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Category Archives: Poetry

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 179: Canine Rhyme Time

04 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by duckykoren in Dogs, Humour, Pets, Poetry

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dogs, Friends, Humour, names, Pets, Poetry

I’d like to share a conversation I had with a friend a few years back.

This happened as I arrived to visit her just after she moved into a new home.

When she answered the door, she was accompanied by her dog.

“Hi Muffy,” I said, reaching down to scratch behind the dog’s ear.

That’s when another dog began to bark outside.

My friend must have seen the worried look on my face as I looked up and down the street to see if there was a loose dog headed our way….

“That’s our neighbour’s dog, Buffy.”

“Ha,” I replied, “Buffy and Muffy, …funny!”

She then pointed to the opposite neighbouring house.

“And my neighbours in that house over there have a dog called Scruffy.”

I was beginning to sense a theme.

“Buffy, Muffy and Scruffy,” I said… “That’s hilarious!”

I stepped forward to enter the house.

However, my friend wasn’t finished with me quite yet.

“And do you see that blue Victorian house over there?” she then asked me.

I feebly nodded my head yes.

“That’s where Duffy the dog lives with his owners.”

I winced.

“And last but not least,” my friend continued pointing at the bungalow across the street…

“There’s another dog who lives in that house, and would you like to guess the name of that dog?”

“No,” I said trying not to cringe. “Tell me…”

“Fluffy.”

Sigh…

In closing:

So there you have it in a short story

About dog owning neighbours whose names rhyme incorrigibly

Served with a helping of humour on the side

You know, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 166: Expressway Wordplay

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by duckykoren in Communication, Poetry, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Advertisement, Contest, driving, Frost, Poems, Poetry, Signs, Toronto, Toronto Transit Commission, TTC, Whitman, Yorkdale

image

It was way back in the early 1980’s while I was driving my car about town that I heard a radio advertisement sponsored by the Toronto Transit Commission also known as the TTC. The ad said that the TTC was holding a poetry competition.

Toronto Transit Commission holding a poetry contest? How strange, I thought.

They were asking people to write a poem on how to encourage people to use public transit. The winning poem would become an actual TTC advertisement and be featured on city street signs.

Poems on city street signs? Even stranger, I thought.

I pondered that this endeavour would prove to be a challenge. How does one put a poem on a street sign and make it a functional advertisement to promote public transit?

???

CANNOT BE DONE, I told myself before dismissing the subject matter from my mind and eventually forgetting about it altogether.

Until about a year later…

I was driving on a collector lane, and as I was passing by Yorkdale shopping centre near Dufferin Street in Toronto, I spotted a large overhead highway sign.

It read:

LOOK TO THE LEFT…

A moment later I passed underneath this sign.

That was strange, I told myself.

Looking ahead I notice that I am quickly approaching another similar sign.

Before I pass underneath, I read:

AND YOU WILL SEE…

Okay, I told myself, something is definitely going on here. I start looking ahead to see if I was approaching another sign.

I was.

This one read:

PEOPLE RIDING ON THE TTC

I looked to my left.

What I saw was that travelling a short distance away, there was a TTC Subway going in the same direction that I was.

Further, I could see people riding on the subway.

That was when I remembered the poetry contest.

Somehow, somewhere, a very clever poet did what I had deemed as impossible. They successfully came up with a simple poem, that promoted public transit in a very positive and affable manner.

Even decades later, I find myself still smitten with this poem’s charm and simplicity.

It was not written by Whitman or Frost, but I found it incredible nevertheless…

In fact, I’d like to try my hand at some poetry right now.

Let’s see:

Ahem…

Look on this page…

And you will see…

Some really silly…

Poetry.

Okay, so this poem isn’t Whitman or Frost, or even original.

But for this day, this hour, this minute…

…It’ll do.

Go ahead, call me crazy.

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 162: Thank You For The Food We Eat

02 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by duckykoren in Grief, Music, Poetry, Religion

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Delta, funeral, Grace, grief, Heaven, Music, Pizza, Poetry, Religion, Room Service, Singing, Toronto

Sometimes we can find joy and inspiration in the most unexpected places.

Case in point:

We have a traditional family song that we sing after saying grace. It’s a simple and pleasant little tune. It has been sung at all family celebrations that involve food.

The verse goes like this:

Thank you for the world so sweet
Thank you for the food we eat
Thank you for the birds that sing
Thank you God for everything.

Amen.

My Grandparents have sung this, my parents, my cousins, aunts, uncles, the grandchildren and great grandchildren have sung this too. We have all sung it hundreds of times.

