Happy Day Before Thanksgiving Day...

PAD Challenge 22:

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “(blank) Day;” replace the blank with a word or phrase; make the new phrase the title of your poem

Tis November-twenty-something and all through the store

Dash shoppers with carts filled with goodies galore

The stuffing, the taters, bread, cheese, munchies, booze

A new tablecloth, gaudy balls, spike-heeled shoes

Quick glances at cell-phones then frantic ‘oh mys’

Clean the house-decorate-make-and-bake-pumpkin-pies

Make sure we all have clean shirts-skirts-pants etcetera

‘Make a memory’ by doing at least one thing together-yeah!

Hurry home, unload stuff, hang up laundry to dry

Flip out at little Tommy who has no idea why

Blast into the bedroom, chuck junk in a corner

Zip into the closet for the vacuum cleaner

Down the stairs, up the stairs, phone rings…she can’t…

On second thought, she better; it might be important

What, What?!  You forgot to order the turkey?!

Well kids, looks like dinner will be good old beef-jerky

Nope. Back-track to Walmart for a frozen bird

Crowds crowd every aisle, dazed yet undeterred

Looking for things lists have not seen before

A big orange whopple-glop to hang on the door

A glitzy itsy-bitsy filled with ‘stale crunch’ to eat

A centerpiece too big to fit in the back seat

And branches from a sort of pine-treeish-looking thing

Tortured with fake holly berries and red and green string

It’s nudge-push-shove , yes, I blush now just to tell it

People clinging to crushed ads of You-Want-It-We-Sell-It

Only to hear at the end of their wild-goose trek

…sorry, we’re sold out until next year; rain-check?

Now the weary get wearier, the greedy, greedier

While the spenders get spendier and the needy, needier

And tempers are quickened and nerves put on edge

Mother trips on the carpet, Dad backs into the hedge

And out on the streets voices are raised in anger

Because someone caught texting caused a fender-bender

And now everybody is worked up and riled

They pocket their phones ‘yes, it coulda been a child’

Meanwhile, mentally reaffirming while they’re still alive

That today was the last day they would text and drive

…then its back to the house but straight out the back door

Better stay clear of this yearly kitchen uproar

I, baffled beyond logical explanation

Decided to find out just ‘what in 'tarnation’

In a world of quick-stops, on line shops, self-check-outs

What is all this frenzied, hyper-rush about?

 ...and you could have heard a pin drop when this Canadian asked it

Jaws fell, so did apples from a dropped apple basket

Why, have you not heard, someone turned to say

You better hurry for tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day

© Janet Martin

written entirely for humor-value...well, almost.

I'm Canadian so the only rush we have here are those falling prey to Red and Black Friday-sale decoys dangling on every cyber-street corner;-))

and every store window.

Happy Day Before Thanksgiving Day, dear American Friends

Profound Pleasure (thank-you, Ancient Poets)

Rats!!! Why is it like this?! 

On not-planned to write-much days poems keep pummeling my brain...

Title inspired by those two words on this back cover...
I'm supposed to be cleaning, NOT reading;-)
but when words like 'profound pleasure' pop out one must surely explore...
actually, this book is no stranger to me:)
 It's one of my go-to's when I'm hungry for good poetry!

...the way you whisper through me, we of centuries apart

Where tick of clock mutes quick of pen beneath thought's breathless touch

Ah, I am no philosopher of life or love and such

 But panoramic-printed page can steal one's very heart

The way that you articulate the new in age-old script

Convinces me life's best things never change while most things do

How could you know, lifetimes ago, the throes poet's pass through

Unless these thing are not susceptible to Bygone's crypt

...and how could you, lifetimes ago, surmise a poem's span

Of words stirred in the dark of night that dared to face the day

Then bared to worlds you'd never meet on streets far, far away

Ah, this rouses profoundest pleasure in modern-day man

...to meet on common ground thy verses centuries-immersed

The power of the printed word exceeding wildest dreams

Because Hope snared through half-shut eyes from visionary streams

A few small drops of ink to quench a far-off poet's thirst 

Janet Martin

Cleaning Day

PAD Challenge day 22: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “(blank) Day;” replace the blank with a word or phrase; make the new phrase the title of your poem; and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: “Happy Day,” “Sunny Day,” “Thanksgiving Day,” and “Happy Birthday.”

Tis wise to take the time sometimes to clean out nooks and crooks

To chase the drowsing bunnies from do-dads and brick-a-brac

To leaf through closets, cupboards like the pages of old books

And wrest with cloth-broom-mop stayed dust from crevice-corner-crack

Tis wise sometimes to take the time to swallow our pride 

And tackle 'drawers' oh horrors, we keep hid from outside folk

Its strange, what human nature can ignore, excuse and hide

Until some unsuspecting 'oops, oh my!' gives it a poke

Then shake and scrub, rub-a-dub-dub, sweep out the 'shame on me'

To keep a house in order requires old-fashioned grit

But hard work will return the 'rooms' to what they ought to be

The sparkle worth the effort that it took to polish it

Janet Martin

Poem...

