My Simple Cycle

Morning comes drenched with light
Light brings me to my knees
Knees that wrestled in the night
Night dispelled in fervent pleas

Pleas turn to thanks and praise
Praise to only Him who frees
Frees me to face the day
Day voiced in bitter lees

Lees of mire I strive to shake
Shake the dross from veiled sight
Sight unseen sweet saving grace
Grace walks me through filtered light

Light lingers long till dusk
Dusk turns quickly into night
Night illuminates this dust
Dust sprinkles me with light

ddversepoets.com loop poetry. Well, this wasn’t easy! Hope I did it correctly.

 poetry toolbox.

“Loop Poetry is a poetry form created by Hellon. There are no restrictions on the number of stanzas nor on the syllable count for each line. In each stanza, the last word of the first line becomes the first word of line two, last word of line 2 becomes the first word of line 3, last word of line 3 becomes the first word of line 4. This is followed for each stanza. The rhyme scheme is abcb.”

Juxtaposition

Goodbye yellow brick road
I watch as golden streets
Melt round my feet
Did I ever imagine
Whirled peace
Would find me
In the eye of the storm

This is nuts
I’m okay
Come the end of a day
Change is brewing
Dreams have nothing to offer
In this economic crunch
Even a scarecrow can learn

Dversepoets.com Lillian takes us back to some of Ben and Jerry’s archived ice cream flavors and asks we write a poem using one or two or three and write a poem NOT about ice cream.

Since the heat is on and I don’t usually consume a lot of ice cream, I binged and used 5 because it’s not about ice cream.

The list,
Change is Brewing – current
Half-Baked – created in 2000 -still going strong
Urban Bourbon – 2017 -still going strong
Coffee Coffee Buzzbuzzbuzz – current
Wavy Gravy – 1993 – 2001
Urban Jumble – 2000 -2001
Dastardly Mash – 1979 – 1991
Miz Jelena’s Sweet Potato Pie – 1992 – 1993
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – limited edition available July 18 to 25, 2008
Late Night Snack – 2010 – 2014
Imagine Whirled Peace – 2007 – 2013
Sugar Plum – 1989 – 1990
Cool Britannia – 1995 – 1998
Economic Crunch – only in 1987 during the stock market crash
This is Nuts 2001 – 2002

Seal the Deal

Time to wrap this up
Send it flying
No return address
Cease vying
Disabling hope with whims
Spun on tails of rampant winds
Boomerangs of violent strength
Unwrapped within a half-breath’s length
Flaunting this unsightly mess
Be gone!
Better ways to spend my time

Dversepoets.com Monday quadrill. Wrap. #2

The Party

“Such pretty paper,”
She cried
“I wonder what’s inside”
She shook it and listened
Felt its weight
Maybe a puzzle waiting to solve
Or a book
With places to go
She looked away
To what someone else gave
Until unwrapped
She never would know

Dversepoets Monday quadrille. Dverse’s original poetry form and one of my favorites. Exactly 44 words excluding the title. The word is wrap, or any form thereof.
Feeling feisty. I wrote two.

Say What You Must Then Mind Your own Dust

You can’t see me
Behind my smile
You can’t hear me
Only my voice
You can’t read me
You see my words
On a screen
Or paper scrawled
With cursive flare
Or scripted font

No you can’t see
Deep in my heart
What ebbs and flows
‘Tween dusk and dawn
How scorching heat
Of blistering sun
Or winter’s frost
Spring’s gracious thaw
Fall’s lovesick goodbye
Stirs my heart

As moments flee
There is just One
Who knows every
Ounce of me
And this my prayer
That I may be
Pleasing in His view

And oh

That I

may do

The same

For you

Dversepoets.com open link. Poem of choice Meandering through a lazy busy and very productive day but no one but me can tell.

I read dverse is going to the moon. Don’t quite understand it yet, but I go a lot of places and never leave home.

No Haste

I watched the honeybees
Gather nectar from
Sharp spiny thistles
Black and red butterflies
Too quick for my lens
Always an eyesore to me
Now worth keeping
I pulled shallow weeds
Watched sunlight rush in
Cascading over my shoulders
“Thank you”, she said

Plans dropped like rain
I wandered alone and aimless
Through dry puddles
Me and Jane Austen
Spent a lovely afternoon
Saw what I missed
All these years
Bees, butterflies and me
A day not wasted

Dversepoets.com Lisa suggests fractal poetry. From a list of options I chose this,

“Think about something/someone in your world that you have, up to this point, only given a superficial consideration of and decide to look a little closer at it/them. Use what you discover as fodder for a poem.”