I aways wondered where this song came from. If I had to take a guess, I would have assumed that my Grandfather wrote it.

Then came the day when my Father told me where the verse really came from.

This verse was from a hanging wall calendar. It was made from linen so that when the year was over, it turns into T-towel. It hung in our kitchen from 1970, and halfway through 1971. As soon as he told me this, I immediately remembered this calendar.

Now, if you will, forward a couple of decades

It’s February 2000, and my Mother has come to Toronto for my Grandfather’s funeral. It’s a very sad time.

Mother and I had just arrived at at the Delta Hotel, and it’s been an emotionally exhausting day of funeral preparation, travel and grief.

To keep thing simple, at the end of the day I suggested to Mother that we just order in pizza.

She grew very quiet.

After a few minutes, she said that there will be no pizza. Instead, she has decided to order room service.

Then picking up the telephone, she dialled the restaurant and ordered a rack of lamb for herself, and scallops for me.

After the food arrived, we sat down, said grace and then sang Opa’s little song that I referred to earlier: ‘Thank You For The Food We Eat.’

We then commenced with eating dinner.

Mother was absolutely enthralled with her rack of lamb. She told me that it was the best she ever had. After taking a few more blissful bites, she looked up at me and said:

“You know what?”

“What?”

“I’m so glad that we ordered room service.”

“I would have been just as happy just having the pizza for dinner,” I told her.

“No,” she said to me quite defiantly. “I knew that we had to order room service.”

“Why did we have to order room service?”

“Because,” she said raising her eyes from her plate to me…

…”I could never have sung ‘Thank You For The Food We Eat’ over a pizza!”

For the first time in days, I found myself laughing.

So was Mother.

Further, I have no doubt, that somewhere up in heaven, my Grandfather was laughing too!

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 151: Lucky Stars

22 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by duckykoren in Astronomy, Childhood, Fiction, literature, Money, Music, Poetry, saving, Science, Society, songs

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

allowance, astronomy, binoculars, fathers, ice cream, money, Music, piggy bank, Science, Songs, stars, Toronto, universe

I am one of the lucky ones.

This is because when I was seven years old my Father saw to it that I had my own pair of binoculars.

First, he planted the seed that lit the spark.

He always talked about stars, and the moon and the sun. I was barely four years old when my Father would take me for evening walks down Dufferin street, in a popular Toronto suburb. As we walked, he would point to the moon and the stars and tell me how far away they were and how glorious and mysterious this universe was.

He even taught me a little German children’s song called “Weiss Du Wie Viel Sternlein Stehen.”

We would sing it together as we walked the circumference of our apartment building while out for our evening walks.

The melody was lovely, and the sentiment equally so.

Try to imagine me as a four year old child, stumbling through the following German verse:

Weißt du, wieviel Sternlein stehen
An dem blauen Himmelszelt?
Weißt du, wieviel Wolken gehen
Weithin über alle Welt?
Gott der Herr hat, sie gezählet,
Dass ihm auch nicht eines fehlet
An der ganzen großen Zahl,
An der ganzen großen Zahl.

Which in English translates into:

Do you know how many little stars there are
In the wide blue sky?
Do you know how many clouds
There are over the whole wide world?
The Lord God counted them so well,
That none are missing
From the whole big lot of them,
From the whole big lot of them.

My imagination had been sparked.

Then, I started receiving an allowance of ten cents a week when I was five years old.

My father had procured a ceramic piggy bank into which each week we would both ceremoniously insert a dime. This allowance was earned by making my bed, brushing my teeth, and generally for being a good girl.

From time to time, family and friends would give me small monetary gifts, a quarter here, a nickel there. Once, I received a dollar from a Grandparent in a birthday card.

“This is for ice cream,” read my Grandmother’s all too familiar handwriting script.

However, I knew better. Dad’s rules were that should I ever receive any money, half had to be saved. Happily, that still left me enough money for an ice cream cone at the local Dairy Queen.

By the time I was seven old I had saved six dollars. Not long after that, my Father saw a newspaper flyer advertising binoculars on sale at Canadian Tire. He told me that the magnification was very powerful, but I had no idea what that meant.

The price was $14.

Dad and I had an agreement that as long as I kept saving for a pair of binoculars he would help pay for half.

Luckily Dad was so excited about these new binoculars he was willing to throw in the last two dollars that I needed.

I remember the first time that I held those binoculars. They were heavy, shiny, black, and well made. That was a time before everything was made of plastic.

