Pleasure

Sammi’s Weekender #266 (flippant)

Click to flip over to Sammi’s blog and more 74-word wonders.

Was it something I said?

Many things I’ve done and not done
which brought me much self-inflicted grief;
like transfers or removals from jobs,

I’ve sat smiling at wrong times,
adulted too young, or the drink I tasted
when I got more than a little bit wasted,
‘twas most often my spectacular speech
that others appreciated the least.

I’m gifted this flippantly waggish tongue
emitting my intently presented voice
speaking a cutting language, exposing
my cantankerously lighthearted snarkastic choice.

Look both ways when words fly like the breath of buzzards.
Mind the gaps and if your gunna do it, go all the way.

Monday’s Rune: Pride Month Poetry

Looking Both Ways

There’s tragedy in America
and over the world today.
One that has always been there
brewing trouble bubbling,
either hidden or ignored.

Without love, honor, and respect
inside and out,
sans pity and pride, compassion, and sacrifice,
we are doomed
to be less than
the best of humanity’s history.

Let nature and nurture battle on,
let knowledge
and wisdom wrestle
with feeling and emotion.

Nature’s questions asked without fear,
safe for all, with courage
to face battles between
sweet dreams of hope
and nightmares of reality.

Ally with truth, with
compassion, without weakness or fear,
with hope to continue
standing with universal rightness.

Look both ways and try, try, try to understand, it’s not magic, man.
Mind the gaps in the human condition as you embrace its diversity.

Note: I will be reading this poem (and others) at the Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown, TX, 30 June 2022 @ 7:30 PM.

Sammi’s Weekender #264 (Picturesque)

Click on the graphic for more 54-word wonders and Sammi’s blog page.

Damn Reality

Here I go again reading
Bukowski’s clear vision voice
poems lacking picturesque pastoral principles,
with plainly different aesthetic dispositions
of attitude nobody loves.

We know that deep inside,
his way is part of us;
part of him, hides in us.
How many ways
can we paint the same picture,
or tell the same story.

Look both ways reading anyone’s poems.
Mind the gaps hiding deep within when writing your own.

Sammie’s Weekender #263 (vernacular)

Click this graphic to open Sammi’s page in a new tab.

Dead and Gone

When they ask me, where do I say I’m from?
Why ask? What difference does it make?

Do I say from a blended Irish Catholic coal miner family
of the northeastern Pennsylvania Wyoming Valley?
From a time and place, now too far away?

A way to which I cannot return. My blood no longer mixes.

A place foreign to the vernacular of history,
now threatened by polite inclusiveness.

Now none of me lives there.
Only cold rainy nights and forgotten headstones
on lost graves of people I never knew remain.

Look both ways for ancestral truth, but the past is gone.
Mind the gaps for reality’s dark shadows before landing right here, right now, in this world.

Monday’s Rune: Live Well

 

I Admit It

Sometimes I don’t understand, or
(and it’s not the same thing)
I misunderstand, hoping
somehow to be brought
to correction and truth,
by way of clarification,
minus animosity.

Like one day
writing to prompts.

A young lady made clear
her (pre-pandemic) intention
to complete
the several months long hike
of the Appalachian Trail,
Georgia to Maine.

Starting in February,
finishing in May (unlikely),
by hiking
twenty-seven miles
every day for months.

She had done eighteen miles in one day,
no more; none
during March or July
on a rocky or muddy ascending trail.

I wanted to say,
that’s a marathon a day,
every day, for at least three months
(more like five to seven)
bearing a pack, food, and water.

But I didn’t. Is it for me to say?
Lest I dash her dream with reality.
Is it for each person to discover
our dreams? To defeat challenging demons?
Not with wisdom but with grit.
Each of us must, on life’s long wander,
one day, one step at a time, take the risk.

Look both ways on every trail.
Watch where you step and mind the gaps lest you find a limp.
Follow your dreams.
Wisely.

Click on the photo of my favorite trail bench for more info on the Appalachian Trail.

 

Monday’s Rune: Big Country Swap Meet

Listen: Brack-In Ridge

Reportage from Abilene, Texas.

The parking lot guy collects a five spot.
I joke: five dollars to see my
brother-in-law? The good ol’ boy
with the best trash and
the biggest damn stash east of the Pecos.
I suppose west of, too.

A cowboy swap meet.
Auto stuff, mostly.
Kind of a thing in a place,
next to a silent (today) drag strip.
I spied more vendors than not.

Gear heads. Rust is the most
favored color and condition.
Many men’s junk—treasures
for another’s home, yard, or garage.
To be sold again one day down the road.

Huge bushy mustachios, semi-clean blue jeans
with stained dirty shirts work, baseball caps
of some kind to cover secret coded bald heads,
hidden lips that barely part
speaking a strange dialect,

What’s the least y’all take?
I’h gotta have ‘at old junk.

Gotta get that much,
‘at’s mah last one,
except fer ones I ain’t sold yet.

Big sky country, gateway to western Texas.
And women looking. And high priced
cars, trucks, scoots, and toys
that been rustin’ for years.
Who knows where?

It’s a tribe thingy.
I like ‘em,
but I don’t get them.
They don’t get me. Seems fair enough.
Still, it’s fun to sit and stare. To look,
and to listen.

Look both ways, be y’all a seller or a buyer.
Mind the gaps for the best deal.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #260 (omphalos)

A big congratulatory shout out to Sammi for five years of weekend wonders.

Click on the omphalos prompt for more 91-word creative wonders on Sammi’s blog page.

Navel Gazing

Am I lost, have you seen me?
Am I crying or standing angry?

I listen but I also speak,
I read but I write, I love—
but I also hate and abominate.

