pictured words

a simple pairing of pictures and poetry

Nursery Rhymes with Built-in Crimes

1.

There once was a hideous thug
With an ugly and ominous mug
He’d threateningly prey
On sweet girls’ curds and whey
Then just sit there obnoxiously smug.

2.

Who’d rock their poor baby to sleep
From height that’s forebodingly steep
While singing a song
That’s in every way wrong
And just causes the baby to weep.

3.

There once was a farmer’s wife
Who wielded a carving knife
In nursery rhyme tales?
Oh, please spare the de-tails
Of blind mice who must run for their life!

(c) Marie Elena Good, 2013

Share the light.

Photo by Alex Azabache on Pexels.com

“A candle loses nothing by lighting another.”  ~ James Keller

Is there anyone who hasn’t heard
Or anyone who’s not been stirred
By this glowing, truthful quote
That light remains, as flame’s transferred.

Might sharing light extinguish shame?
Bring honor to another’s name?
In my mind, it is good to note
That light is light.  It’s all the same.

I cannot lose myself, it’s true,
By giving of myself to you.
The sharing is the antidote.
Let’s give, and watch the light accrue.

When sharing kindness, goodness, light,
We witness charity ignite.
This sentiment that Keller wrote
Shines hope into a troubled night.

© Marie Elena Good 2024

CANDLE SCANDAL

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Candle Scandal

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Get my drift? Though it’s really
none of my beeswax.

They have a short fuse.
They think they’re enlightened. Sure.
We know they’re wicked.

© Marie Elena Good 2024

When my husband said candles are wicked, I knew I had to run with it.  😉

CAUSTIC CREDO

Photo by Rahul on Pexels.com

Entertaining thoughts
of lynching trial jurors?
More insurrection?

Trump and his trial
likened to my sweet Jesus?
Never!  By no means!

© Marie Elena Good 2024

Untitled

Sometimes the beauty
Lies as much in the shadows
As in what casts them.

#seventeenineighteen

Seeing Through the Disconnect

Photo by Darya Sannikova on Pexels.com

How dissimilarly we are wired.
How varied, the ways we’re inspired.
We think as we do,
Due to all we’ve been through,
For we’re products of what has transpired.

© Marie Elena Good 2024

FOR YOU

Photo by Keith R. Good

Your life can’t be good.
Don’t listen to those who say
God can make a way.

Time is running out.
It isn’t possible your
Changes can be made.

You have to settle.
Don’t believe for a second
Your life means something.

© Marie Elena Good 2024

This is a Reverse Poem.  Please read the poem again from the bottom, up. I wrote this 3-stanza poem in my favorite 5/7/5-syllable style. 

DETACHED and EMERGING (2 in Sijo)

Painting by Deanna Marie Metts

DETACHED (sijo)

Member of Mensa Foundation. Former business owner,
Now mindful only that this actual moment in time
Is dreadfully not as real as yesterday’s tomorrows.

© Marie Elena Good 2014

EMERGING (sijo)

Weeding worry stubbornly seized in depths of clay soil perdition.
Bleeding time. Believing her beseeching isn’t reaching the Ear.
Then, breakthroughs and dream-come-trues. Not of fantasy, but of being.

© Marie Elena Good 2024

I wrote Detached in 2014 about my mentally ill daughter. Emerging, written now exactly ten years later. Though she still struggles, the difference is immense. There is so much for which to be thankful!

Yeah, It’s All Rite

I. 

Being proud of my
gratuitous training bra.
Forced rite of passage.

II.

Hollow dissonance.
First solo and ensemble.
Black notes and white face.

III.

Shaving of The Legs
without my dad’s awareness.
Razor-thin escape.


IV.

“Does anybody
really know what time it is?”
My first sleepover.

V.

Kissed by the back door.
Glaringly obvious it’s
my first, but not his.


© Marie Elena Good, 2024

Closet Dancing Queen

No Merchandising. Editorial Use Only. No Book Cover Usage Mandatory Credit: Photo by Everett/REX/Shutterstock (411137x) Saturday Night Fever, Karen Lynn Gorney, John Travolta ‘Saturday Night Fever’ – 1977

Closet Disco Queen

I was a band nerd.
Not a rah rah. Not a geek.
And not a surfer.

That wasn’t my bag.
But I liked walkin’ the beach
and catchin’ some rays.

I wasn’t a drag,
but not all show and no go.
Like, can you dig it?

I was no brick house.
If I stuck out my tongue, I
looked like a zipper.

Not a dancin’ queen.
Didn’t have the moves, ya know?
(Just keepin’ it real.)

© Marie Elena Good 2024