Pleasure

Friday Fictioneers 7/17/2020

Many thanks to Rochelle @ Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple for orchestrating Friday Fictioneers. The challenge is to write a story based upon a photo prompt (and thanks to Jean L. Hays for that), with a beginning, middle, and an end in fewer than 101 words. This is my third venture.

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Jean L. Hays

Genre: Ironic (flash) Fiction
Word count: 100

***

Lobo and Robin met and married at the University of New Mexico following his return from Vietnam in 1970. He was from the Atchafalaya Swamp region of Louisiana, she from Montana ranch country.

Doc Robin, as she was called, was an internationally known infectious disease specialist. Lobo, a highly sought after free-lance journalist.

Their 50th anniversary party was planned for Saturday night on their rancho near Albuquerque.

“What’s in the box, Robin?”

“Designer surgical masks for the party.”

“You’ve thought of everything.”

“Not really, Babe. But it would not do for our quests to go home with COVID-19.”

Lobo howled.

***

Click blue frogs for link to inlinkz

Look both ways to plan a party.
Mind the gaps of the ironic mind in a literal world.

Poetry: Love Sounds

Thorns are in gardens,
And colors from pretty flowers,
Rose pedal jellies are sweet.

This world of sounds,
Voices heard, long before birth—
Mother, father, sister, brother.

Sounds of nature,
So sweet and quiet,
Some warn of danger,
Others safe passage,
Voices of friends,
A love,
Some grumpy old men.

In time,
Life’s pleasures wane and wither,
Music comes not as before,
Beautiful sounds are
Nothing to waste.

Disallow atrophy
Of lust
For a wondrous life.
Be alert.
Sounds. Enjoy them.
Be aroused
By smiles and touches
Of troubadour drums.

Surround yourself with pleasures.
Hear every note
With silences between.
Waste nothing.
Mind our gifts.

Take care,
my love.
Some things shall not
Always be there.

Look both ways with eyes and ears.
Mind the gaps between notes and words.

Poetry: Old Hank

Never heard of Bukowski.
Frost, Yeats, Whitman,
certainly Poe. Those guys;
and Dickenson, Browning,
later Plath and Angelou.
Mary Oliver, too. New and youngs
like Canuck Chica, Kaur.

Gone two decades plus six, old Hank,
who’d turn a hundred this year,
took hold of my poetry reading.
Also liking some Billy Collins
and Clive James. Tony Hoagland’s
pleasant prose and light but raunchy
poems been worth my time.

Poetry, a pleasure,
in the writing and for the reading,
yet brainy head scratchers
laced with metaphoric depth have
pride of place on a lover’s shelf.

Raw life, pain, and beauty without
pretentious creativity,
Old Buc’s art “is its own excuse.”

Look both ways,
to the darkness of shadows
and to the colors of light.
Mind the gaps of the matrix.

Poetry: Natural Brutality

Being one with nature,
the coexistence of life on Earth
is such a wonderful concept.

What is more part
of every life than death?

Has anyone told the fire ants,
much less gained the cooperation
of such touchy predators?

Will they forgive my use
of deadly chemicals to remove
a hideous colony
setting up housekeeping
on my back porch?

Will the bite of the rattlesnake
be part of Nature’s
delightful beauty?

I love Nature, but
I know something about it.

It’s unforgiving, painful,
deadly, and indiscriminate.

Natural selection
is Nature’s evolutionary tool
and the reason
ninety-nine percent
of all life types are extinct.

Look both ways,
mind the gaps in everything,
especially where place your body parts,
lest Nature object in some naturally painful way.

NaPoWriMo: 30 poems in 30 days (day 24)

Day 24 prompt: write a poem about a fruit. Where do we get the word for the color when we mix red and yellow?

A Norange by Another Name: Orange

What shall we call this yellow-red color?
Geoluhread was, but is not right. From China
came five centuries ago the answer, a round
citrus fruit. We shall call it orange, as is the fruit.

See the color, not persimmon, pumpkin, or tangerine
they are all orange. See textured shiny bright rind
hiding yellow seed, white albedo pulp and triangle
segments of juicy sweet meat for kings and queens.

Feel the firm round breasted textured shape,
softly, almost spongy, heavier than an apple
with a protruding nipple or navel or pedicel
from the flower of past blossoms mating.

Smell the fragrant fruit, the peel, the acceptance
of inviting sensual aroma used in fine perfumes
or arousing essential oils. Hold the orange
to your nose, near your lips, take her home.

Taste the tangy citrus flavor after peeled,
soft, bitter skin is removed, baring mixed taste
and aroma of sweet bliss, a robust exiting,
acidic-sweet flavor sliding into your mouth.

