Nostalgia

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 9, Ode to Shoes

As if I was Dear old Pablo, Keats, Shelly, or Sharon Olds, I’m to write an ode celebrating some everyday object. We have arrived at Day Nine of the annual challenge of writing 30 poems in 30 days (in April). I try to compose to the tune of Maureen Thorson’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) prompts.

I looked it up. An ode is a lyric poem usually marked by exaltation of feeling and style, varying length of line, and complexity of stanza forms. Generally, odes show respect for or celebrate the worth of something. I picked shoes for this poem and have likewise paid homage to my shoes (click to read it) in the past.

Ode to Shoes

I don’t recall them all,
My shoes and theirs,
the big and the small.
I poemed about one
old faithful pair,
but every day
my shoes are there.
In childhood,
ones for church
and everyday ones.
I have 12 pairs now,
that’s few
compared to some
like the dictator’s wife,
famous for so many
(and little else).

Special ones:
combat or flight boots, hiking, walking,
running; and those god damn shiny Corfam oxfords,
or polished patent leather (or high-gloss plastic for my laziness);
house shoes, golf, football (cleats),
leather, and motorcycle boots,
protective shoes
and fashion footwear, too.

Sandals, flipflops, mules, and
post pedicure odd—one-time use flipflop-ish-es with toe spreaders,
sexy stilettoes
and smelly LGBTQ+ or not
Birkenstocks,
fetish shoes bring pleasure,
while golden shoes
promise treasure.
Wingtips for boomers,
granny shoes for nuns,
shoeless folks: singers,
runners (marathoners),
dancers, poets, cave men and women,
shoeless Joe Jackson,
and shoes that made the rich richer.
Glass shoes with fairy tales,
magic shoes, and you will run faster, promised shoes.

Corrective shoes and recovery
or protective boots and shoes,
so many!—too many kinds
and types and styles and purposes,
but all shoes for us to use.

I’m wearing shoes, slippers to some,
and I am wondering if we the people
have more shoes than any other
article of clothing (I don’t),
but why the hell not?

The wonderful, useful, purposeful,
functional, beautiful, sexy, ugly, everything—
there may not be such a thing
as the ordinary everyday shoe anymore.

Look both ways and wear good shoes
(whatever they are, appropriate mukluks, perhaps).
Mind the gaps because even cliff climbers have their own
(bicyclists do too) special kind of shoe.

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.

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.

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.

 

Friday Fictioneers for October 27th, 2023

For eleven years, Rochelle has been prodding fictioneer bloggers along with pics meant to inspire. That would be more than 570 Fridays to story. Thank you, Rochelle, the host with the most dependability.

Today she and Lisa Fox coordinated with a winter pastoral picture to stimulate our imaginations. So, we write on with between one and one-hundred words for Friday Fictioneers.

I enjoyed the Mama Cass video that Rochelle posted, and I decided to combine the two elements for a quickie #FF.

Click on Lisa’s photo prompt for Rochelle’s blog page.

PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox

Genre: Musical Fiction
Title: JBL Voices
Word Count: 100

***

I was jamming.

“Creeque Alley” was blaring in my ears as I walked on a cold, crisp October day. I dug the snow, the fence, and my music. Wonderfulness!

I heard Michelle’s voice. “We never broke up. We just got lazy. Cass was the only one with any sense. Now everyone’s gone but me.”

I looked. No Michelle Phillips or Mama Cass—nobody. Just me and mighty fine folk music on a better day. I took the headset off and looked around.

I moved on—thinking, I knew she’d come eventually. But who can I tell about Michelle? Maybe Rochelle.

Look both ways to love the voices of the past.
Mind the gaps, but admit it, modern music “can’t go on indefinitely.”

***

Click on the “Zal and Denny workin’ for penny” pic to read more par excellence stories.

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 29)

Today, I was to cook up a poem in two parts. The recipe was supposed to focus on food or a meal. Part of the poem was to season the food as a person, and I was to give it some spoken dialogue.

Boiled versus Fried

  1. First this:

Newlyweds were we,
having moved to above her garage
from over on Waverly Way.

She fixed supper for us,
and I first met up with boiled fucking
okra, AKA, slimy green snot.