Those binoculars lasted almost fifty years.

An unfortunate fall from a high closet smashed it into two.

I was heartbroken, and kept a small piece of the leather strap as a memento.

It wasn’t until 20 years ago I read Antoine De Saint Exupery’s book, THE LITTLE PRINCE, for the first time.

He swept me away with his simple yet eloquent writer’s voice.

It was in his quiet narrative that I realized that I was indeed one of the lucky ones.

At the beginning of the book the main character explains how he once made a simple drawing.

This picture to everyone else looked like a plain ordinary fedora style hat.

But it was not a hat.

What he had actually drawn was a snake who had just eaten an elephant.

Then he writes:

I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my drawing number one, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say: that is a hat. Then I would nevertalk to him about Boa constrictors, or primeval forest, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.

This passage was an epoch in my life.

For years, I felt myself strange that I could sit in a circle of women at work who were endlessly discussing their searches for store coupons, pretty window dressings, the latest gossip, and feel completely alone. They became silent when I voiced my passion for social justice, reading, writing, and science.

In time, I began to eat alone.

That’s when I began to seek out like minded people, who In St. Exupery’s words I could about talk about…

Boa constrictors, or primeval forest, or stars…

I found them, or rather, we found each other.

Yes, I am one of the lucky ones…

I have been since I was four years old when my Father taught me a song about stars during an evening walk that lit the spark that led to a love of astronomy, primevil forests, children’s songs, and Antoine De Saint Exupery.

Thank you Father.

Thank you Friends.

X

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 127: …It Was A Dark And Creepy Night

26 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by duckykoren in Astronomy, Poetry

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astronomy, dogs, moon, Poems, Poetry, sky, Space

I am not the superstitious sort.

However, I do believe that there is something about a full moon that does strange things to people.

As a union steward, no one has to tell me when there’s a full moon outside.

When the full moon coincides with Friday the 13th, I have standing orders with my supervisor that I will not be showing up for work that night.

It’s just too unsafe.

Well, several years ago, I was getting some pretty vibrant heebie jeebies on the shop floor.

Everyone seemed a little unhinged, including myself.

There was no doubt in my mind that we were in full moon mode.

And so, when my shift was finally over at midnight, the first thing I did when I got outside was look for the moon.

It was a clear sky, but there was no moon.

“Strange,” I thought to myself. The parking lot at work is one of the best places I know of to get a good view of the night sky. There were no trees or building to block the view.

On the drive home from work, I still could not catch a glimpse of the moon.

Not one.

“Okay,” I thought to myself.

“I’ll just have to look some more when I get home.”

Once I got home, I leashed up my dogs and we went on our late night walk.

It was about 1:00 a.m.

We walked…

And walked…

And walked…

Until we reached a field where we could finally see the whole night sky.

And you know what?

There was no moon.

In keeping with the old ways, I decided to mark this dark and creepy night with an obligatory, Frost-esque style poem:

Here goes…

*ahem*

IT WAS A DARK AND CREEPY NIGHT

“Hey diddle diddle
From a field in the middle
I searched the sky for the moon
My two dogs and I
Saw only saw black in the sky
And not even a meteorological balloon.”

…

I rushed the dogs back home in record time.

It’s never happened again.

Post 71: Chaos Theory

30 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by duckykoren in Poems, Poetry, Religion, spirituality

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chaos, death, destruction, Faith, ferryman, Poems, Poetry, reaper, spirituality

Woke up this morning to terrible news
While I slept chaos tightened the screws
Overnight the reaper tallied his score
One thousand plus met death at the door

The whole world runs on the chaos theory
The devil revels in the chaos theory
You cannot run from the chaos theory
There’s no control in the chaos theory

Just when you think you’ve got a good bead on things
You get sucker punched just before the bell rings
I can’t say this any more clearly
There’s death and destruction in the chaos theory

The only way you can make this right
Is keep your loved ones close and say your prayers at night
It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor
The ferry man will come and settle the score

There is no reason for the chaos theory
There is no rhyme for the chaos theory
There’s no steady beat with the chaos theory
The world revolves on the chaos theory

You may wonder if God can hear your cries
The devil says no but he always lies
Do you wonder how we ever survived
Just to watch fight and pray to keep faith alive

You cannot run from the chaos theory
CNN and FOX love the chaos theory
Life is cheap in the chaos theory
There is no peace in the chaos theory

Your demons get their kicks from the chaos theory
The devil gets high on the chaos theory
There’s no out thinking the chaos theory
God says do not fear the chaos theory

He’s got this.