I must find myself,
so I may contemplate my bile.

Every day, untethered, to consider
my center, my core omphalos
being wisely chosen.

Not fooled by feelings or desires,
looking deep and true
before winter blows

that last breath from my chest,
before my dust returns to the cosmos
before it is too late,
true to myself, my love.

Look both ways at your best and the worst.
Find the true you without judgment or odium.
Mind the gaps and look there too,
for the stain of truth is better than vain and useless glory.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 25)

Click to open the prompt page and links to more poems in new tab.

Today, my NaPoWriMo assignment is based upon an Irish poetic genre called aisling. An aisling recounts a dream or vision featuring a woman who represents the land or country (typically Ireland) on/in which the poet lives, and who speaks to the poet about it. I had the option to write a poem that recounts a vision of a woman who represents or reflects where I live: Texas.

la dama de texas

I looked, but bright sunlight and a vast blue sky
tempered my curious gaze over her vast wonderment.
She was like a kaleidoscope of diversity,
capricious changes over her sensuous body
constantly looming; inviting, yet hostile.

Her hair was a big thicket of trees:
pecan, oak, palm, cedar, and holly;
her brows were of pine, and elm above
lashes of ash and cherry, anaqua and yaupon.
Her brown skin and dark eyes testify
to her Mexican heritage, her breath was of
sweet orchid, redbud, and magnolia. Temptress,
with a capital T.

Her breasts were like mountain ranges:
Chisos, Guadalupe, Franklin, and Davis;
at her sides and hips Chinati, Boquillas,
Hueco, Christmas, and the lower Palo Pintos.

In her swaying curves the hidden canyons:
Palo Duro, Santo Elena, and Mariscal with
the jewels of caprocks, pinnacles, and hoodoos.

At her back, the Llano Estacado horizon rolled
smoothly into her Balcones Escarpment to
plateaus named for Edwards and Stockdon.

The moist whites of her eyes shown like cotton bolls,
lids like sandy beaches, her fingers like rivers:
the Pedernales, Neches, Trinity, Comal,
Brazos and the majestic and mysterious Rio Grande.
Her arms were like Devils River and the Pecos.
Her desert skin shimmered like moist sand.

I saw her holding an abundance of animals
and insects that staggered me.
The diversity of people standing in her shadow,
waving their ubiquitous flags, while protected by her,
spoke languages mixed with southern or western dialects.

Beneath her beauty, a sweetened but exaggerated history
belied the truth of a dark, slavishly embarrassing past.

An enigma with something for everyone
yet comfort for only a friendly few.
I’ll take Texas over Hell
with my eyes wide open.
She said I may stay,
but only if I see things her way. I try.

Look both ways to see the good and the bad.
Mind the gaps and accept the facts.
Everyone must be somewhere, even if they’re going nowhere.

Those are miles! It seems like a long drive, but it’s only about 10 hours if you go 90 miles per hour non-stop.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 6)

Today, I’ve been challenged to write a variation of an acrostic poem. But rather than spelling out a word with the first letters of each line, I’m to write a poem that reproduces a phrase with the first word of each line.

I chose Find what you love and let it kill you. (Attributed to: Charles Bukowski [unlikely], Kinky Friedman [more likely but with like instead of love], Van Dyke Parks [attributes to Friedman], and Anonymous [possible, but someone said it first]; and if it was Kinky, who used love first?)

Seriously

Find my reason for being, my why did I not die,
What is it that makes me do the things I do?
You may have some thoughts about my dilemma;
Love or hate and genes and things, like moon phases,
And everything about what I was and now I am.
Let us feel, taste, smell, see, and hear all there is.
It is my life, after all, and I must find it or
Kill myself trying because this is too important for
You to take things like love and death so lightly.

Look both ways while searching for all the love to live for
and all reasons to die. Mind the gaps for gods with all the right answers.

Thursday’s Rune: 3 3 22

Ode to Sexy GCS

Saying it’s iconic is a trite, ubiquitous
marketing cliché to honor nouns.

Yet, certain foods deserve menu pride of place
for meaningful simplicity,

for memories, taste, and community pleasure;
for ingredient brevity, seldom seeking savory mystery.

I salivate composing a poem
to the American grilled cheese sandwich.

GCSs have been around more ‘n a hundred years,
frequent fare served at fun food venues,

including my house, where casual is key
and kiss is a simple, honorable principle.

Why many recipes? Bread, cheese, butter,
and heat. It’s American. Add more and

it’s a melt. If that’s what you want, well fine!
Let Brits have their toasties, jaffles for Aussies,

panini is Italian and bless the French
for le croque monsieur. Nice. But none of that is GCS.

Done right, fried golden crisp with a shell’s
shades of black to yellow-brown, either square or round.

Cut squares diagonally, two isosceles right triangles
for proper holding, touching, and eating (warm to hot).

And kissing if you want. See the colors and shape,
the moist but firm surface.

Pick up with clean dry fingers, opposite the
triangle’s hypotenuse, gently between two legs.

At the right-angle corner, hold it between your
index and middle fingers, and thumb, gently lift

its moist crisp oiliness to your face. Allow it
to touch, to be felt on your skin and lips.

Holding near your nose and mouth, invite
sensual fragrance to enter your nose, slide

it gently between your lips, barely touching,
before being taken into the mouth.

Gently bite it. Feel your teeth crunch through the crust
into the warm melted cheese. Chew slowly, thoroughly.

Swallow the bite while planning the next. No rush.
Eye the stack and plan your next attack.

Look both ways.
Food and sex are both pleasures.
Enjoy.
Mind the gaps, the dips, and company.
Bond with the world.