as well.

While the music matters and memories play;
the sights, the marching, the yelling fans
participating with the school and the band.
It is magical. The drum majors.
Game scores are briefly forgotten
when the uniformed cadets rush out onto the north end,
and for ten to twenty minutes the crowd participates
with yells and singing to the marching musical repertoire.

Many fine schools have great bands
providing entertainment, excellent music,
and a unique perspective important to those schools.
But there is exactly one Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band.

Look both ways, especially into the past.
It is possible to feel those emotions again.
To be part of something not you, bigger than self,
but also part of who and what you are.
Mind the gaps and let the yell leaders lead. Stand up and yell!

Happy Birthday to a big Texas Aggie Band fan, Yolonda.

A Toast to the Town – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Two

Today I was to write a poem about something I’ve done, presumably as a child or adolescent, that gives me a kind of satisfaction. I think it is supposed to be something for which I am grateful. I had to dig for this one.

Grateful for the Grog

It wasn’t cocaine but some think it’s the same
when the forbidden froth of the fifties,
long before there were Swifties,
beer became the name of the game.

First taste was a sip, likely bogarted from
mother or father, or perhaps from my drunk-ass brother,
to wash down that salty Wise potato chip?
Hometown suds, favored by local buds
and still tastes like bad-beer today.

It was gunna happen anyway.
I learned to like it and how it made me feel.
I would have tasted beer someday,
then acquisition became part of the deal.

Tom T Hall’s song set somewhere aside,
beer became my pleasure and my problem.
I’m shocked that to some
the pleasure is none
and beer is forever denied.

“I like beer, it makes me a jolly good fellow
I like beer, it helps me unwind and sometimes it makes me feel mellow
(makes him feel mellow) … (He likes beer)”

So let me explain
in this little refrain

how grateful I am
to the woman or the man who drew me my first mug
from a spout, a bottle, or a sealed tin can I can chug.

Look both ways for the imperfect pleasures of life.
Mind the gaps and watch the taps, as the kegger is still a rite of passage.

Dream On – NaPo 2025 Day Seventeen

Today I was challenged to write a poem themed around friendship, with imagery or other ideas taken from two paintings (my choice from many). One by Leonora Carrington, and another by Remedios Varo, two surrealistic artists and friends. A surrealistically inspired, friendly poem?

The irony of this day is this prompt juxtaposed with the definition of surrealism: “the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature (poetry), film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations.” (Webster, on line) Where does one draw the line?

“One good friendship will outlive forty average loves.”

Faces

On purpose.
Told no one. Told everyone and nobody.
Formless as seen on tv ritual
ceremoniously entwined
with green crabapple branches.
Cuts. Touch. Mix blood brothers.
That smell. You! What? Stink-love.

Feel that? Smell. Yell. Scream.
Lie. Beatings from bullies.
Shinny-up. Run. Escape. Drown. Cross.
Crimeless criminality.

Friends first. Not. But.
Family was a lie.
Roy Rogers was naked.
All naked. Sing. Pray. Sting like a bee.

Share hair. Cardboard shoe soles
over shew holes and altar boys.
Smoke sticks. Tangents. Guilt.

Together every day. Share loot.
Flat nose. Black eye. Blood everywhere.
Swing. Fall. Break things.
Climb. Cry. Evil father.
Saintly mother. Naked sister.

Uncle Joe. G. I. what da ya know?
Cold is not coal, or pea.
Melds wrapped in love and shame.
Masturbating demons defiled hosts.
Do it. Now dare to do-do, pee higher.
Lie to be loved. Play all day.

Ugly beauty deep forever.
Melting madness of happiness.
Wanting what color of love?
Damn.
Help.
Hurry.
Hide.
It’ll never die.

Then it died.
Then you died.
Then I cried.

Back.
Then.
When.
Me.
We.

Look both ways or every way at the same time
because art is in what part of a dream when nothing is real and there is no god?
Imagine. Mind the gaps and slaps in genital naps.
If it makes sense, it cannot be art.

Poem to a person – NaPo 2025 day two

NaPo 2025’s second day challenging prompt invited us to write a poem that directly addresses someone, has a made-up word, includes an odd or unusual simile, makes a statement of “fact,” and that includes something that seems out of place in time.

More Than Love

My dearest philologloth,
Are there worse places?
Is your prison like a happy place?

Your soul is good.
Unlike the dark life fiction
of your self-inflicted addiction.

Like a blade runner
missing for thirty years,
a gauntlet falls upon deaf earth.

Hearts grind to needless halts
when minds forget to remember
when my me died that September.

Come, my son
rise above it all
but not the love.

That tote we carry
full of all the good
and all the bad losses we’ve both had.

Love you, Dad.

Look both ways to discover the dark side of pleasure.
Mind the gaps for forgiveness and step carefully into whatever future you have left.

Sammi’s Weekender #367 – Party

What Matters?

I envied parties.
Younger me wanted something,
or was it concern about missing out?

My last party,
a high school graduation overdone deal
for a grandson, with whom,

I exchanged five words.
People I didn’t know,
went mostly unnoticed by me.

Many lacking in the social graces
except for some like me
so many names with unfamiliar faces.

