Human Condition

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 10, Black Swan

To celebrate the achievement of ten poems to prompt, I am to write a poem based on a headline, cartoon, or other journalistic tidbit featured at Yesterday’s Print.

I selected one from The Bridgeport Telegram, Connecticut, October 22, 1954: “Pent up prejudices.”

Black Swan

To say
“I’m only human” is descriptive,
yet
it’s neither explanatory nor extenuatory.

But confirmation bias,
is as humanly normal
as old dogs scratching fleas.

I know I like it; I mean,
hooray for my side!
I like being right. But …

What if I’m wrong?
How do I control
for
them telling me lies?
Am I just
hearing what I want to hear?

Look and listen both ways.
Knowing we are imperfect leans toward self-awareness.
Mind the gaps in the political speeches
where back scratching helpfulness willingly hides.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 8, What Just Happened?

And the beat goes on into day eight. The Napo dimension prompted me to write a poem concerned with an encounter or relationship that should not have happened; this due to time, space, age, nature, or any other reason.

I went sci-fi into a dream state of self-meeting-self. It happens because two materially different universes overlap during a time warp and interpersonal worlds mesh.

What Just Happened?

Time itself is not the same
from one universe to another.
Though parallel in thought—
they rarely overlap;
the two adjoining realities.
Yet we met.

Two mirrored persons
of numbered beings
sensing each other.

He was me and I he,
and for that brief period
of twisted time we could see.
I to the right and he to the left.

When you meet your true alternate self,
like a scratch on a record,
it is what it is and simultaneously isn’t.

As the overlapping of universes,
one sensory, real, and hard;
the other holographic waves of
semi-sensations are reflections of—
like near death experiences.

Communication is possible
as awareness is a reality
sensed telepathically.

Yet clearly
as self meets self,
if only
for a brief interlude,
as otherworld sparse realities
entangle, and no one knows why.

Look both ways and stare into the eyes of life.
Mind the gaps between dream state realities because
a thing can be true and simultaneously untrue,
where fact and fiction are confusingly entangled.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 6, Truth Hoax or Delusion

For my fifth poem of April’s first Saturday (it’s a long story), the NaPoWriMo prompt asks that I write a poem rooted in “weird wisdom.” This means something objectively odd that someone told me and has stuck with me ever since.

Truth, Hoax, or Delusion?

My friend, Elizabeth, is white, was raised Methodist, but has Carolina Low Country roots and claims hoodoo spiritual knowledge. She predicts her days by pulling runes from a bag or tossing tarot cards. She has all the New Age trinkets and talismans. She was Wiccan, claimed to be a New Age witch of some sort, then was Druid. I lost track after that.

But she is a poet from a very interesting tribe. One day Lizzy confided that there is a Big Foot (Sasquatch, Yeti, or Abominable whatever) and that she had personally seen it — all 500 to 1000 pounds on a seven-to-ten-foot frame, anchored to Earth by seventeen-inch furry but bare feet.

Her private testimony was as a passionate eyewitness. It brought a soft smile from me. I decided to ask how her Druid studies were going.

I looked up and became a believer.

Look both ways and be aware while hiking the trails.
Do not eat unknown mushrooms, carry a good camera, and mind the gaps.
For as the old Sherpa said,
“There is a Yeti in the back of everyone’s mind; only the blessed are not haunted by it.”

Taken by me at a coffee shop in Issaquah, Washington.

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.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 1 Going after Cacciato

Day one of the NaPoWriMo 2024 event assigns me to write, without consulting the book, a poem that recounts the plot, or some portion of the plot, of a novel that I remember having liked but a book that I haven’t read in a long time. Define a “long time.” Am I supposed to remember plots well enough to recount them? Enough of my whining. No cheese, please.

I decided on Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien. I’ve done this in the past, particularly with O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. But as wonderful as that book is, it is a collection of connected stories with literary or psychological plots.

Pass the pipe, Paul.
He is there! We know!
You saw him say goodbye.

Follow his fantasy
to get out of this place,
miracle of miracles, as we

dream on, dream on, dream
ourselves away. Away to
gay Paree as all can see.

As the white rabbit said,
march on and find adventures
and stories, because

you do not have to be
smart to be happy,
you just should be in Paris.

Look both ways as you go after your dreams.
Mind the gaps because that is where dreams morph into gods.

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.

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.

Friday Fictioneers for January 19th, 2024

From the pages of Mistress Rochelle’s blog comes a Jennifer Pendergast photo prompt of ladled ice in a frozen spa bucket to inspire us all to contrive a story of not more than a hundred micro-fictional words.

Click on Jennifer’s picture to skate on over to the Purple Blog for a dousing of the simple rules of entry into the welcoming warmth of Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

 

Genre: Romance
Title: August’s Commandment
Word Count: 100

They met one August while she was visiting family back east. There was some talk, wine, a dance, and time alone; eyes met, and after that, a kiss. Then, a sexual tryst. Their love grew, but full-time togetherness was not to be, except each August, same days, same place, same passion.

A few days each year for another fifty years, they met repeatedly. They discussed their polyamory as each was awkwardly enmeshed but still loved their family and were otherwise devoted to a loving spouse back home.

One day a letter arrived. Only memories now. But never again. No regrets.

Look both ways at fact and fiction as neither provides the full story.
Mind the gaps in the years, for love knows no limits.

Click here to read more #FF stories.

From the movie, Same Time Next Year (Ellen Burstyn won a Golden Globe for Best Actress), 1978.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #343 (window)

Click on the window to open up into Sammi’s page and other windowisms.

 

The Side I Never Met

Floating through darkness
I saw a light
in the black universe, one
dot, then
I determined
it was a window.

A woman was there.
She seemed to look but not see,
her blue eyes were calm.

I sensed
honest love, like a mother.
I could see longing—expecting
in her moist eyes.

Then I saw
the window was
a mirror of reality.
She was my reflection,
able to see into my past.
She was the image of the real me.

See both ways when looking through windows or into mirrors,
especially as metaphors of life.
Mind the gaps, the cracks, the wrinkles, and the patina of age.
Everything means something.

Sammi’s Weekender #342 (ocean)

Click it to visit Sammi’s page, to play along, and/or to read other 21-worders.

Two Earths, land and
ocean

perfectly disguised above.

Deadly.
Needed for life.

One Ocean. Four names. Only one.
Awesome is insufficient.

Look both ways when lost at sea.
Mind the gaps in the Marianas Trench.

The third line alludes to the song, “A Horse with No Name” by America (band).