Hear the soft sound of bursting flavor,
for quiet wet eating, the soft thud when
dropped or tapped. Hear yourself masticate
briefly before swallowing treasured pleasure.

Look both ways for the common and the rare.
Mind the gaps, by any other shade, tone, or hue, and orange is still orange.
The fruit came before the color.

NaPoWriMo: 30 poems in 30 days (day 20)

Day 20 prompt: write a poem about a handmade/homemade gift.

What Matters

For the man who has everything
or who could, if he would,
make (don’t buy) to please.

Amazon does not have your heart
nor your hand, and Bezos does not
need your money. In the end, it’s you
that is my gift, so keep it simple
and easy. Go underboard, if you’re able.

Spend less. Write or read, sketch or draw,
don’t buy me a book. Read one and tell me
all about it. Write me a four-line poem.
Sketch a joke caricature of me.

Write a note that says you love me,
put on lipstick, kiss the paper, and send it.

What I want from you is a bit
of your time and attention. Just briefly.
From you to me is all that I need.

Here, let me hand you this notebook
and this pen, in the time it would take
for you to scribble a quickie phrase…

I’ll be happier, no internet search required,
a treasure like no other will I have,
and you will feel better too. Trust me.
It’s not that I ask little,
it’s that I want you. I know what matters.

Look both ways and slightly behind.
Be safe. Mind the gaps in your masks.

NaPoWriMo: 30 poems in 30 days (day 19)

Day 19 prompt: write a poem based on a “walking archive.”

The Spring Draw

Spring replaces Winter’s browns and grays
with shades and hues of green, some pinks
and whites in the trees. And more rain,
and wind to help insects spread pollen,
the whole point being new life, hope,
and promises of Summer to come.

Even the trails lay a carpet of green grass,
soft to my steps, comforting. To the sides
more color and tones of red and blue,
orange and proud yellows mixed with white,
every color and shade seems bright.
Both quiet and loud, and deer appear,
rutting passed soon we’ll see fawns running.

I pause often to photograph or admire
this gallery of natural art, walking on my trail,
some path remains, limestone rock
for stepping or tripping as creeks and washes run
wet with rainwater, animal prints in mud,
views obstructed by leaves fresh and green.

There is beauty even in the old dead trunks
of former mighty oaks, with knots and holes,
still standing tall and proud, some down
yielding to stormy winds, the promise still
of awakening even the soil of the Earth.
I sit to rest and to ponder or brood,
to drink and to stare and admire,
and to pity many who have seen
neither tree nor forest, nor felt the happy
heart of a Spring calf.

I walk Texas trails in Spring before
Hell sends Summer to scorch, and it calls
for cream to screen the rays of sun. Before
wet clay turns to dust and water runs rare.
Before the prickly pear cactus turns
its brilliant yellow flower, then to an apple red
bulb, then to a new cactus head. So long
as I am, and I can, out I shall go to treat
my senses to the many glances of nature.

“Me imperturbe, standing at ease in nature.”
Or, at attention, as I want to miss none of it all.

(Quote: credit Walt Whitman)

Always look both ways and all around, up and down.
Mind gaps and ravines in natural beauty if you seek pleasure.

 

NaPoWriMo: 30 poems in 30 days (day 18)

Day 18 prompt: write a poem that is an ode to life’s small pleasures. I did a semi-sonnet of 14, ten-syllable lines.

Ode to My Pillow

You hold my head up with a pleasing touch
you ask nothing, I take you for granted
dressing you only encased, on a whim
I hold you, or tuck you between my legs,
or force you to support me from behind.
I turn, and show you my boring back side,
throwing you to the floor, replacing you
when you get old and dirty and baggy.
I bend and stuff you, your silence supports.
You hold my tears, each a precious diamond.
In nightmares or pleasant dreams, when I call,
I wake for no reason, I find you there
for me. You bolster my brain, hide my mind.
I sleep with you, and you ask for nothing.

Look both ways to fluff a pillow.
Mind the gaps under your head.

NaPoWriMo: 30 poems in 30 days (day 16)

 

Day 16 prompt: write a poem of over-the-top compliments. I added my apology.

To all the men and women, to the heroes and heroines
in worlds of history, art, literature, lifestyle, and character;
in science, medicine, and defense, like beacons of hope for humanity
you have been, each individually, a bright star in my sky.
By your exquisite example of perfection personified,
with wit, wisdom, and humor, you were my compass.

I was blinded by your brilliance, deaf to your depth,
ignorant of your veracity. Forgive my foolish denial of
truth by seeing you only as god or goddess, only as
a sunny day with never a shadowed soul, never a flaw,
never as another frail human being. When I placed
you upon pedestals and you proved me wrong,
we both cried.

Look both ways with discernment toward others.
Mind the gaps in every life as perfection is not what we think it is.