Category: Musings

Kant, Kermit, and I

I see you, Kant, you pietist old goat,

thinking to save my faith apart from reason,

old toad, when a frog could have told you

like Kermit did, that phenomena be damned

it’s the noumena that we long for

not what our five senses perceive

but what we’re born knowing

that rainbows begin here but end there

that there are monsters under beds

and angels glowing near us

that what we can’t see is more powerful

than what we do see

that God is good and we’re not

so there’s an infinite gulf between us

only God himself could bridge

and, Kermit, that’s why there’s so many

songs about rainbows.

With Utmost Gravity

A word prompt to get your creativity flowing this weekend. How you use the prompt is up to you. Write a piece of flash fiction, a poem, a chapter for your novel…anything you like. Or take the challenge below – there are no prizes – it’s not a competition but rather a fun writing exercise. If you want to share what you come up with, please leave a link to it in the comments at Sammi’s #WWP.

With Utmost Gravity

It’s a conundrum

A knotty problem

I wrinkle my brow

Wink at the crow

Say a “Hail Mary”

And still it’s with me

The confounding notion

That this earth in motion

Might become idle

Like a spent dreidel

Then weightless I’ll wander

Out . . . yonder.

Not a Mirror

Photo by Drigo Diniz from Pexels

This is not a mirror
Ground silica back-silvered
A labyrinth to unravel your soul
But splintered fragmentation
Of all your expectations
A story to re-glue and emboss.

This is not a mirror
Portal to another world
Left-handed universe
Turnabouts of phantoms
A touch on your shoulder
That welt on your cheek.

This is not a mirror
It is an owl’s feather
A rat’s tail, a torn page
Blood of jilted lover
The sigh of an empress
Dethroned by endless war.

This is not a mirror, a mirror, a mirror.

For Dverse, Mish's Poetics: Object Poems "This is not ..."
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A Whale of a Dream

Lisa of Tao Talk asks: In the shadows, did you ever secretly wish you were someone else, either as a child or an adult? My answer? I can’t say that I have but like so many children, I’ve often wondered what it was like to be the big creatures of the earth, including the now extinct dinosaurs. Many of them seem like gentle giants, elephants for example. Others strike terrors, like lions and tigers and bears, oh my! But it’s the fantasy creatures that overtake a child’s imagination, like unicorns and griffins and flying horses and magical birds, like the phoenix. Underwater, it’s the music of the whales which seem to have dominion over most of the vast recesses of the world. They live in a universe of their own, unfettered and majestic.

Orca, 2020 by Angela Gram (b. 1985)

There’s an ocean of energy in swelling tides
dancing in atoms and planets and stars
but most of it’s not in the surface above
it rides in the universe of the heart’s designs
wanting the freedom of the sea’s vast lands
where Atlantis lies buried and canyons unfold
and gravity means little to eyes that glow.

Something is missing in the world above,
something that my mind’s eye sinks below
where dreams turn to dust and songs to wails
and gates are just openings to walls within walls.
So give me the sea and the skin of a whale
and tumble me down to the music below.

Cornered in Sam’s Club

Under the glare of warehouse light
steel-eyed commerce crisscrossing
vaulted space above while below
we, in well-trammeled lanes, forage
with brandished carts loaded,
swallow claustrophobic desire
stretch Ali Baba eyes to needful things
as La-Z-Boys race past
iWant-slick bling-gadgetry —
only to be stared down by a winged unicorn:
unflurried pinkness, nestled wonder
in small chubby arms.

Sammi's Weekend writing Prompt #180

A Meteor’s a’Comin’

Canoop! the sound of your loop-tee-do
Enough! the slough of your despondency
Wooditch! the whinge of your panicky
The meteor’s coming ‘ere election day!

Cannip the conniption fit, buddit the funk
Swallow the glut of slubbish bilocracy
Gnash, says the prophet Neal deGrasse
Tyson, we’ll die in a blaze ‘ere election eve!

O Meteor of space! O Deliverer of grace!
You’ll spare us, ‘ere you dare us, with crater
Dustiferous, injurious, deleterious bringer
Of sweltering doom ‘ere we galood election gloom!

Come the third of November, we’ll never remember
Who’s Harris, Who’s Donald, What’s Joe Biden hidin’?
We won’t know a thing when the meteor’s oncomin’
O’er helter-election-welter, combustin’ election eve!

For Peter Frankis's NTB "Let your words ring out" at dVerse. 
Check out Mr. Linky for more poems with "with a focus on sounds"

Color Me Zany

Weekend Writing Prompt #176
Crayola Experience in Easton, PA

Y’all know there’s red, white, blue
Violet, purple and cerulean too
Jazzberry jam, purple mountains’ majesty
Canary, cornflower and fuzzy wuzzy
But strike me dumb if ever you see
A spectrum as mind-blowing as ZANY
Not even a Crayola box can contain
The uncanniness like an outrageous grin
For when you happen to chance upon it
Everything’s a subject for merry wit!

Sky-verse To You

I’m skating it, free-wheeling it
Somersaulted skyward by the infinite jest of it
That I could be winging it, barrel-rolling
Like Icarus to the very summit of it
Unburned by it, cascading liberating fall of it
Caught in it, unbound through it, Your love.

For dVerse's Quadrille #112: The Sky’s the Limit (in 44 words)
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Hey, Howsabout a Hug?

Blogging Insights:

Dr. Tanya asks: Do you think that comments add value to a blog post? If so, how?

My opinion on this given in a nutshell?

Take it from me in this silly doggerel:

It’s been six feet this and six feet that

Far too long and there’s no end in sight

But a blog’s been the same for a’ this & a’ that

No need to distance because of a blight;

Don’t shrug, give a hug, leave a comment below

Just to let the blogger know he’s a good fellow. 😉

To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!

Proverbs 15: 23