The Puppet

.

Sometimes he's subtle

Except when he's not

He lifts a finger

And she dances a jig

Keeping time to his tune

Wondering what’s come over her

***

***

Written for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads where Mama Zen asks us to write a poem in twenty-five words or less, using a "power image," one we return to over and over.

.

The Vitriolic Vagina

Photo By Jaime Clark

Your point made;

You want control. Well,

Sorry, pal,

Not this gal;

Have control issues myself.

So just fu… kiss off.

*** 

This was written for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads (IGWRT). Sunday’s challenge was to write a shadorma, using one of several excellent extreme close-up photographs posted on IGWRT. Another new poetic form for me, a shadorma is an unrhymed, six-line poem with a syllabic rhyme scheme of 3-5-3-3-7-5 syllables per line.

Boomers

Picture, if you will, house

after house after house of the

post-war American dream, not

Levittown, but close enough, and not

geographically, because this was Houston, 

which was as far from New York as this
neighborhood is from anyone’s

notion of today’s American dream.

See them, these near identical houses

filled with near-identical families?

Watch the Chevvies and Fords carry dads

out of their driveways at 7:42AM each day

while moms prod their two-point-five kids

to “hurry, or you’ll miss the bus” before they sit

and plan their near-identical days of cooking,

cleaning, and coffee with Carol next door.

We didn't know it then, of course, but we were

to become famous, we 2.5 kids in those houses.

We were the post-war population explosion,

the near-identical babies whose arrival would be

felt from Madison Heights to Madison Avenue.

Back then, we knew only the joy of slipping 

through the dusk, hiding and seeking with our pals,
just waiting to claim our piece of the dream with a  

Boom!

***

Written for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, where the prompt was "neighborhood."

Hunkering Down

(Image: detail taken from AP photo)

She’s not too bright sometimes,

my father always said. I’m not sure but

I think he meant it took me longer

than most to learn my lesson.

The storm has been raging for months.

The winds die down from time to time,

and being the slow learner that I am,

I'm lulled into thinking all is well.

I can’t say I thought it was safe to go out again

because I never came in. I leaned into the wind,

plodded forward, taking everything that came my way,

but making less progress with every step.

The winds howled and buffeted and tore

at my soul and still I pushed on,

battered and bruised, eye on the prize,

like an idiot, or somebody hell-bent on nobility,

I slog on no longer.

Perseverance is a poor substitute

for winning, and nobility is

just another word for crazy.

***

Linked at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Poetry Pantry, dVerse Poets Pub

Happiness Salad

The Muses Try a New Form: Tetractys

Kerry of Imaginary Garden with Real Toads  prompted us to write a Tetractys, a poetic form invented by Ray Stebbing.

A tetractys has a syllable count of 20, arranged 1, 2, 3, 4 (adding up to 10) and 10. It consists of at least 5 lines of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 syllables (total of 20). 

Tetractys can be written with more than one verse, but must follow suit with an inverted syllable count.  Double Tetractys: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 10, 4, 3, 2, 1. Triple Tetractys: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 10, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 and so on. 

***

 

Happiness Salad

Photo by Lisa Maxwell-Rounds

her

baby’s

peach cheeks and

blueberry eyes -

fruit of her womb makes happiness salad. 

Bag Lady

You see her everywhere, but never look,

On every corner and crowded city street,

Hoping to score the perfect find, the one

To carry her forward and provide, each

Picked up and carefully stored in her bag.

Like a shark she seldom sleeps, always 

On the move - survival depends upon it,

Spoils clutched close to her breast,

Vigilant against the predators of her own

Kind looking to take a shortcut to happiness.

She may be old and slow and move with pain,

Soon approaching the end of the journey, but still

She searches and gathers discarded bits of life:

Maybe this time a better thing, some thing,

Any thing to succor and sustain another day.

Exhausted, she stops to rest a moment and

Sits down on her heels and breathes in

The smell of desperation and despair

Swirling around her, and she opens her bag

To find it filled with nothing but ash.

You look but never see her, until the day you do.

You see the woman she is and the woman she was

when she had hopes just like you, the woman you will be,

hopes to find the best thing, the sparkly thing, the bright 

shiny future, until one day you see that you are she.

***

This award-winning video by Bert Salzman is a bit long, but very well-worth watching.

Holding Court

Image: Prinzessin Hyazinthe

Alphonse Mucha, 1911 

Royal duty weighs heavy

on a young princess, especially 

one longing to whirl through the night

caught in the arms of her prince.

As the stench of sycophants

assaults her wrinkling royal nose,

she thinks to herself that holding court

is like holding cold fish, long dead.

 

A waltz fills the head

beneath her royal crown,

and satin toes hidden under

silk and brocade tap the 3/4 beat.

Fighting the smile that hovers

just behind her royal disdain,

she turns up the music

and dances away.

***

I'm joining in at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, where the challenge is to an ekphrastic poem  (a decidedly unpoetic term) in response to a painting by the Czech art nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939).