Hour 10 – What is Love?
Was that love
What you felt
Or it wasn’t
The nights spent
Over calls
Losing time
Was it lust?
Feeling me
In whispers.
The Care Giver – Hour 13
I am a care giver for my aging mother.
Not much humor in that.
Bittersweet at times maybe,
frustrating, yes!
But funny not so much.
If it were anyone else’s mother with dementia
I might find humor in how this lady dresses now.
She was always a clothes horse and
conscious of fashion and her appearance.
Now she wears gym pants with a racing stripe,
A gauzy cotton Indian shirt with a nylon nightgown on top
and a big white sun hat with a blue flower on it.
Around the house.
Or an orange satin mu-mu over blue jeans
with a green cotton t-shirt over the dress
and a grey furry winter hat that she loves. Why?
To run away from home with her walker. (She’s tried.)
A backwards printed top over inside out pants
rolled up at the cuff, because “that’s how
all the girls wear them this season.” And a purse she made
that is covered in buttons and has nothing inside.
She loves to squirrel things away.
When she passes, I’m sure we will finally find
her two sets of hearing aids, her two missing
pairs of glasses, the gold coins she has always
accused me of taking, and her four missing hairbrushes.
They’ll be with assorted fancy cookie and candy boxes
that she thought too pretty to throw away.
Near my Dad’s practically new black cowboy boots
and the baseball that used to be in the toe of them.
He died in 2004.
And we can’t forget the pictures! Pictures of herself
that she swears are her mother.
Pictures of her children that she swears are not hers.
Plus perfume and lipsticks that are too old to use.
But so is she. And so am I.
And both getting older every day.
Hour Eleven: Extraordinary in Ordinary
they have curves
length
height, just the right height
shaped aerodynamically
ridged undersurface
to grip better
i slip them on
no thought about the science behind their being
my slippers
Hour Nine
Publishing
Maybe making books
Is fantasy,
All inside my head.
Putting together pretty
Words until the ink is red.
Maybe making books
Requires a bit of whimsy
To see the dreams
Contained within.
Prompt #13
I play the accordion. In a band.
Yes, I’ve heard all the jokes:
“definition of perfect pitch?”
(accordion tossed into a dumpster)
“don’t leave your accordion in the car”
(someone will break in and leave another one)
Whatever.
My friend who is also a musician tells me:
“You can make hundreds of dollars doing this. Hundreds.”
And I have.
Splitting up the proceeds of the tip jar, walking away
with 20 1-dollar bills and a beer buzz.
Playing for $500, playing for $350,
playing for drinks, for dinner, for “exposure”…
My bandmate says,
“Enough with the exposure already. If we get any more exposure,
we’ll be rated X.”
But there was that one time 15 years ago in San Juan Capistrano
where we made $950 in CD sales.
Someone brings it up every time we’re driving home
from Pasadena, from West Covina, from Fresno, from Portland.
“Remember that time we made all that money?”
There are lots of stories like that one.
Okay. Not lots. A few.
It’s good enough.
“Do You Know Your Left from Your Right?”
Hour Thirteen
Children will bounce off walls if their dance teacher tells them. (We don’t of course!)
Adolescents won’t do but so much, they don’t want to get perspired in case “dreamy” happens to pass by.
Some adults will sponsor funds for children’s tights rather than buy a pair for themselves. (Patrons are cool with me, not complaining.)
“Seasoned” adults count like this during warm-up exercises-” One, two, three, five, …eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, etc.” (We reach thirty is less than three minutes this way.)
Dance classes without mirrored walls offer the best teaching environment sometimes. The only body they see is mine and my smile at their effort is all they need reflected. DMW
PS Retired. Recently asked to consider choreographing a new piece just this week.
Hour 13 – Teacher, Please Believe Me
Early morning wake ups
are part of the norm,
dragging myself out of the bed
takes on many different forms.
I make my way to my room
to prepare for my day,
wondering what’s in store for me
and what my students will say.
Ms. Jones, I’m tired I didn’t get much sleep
I was up on my game all night,
I can’t do very much work today
I promise I won’t play fight.
My dog ate my homework, so I don’t have it today
I promise that this is true,
just give me more time I’ll have it done
I’ll turn the next one in when it’s due.
Yeah right, you’ve said all this before
I don’t know why you waste my time,
it has gotten old and funny too
that’s why I can write this rhyme.
Hour 13 – Zebra People in a Zebra World (Image Prompt)
When I see old black and white movies on my TV,
I wonder.
What if my TV had a world within it,
Of Zebra People.
Zebra People, Zebra Pizza, Zebra Pie.
Zebra Pants and Zebra Paths.
Zebra Alphabets – Z to A.
Zebra Words and Zebra Thoughts.
When I see old black and white movies on my TV,
I wonder.
What of the Zebra People in their Zebra World?
Do they ever think of worlds beyond them, like I do?
What would they say if we ever met?
If they saw
the red of my lips,
the pink of my nails,
the blue of the sky, and the green of the trees.
And most of all,
The rainbow of thoughts that flow through my mind,
allowing me to imagine, in the first place,
this world of Zebra People.
When I see old black and white movies on my TV,
I wonder.
What do the Zebra People think of me?
Or more broadly, what do the Zebra People think?
Bound by the rules of their Zebra World,
if they saw me,
Would they, truly, see me?
Hour 13
The moonbeam strikes down
As if it were chaos and secrets
Not knowing what hope it brings
Nor the torment it shines on-
Only hoping to be as bright as
The day is remembers it became whole
#Prompt 13 – 2023
Negativity
Colour my world black and white
That I may see the stripes
Created by the human kind
A barcode catalogue that will never scan
To register the plight of man