Author: Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

By Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

I am Mother Earth
birthplace of all living
and non-living things upon me

Be it animal, plant, water, dirt or sky
it is I who hold the key
to their creation or extinction

Those that are gentle upon my skin
may live in peace and prosperity
such as the lovely butterflies

Those that rend my skin
pollute my rivers and seas
will not see my gentler side

But the rising tides of my anger
and the swell of hot magma
from my very being and my core

It is I who rules this land of mine
all these millennium and I who will stay here long after you are gone

By Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

In response to De Jackson, aka whimsygizmo, host for dVerse Quadrille Monday. Prompt word CHALK used within a 44 word poem.

She stepped over the threshold
hesitant
Hanging in mid-air before her
a chalkboard
Her life’s history written in white chalk on the chalkboard
Detailed year by year and day by day minute by minute
Were those seconds delineated next to every single minute?

By Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

The air crisp for a mid-April morn
Yet by noon-time
Flower petals are dry and brittle

Beneath the old Bald Cypress tree
lay two special eggs
hidden each Easter Day

Though both are grown
No longer at home
I hid these two precious eggs

Knowing one day
You’ll both come home to find
the precious gifts I harbor inside

By Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

Response to a prompt provided by Linda G. Hill for The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS April 16, 2022
The prompt words: nose/noes/knows

My little girl
has two little feet
as cute as they can be

On those feet
are ten little toes
pretty little digits all

Alas my little girl
grew to be a big girl
she’s over six feet tall

Her pretty little feet
now pretty big feet
did sport ten stinky big toes

When I asked her one day
spying her shoes where they lay
Say what is that smell?

My big little girl denied
straight-faced with a whirl
she had not even a clue

But a mother’s nose knows
when her little girls toes
do stink up a room for sure

No matter how those ten toes
denied with adamant noes
it was not their foul aromatic smell

A mother does know
in fact she will always know
the scent of ten stinky toes

There’s nothing quite like it
no man-made sniffer that can rival a mother’s whose nose knows noes

By Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

Darkness swallows my fear
the gloom smothers my dreams
Moonless nights call forth
from within me – something

Barefoot stepping on branches
sharp further and further into a
Noiseless universe pulling
me into a void of – nothingness

Night so dark it drips
from my own bare limbs
Inky blackness inhaled
fills mouth and nose – drowning

Down, down into the black abyss
straining to stay on top
Sucking me roughly to the bottom
where I emerge – anew

By Gypsie Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

In response to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC)
Today’s word is COLONY.

They all look so happy, so content, each in their own little colonies. I like to watch, to see the warmth in their eyes as they greet. Husband and wife embrace and say hello, children run to their parents and grandchildren hop up and down to see what treats their grandparents and even great-grandparents may have brought them.

Little babies coo pleasantly along with the night songbirds and giddy tree frogs hugging the trees surrounding the village.

Evening settles and the women sing together as they cook. Batting away at the myriad of night insects hoping to catch a meal either from them or what’s cooking in the big pots.

Darkness surrounds the colony and the children are all asleep; all except one or two who stubbornly refuse to give up the fight against sleepiness. Eventually they grow quiet too, along with the dogs, cows, horses and other day creatures.

I hear the soft loving murmur of men, wrapping their arms protectively around their women as they slip into bed. Other sounds are heard, signaling my leaving time.

This colony is full. I sigh. I move on.

By Gypsie Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

In response to weekly #writephoto prompt KITES by KL Caley

To fly up high
In the sky like a kite
Would be sublime

Higher and higher
I would go until barely
my tail would show

Up up into a sky so blue
Leaving my birth land
far below

Within fluffy white clouds above
Kites of every size like me
Waited patiently to be set free

By Gypsie Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

In response to the picture prompt provided by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields
for Friday Fictioneers
Six Sentence Count Requirement
Click here to join

I had to go, I really had to go and headed for the chair doing the worst impression of a duck walk there ever was.

Oh the chair, that glorious chair with the magic hole beneath it; we all love you so, all the more since we don’t have to squat our bare butts down on a bush full of thorns or worse, a log full of chiggers!

Sweet relief once I take that seat and let nature flow but, day of all days, my zipper is stuck and my jeans are lodged half way down my hips.

The sound of that zzzzzip is sweet music to my ass-urance that an accident I will not make.

I turn and sit down and discover within a cloud of foul smelling mess, that something is sorely amiss!

“Dad,” I yell at the top of my lungs waiting for him to appear, “you forgot to make a HOLE in this here chair!”

By Gypsie Ami Offenbacher-Ferris

In response to April’s Batch of Virtual Poetorium Poetry Prompt Photo Provided by Paul Szlosek

There is a house
way down that hill
People live there still

In that house
you were born
While I was shucking corn

You came to me
and stayed with me
Like fruit upon the tree

Your pa and me
on bended knee
Worked late into the eve

We did not know
how could we know
The hand that God would show

At ten years old
you were deemed a man
The foreman with cuffs he clad

Your wrists behind your back
pa fought to get you free – I cried
We’ll get you back some day my son

I didn’t know then
that I lied.