Click on the image below to view a Steller Story version of the story
“Johnnycorkbrains Lost His Cup of Tea!”
Category Archives: By Design
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LAW OF THE INSTRUMENT, FIRST DRAFT
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They Write Stories About This Time of Year: Gift of the Chiefs
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DISTANT COUSINS
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LONERCYCLE
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WALKAFELLER PLAZA
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METTLE MOUTH
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HOUSTON on the HUDSON
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GLOWTERPILLAR
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FAVORITE TIME RHYME
YOUR DAY
This day may be like
None ever before,
When a who-knows-what ceiling
For you is in store,
When a leap in the bay
From a motor boat side
Is only the start
Of your who-knows-where ride,
Today may be when
You write your first song,
A number so good it sounds good
On a gong!
You might tour a city,
Paint portraits pretty,
Learn who-knows-what game,
Write jokes that are witty,
Cook from a new page of your recipe book,
Decode that mistake you feared would stay mistook.
Just after that where next this day may go,
If you play your cards right, who-could-possibly know?
Maybe fishing with brother,
Or soccer with sis,
Or the last chapter of
“The Great Adventuress.”
Today’s who-knows-what ceiling
Is … well … who can say?
Only you because this
Is going to be your day.
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WAVE THAT FLAG
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FROM PHILA, WITH LOVE
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DON’T STAIR NOWHERE
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MAKING FOOTBALL MOVIES
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MAY THE FOURTH
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QUOTH MAUDE LEBOWSKI
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GREAT misQUOTES, OPUS NO. 39: Zonk’d!
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EGG ON MY SPACE
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CARLY SIMON ALBUM COVER FIRST DRAFTS: You’re So Vane
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KOJAK FIRST DRAFTS: Teddy Savalas
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THE BARD OF FLUSHING
ON THE OTHER SIDE
I can see it there …
Just beyond the bus door …
Just down the bus stairs …
After just one stop more …
Hissing brakes
Lurching stop
Squeaky hinges
I stand at the top …
Then step step step, down I go,
When feet hit street it’s begun:
The summer, sweet summer, there it is, right there,
Just beyond the bus door, all that fun.
THE LIGHT
If life were like a grotto
There would be no score
If the lighter of a candle
Had been rich or a poor
Or boy or girl
Or black or white
Or young or old
Or left or right
Or what had brought’em there
Or how many lights they’d lit
Or if they liked to stand in back
Or kneel alone or sit
No one keeps track of how to spell
The candle lighters’ names
At a grotto time is better spent
Reflecting on their flames
And when the spirit moves,
Passing the light along,
With no thought that the candle
You’re sharing from is wrong
If life were like a grotto
Every light that we discover
Would warm and guide and give itself
To freely spark another.
A BASKET CASE
UPDATED 3-26-16: To read this poem as a STELLER STORY, click on the photo below.
Last year’s Easter egg hunt
was in the old cornfield.
Now it seems that day
not every egg was revealed
and that from those left back
are this year being born
acres and acres of stalks
sprouting tiny eggcorns.
Nature’s packaged each one
in a shell in a husk,
so cracking the eggcorns
is a rusty padlock fuss.
But once their outer layers
are opened up and clean
the cob yolks deep inside
are like nothing that you’ve seen:
Purple, pink, and yellow,
orange, blue, and jade,
all the prettiest pastels,
every springtime shade.
Just how nature made this magic
Science is still figuring,
but one thing learned so far:
is mighty omelets
from the tiny eggcorns spring.
Eggcorns are the kernel of a colorful Easter breakfast. (Photo: PaC)
