Limerick

via Google

I just realized it's been almost three weeks since I posted anything to my blog. I hardly dare call myself a blogger at all any more.

However, here is a little ditty for today. It sprang pretty well full blown into my head this morning, and is about a wooden puppet who met up with a very handy thief.

Amby Dexter was bereft

on discovering the theft...

now it seemed that

his right hand

was all that he had left.

Kay Davies, January, 2015

Flash 55— Man, you gotta go

hit the road

the open road

the long and very winding road

on your bike—

a biker’s bike—

so nevermore will you hitchhike

on your way

because today

you’ll know why the bikers say

gotta go

you gotta go

oh yeah, now, man, you gotta go...

the sky...the sun...the wind...the open road

55 words by Kay Davies, Jan. 3, 2015

I never wrote for Flash 55 when it was the purview of Galen Haynes, aka G-Man, aka Mr. Knowitall, clearly the man to be reckoned with if anyone exceeded his number count for this popular monthly challenge.

I was saddened, however, when many of my blogging friends expressed their grief for his death last month. I wish I had written for Flash 55, and wish I had come to know Galen in that special interpretation of the word know which only other bloggers can understand.

Kerry says that when Galen knew he had to retire from blogging, he turned the reins and the rights to Flash 55 over to The Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, 

once a place where I had my own toadstool, and a place I am happy to visit whenever I can.

Today is the first Saturday of the month, and time for the Flash 55 challenge. Kerry added a new element to the prompt for the first Saturday of the year: a photo of a biker and his motorcycle, and she wrote "During the 50s in America,  a sub-culture emerged, depicting bikers as heroes who had cast off the shackles of a society they could not come to terms with. In fact the motorcycle and rider became symbolic of a rebellion against a system that the young rejected. This was manifest in the popular slogan 'Man, you gotta go' which expressed an inexplicable urge to be in motion for motion’s sake, rather than for some articulate reason – such as a destination."

I remember the 50s, when I was very young and thought motorcycles an extremely scary mode of transportation. When I was a little older, in the 60s, I realized my poor sense of balance probably had something to do with my opinion, and I've never, therefore, ridden a motorcycle nor even been a passenger on one. Nevertheless, I think I understand that 'inexplicable urge' Kerry mentions, 'to be in motion for motion's sake' and I've written 55 words about it here.

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WOMEN ARE THE WARRIORS

Women are the warriors our times call for. 

                         Aaron Paquette

Aaron Paquette is a First Nations Metis artist, author and speaker in western Canada.

He is the artist who created this, and is also the writer who wrote it. When I got in touch with him, he said, "Feel free to share..." so here is his message.

Thank you, Aaron. This is not only beautiful, I also feel it is important. I have changed only small things, but none of your words.

As a woman I cry for my country, my world, my planet...for our oceans and forests and the creatures who dwell therein. Thank you for granting us permission to share your words, and to display your art.

— Kay

Some people make the mistake of thinking women are only gatherers … gardeners … that they can only dig and pick and cultivate and hide.

I tell you that women are the strongest, smartest and most dangerous hunters the world has ever seen.

Individually, they may be physically overpowered, but in planning, in vision, in purpose and explosive action, they can’t be beat.

Any honest man will admit there is nothing that fills them with awe so much as their partner when she has made up her mind. She has become an unstoppable, indomitable will. If it’s against him, he’d better start running!

There’s a narrative that women are weak, that they’re vulnerable, that they are somehow less intelligent or capable than a man.

Well, they said that about serfs, about slaves, about people from other races. They say it about anyone they want to control.

You see, it’s the storytellers that rule the world.

And we repeat their stories.

It’s time for a new chapter.

It’s time to write a new reality.

It’s time to stand up and tell your story.

You are only vulnerable when you let others define you as vulnerable.

You are only weak if you let them convince you it’s true.

You are only ‘less than’ if you believe it.

Women are warriors. They are the ones who run with wolves, the ones who follow the moon. They are the ones who give life and they are the first story tellers their children will hear.

Women have all the power of humanity. All the power to shape the world.

Are you waiting for permission? Give it to yourself.

Are you waiting for your time? It’s now.

Are you waiting for a sign? Look around.

You are the linch-pin, the tipping of the scales.

The moment you say you’ve had enough. The moment you rise …

Everything changes.

We are in a battle for a future that our children, grandchildren and theirs can grow in, be safe in, be challenged in.

Part of it means taking time for yourself, for silence, to breathe and renew. Part of it means to let go for a while. You've been carrying heavy burdens.

There will be men who cling desperately to the idea that they have power over you. Outsmart them. Outmaneuver them. Out-plan and out-strategize.

There are so many more good men willing to be your allies, willing to be your support, willing to be your partners. We are your sons, after all.

We are in a battle for the soul of the planet.

And you are that soul.

You are the warriors.

And this is your time.

hiy hiy.

********

Feel free to print this out, to share it, to hang it where you can see it.

-Aaron Paquette

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Aaron Paquette is a First Nations Metis artist, author and speaker based in Edmonton, Aberta. His bestselling novel 'Lightfinder' was published in 2014 through Kegedonce Press and is now in its 2nd printing.

To order Lightfinder:

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/…/lig…/9780986874079-item.html

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Once upon a time "Cleese" was "Cheese"

I interrupt the leisurely flow of my first morning in 2015 to bring you a bit of a book review. (I haven't read much yet.)

My husband received, from one of his many daughters, "So, Anyway...", the autobiography of British actor John Cleese of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame.
Said husband seldom reads books, perhaps one a year at most, perhaps one every second year. He doesn't plan to read this one until lolling at Lava Hot Springs for a week during our next road trip.
I, therefore, being out of new reading material myself, and the library being closed due to New Year's Day, am reading Cleese's autobiography.
I'm reading it despite never being a Monty Python fan, and also despite taking years to become willing to watch Fawlty Towers. (I was a few paragraphs into this writing before realizing I didn't know how to spell Fawlty.)
But enough about me, and back to the book: I got all the way to page 11 before I found a typo, so that's a good sign, and I've now finished the first chapter without finding another. However, the real news is that I'm enjoying it because the man can really write.
I recently re-read a number of book reviews by Dorothy Parker. If you haven't read any of those, please do. She could write better than I can, and, I daresay, better than John Cleese, and she did so in the 1920s.

But I digress. I have a long list of things to do in order to ready myself and my house for the new year, but I suspect I'll be more inclined to read the Cleese book than to clean the stove or sort all my old clothes.
Yes, I know the book hasn't received rave reviews, but it is an autobiography of the man, not of the Monty Python group, nor of the Fawlty Towers show, but of the man as he sees himself from the inside. (And, dear reader, please count how many times I used the word 'of' in the previous sentence, because I don't know how many.)
* * *
I am linking this, although it is not a poem, to Susie Clevenger's challenge for the first day of the New Year, in which she asks us to choose one of the quotations she has provided for the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.

"I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years."   Henry Moore