Today’s prompts from Na\/GloPoWriMo and Writers Digest PAD were “weather” and “friends.” And while friends may not be obviously incorporated here, the idea led to me to thoughts of how “traditional friends and allies” can turn, unexpectedly – and how “traditional enemies” may be unintentionally emulated through seemingly casual, ordinary actions and interactions. And even while the world burns, the most ordinary things in life go on. I used that dissonance as a springboard, and the storm as both a real thing and a metaphor. Interpret through your own lens.<\/p>\n
Stagnant storm clouds glower
\nto the west. You note the creeping dark
\nbut gather up your errand notes,
\nyour shopping lists, and run them.<\/p>\n
Friends mutter, “Interesting
\nweather.” Give them a safe nod.
\n“Rains coming.” The whole exchange
\nfeels like B-movie spy code.<\/p>\n
It’s old and everything’s a war
\nrun by crime boss caricatures. War
\non drugs, war on books, war on women, war
\non war – we have a thousand tsars.<\/p>\n
Ghost-carts sail on asphalt
\nwage an ordinary war, bent-out-of-shape
\nthey menace with wall-eyed wheels; you
\ndo battle for a parking space.<\/p>\n
You race the grumbling thunder-rain
\nand its inevitable oncoming,
\neach transformer-explosion flash
\nelectric – adrenal gland on drums –<\/p>\n
Thrums, energized, through veins
\na streak not blue enough, zings
\na shockwave nerve assault. You
\nbarely make the light that takes you home.<\/p>\n
I drafted a first poem, this morning, on Facebook – just idle musings, really (no one said a poem a day had to be 365 good poems) but since I’m lately in the habit of deleting old Facebook posts because they’re no longer timely and relevant, I’m going to share it here.<\/p>\n
What would divide us –
\nkeep us weak – if not
\nreligion, borders,
\nskin, or gender?
\nNot selfishness
\nso much as greed,
\na need, a craving
\nto compete. For some
\nthe race to space
\nwas aspirational –
\nfulfillment of recurring
\ndreams of curiosity –
\nwhile others merely play
\nat “King of the Hill”
\nand race to plant a flag,
\nto stake a claim,
\nto subjugate the cosmos,
\nbend it to their will,
\nand leave it poorer.<\/p>\n
Do you think most humans naturally enjoy being divided and having someone to compete with? If so, why not engage in competitions that could benefit humanity as a whole? Surely even a large financial prize for the “first” or “best” solution would be less costly than a destructive war and far less cynical.<\/p>\n
Would you rather eat at a chain restaurant, where you could safely predict whether you’d like the food – even if you didn’t love it or weren’t excited by it – or at a new restaurant serving foreign (to you, wherever you are in the word) cuisine? How about when you’re traveling to another state or country? Don’t mind me – I’m still depressed by the Burger King in Istanbul and the Popeye’s Chicken at the Ataturk Airport. This morning, I read that there are only 11 authentic, locally-owned Hawaiian restaurants that are not chains. (I didn’t read the whole article and it may or may not be accurate. I hope it was limited to Oahu, which is not “all of the state of Hawaii.” But I will say Maui has become a generic, if pricey, haole haven. <yawn> Not the Hawaii I remember from the 1970s, for sure.)<\/p>\n
Any other thoughts? The mic’s all yours (just be kind, be real – the castle goats eat trolls when they gather under the bridge to drink from the moat, and the resident bard freely steals from the spammers to mock them with ribald songs and poetry – so you’ve been warned! Or welcomed. Your choice.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fair-weather friends, strange bedfellows, and homogeneity – that’s what’s on my mind today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137990935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_has_post_settings":{"highlight_sharing":"default","image_sharing":"default","headline_sharing":"default"},"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[2717,2716,2788,2787,2779,2725,2772,2792,2728],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-137990933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","category-writing","tag-a2zchallenge","tag-atozchallenge","tag-pad","tag-poem-a-day","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-prompts","tag-poets-northwest","tag-stafford-challenge"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 04:33:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137990933"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137991005,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137990933\/revisions\/137991005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137990935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137990933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137990933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137990933"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=137990933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}