Post 68: Smokey Mountain Prayer

21 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by duckykoren in Gatlinburg, Poems, Poetry, Tennessee, Travel

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Bears, doves, Gatlinburg, Hummingbirds, Knitting, Poetry, Tennessee, Travel

On the first of September
During summer’s last days
I came to these mountains
My heart led the way

In a well seasoned rocker
I abandoned my cares
And sat silently watching
The hummingbirds and bears

A dove keeps me company
in a tree to the left
I can’t help but wonder
if she feels lost or bereft

We sit silently watching
Through the fogs and the rains
I’ve so much to learn from her
She never complains

The wind sweeps the clouds
Till the air’s clean and sweet
I survey all the mountains
I can hear their hearts beat

Like being deep in prayer
Or lost in a Psalm
They cleanse me, they heal me
They fill me with calm

On the eighth of September
My days here were done
The rocking is over
My knitting is done

Dear Lord hear my prayer
As I commit to your care
This house and these mountains
The hummingbirds and bears

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 65: “Big Mama”

19 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by duckykoren in Automobiles, Cars, Poems, Poetry

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Tags

Automobiles, Carnivals, Cars, Chesapeake Bay, Chicago, Mama, Music, Poems, Poetry, Rhymes, Songs, Tissue Flowers, Verse, Virginia, Wedding Chapel

In ’72 my Mother bought herself a sweet Grand Prix
Biggest car you ever did see
We knew that we were in for lots of fun and drama
The day my Mother told us that she named her:

“Big Mama”…

Way back in the summer in ’74
Big Mama took us cruising on the Chesapeake shore
My four Carroll Sisters were the sweetest little cuties
As we raised the car roof while singing to the Doobies…

Quiet Kim could always put our hearts aglow
We begged baby Sister Doe to give us a little show
How we laughed till we cried when she sang us “Disco Duck”
Pappy called us all trouble
And we didn’t give a cluck…

And then there was the time in fall ’75
Up to the Fair Big Mama did drive
I talked up all the Carnies and flirted all night
While Cindi and Crystie danced in the moonlight…

On the last summer days of ’76
We had rum on our tongue and smoke on our lips
And Big Mama’s stereo was cranked good and loud
To Chicago’s chart topper
“If You Leave Me Now”…

To me, Summer ’77 was Big Mama’s finest hour
It had nothing to do with her size or her power
Pappy dressed up in tissue flowers and she looked so fine
And then she got me to the wedding chapel on time…

Well, Big Mama got old and she’s now long gone
Sister Cindi asked if I could write Big Mama a song
It took two days for me to write these little old rhymes
So we could remember Big Mama and all the good times…

❤ * ❤ * ❤ * ❤ * ❤ * ❤

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 62: Paint Me A Mask

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by duckykoren in Arts, depression, Poems, Poetry, self help

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arts, Colour, Depression, love, masks, painting, Poems, Poetry

I can see in your eyes

That you wear a disguise

Can it be that the truth

Is elusive as youth…

Not wanting to pry

I will live with your lie

Since the face is amiss

I will tell you just this…

Paint me the mask

that you want me to see

With your brush firm in hand

Let your colours run free

I will not stand in judgement

Please allow me the grace

I will see what you ask

When you paint me your mask.

Let the red stand for anger

And the blue show your hunger

Let the green show your peacefulness

The purple your wistfulness

When the mask has been filled

With your painting enough

Stand back when I show

How I’ll paint it with love.

And then when comes the day

Finally you can say

Of this mask you grow weary

You wish me to see clearly

You no longer can hide

What is real, what’s inside

Set the mask bright aflame

With no worries or shame.

So paint me your mask

Is all that I ask

Keep me not at arm’s length

Let me give you the strength

To be what you’ll be

When you sit next to me

I will not turn away

Next to you I will stay.

And when pain rains on down

Brown and blue are your crown

When you have no more strength to give

I’ll give you the will to live

Yes, I’ll give you my love

I can’t say it enough

We’re forever as friends

And ever…..

Amen.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 60: Happy Thoughts

15 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by duckykoren in Poems, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Airport, Bliss, Happiness, Happy, kiss, Poems, Poetry, thoughts

A happy thought

Cannot be bought

No matter what

You were previously taught…

A happy thought

Is for naught

Unless you start

With your own heart…

A happy thought

Is all you’ve got

When in the sway

Of a bad day…

A happy thought

So easily caught

With a mental kiss

On the lips of bliss…

A happy thought then

Is always gotten

By grabbing where

Others only see air…

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

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