Tag Archives: creativity

As You Speak, So Shall You Be

(Poem 305 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/sqqZdi

There once was a girl
who was very mean;
she pushed her brother
and refused to clean.

She did not feed the cat
and yelled at her dad;
she hit her mother
and broke things when mad.

One day she yelled
at a little old lady
who was sitting alone
in a spot that was shady.

The girl demanded
the woman give up the spot
because the sun was up
and she was very hot.

So the little old lady
gave up her prime seat,
but rather than thank her
or say something sweet,

the little girl screamed,
“You’re ugly and old!”
And the woman turned ‘round
with a look that was cold.

Her face transformed
to a monstrous sight,
and the mean little girl
was filled with fright.

“Your very own words,”
the scary witch said,
“now apply to you
until the day you are dead.”

The little girl gasped
and ran to her room
where she looked in a mirror
and was filled with doom.

No longer young looking,
her skin was lined;
she could hardly see,
as if she was going blind.

Her bones hurt,
and her joints ached;
her hair was white
and her hands quaked.

She climbed into bed
and fell into mourning.
For all naughty children,
let this be a warning.

@Home Studio – 305th poem of the year

Runner ups for the Little Old Girl photos to accompany my poem:

Seeing Flower

(Poem 293 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/hZ2PSe

One of my favorite
exotic plants
is the Seeing Flower.
I’ve never been able
to grow them at home
but have found
several in the wild.
I absolutely love
how they track
your movements
and appear to make
eye contact.
I always wonder
what they are thinking.
I know it’s silly,
anthropomorphizing
a flower, but
I can’t help it.
They say eyes
are the window
to the soul.
What if plants
have souls?

@Home Studio – 293rd poem of the year

Runner ups for the Eye Flower photos to accompany my poem:

Cave of Fears

(Poem 292 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/sldLEB

There is a cave
in the land of lost time
where forgotten dreams die.

If one ventures near
the mouth of the cave
a sense of apathy
and despair descends.
If someone musters
the courage to enter,
they’ll be greeted by a cold
chill and a sense
that someone is watching
from the darkest recesses.

Are those outlines of skulls
tucked along the edges
of the cave floor?
And what are the veins
of liquid seeping
from cracks in the walls?
The mind will see the worst
when fear begins to creep
deep into the suffering soul,
for no one is drawn
into the cave unless
they are overcome by pain.

Though time does not exist
inside the cavernous vault,
it can feel like decades
spent wandering through
corridors of damp labyrinthian
passageways and tunnels.
Each bend and fissure
holds new anticipation
of terror, certain death
by sinkhole, falling
into an abyss, never
to be found.
Cries of dread echo
from the underworld,
but nothing materializes.
In the eerie gloom,
hope is obscured,
a claustrophobic panic
envelopes the heart
of even the most intrepid.

And then one day,
after struggling through
a crawlway, the visitor
is faced with a sump.
The only way out is through,
but submerging the self
requires a strength of will
nearly impossible to imagine.
If the lost one dissolves
their doubt and dives,
they will emerge
into a glorious chamber,
a sanctuary of sparkling
stalactites and stalagmites,
and brilliant light
streaming in from an opening.

The confused explorer
begins the remembering
of the world they forgot
and climbs the limestone
ledges until surfacing,
stunned and blinking
at the blinding sky.

Unsure how or when,
they realize that all fear
dissipated somewhere
along the way, or perhaps
it was collected by the cave.

@Home Studio – 292nd poem of the year

Bowl Dome Theater Target

(Poem 290 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/jNdjzq

She shaped this beautiful
dish with her own two hands
out of white clay spun on a pottery
wheel and brushed with porcelain
paint before firing to perfection.

He built this dome in an ancient
mosque with his own two hands
out of bricks, wood, and stucco,
so everyone could hear the Imam’s
voice resonating and to symbolize
heaven arching high above the faithful.

She designed this sunken
amphitheater with her own two hands
out of stone, brick, limestone, and marble
and directed the labor of 30,000
people for over a decade for its completion.

He created this axe-throwing
target with his own two hands
using woodworking tools, wood glue,
live edge Maple, Redwood, and Cedar,
and may never throw anything at its surface
because it turned out too beautiful to destroy.

