How To Be Happy

tie your poems with spider silk

to the shoulders of yellow tulips

and wait for your socks to sing.

say your favorite word ten times

fast while spinning on a piano stool

that sailed on a tall ship from rome.

dance on stained-glass sidewalks

where painters are selling secrets

vangoghed with ribbons of rain.

sleep between sheets of music

on a pillow of mountain forest

under blankets of gypsy moon.

wake to the sound of silence

and pour it on the good things

already dangling around you.

a poem for dVerse Poetry Open Link Tuesday, week 38.

whoooooohoooooooooooooooooooo.

Angel’s the parakeet with the “eyelashes” and darker blue throat.

Timmy’s the singer.

Well, they both sing, but he usually jumps up to the microphone first and loudest.

xoxoxoxoxoxoox

once when i wrote a poem about sailboats

it went flying out the attic window

with a big hunk of cheddar cheese.

my next mizzenmast ode danced

off in the night with artistic owls.

after more sailing poems vanished

i turned my pen to pastry poetics.

alas, my stanzas about tofu cake

bought one-way tickets for italy

and my chocolate eclair sonnets

ran off to join the russian ballet.

i let a year pass, then managed a

haiku about a man who’s dog won

the lottery, but that one ended up

laundry mush in my jeans’ pocket.

18 months later when i chanced a

poem about cats it fell off the roof.

i then gave up writing poetry for

81 years until attempting this one.

so far so good, the words still here

on the page, sailboats photo intact.

might even be able to slip in a few

words about how the skinny sailors

go richocheting off the rigging and

flying into the great deep and such

before this poem is onto my tricks

and suddenly …

Posted for dVerse’s Open Link Tuedsay.

lovely sailing ships photo downloaded from

http://www.4wallpapers.com

xoxo

and while we’re on the subject of hammocks

let’s remember
the creaking ones
all slats and wire

slung low under
grandmothers’ elms
near lily patches

where the owls
were weaving hats
from lilac leaves.

let’s remember
the summer nights
we hid in bushes,

boys against
girls, and vice
versa, kids

running wild
in the music
of yesterday

on missions
of growing up
and away to

planets we
still can’t believe
we’ve landed on

— offices and
supermarkets
and lines of

traffic that seem
to go on and on and on
(like this sentence)

🙂

until we remember…

every moment is
soaked with the scent
of daring possibility

and watercolored by
brush strokes from lilies
that laugh on the moon.

a poem for dVerse Poetry, Open Link Tuesday, whooohoooo.

lily patch photo credit to igardena.blogspot.com

At The Museum

we sat on benches
facing a painting much
smaller than imagined.

how could so much
longing and fame be
packed into just one
18″ x 24″ rectangle?

we then wondered
why america had
not gone metric.

we also wondered
who put the ram
in the ram-a-lam-
a-ding-dong, but
soon changed the
subject to proust.

we later found a
cafe and ate cake,
the crumbs falling
from your fork onto
the stolen artwork
in your underwear.

it was a great day.

Folks, do NOT ask me how my minds wanders to words like the above! I have NO IDEA either!!

🙂

🙂

🙂

Happy St. Pat’s!!

I’ll put the Spaghetti Bench photo credits in later.

Kelly’s turn on this laptop now. We are down to 1, and sharing.

But that’s okay, I’ve got songs to practice on guitar now anyway.

xoxo

Okay, the benches are wood by sculptor Pablo Reinoso.

The Return Of My Coffee Rooster

my coffee rooster flew back in through the

dog door this morning with muffins for all,

his tales from far beyond the pastried portal

leaving me, as usual, with maps in my eyes.

he’d been to sea with van gogh’s blue guitar

and georgia o’ keefe’s thanksgiving ukulele,

sailing on tall ships made from fine fiddles

and scrapbooks of far-off singing at night.

he’d yodeled in the alps with gandhi’s beagle

and gambled in paris with shakespeare’s cat.

he’d crept up einstein’s rose trellis to peek

at him and churchill sitting knitting socks.

told me his favorite part was arm-wrestling

nostradamus the october night they sat up

baking and eating starlit pies and laughing

until sunrise sang them both off to dreams

of moonkissed maidens they hope to one day

meet and marry on martha’s vineyard or mars.

Just a little poem for dVerse Poets Open Link Tuesday, which goes live weekly at 2:00 Texas Time.

from my coffee rooster and me.

xoxo