Month: February 2016

you can not redo

Read this one aloud! I loved this poem by Tony Single at unbolt.wordpress.com.

Tony Single's avatarunbolt me

“do you know how to play in the way?”
an old man shares a secret you now wish to unknow
“don’t redo anything, just accept what was,” he says
“and when you climb those windblown outside ladders
you must try to accept what is”

a foot before the next fool rung
two souls in a twirl like smoke from a kiln
(though one of you is dead)
still afraid of the naked umbilicus
seething over seas of regretfulness
sure, there’s forgetfulness and clinging above
and balking and shaking and more clinging for love
but there’s also the inexorable release
and beholden fall

those sarsen skewered swollen waters are
open to the lives pitched their way
the kerplunken, the sunken, the drunken out gills
and old afore the siren’s end call
no sound, so drowned, no longer found in the way

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2016

View original post

Photo of You

there you are
the mythical man;
although, your photo is dated two years past.

it must be
genetic wisdom
our lofty foreheads, near mirror imaged
faces.

ideas of you
ephemeral then
almost mythical in scope to the child I
was.

always wedged
in a crevasse deep
somewhere outside my heart, yet within
me.

no hero;
you never answered.
i fantasized your presence; you never
came.

you can’t know
how often i’ve wondered
would you have loved me if you’d stuck
around?

  
peace, people.

New Hampshire

As I watch the unending news coverage of the primary in New Hampshire it occurred to me that there was probably a better side to the state. So I give you a few good reasons to talk about New Hampshire that are totally non-political.

Aren’t these gorgeous? All photos were found on Pinterest. 

 

Flume Cascade, Franconia Notch State Park

Portsmouth, NH

 
Mad River in the White Mountains

 
Berlin, NH

 
Sabbaday Falls, White Mountains
  
 
 

Connect Four

The Stat Connection

Go to your Stats page and check your top 3-5 posts. Why do you think they’ve been successful? Find the connection between them, and write about it.

After fooling around with my stats page by going to a place that I didn’t know existed, I discovered that I do have access to stats that are more than a week old. I’m so pitifully unsavvy about accessing such things. Poor, poor me.

But to find my top-viewed and best liked posts I didn’t have to go back very far at all. All of these were published in 2016: 

Without You http://wp.me/p4O8fw-1Gz

A Pauper’s Death http://wp.me/p4O8fw-1Et

Bathtub Follies http://wp.me/p4O8fw-1F1

Piano Player in a Whorehouse http://wp.me/p4O8fw-1Cs

I hope I’m learning to connect with readers more, and certainly I’ve learned how to interact with other bloggers in more productive ways.

Try as I might, though, I cannot find any connection between these four posts, other than that they were all written by me.

Without You and Bathtub Follies are both slice-of-my-life stories and have a bit of humor to them, but A Pauper’s Death is a rather mournful poem, and Piano Player in a Whorehouse is a bit of futuristic fiction set in a post-Trump presidency America.

If I knew what made them succesful I’d copy down that formula and sell it; although, to be honest they weren’t THAT succesful. One of these days, though, as God is my witness, I’ll publish a piece that gets more than a mere 55 hits. And then, I’m going to celebrate with a donut.

  
Count on it.

Peace, people!

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/the-stat-connection/”>The Stat Connection</a>

Note to Millennials: Saying Doesn’t Make It So

Jan Wilberg says exactly what I’ve been feeling, and what I know in my heart to be true. Read more at redswrap.wordpress.com.

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

I get why young Progressives are supporting Bernie Sanders. I’d be disappointed in them if they didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I completely support Hillary Clinton. I list my reasons in an essay published in July. My opinion hasn’t changed; it’s just become firmer: She’s tough, smart and tested. Plus it’s time.

But Bernie Sanders is saying the things that I love. Universal health care, free college, increase taxes on the 1%, these are all things near and dear to my heart.

