Posted in Poetry

All I Ask

Posted on by jillys2016


All I ask is that you lick
your phone less and maybe use your
hands to play childish string games
cradling cats
here’s the church
here’s the steeple
instead of building barriers
of one-handed pepperoni pizza
and stiff cold-jointed bones to
worship, worship, worship

© Jilly’s All Rights Reserved

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Author:

A wild soul writing poetry.

30 thoughts on “All I Ask”

  4. I love the call to play games instead of licking a phone and building barriers, Jill. Cat’s cradle and ‘here’s the church’ will keep those ‘stiff cold-jointed bones’ supple.

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  5. The call away from the present addiction — “your phone less and maybe use your / hands to play childish… games….” — comes to the fore for me in this poem, Jilly. We grow cold and stiff [to each other] the more we worship the screen. (I may be way off base here… but that’s part of how I read this.) I enjoy the short-listed games and the repetition of worship for the finale. Awesome!

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  6. Bam! Great. “Lick your phone less” — right, we hold them so close we are licking them while liking everything. The one-handed pizza is terrific, and landing the church/steeple->worship was brilliant.

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  7. with QBit and Charley’s help I can see it now as staying off the smart phone when eating, but I don’t get the “cold-jointed bones”. (maybe a flip phone?) Any help from other readers.

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    1. I think Cats Cradle is both a childish game, but also the frozen end of the world, e. g. Vonnegut and Ice Nine from “Cats Cradel”. I think she sees the phones as us freezing ourselves into that apocalypse. And I think also irony at the end as we act like we worship these devices, so a bit of a mixed call to worship there. Ambiguous.

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  8. Oh this is so clever! ❤️ Nowadays the youngsters especially have a hard time staying off social media and games while eating/talking or doing other work 🙂 Lovely write! ❤️

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  14. A great use of the prompt! I’m so glad I never had to worry about this when my kids were growing up. Younger daughter had a game she made up that I played with her when we were in waiting rooms–where our hands were “fishies and sharks.” Now I have the song going through my head! 🙂
    (At the same time, I love having the technology to do my work, to stream, etc.)

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  17. ah….put down that device…get your head out of your or my phone and play cat’s in the cradle and childhood games. I’m reminded of being in a restaurant and looking across the room at a family out for a family dinner and each child has their head down, texting away or playing an electronic game instead of talking. I remember the days when I always had a tablet of paper and pencils, perhaps a crayon or two in my bag and if the children got restless, we played a family game of tic tac toe or hangman; or drew one photo, passing the paper around, each one adding a piece to the picture! Engaging. Yep — quit licking that phone!

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  18. Yes Jilly, there is a wonderful world out here these techno zombies perhaps should explore. They might even like it. The resolution of the 3D images is breathtaking in the physical world! ;-))

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