It was nineteen hundred and sixty-six;
we were 19; something, like this, well folks,
you just never forget, or forgive.

I’m certain I heard the grassy flavored
seed pods of gumbo thickener sing
eat me raw, you city slicker. We be worldwide.
I wanted to puke. I could’ve just died.
Embarrassed, I mannered-up and sighed.
And I swallowed the snotty lady’s fingers.

Little evil green monsters, till one day…

  1. Then this happened…

A crunchy cousin, nicely coated,
in some restaurant, called theirselves fried okra
provided texture to my tale and it was,
step back, Jack, we gunna treat ya well.

Old John Henry called it all “Okree,”
like old aunty of the Mallow family
with a funny first name
and John seemed to fuss over the food
in a good way, but I passed on boiled,
stewed, raw, or wrinkled. Fried
is the only okra for this damn Yankee.

Look both ways and learn to try, but texture counts.
Mind the gaps, but India grows most okra and now has the most people (not China),
and they must eat a lot of okra over there.

 

Click the button for more NaPo magic.

 

Fried okra.

 

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 28)

It is Yolonda’s birthday. To celebrate with NaPo, I am to write an index poem (me neither). I could use language from any index or invent one. It is kind of an index to parts of her life.

Yo’s Index (chronological)

Arrival in Cisco, 47; Commencement into the World, 64; Abilene Discovery 65; Blissfulness, 66; PA pronouns after laughing in the Chapel, 66; Travels of Ankara, Turkey, 67; War Hymns, Chig-gar-roo-gar-rems, Hullabaloos, Caneck! Caneck! and au revoir Air Force, 68; Hello Number One, 71; Woodville bounce-back, 72; O-1 with you (she’s back), 72; here/there/everywhere, 73; Hello Cowtown, 74; Welcome two to the gene pool, 74; Redneck Mothers, 75; Happy alert Thursday, 76; How much more of this?, 77; She was number three to stroke back Mother’s Day, 78; Goodbye Stranger, 79; Island fever, 80-82; Missed the bus, 83; Rabbit fever, 84; Rancho Swimming, 83-95; Goodbye friends, 86; Ride the Fiesta, 86-92; Shadows of darkness; 90-97; All Hell breaks loose, 96; Heaven sent, 99-01; Hell sent, 02-07; Emerald water/white sand, 12; The three mountains and it’s 50 as we, 15-17; Near Austin City Limits, 18-23.

Look both ways.
It all boils down to a book of life, which requires an index.
Mind the gaps and always remember names and places.
“Okay, but is it a poem?”

 

Click here to see the pure f-ing magic.

 

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 22)

For this Earth Day, also a Saturday, I was to select an Emily Dickinson poem and change it by removing dashes and line breaks. I was then to add my own breaks as well as to add, remove, or change words. Basically, I was to make a Dickinson poem mine.

As I read various versions of her many poems, I learned that others over the years have taken license to make changes to the point that I cannot determine original forms or words. In the case of one book I have, an entire stanza of a poem was either added by one or deleted by the other.

Because today is Earth Day, I chose a Dickinson poem that relates to nature: “The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants” – (1350); or XXV, page 97, in my copy of The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (intro and notes by Rachel Wetzsteon). Generally, Dickinson did not title her poems, thus the numbers.

Bill’s Magic Trifle

The Liberty Mushroom is
the elf of plants at evening,
but not at morning, in its truffled magic hut
it stopped upon a spot as if it always hesitated.
Yet, its whole life is shorter
than a snake’s delay
and faster than the strike.

It’s its vegetation’s juggler,
the ever-changing nature is like a bubble
on the ground or floating to the trees.

I feel as if the grass was pleased as I
to have it grow in and among her blades of
scion of Summer’s circumspect.

If Nature had a more supple face
or she could pick a favorite fairy;
if Nature had an apostate fungus
the lowly liberty cap mushroom would be him!
And a favorite ‘shroom among us.

Look both ways because then is not now.
Mind the gaps left by migration and imagination.
Happy Earth Day.

 

Click on the NaPo 2023 button to see the challenge and to read more poems (not all are on prompt).

 

Hallucinogenic common magic mushrooms