But here’s the deal. These things are only amazing because no one has said them for a very long time. No one who is young right now knows that political life in America used to be full of big, ambitious, outrageous talk. When the wonderful Beyonce did her Formation yesterday at the Super Bowl with the Black Panther theme, well, guess what, there were once ACTUAL Black…

View original post 331 more words

Tortured

reclined on
a bed of nails
sharpened spikes
evenly distributed,
i entrust the safety
of my body’s unmarked skin
to the holy force of physics
and still, in the quietude
of darkest, velvet night
the troubled mind can
find no peace tucked
beneath a concrete
blanket of equal
and opposite
forces.

http://youtu.be/hG7lGZqWFpM

Love the Name You’re With

Written in response to the Daily Post’s Daily Prompt:

Say Your Name

Write about your first name: Are you named after someone or something? Are there any stories or associations attached to it? If you had the choice, would you rename yourself?

The story of my first name, Leslie, hinges upon the story of my middle name, D’Aun. 

My mother had a close friend whose daughter was named D’Aun, (pronounced Dee Awn). Mom was enamored of the name, but didn’t want to infringe on the friend’s daughter’s name. And I suppose that might’ve been awkward.

“D’Aun, stop that right now!”

“But Mommy, I’m not doing anything!”

“Not you, D’Aun–D’Aun!”

So rather than deal with the confusion and the imagined penalty of name theft Mom elected to find a first name to precede the name D’Aun. Apparently that was no easy task. Many names were considered and subsequently discarded.

Then as my mom’s due date drew near her mother, (my Nanny), found my name while reading a book. The heroine was Leslie. And that name seemed to fit well with D’Aun. 

I’ve always believed the book Nanny was reading was Giant by Edna Ferber. It was published in 1952, and I was born in ’56, so the timing would’ve been right.

In the film version of Giant, Leslie is played by Elizabeth Taylor, so that only adds to my certainty that I am the character’s namesake. I mean, just look at her and then look at me! Or not.

  
The pronunciation of our names is different, though. Having only seen the name in print my Nanny believed Leslie was pronounced with a soft “s” sound, whereas in the film it’s a “z” sound.

Oh, that friend of Mom’s with the daughter named D’Aun–I don’t recall ever having met her. As is often the case friends from those early years drift away and are never heard from again. They could’ve left D’Aun as my first name and no one would’ve cared. 

There was a time in my life when I wished to have that romantic sounding moniker. D’Aun! I imagined in high school how much different my life might be as a D’Aun! But plain old Leslie suits me. I don’t think any other would fit me quite as well.

Peace, people!

  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/say-your-name/

Woman Before A Mirror

Picasso’s “Girl Before a Mirror”

selfies:
one of the kardashians, kanye’s wife,
kim, published a coffee table book around her favorite
selfies.

hundreds
of pictures of kim, provocative, poised,
playful, compiled for public perusal,
appropriately titled
“selfish.”

i did not
purchase this book; however, i wonder
if it could be used as a template for my own book of
selfies.

so far, of
the twelve selfies in my iphone, only
two do not render my visage as a distorted picasso
painting.

much work remains.

 

From Kim Kardashian’s book, “Selfies.”
 
 
The author, giving a sneak preview of her book of selfies.

Peace, people! 

Copyright 2016. All rights reserved by Leslie Noyes.

Note: I have no connection at all to Picasso, nor to Kim Kardashian, never have been or intend to make any monies or free lunches on the back of this post, and to my knowledge was never a model for Picasso or for Kim.

Lone Star Cuisine

Written in response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt:

Live to Eat

Some people eat to live, while others live to eat. What about you? How far would you travel for the best meal of your life?

I’m a Texan by birth, and even though I haven’t lived in the Lone Star State in well over two decades I still crave a couple of foods that just have no peers anywhere else on the planet.

The first is a chicken fried steak. 

 While one can order a chicken fried steak outside of Texas there is some undefinable attribute that is missing when this dish is served elsewhere. I am actually capable of making this comfort food, but making good gravy is not my forté. 

The other food I must travel to Texas to enjoy is chili Relleños. I’ve had Relleños served a hundred different ways, but in Texas the product is fairly consistent.

  
I’ve never attempted to make Relleños. Studly Doright doesn’t like them, so it seems a bit wasteful to cook them just for me. 

The question posed by the daily prompt was how far I’d need to travel to partake of my favorite foods. Thanks to Google, the answer is just a click away.

  
In ten hours or less I could be at my middle brother’s home in Houston. That’s totally doable. Start the car.

Peace, People!