…Snippets:


Brilliance slips away
on particulate matter.
You’re not the banker
so let the cards scatter.

The painter allows expects
colors to bleed.
Rare, carbon-trace-papers
seldom at need.

Yet you cling today
on a slippery ladder.
You’re beaten, and blanker,
and profoundly sadder

Acknowledge decay
and reality clatter
The consequence anchor
and plain, simple chatter


Help!
Any and all thoughts are helpful. The last two lines are particularly dreadful and my editing capabilities here have taken a whacky turn.
Thanks. 


as your thoughts tatter…
while your conscience does smatter
as your conscience does scatter…. [/i]





The last two lines wandered off with the wine.

Write or share one poem a week in December. That's four poems in any form you like. Do it or you're a Grinchy Scrooge before the ghosts visit.

Your poems can be about Christmas, Kwanza, Hanika, Winter, gifts given or gotten, childhood memories of the Holidays and what they mean to you.

C'mon, are we writers or witherers? We'll figure out the rest on January 5th. Deal?

Share your poems here or PM me if you want me to post for you, incognito.

As the title itself indicates, let's see and learn from some of the worst sentences you've ever had the misfortune or great fortune to experience.

Some bad sentences are train wrecks and some can be entertaining - it all depends on how you look at it.

You can make up your own sentence or add a sentence you read somewhere else. Please, if you use someone else's sentence, be sure to give credit where credit is due.


Let's see where this goes, if anywhere. 

I'll start with...

There have been about seven boxes stacked against a wall in the back yard that I have procrastinated going through since we more or less settled in here because I know these boxes are filled with ruined keepsakes, knick-knacks books, RC vehicles, and kid's toys that need to be sorted, donated, or tossed out. It's a dusty job that I spent weeks doing when we moved in May and June. It was depressing. I haven't been motivated to go through any more boxes since we returned from vacation in August because it has been miserably hot and I'm not willing to have a heat stroke in the name of purging and I sure as heck am not bringing the boxes into the house to go through.

On the few days it’s been cool enough to work outside, someone has been home. When I do that kind of work, no one can be home because I don’t want to be disturbed, answer questions, or be chided. I want to do it and get it done without having to explain myself.

Yesterday we got rain. Rain is a great motivator. One, it's not overbearingly hot outside and two, if I don't get to the boxes before the rain does then everything is for sure ruined. One of the boxes I went through was the size of a washing machine, so I spent a good deal of time stooped over. I managed to sort five boxes before a downpour, so I made room in the garage for the remaining two boxes to fit into the three isles of boxes in the garage.

Of the two remaining boxes, one was too heavy for me to move alone but there was no one to help me so I pulled out my bionic woman muscles and moved the box before it was soaked. With reaching and bending and moving the heavy box, I managed to injure my back, like an idiot. I've been sitting on my arse all day and hobbling around like Quasimodo when I do get up to walk.

I found one large box full of magazines, paperwork, notebooks, workbooks, stationery and a box of cards of condolences and a folder with notes and the receipts from my mother-in-law's funeral in 2008. All ruined with spots of mold - but why did I even hang on to that stuff in the first place? I know we bought, and I planned to send,” Thank you” cards but I never got around to it.

On a good note, I found unopened boxes of new, air-tight sealed Christmas cards and notepaper that I can send out this year. I also found our long-lost advent tree that's been missing since the move in 2014 from the house we lived in for 27 years. The box that contained it was thrashed so I was sure the contents were ruined beyond salvage but I was pleasantly surprised to find the music box, the tree that sits on it and the 25 tiny ornaments in the music box drawers are all intact. I need to clean the tree and wipe everything down to make sure there are no mold spores, but it was a happy find. I bought the tree when I sold Avon about 28 years ago.

I pulled it out for our first son one month before his first birthday on December 23 and we systematically went through a box a day from December 1st through until the 25th. He learned the words soldier, trumpet, snowman, snow woman, harp, etc. He already knew the words drum, train, wagon, angel, heart, etc...  He also learned to count from 1 - 25 and to recognize the numbers. He looked forward to it every year thereafter. Then right before he turned six, he had to share it with his one and a half-year-old baby little brother. Then it became a battle of who got to go first and put the angel on the treetop. Since the boys were born in odd and even years, that’s how it went. The child born it the odd year got the odd years, the child born in the even got to go first and grace the treetop with the angel on the even years.


It was a great teaching tool and the kids delighted in it. It seems like a silly family tradition now but if I’m ever blessed with grandchildren, I’d like to continue the tradition. Anyway, I’m putting it up on December 1st.

These aren't my videos but these give you an idea.
With a few decorations and the lights (round purple gift with a red bow) plugged in.

