Judy’s Advice on Preparations for the Afterlife (For Jim) Do you get a discount or will there be none When your time on Earth will finally be done? Whether it is better to be raw or roasted well depends on where you’re going. Is it heaven or to Hell?   I received this request for a poem from Jim Anschutz: Some of my thoughts on cremation. 1. I will ask if they give senior discounts.. 2. I will also inform them that I sit out in the sun each day and get quite sunburnt. My question is, “do I get a discount for being pre-cooked? You can take it from here, Jude. Please make this a very humor ..read more

If this poem left justifies, click on it to get it to center as it is a shape poem! After 15 Years Your memory                                                     cuts so sharply through my dream’s beginning that I wake, gasping like a fish on the sand left by some fisherman too intent upon his next catch to end it cleanly. In its tight s ..read more

“Too much happiness or too much unhappiness render us oblivious to any good or bad changes around us.”  —Alka Girdhar  Balance Happiness, like sadness, takes up too much room— like a greedy house guest usurping our closets with their excess. What bride notices the homeless on her bridal route? What new mother thinks first of the starving hidden half a world away? Sadness, like happiness, eats up our world. The hungry yearn first for bread, the ill for surcease from pain. Who feels the thorn may overlook the rose. Life is balanced, not within each, but within the all. What seems unfa ..read more

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The Ticket Because I could not stop for death, three times it  let me pass, but the reprieve it granted, sadly will not last. Frequently, it beckons, choosing friend after friend in a sad progression I know will never end. One day it will summon and I can’t refuse to go. I only hope that when it comes, my passing won’t be slow. Let us go then, you and I, forgoing futile censure, traveling without regrets into this new adventure.   “Let us go then, you and I,” from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” “Because I could not stop for Death, Emily Dickinson For NaPoWriM ..read more

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Midnight Minuet Sneaking down the unlit hall, we take turns answering nature’s call, awaiting our own turn to sneak to the john to have a leak. In the darkness, we repeat this rather tricky hourly feat. Him, then her, then me at last. So are our nightly ramblings cast. It is not choice that brings us here to void ourselves of pop or beer. In fact, a full night’s sleep we seek— our intentions strong, but bladders weak. At eleven, twelve and one and two, sleeping is what we’d rather do. Instead, we do-si-do—just missing the next sojourner bent on pissing!   This poem is dedicated to a ..read more

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Comb vs. Hair  Every day, the great debate as I attempt to set it straight. Yet despite how hard I try, it continues to go awry. The straight and narrow is not its schtick. It’s stubborn, willful, obtusely thick. It wanders from my planned-out way. Down former paths it prefers to stray. Daily, I attempt to guide, while it goes against the tide. Unruly tangles and snarls abide while I would choose to smoothly slide down tresses lovely, shiny, straight, instead, alas, it is its fate to wander this way and then that. (Perhaps it’s best to wear a hat when wandering away from home?) This hair ..read more