I have no idea if this fits a fractal but it’s a shot on this lazy day.

Inevitable

She fell down, climbing up the stairs. Her knee gave out. She did nothing. Years went by and she continued to climb, and once in a while her knee gave out. She did nothing. Still, years went by and her knee continued to give out.

Now she couldn’t climb at all. Surgery made her tremble. Invalid made her tremble. Dependence made her tremble. Trembling made her tumble till she crumbled to the ground. Now she couldn’t get up at all. All her fears upon her in a day.

She had no other choice but surgery. The pain was more than she could describe. Every day she ate ice cream. Every day her friends gave her reason to laugh. Every day someone loved her in her pain.

Years later she tells she’d had it sliced away. Leaving a scar exemplified the relief, not the pain.

Dversepoets.com offers the prompt “prosery” exactly 144 words, excluding the title. A line from a poem incorporated into prose. Flash-fiction.

“she’d had it sliced away leaving a scar”. Michael Donaghy

The line comes from a poem by Michael Donaghy, and I came across it in Ruth Padel’s book “52 ways of looking at a poem”. Donaghy was born in America in 1954, and moved to London in the 1980s, where he worked in traditional Irish music. He sadly died in 2004.

https://rihlajourney.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/liverpool-michael-donaghy/%5D(https://rihlajourney.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/liverpool-michael-donaghy/)

I was especially drawn to the book title ‘52 ways of looking at a poem”. I bet there is more than 52.

Nice to write some fiction for a change.
This is exactly 144 words.

I will read some of yours in a couple days.

Forgiveness Without Repentance?

Eleven days home and I am still acclimating to the environment around me and processing the many thoughts and lessons I gathered during my month away. I found my slippers tucked in the bottom of my carry-on bag and now I feel obligated to apologize to a Golden Retriever for my accusation.

Of all the issues before me, why should this trivial matter highlight my days and take precedence over my earthly and spiritual relationships? Perhaps not trivial at all because if I cannot admit my mistakes to an animal, who may care less than a whit, how much more would I not confess to a person, and more so, to God?

I believe everything is gained when one repents and everything is lost when one does not, no matter the station one holds in life. Most of all I believe repentance to God is above all because He is LORD of all.

A personal six-sentence lesson in repentance. Oso, I am oh so sorry!

Yes, I swat flies, kill spiders and don’t feel guilty.

Who Needs Peace?

We reach an age where we hear of people dying more frequently and often suddenly. It is disheartening, to say the least. I recently heard of three deaths. One of them I read on the obituary page, one on social media and one by note card I received in the mail after I returned from a month-long vacation. All three were dear to my heart but we were separated by distance and life circumstances. I was present for none of them, and my last words to them were spoken a long time ago.

One of them was a friend who lived only a few miles away. We were very good friends for 34 years but the last time I saw her was on her birthday in August of 2021. One was my landlord some 36 years ago when I was single, raising a son. Years later, I became his caregiver but that ended about five years ago. How kind of his wife to send me a card telling me he passed but oh how shocking! The third person moved with his wife and daughter about ten years ago; my only contact, social media and mutual friends.

As I recall my conversations with each one, I have peace and an overwhelming hope in the midst of my grieving, for I know the condition of my heart when I last saw each one. We cannot stop the aging process and the deterioration of the human body, and death for all is a mere matter of time.

What I have learned most recently is because I too will someday die, I want to live to my fullest potential while I am still on this side of the grass, and because I believe the other side will be even greater, why not purpose to enter it with no regrets?

We are born once and we die once but in between Jesus asks us to be born again because we only die once. All of our words and attitudes toward God and man matter and I am happy that concerning my three dear friends, I am at peace.

I began a six-sentence story but could not fit it all, so I strung three together. Writer, in training, where train cars are linked together to carry more.

I know Who Forgives Me

Today I baked a strawberry rhubarb pie and rather than using the pie crust recipe that my mother taught me when I was seven years old, I tried a new one. I recently watched how it was put together, copied the recipe and was excited to try it out. The bottom crust did not fit the pie pan and I had to piece it together from the dough I reserved for the lattice top. I cut the top crust into strips and made my own design and when it was all put together no one could tell I struggled.

I guess that’s one of the reasons I love dough. It is flexible and forgiving. As much as I know it will taste delicious I also know it will never be my favorite, because my recipe forgives me all too often.

I weave the secular into the sacred in six sentences.

I need tech support!

My strawberry rhubarb pie