Texas

(Drum roll) NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 30)

Today is the final day of NaPo (and of April). Beginning tomorrow (and for May), I plan to read as many NaPo poems done by others as possible. Thus, my posts will slack off a bit.

The month of May has us doing family things, routine medical visits, and a five-day jaunt into the wilds of west Texas (family stuff) for Mother’s Day which is also Julie’s BD this year. It’s a bit special because she was born on Mother’s Day.

May also has Armed Forces Day (20th), our 57th wedding anniversary (27th), an in-person gathering of my writing group, and Memorial Day (29th). That last one is the unofficial threshold of Summer, but also when I try to remind folks that it is about remembrance of the dead.

Todays assigned prompt is to write a palinode, which is a poem written to retract a view or sentiment expressed in an earlier poem. I poked fun at football with my first 2023 NaPo poem “Not Only Texas.” To contradict that sentiment, I wrote this poem.

To Be Fair—

Many years ago, as we stood side-by-side on Kyle Field, Billy bluntly said, “Maybe I should have played this game.”

To be fair, or perhaps to favor American football; where dreams are made, others dashed; boys become strong, others injured, sometimes both; it’s our game. Canadians play a little differently. We try to interest Mexicans, Europeans, and the world. Where they call soccer, football.

Football mixes institutions: education, entertainment, music, religion, and groups of civic pride into the practice of honoring people and a game and raising hype to a positive practice. Who knows, maybe God does care who is good, big, fast, skilled, and who wins? About whom prays best?

Life has daily challenges, and who am I to say what the best way is to learn, to survive, to win?

After all, I, too, wanted to score the winning touchdown on Friday night. The Band of big and little Brothers, of life and death, and still—win we will— “The Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps” – and we watched, as the band marched and played on, and on so well.

Look both ways to see the good and the bad, the ups and the downs.
Mind the gaps, the clips, and the traps.
And whatever your game, do it as well as you can.
Gig ‘em!

The phrase “The Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps” is from Gen Douglas MacArthur’s Duty, Honor, Country speech at West Point, N.Y., May 12, 1962.

***

Click my grandson’s (in red) pic to watch a very positive video endorsing the good things about the game of football and the song by Kenny Chesney – “The Boys of Fall.”

 

If that link does not work, thy this:

 

 

Sammi’s Weekender #286 (bibliopole)

Click here for Sammi’s blog page and more 39-word bibliopole works.

Larry Jeff

He had much to say
about Texas, Texans, Mexicans,
and the cowboy way.

McMurtry, best known
for essays, books, and movie scripts
which Hollywood’s Oscar would pay.

But Larry most loved book scouting,
a proud bibliopolist,
another dying breed.

Look both ways learning about history, myth, legend, and reality.
Mind the gaps because therein may hide the best of the stories.

 

Larry Jeff McMurtry (1936-2021) was an American novelist, essayist, bookseller (book-scout) and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. Dying breeds, historical truth, and books attracted him personally and professionally. My favorite McMurtry quotes are:

“People would be bored shitless if they had to love only the good in someone they care about.”

“Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look – historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.”

“Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.”

Sammi’s Weekender #269 (variation)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s page with links to other 67-word wonders.

Texas
is not a State
of sameness.

Variations abound.
What animal husbandry
and agriculture
ain’t changed.

Yonder are
the Gulf of Mexico Coast
Great Planes,
Interior Lowlands,
Basins, and Ranges
overlapping with

Pineywoods,
prairies, marshes,
savannahs;
south, rolling, and
high plains;
storybook names
like
Trans-Pecos;
mountain ranges
like
Franklin, Chalk, Chinati,
Chisos, Christmas, and Davis;
Guadalupe, Palo Pinto,
del Carmen,
Diablo and Vieja.

Texas is many places.

Look, “Highway 6 goes both ways” *.
Mind it all; the gaps, the plains, and the mountains.
There is not another place like Texas.

*Texas Highway 6 runs 476 miles, from the Oklahoma border to Galveston, Texas. The quote is a pejorative quip or gibe at Texas A&M University for complainers who dislike the place. It’s like don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. In other words, the same road that brought you here can take you away in two directions.

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.

Sammi’s Weekender #251 (rune)

Click here for Sammi’s blog and more 96-word wonders.

 

Pulled Curly’s Rune

At first, years ago
when I was a green carrot,
Texans were, it seemed,
wonderful; charming, friendly,
funny-talking folk in spurs
and special wide brim hats,
and mess on their boots;
mysterious, clever, dashing,
men, woman, and children;
lovers of prickly flora
and less flattering fauna; frank
but short of blunt, somber souls.

For forty years I lived among ‘em,
counted myself one,
married another,
raised three more,
befriended many, tolerated more;
a citizen with resident rights,

I’ve noticed fewer hold that mythical
individualistic spirit,
lost in a dangerous land,
well-known as
Houston in New York.

Look both ways when we pine for the past.
Enjoy the stories and the myths, but mind the gaps where rattlers sleep.

Why Houston in New York?

City Slickers movie slice. My point.

Sammi’s Weekender #230 (brush)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s Blog and other poems/stories/writings for his prompt.

 

Damn Yankees

Peckerwoods range southern from taproot wormwood sagebrush out west,
to different dialects in deep East Texas’s vast Big Thicket Forest
with snake-filled, gator-infested swamps.

Coon hunters haul coonhounds, like Ol’ Blue,
in pickups circled round night fires.
Dogs tree them coons for the bark and fun of the run.

Where cultural racism thrives as casual and common as an Easter toothache,
in tasteless towns, where hate breeds happiness decayed.

Damn longhaired, white-assed Yankee,
“What cha mean ya never been coon huntin’?
Grab yer wahoo and follow me.”