Before decorations playing, We Wish You a Merry Christmas on the music box.

Happy Holidays to my friends here and at MWC. May the gifts you find and the gifts you receive light up your lives.

~Deb

11/14/19

On his sixteenth birthday, a "quiet boy" pulled a gun from his backpack before classes began this morning and fired five bullets into a quad filled with high school students, then put the .45 caliber to his head and fired the last shot.  A 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy died as a result of the shooting. Three victims remain hospitalized, including a 14-year-old boy and two girls, ages 15 and 14, who are not critical. In the last report I heard, the shooter was listed in grave condition.

The shooter's name is, Nathaniel Berhow's. Nathan's father, liked to hunt and owned several guns was arrested for spousal abuse in 2015 - but not charged, divorced in 2016, then died of a heart attack in 2017. Authorities have not found the gun's owner.
 
Saugus High School in Santa Clarita is six blocks from where I lived with my aunt and uncle after they moved from Fillmore and where my cousin, Sis graduated from high school.

This shooting was less than 35 miles from home.
Last year's Borderline Bar shooting, less than 25 miles from home and 11 miles from our son's college campus.

A sad day, it's now cliche' to say, "When will all of the killing end?"

Hopefully a little motivation for some new material for each of us but please feel free to add your archived poems.

Initially, I intended to selfishly post my own old poem after stumbling upon it at MWC but came up with this idea as an afterthought and after reading Citabria's (remember him?) suggestion that we have such a thread. Finally, after 12 years, your idea is brought to light, Mark. Let's hope it works. Consider ourselves challenged.

Let's do this thing!

Blah, blah, blah, what I wrote before.>>>>

Resurrecting an old poem in honor of Veteran's Day. This is one of my first poems. It's not very good but I haven't written a verse about Veterans since. I need to work on one.

Ode to War

My Grandfather went off to war
fighting Japanese who'd bombed our shore.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki paid the price-we dropped the bomb.
Grandparents, mothers, and children burned and gone.
The cost too high? Yes, to be sure.
They knew what they were fighting for.

The world as one had gone to war.
Families murdered, burned, the horror.
When it was over Hitler was dead
no price too much upon his head.
Far across the distant shore
I know what they were fighting for.

My Uncle Bruce went off to war
navigating spy planes o’er the shore.
The Chaplin said,  "Your son is dead."
Granny sadly hung her head.
My uncle went away to war.
Don't know what he was fighting for.

My Daddy went away to war
scouting runways by the jungle floor.
He came home but had lost his smile.
I've looked for it all the while.
My Daddy went away to war.
Don't know what he was fighting for.

Our soldiers going off to war
mothers, fathers, sons and more.
On desert sands, dirt in their eyes
for oil, my God please hear their cries.
They’re brave and strong right to the core
Not sure, what are they fighting for?

My friend’s son returned from war
he knew just what he would endure.
They unloaded dead soldiers off the planes
a cold, wooden box with his remains
A mother’s heart broken, on her knees, fell to the floor
“My God, what are we fighting for?”



~Deborah Jean
        11/11/07

2019, September 25th

My Granny, Betty (Davis) Leach, my mom's mom, was born 100 years ago today. She died in 1991, four months before Darren and I were married.

She was sharp as a tack and very intelligent. She was a pilot in college and told me once that when she was young, her dream was to be an astrophysicist.

Sadly, a case of appendicitis caused her to miss her last three months of college, so she was unable to graduate, then the war broke out. She married and had five kids. My mom was the eldest. My mom's brother, Bruce Leach was killed in a Navy P3 Orion that crashed off the coast of Okinawa on April 1968. My mom’s sisters, my Aunt Nonnie, Aunt Mary, and my Uncle Bill remained close but no one in the family fully recovered from that tragedy and she carried the devastation of that loss with her every day of her life. We all did, but I know they all felt it more profoundly than I.

I remember being a little kid and going down to San Diego for my Uncle Bruce’s graduation from Naval training. We camped in a motorhome at the beach. She and I were sitting around the fire one night and I pointed the flashlight up at the sky. She told me that light goes on forever until it hits something. To me, this was fascinating, and I had to test it out. That night she pointed out the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, showed me other constellations and told me why they were named and what that meant, and my love of the stars, the moon, and the night sky was officially born.

When the astronauts landed on the moon, she called me in Texas and told my mom to make sure I could watch it on TV. She and I talked about it and how brave the astronauts were. She said she would have loved to go to the moon. She saved the newspaper with the headlines of the Moon Landing for me and gave it to me when I was 21 years old. I still have it.

