A quick shift of the mind can put you in a better place, while a quick shift of the body, after a certain age, could put you in traction. So, I wish you a positive mental shift, and a gradual, physical one, my friends.
This is for dVerse Poets’ Pub where Mish asked us to write a quadrille (44 words) and include some form of the word “shift”.
Some days I can’t get the peanut butter
outta my ears.
Some days my mouth feels
full of marbles,
each word bumping up against the others,
all in a rush to get out.
Some days are a forest of words
surrounding me
where I wander, lost.
Some days are a silent desert that
I trudge through alone.
Some days the hardest work
isn’t baling hay, or digging ditches, or chopping wood;
it’s getting meaning
from one solitary soul
to another
This image, and some other cool writing prompts, are found at The Sunday Muse. Check it out.
*Note: Photo Manipulation by Photographer Dariusz Klimczak
I do not wish to be Queen of the Universe directing everything and everyone I do not even wish to be a yenta with the happiness of a village in my hands But I see a good man, alone and a woman disappointed, betrayed again and again and my heart aches for these two And I think it would be so easy, such a natural thing, and I would like to have a chessboard or Parcheesi board and simply arrange the game pieces so that everyone lives happily ever after. Note: The Yiddish word for matchmaker is actually "shadchan", while "yenta" is an old, busybody. I used the word, "yenta" though, because I thought since Fiddler on the Roof it was more familiarly aligned with matchmaking.
Endings break my heart
sometimes.
But sometimes
they can’t come
fast enough.
Nothing new can start
until there has been
an ending.
This is not profound
or deep
it’s so simple
we forget
sometimes
To live
to love
to grow –
we need endings
before we can do any
of these
And without these
we are nothing
This is my first, last time
trying to undo
all the mistakes of a lifetime
trying to do
all the things left undone
This is the swan song
of the ugly duckling
the sky falling
on the little red hen
when the birds of a feather
flock together against
the outsider
"I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind." -Neil Gaiman (and me)
As the sun sinks below the horizon its colors bleeding into black I sit on the fence, part of me reaching forward part of me pulling back Just a stone’s throw from salivation wondering if I want to be saved or spent
-Image from Jena Schwartz
Steppin’ out with Norma by Mary Bach
In Other Words 