Look both ways and wonder, why does it have to be this way?
Mind the gaps for gators and snakes.
“Old Blue got one treed, but Scout is a-trackin’ some tail.”

Poetry: Winter Spring Water

Sitting on a bench
beside this small lake
on a warm, sunny
winter March day,
in Texas, not yet Spring,
but it feels good.

A golf course
on the opposite side,
with carts silently
moving, following, stopping,
going nowhere
to find a ball.
Golfers swing clubs,
ride to find balls.
Some call it exercise.
I gave it up
in college. No
regrets.

What is it
about the water
that calms me
and I want to
write a poem
about feeling
peaceful, calm,
listening without
hearing brave birds?

Soon it will be
Spring, and
I’ll return here,
to find calm.
A nice day, this,
in many ways.

Look both ways around the water.
There’s the natural and the not.
Mind the gaps where golfers lose their balls.

Poetry: Grant Me the Words

Yesterday, Morris Mac Davis (January 21, 1942 – September 29, 2020) died, as did Helen Reddy (25 October 1941 – 29 September 2020). Mac was a country music singer, songwriter, and actor, originally from Lubbock, Texas. He was one of (if not the) my wife’s favorites. I wrote this poem a few weeks ago. I kind of relate it to his song, The Words Don’t Come Easy.

Grant Me the Words

I want words to share with her,
to impress her, to draw her closer.
Are there such words? Is what I feel
a force? One that words can’t say?
Words must say what I want. This world isn’t
perfect. People have people issues,
life is life, it is all relative. Except love.

Love is not relative. Love comes in thousands
of different flavors. That love is not this love.
Each is special. Each unique. Each its own.

The pain is not the love, it is not the passion,
it is not the physical or mental human reality.

It is the inability to tell another human being
how much you love them. How much you care.

We suffer most not because we love, but because
we lack the humanity to share our words of love
with the world, because we don’t know what they are.
But we try. We must always try.

Look both ways at the good things in life, like love.
Mind the gaps for lessons and reasons. Always try.
They don’t come easy but find the words.

Friday Fictioneers for 8/28/2020 (Big Bend Kill Me, Save Me)

Thanks to Rochelle @ Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple for another Friday Fictioneers inspirational photo, promulgated on Wednesday. Her weekly challenge is to write a story of 100 words or less based on the photo prompt, provided this week by J Hardy Carroll.

Photo prompt provided by J Hardy Carroll (photo credit)

 

Title: Big Bend Kill Me, Save Me
Genre: Fiction (Texas Outdoors)
Word Count: 100

I was lost at night in the Chihuahuan Desert of southwest Texas. Thunderstorms flooded arroyos with torrents leading to the Rio Grande. Without overnight gear, rain soaked me. I couldn’t see as storms raged and lightning flashed.

A bolt struck near me. I felt an electrical burn run through my body. I was going to die. A nearby cactus caught fire and burned despite the rain. I crawled under a rock outcropping.

Park Rangers rescued me in the morning. Someone had seen my signal. I asked, What signal? They said, a tall pillar of yellow light pointed the way. Strange.

Rising 8,085 feet out of the Chihuahuan Desert, El Capitan is the most well known Texas peak.

Look both ways and carry the ten essentials of survival.
Mind the  gaps for flash floods.

Click for link to other stories.

Personal Poetry: Monthly Status Report – March Poems

March is supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb — not this year. It’s reversed. It started pleasant enough, but now I am cold (I think I have one, or allergies due to pollen all over), it is cold and windy outside. When I finish all my reading and writing for today, I think I’ll take a sick day. Do retired folks get those, especially on Sundays? I feel the need to heal.

I posted a few of the poems I wrote during March. In addition to the 31 for each day, I wrote about 10 others simply because one does not refuse when one’s muse presents a poem. I also managed to write a few essays, but this month my poetry muse has been more active.

Poem titles for March included:

    • March (posted)
    • Rock and Roll Will Never Die
    • Now What I Was
    • A Touch of Cold (maybe it was cold in early March)
    • The Fire Down Below (posted)
    • Toys
    • At the Beginning of the Day
    • There Was a Time
    • Why We Can’t Be Friends (I can’t love/like everyone)
    • Late Bloomer (that would be me)
    • I Might Be
    • Me Too
    • Stinks (the smell, not the poem)
    • Hear Ye Me and Thee
    • The Dance (what we all want to do)
    • Bacon (the meat)
    • The Irish in Me (Must have been the 17th)
    • Too Much (of what?)
    • Losing It (crazy)
    • The Priest (a man I knew who died in prison)
    • Tank Hill
    • It’s Just Me
    • Handwriting from the Past
    • Confusing Transitions
    • Stability
    • Starting Short
    • Mari Zone II
    • Men Kill
    • Broken Sadness
    • Rouquin (French word)
    • Self Portrait as Poe

Beginning tomorrow (1 April 2019), I’ll continue to write at least one poem each day, but instead of writing to my muse’s ideas, I will write to whatever the National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) challenge prompts suggest. My source will be that website where each day’s assignments are posted around midnight. I’ll write and post the poem before giving up the day to Mister Sandman.

I expect to travel during the final days of the month, so I will be writing on the road (again—now I have Willie whining in my good ear). The world is rich with characters and topics, so I anticipate no lack of subjects (think small towns in west Texas).

Unlike my others, I feel challenged (obliged) to post these. That’s what NaPo is all about. Don’t say no pressure. Yes there is, and you know it.

As for prose, who knows?

Look both ways for opportunity and danger.
An inspiration need not be the creative juggernaut of the day.
Mind well gaps within the gaps.