I always marveled at her ability to sit down with a cup of coffee early in the morning and do the crossword puzzle every single day, and she usually finished it. My mom sent her crossword puzzle toilet paper once as a gag gift and Granny joked she was tempted to get her pencil out and go to work on it.

She was the biggest cheerleader I ever had in my life. She called me, Honey Girl and told me I could be anything I wanted to be. I went to live with her, my Grandpa, and my Uncle Bill when I was 11-years old. She loved to laugh and wasn’t afraid of anything that I know of.

Her life was marred with tragedy and sadness, but she was a sweet, kind, loving, and generous woman. She shared a lot of things about growing up in Raton NM, the mesas, the railroad, the Golden Spike, and how she loved Colorado, especially Ouray. I miss her and I appreciate the gifts of love in everything she did for me, for giving me courage, and for pointing my eyes toward the stars.


I often think about how her life would have been different and how such marvelous opportunities could be snatched away to change one’s path so dramatically. Had her life not taken the turns it did, I would not be here. I’m grateful to be her granddaughter.


This is a work in progress from NaPoWriMo 2019.


Embers

Finished constructing another meal,
she hands her husband a corrugated lunch pail
and thermos as he returns dutifully to work.
With a goodbye kiss,
the opened door announces today's weather.
Morning chores accomplished; she sits for intermission.

Window filtered rays of sunrise cast a halo
on her worn-out, wiry hair.
She rests her elbow on the sinewy woodgrain
of the old oak table oozing memories,
revealing stains, and underneath,
forgotten bubblegum
from three generations of family sprouting into the next.

Auburn highlights whisper of her youth.
The leathered cracks that score her lip-line
tell of bittersweet realities,
wind, and the sorrow she’s weathered
in the high desert
with mosaic Joshua Trees
that wave at you as tumbleweeds roll by.

Between rising ribbons in a spectral of steam,
she peers over her glasses and white, porcelain coffee cup,
angles her head sidelong and shakes a cancer-stick
loose from the pack.
She picks up her Bic and spins
a flame with the snap of a finger.

Takes one, lengthy drag from her long Virginia Slim,
sets it in the ashtray
among crinkled, lipstick-stained cigarette butts
to be forgotten.
She seizes the newspaper to dissect,
folds the page that remains to her proclivity.

She turns to scan a cluttered counter for a #2 pencil.
Her tool of choice retrieved,
she flicks its eraser beads
into the bed of cigarette butts
and checks to ensure the graphite
is sharpened to a fine point.

Concentration fierce on her brow
until that a-ha moment
is meticulously scribbled
onto her crossword puzzle
while her cigarette lingers,
smoldering relentlessly
into a train of ashes
held together and bent
as if sculpted in Play-dough.

Reminders of the war, misplaced possibilities,
and unknown consequences
no longer haze her consciousness,
not now, anyway.
Peeking over the rim of her glasses,
the champion looks up, smiles,
and cheerfully says, “Good morning, Honey Girl.”

Smoke still climbing from the heavy, leaded glass ashtray
the embers advance
while the nicotine cloud lingers tenaciously.
Eventually, the fire gives up and succumbs,
as did she.
Her blaze of aspirations not designed
to be wasted as they were.

~Deb

I'm curious to see how many people unfriend me on Facebook and how many of my friends respond. I know, it sounds sort of, well, it makes me sound like a lot of things, not necessarily good but not that bad either. I will certainly catch lip about it. It will be an interesting ride. I know BWF is not a political forum but I'm looking at this as something of an experiment and wanted to share it with anyone who is interested.

Here's my proposal.

"I am issuing a challenge to every single intelligent person I know.

I've watched interviews and town hall meetings with most of the remaining Presidential possibilities for 2020. Clearly, Trump does not give a darn about you and me or the environment. We had the hottest July in human history this year. If you don't believe this is a human-caused phenomenon, you didn't pay attention in school. Trump has to go. He's unstable and hot-headed and basically an egomaniac. There are no Republicans willing to run against him.

*Biden, Warren, Sanders, Harris, Booker, all of them sing more or less the same mantra. However, Yang is pitching a completely different INTELLIGENT campaign. I'm loving this guy. 

I like to think most of my friends are intelligent so I challenge each and every one of my intelligent friends to listen, you don't have to watch, just listen to this New Hampshire Town Hall Meeting from beginning to the end BEFORE you make up your mind about who to chose for 2020. Isn't your decision, your future, and the future of your children worth at least 50 minutes of your time?

If you accept this challenge, leave a message or like this post and if you really like it, share it.

This is me, Debbie, doing this on my own free will, not a spam post. Will you accept my challenge?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7DP_Q8eDt4&frags=wn&ab_channel=FOX10Phoenix
"
That's it. Now, who is the egomaniac? Ha!

~Deb