@Home Studio – 290th poem of the year

Book Fairies

(Poem 280 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/rqq9tW

My book fairies
come out at night
as all book fairies do,
but mine are pesky
little things
nuisances, that’s who.

They steal my things
like coins and rings
and put them who knows where.
They flit around
upsetting the dogs
and giving the cats a scare.

I know the night
is their time to roam
and I shouldn’t begrudge their fun,
but we’re trying to sleep.
We have work tomorrow,
and their revelry’s just begun.

Once in a while
they’ll do something nice
like leave a breakfast for me,
but even then,
they use books as plates
and put fish scales in my tea.

I wish them well,
health and long life
and all those other things,
but I need them to go
inhabit someone else’s shelves
with their constantly flapping wings.

@Home Studio – 280th poem of the year

Runner ups for the Fairies photos to accompany my poem:

Olive Green Yarn

(Poem 273 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

(Hair stick art display)

I needed a way
to display
my hair sticks
decoratively,
so I measured
and sketched
a design Grandad
could build
with his hands
and his tools
and his can-do
attitude that turns
ideas into art,
like a barn
or a staircase,
a balance beam
or doll furniture,
or a simple
wooden frame
with olive green yarn
stretched taut
between raised metal tacks
and a shiny gold hook
holding fast at the top
to hang my idea
for all the world to see.

@Home Studio – 273rd poem of the year

Plasma Blobs

(Poem 269 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/OvDj2h

Plasma is rare
on earth,
though found
in abundance
everywhere else
in space.
And now scientists
are telling us
that these blobs
that are not solid,
liquid, or gas,
but another state:
communicate,
behave predatorially,
congregate,
interact with satellites,
get the zoomies,
race excitedly
toward thunderstorms,
form crystals—
corkscrew shaped
like DNA,
and may be inorganic
non-biological life
or pre-life,
and we’re supposed
to go on sipping our tea
and paying our bills.

@Home Studio – 269th poem of the year

Runner ups for the Plasma photos to accompany my poem:

Whales in the Sky

(Poem 252 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/YfTkjY

Last night I saw a giant humpback
whale swimming in the sky, diving
deep through the air water to the
ocean floor land where I stood in
awe of its graceful power that both
terrified me and kept me rooted in
place admiring its beauty and grace.

@Home Studio – 252nd poem of the year

Runner ups for the Whales in the Sky photos to accompany my poem:

COVID’s curse

(Poem 246 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/zxz2Lt

COVID’s curse is that it lingers,
hangs menacingly in the air, and
recapitulates its previous threats
with symptomatic diminishment.
Not as serious, less deadly, return
to work after only five days now,
means everyone shares the virus
and those concerned are viewed
as disproportionately cautious.
Do they remember the terror so
recently fresh to those whose
cats lost their owners and children
lost their grandmothers and we
lamented the death counts daily?
This time when my husband got
sick and I could not touch him
for a week, I still checked to make
sure he was breathing and sheltered
in place and social distanced,
though no one uses that language
these days anymore…so 2020 of me.
Perhaps it is the lack of the sense
of smell that was stolen from me
or the worsened sense of vision
that was purloined or the lessened
oxygenation ability that was pilfered
or possibly the energy I once had
to function all day that was looted
after my fourth run-in with the
offender who is nothing more than
an unwelcome, tiresome loiterer.

@Home Studio – 246th poem of the year

Runner ups for the COVID photos to accompany my poem:

4am

(Poem 222 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

 AI Generated image I prompted on Gencraft.com https://gencraft.ai/p/nh6lZj

What is it about 4am
that makes magic drip
onto the page like wax?
The air feels different
when the dogs and sun
still sleep; the dew is
yet to blanket itself
across morning’s back.
There in the stillness of
the pre-dawn quiet,
thoughts have latitude,
and words permit them-
selves both whimsy and
wonder without too much
introspection or gravity.  
It is refreshing to be
acquainted with the
other side of night that
does not lay souls down
for fear they must be kept
but celebrates once again
the uprising of the spirit.

@Home Studio – 222nd poem of the year