This week’s word is Daily. Media is marker.
Last week’s word was Act Media is pen &ink with marker accents.
why describe what you will inevitably judge for yourself?
Archives for category: Poetry Friday
Last week’s Poetry Friday inspiration yielded an awkward performance piece. I accidentally inflicted a minor case of food poisoning upon myself with undercooked chicken. I’ll leave it to your imagination, but chicken isn’t on the menu this week.
This week’s Poetry Friday word, bite is more pleasant:
Pen & ink with marker
Poetry Friday: Wonder
It’s no secret, I can be a grouch where children are concerned. I like the way they think and explore, but they make my brain tired with their endless questions, and demands for explanations over the simplest requests. I prefer authoritarian relationships in which subordinates do as they are told. Genetic survival instinct, however, implores kids to ask why and question authority. If we never asked ourselves why, I would be looking for berries, and overnighting in a cave wearing a loincloth and Poetry Friday would be the least of concerns. Luckily for mankind, kids do not conform to my utopian ideals.
One of the most awesome things about children, is their pursuit of knowledge when faced with a world both overwhelming and dreadfully unfair. Each day they approach all life offers like pimply-faced ingenues, mouths agape in the spirit of wonder. Absorbing their experiences vicariously, gives us the opportunity to experience the world, without malice, prejudice, or despondence, invigorating ordinary moments with fascination.
As there are no children to be found in my home, there are four-legged boarders that have redirected the way I see the mundaneness of domestic life.
For example:
The vacuum cleaner is a frightening appliance with no useful purpose other than evacuating all pets from the home during an emergency.
The coffee maker’s last puff of steam is a god-like apparition requesting an overwhelming howl in response.
Riding through the car wash might seem like an invigorating new experience, but it is really just a test of the strength of your dog’s bowels.
Napkins are most enjoyable when shredded into tiny bits.
The automatic feeder rules over all daily activities.
The kitchen floor is composed of a delicate material which may only be properly cleaned using ones tongue.
Poetry Friday: Glow
This week’s inspiration reminded of one of last year’s thunder storms. I wasn’t aware of any weather alerts, but the wind was absolutely howling and the hardwoods were swaying like limp blades of grass. Being alone didn’t alarm me, but being faced with finding clothes and locating pets should a tree crash through bedroom ceiling prevented sleep.
I gathered clothes, cellphone, laptop, and a sleeping bag and retreated to the basement. Not wanting to waste precious battery power,I slipped a glow in the dark bracelet around my wrist. It gave off enough ambient light to move around safely, and locate the cats.
The resulting storm moderately trashed our yard with limbs and debris, and my neighborhood was partially blocked off by trees a minor inconvenience compared to what other communities endured.
words glowing like embers
casually dissipating into
the atmosphere if only
someone were willing
to listen they would
not be condemned to
phosphorescent memory
in the mind of the speaker
This week’s inspiration for Poetry Friday is bull.
I feel mundane taking so many of these words at face value. Especially a word that I regard as one half of a compound word that is unfit for the ears of delicate company. But here is my perception of bull from the point of view of Captain Obvious…you might recognize this drawing as the statue on Wall Street.
And the muse has presented us with an offering:
Digitally Altered Photo
Camera: Samsung Moment Cell Phone
Software: SketchBook Pro
My home is the place wine glasses come to die. FIrst, they are condemned to a purgatorial existence with forgotten mismatched brethren. Four matching glasses might enter the premises, but it is mandatory one be sacrificed to appease the vengeful goddess of the kitchen sink before the clock strikes midnight. If said spirit is unappeased, then wine will be spilled like the blood of those lost in holy wars to baptize the ecru sofa in the living room.
The last time we purchased glasses, the Better Half selected these clunky stemmed water goblets. He thought they were proper wine glasses, as did the clerk who wasn’t of drinking age. I decided I could care less since the rim wasn’t the thickness of a jelly jar. The spirit of the kitchen sink wasn’t to be deceived, and promptly seized the first water glass in lieu of an adequate sacrifice.
What do matching glasses matter anyway? We rarely have company, and a functional corkscrew is more important than a hostess award from M. Stewart.
*******
Most days I wear contact lenses, but I have glasses in case I run out of disposables. I prefer the contacts because I can sleep in them and I don’t have to think about my vision until it is time to change them. I might wear my glasses ten days in a year. They are old and out of style, but it doesn’t matter since I’m rarely seen wearing them in public. When I do wear them, my spouse refers to it as an opportunity to sleep with another woman.
This week’s word is bear. Being short on time, I’m phoning in this one in the form of a colored pencil drawing from more than decade ago. I don’t remember the size, but I believe it is approximately 22″ x 18″.
This week’s word is mouse. If you are of tender heart, or smitten with rodents, you might not want to read further.
Some family tales are not stories as much as they are embellished non-fiction shaped by archetypes and character studies. It isn’t always the spoken words that are relevant, but the unspoken history shared by the orator and the audience. Without the history, it is more difficult to discern whether the action is predictable, ironic or just plain dark.
My grandmother’s hands resemble lengths of knotted rope. They have looked that way as far back as I can remember. Frayed with age, swollen knuckles comically out of proportion to otherwise slender digits. It’s amazing they remain capable of grasping at straws much less fastening the clasp of a shiny bauble, but like others marked by the Great Depression, she persists. I’m not sure if it is the hardship that fueled her or a sour feistiness that sometimes impairs her ability to see beyond the current moment.
After my Grandfather passed away, she continued living alone, tackling day to day tasks, occasionally interrupted by moments of shear madness.
Once, when she was unable to to turn the lever of the can opener, she reached for a old fashioned meat cleaver, one of the few relics remaining from grandfather’s career as a butcher, and brought the blade crashing down on a can of corn. There was corn on the counter. The floor. The ceiling. A single serving remaining in the bottom of the can. Maybe it was a fit of madness, or the realization of being alone after more than fifty years of co-dependency marriage. Either way, the roots of impetuosity were deep.
After an unwelcome encounter with a rodent, she took the offensive. She tried a traditional approach and purchased a package of spring-loaded mousetraps. She set a few, but manipulating the spring with her gnarled fingers was difficult, so she opted for sticky strips.
One mouse foiled by the adhesive strip, was caught by his back foot..When she she saw her trophy, she just couldn’t bare “to let the little fellow suffer any longer”. So she put on her garden gloves, picked up the trap, mouse dangling upside down by a single limb, and beat him to a bloody pulp against the side of her house.
And the word is watch.
The award for stating the obvious? I haz earned it.
My mom was kind enough to save the watches I had as a teenager. It looks like someone was overcompensating in the accessory department. Apparently this is an unfortunate sided-effect of never having your ears pierced. I’m not sure if I qualified as a geek or a nerd, but classification is rarely so simplistic.
There were other more vanilla watches during that time, two Fossils, a
Bulova, and countless throw away digitals, all too scratched up to justify a second life. Looking back, I’m not sure if the obsession was related to fashion or existentialism. Now, I tend to wish time would go ahead and pass already.
In the spirit of the Hemingway Challenge.
Broken watch.
Time stands
Still indefinitely.