As tender as the hour when dusk fills the wooded hill

And friendly as the flower on a winter window sill

Bigger than a belfry of books and smaller than a sigh

Ah poem, you are like a laughing brook, a butterfly

…a girl of half-past three or baby wee, you steal the heart

And ease upon the mind’s eye sentimental works of art

Like seasons swept to simper in the solace of the soul

Poem, you vex, you tease and please with syllabic cajole

You scoff at time, you touch but not with finger-tips, soft pink

Passion in every form smolders in storms of static ink

And in life’s racket cold and hurried you draw us aside

Poem, the darling of the pen, you fill meek men with pride

The way you move through they who pause to glory in your springs

Makes monarchs of everyday ‘us’; turns beggars into kings

A soulmate to the drifter, ageless lover, how you touch

Poem, a kindred spirit in a world that talks too much

A mentor when desire torments eyes with pomp and show

You teach the mouth to murmur, feet to stop, or at least slow

Modest, first glance can never guess by your plain dress of ink

How poem, humble poem is pen’s Masterpiece, I think

© Janet Martin

Nameless Nymph

While we slept, She returned...lolling on leafless limbs

and strolling the frozen furrow

 

She sheds vesture lily-starred

Dons a dress of gilded gem

Crowning field and boulevard

With a dazzling diadem

She, while people slumbered, slipped

From summer’s care-freer clime

To tease treetops, doffed, white-tipped

With whispers of Father Time

She, without fanfare or fame

Fells earth’s final flower-shows

And nobody knows Her name

Where she comes from, where she goes

Dreamers stare where echoes chafe

Torn between what is and was

Where the wind is like a waif

Looking for lost leaf-applause

© Janet Martin

Dialogue at Daybreak

Darling, earth is kissed with morning; tell me, where shall we begin?

With the wars where love and worship test domains beneath the skin

Darling, calm amidst storm’s chaos is a hard thing to achieve

Yes, but only if we fail to fully trust Whom we believe

Darling, life would be a pity without love to conquer all

Yes, my dear, let’s stand together for alone we surely fall

  

Tell me darling, was it worth it, when the winter closes in?

Were the miles that lie behind us worth these atrophies of skin?

For, oh my love, there is no turning back to start again

But the earth is kissed with morning; tell me, where shall we begin?

Who knows when somewhere we passed the halfway mark from Here to there

Yes my dear, let’s live each day as if we have no time to spare

Darling, there is much at stake here in this wake and sleep facade

Yes, we should make the most of it before touch turns cold as sod

Before God, who knows the number of our days when we are born

Snuffs the flame that lights the gamut of time’s tolling morn to morn

Darling, oh my darling, tell me when we meet that place we part

Will you always keep a candle burning for me in your heart?

© Janet Martin

 The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day has drawn near. So let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 

Rom.13:11-12

Lessons Learned and Re-learned

For today’s prompt, day 20, write a “what I learned” poem.

The Past no one can reach,

But oh, it reaches far

 To teach us just how long the arms

Of short-lived actions are

***

The future never looks

Like we pictured, when past

It's landscape is the shape of choices

Oft made far too fast

***

Sometimes life-circumstance

Forces fresh point of views

And though circumstance
 Seems out of our hands

Response, we always choose

***

When I think less of 'me'

And more of 'we' and 'us'

I find I have the eyes to see

Beyond my fretting fuss

***

The longer that I live

The shorter seasons seem

So I have learned to treat each day

With reverent esteem

***

The longer that I live

The less it seems I know

The less I know the more I need

God's grace, whereby I go 

***

The School-master of life is wise

And kind to we, sight-blind

If we forget much that we learn

We should keep this in mind

Though His lessons to mortal dust

May not always seem such

It is so we may learn to trust

He who loves us so much

***

To be wise in one's selfish eyes

Blinds us to evil's way

To fear God is to shun the lies

That else would lead astray 

***

Not on platforms of victory

But crawling in the dirt

Is where I learn true sympathy

For a brother's hurt

***

When crowds have fled and death lies red

Upon earth's grave-ward lea

Still there is One, when life is done

That will abide with me

***

Ah, dread would fill my head with fear

And fear would be a noose

Without God's promises, my dear

To cut this captive loose

***

How pray tell, can we find comfort

And peace on this earth, war-torn

From the Word that never alters

Since the day the world was born

***

Now a few practical discoveries

I have learned that writing poems

Does not get the laundry hung

Does not dust, sweep, scrub the kitchen

But oh, it keeps the spirit young

***

I have learned there is no fountain

Filled with youth's euphoric flit

But the potion in a poem

Is the next best thing to it 

***

He who looks with humble honor

No matter what he may see

Finds pure beauty in the common

Through the eyes of poetry

***

Not the cold gold of a dollar

Not the pomp-and-show grandstand

Success lies in every scholar

That makes love their Chief Command

Janet Martin

 above pages from book pictured below