I talked to his other grandfather,
and to my twin step-granddaughters
who seemed to like me better,
after thousands of words, I felt likewise.

Small intimates are for me now.

Look both ways because the life of the party is not who it once was.
Mind the gaps when you soberly tell me about your life and what really matters.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 19, The Burden of Truth

My poem today was to be about something that “haunts” me. Fair enough.

But the prompt also required that I change the word haunt to hunt. Since my nineteenth poem uses neither word, it is not (technically) written to prompt. But almost.

“You better stop, look around — Here it comes
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown”
(From the song, “19th Nervous Breakdown” by The Rolling Stones)

The Burden of Truth

There is a profound sadness in me—
One retained by conscience and nourished by guilt.

More than thirty years of unhealthy, but honest regret
and self-disgust padded with insufficient amends
has not mitigated my permanent tattoo of rue.

Done cannot be undone.
But a foolish deed,
words written or said, cannot be overturned
by going back in time —
back in time to fix, to heal, or to recover.

No amount of positive can reverse it.
Neutralizing is impossible.

Repression of memory is pathetic denial—
defense mechanisms to palliate my purgatory.

Even the permanence of death
leaves lasting damage to unrepairable hearts,
minds without memories,
which may be just as well. I know and I do not know.

Perhaps there is a time for every purpose.
Maybe this stone will be cast away.
Hope so
because I don’t know how to turn
guilt into innocence with only time.

Look both ways at the story of life for forgiveness and regret.
To kiss and to touch. To be right and to be wrong. To climb and to fall.
Mind the gap to fit the story but we may never know the truth.
Even eyewitnesses are wrong seventy-plus percent of the time.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 15, How Things Change

For halfway day, for the fifty-yard line of National Poetry Month (US and Canada), for the late bunt that moved me to second base, for Day 15; I was to be inspired by the wide, wonderful, and sometimes wacky world of postage stamps. I assumed my poem was in the offing.

Technically, I’ve been, or was, a collector of stamps since around age 11. Over the years that hobby dwindled and failed to hold my interest, although I am still interested in stamps, especially the lovely old ones, from the US and other countries. I have acquired entire collections simply because some collector had lost interest. Click here for wiki on plate blocks.

How Things Change

When I was quite young,
too young,
my aunt gave me her
well organized, large collection
of used postage stamps.

My sister’s boyfriend at the time
(she was 13 years older than I)
collected new plate blocks.
He gave me some and encouraged me
to abandon used stamps for new
with printer plate numbers.

I did. He helped. I traded
my aunt’s collection to enhance
the upgrade. Eventually,
I put my collection away,
although I have acquired
other collections over the years.

I’m different now. Sister’s BF
has gone to the big Post Office
in the sky. I am not a collector
of anything. I’m an accumulator
(books, rubber ducks, some
stuffed animals and dolls).

But for many years I have
regretted my decision to part
with my aunt’s collection. Those
old used stamps would mean
more to me now than all the
many collections I have
stored and ignored.

Look both ways and appreciate the past,
but if wisdom comes with age,
accept it without regret, if you can.
Mind the gaps because memory is a strangely alterable thing.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 2, Hello, Jimmy

Day two of the NaPoWriMo dot net prompts has me writing a platonic love poem. In other words, a poem that is not about a romantic partner, but some other kind of love. In my case, the plutonic love of a friend.

My poem was to be written directly to the object of my affections and should describe at least three memories.

Hello, Jimmy!

I don’t remember
where or when we first met,
nor when we were not friends,
Jimmy (later Jim),
never James to me;
although, I left first
for Basic Training,
before you went later
to Navy Boot Camp.

We grew up through times
of learning to swim together,
our first diving board jumps,
walking the mile and stopping
on the way home
to pick and eat wild berries
on the spot, while “dying” of thirst.

To our family’s first televisions
and Roy Rogers, and more
black and white pretend life.

You from a large and growing
family, me essentially
an only child,
fishing in pristine
Pocono streams or
in the smelly Susquehanna,
where we also swam
and somehow survived.

We shared the instinct to
climb every wall or cliff,
getting stuck because up
was easier than down.
We shinnied up and jumped off
almost everything,
often landing wounded.

We stumbled into rocky,
hormone laden, teenage
years when you had sisters
who I noticed more and liked.

We envied each other’s worlds.
Our last visit was, what we felt,
a final embrace;
only this time—
you were the first to leave
and left me forever behind.

Look both ways to discover the many forms of love,
what it is and what it is not.
Mind the dark, silent gaps in time
when the love of a friend outlives many longer romances.

Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt #350 – Vapid

Click on graphic for Sammi’s blog and more special vapid writes.

An Ordinary Rage

Ordinary wine works just fine
for normal people like me.

My sister-in law explained,
(about damn near anything
she liked): “it’s all the rage!”

Like mid-eighties, vapid looking,
overpriced, Cabbage Patch Dolls.

Ordinary is good. Strength
resides around the center of a bell curve.

If everything must be so damn special,
think about that, my friend—
because (then) nothing is.

Look both ways because weddings are wonderful and funerals are not.
The first is an option while the second celebrates death more than life.
Mind the gaps and be skeptical of outliers.

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.