The assignment was to write a 6-line alphabet poem that started each line with a letter of the alphabet in a 6-letter sequence. I.E. abcdef, qrstuv, etc. Being a creature of excess, I used the entire alphabet, forwards and backwards, ending with a final Z to boot, since the title began with an “A.” Please note that this is the cynical rant of a misanthrope—not necessarily my own view. And this is the only photo I could find in my album that smacked of high society. Actually, it’s a photo of me and my date for the junior prom.
A Misanthropic Anti-creed
After all is said and done,
brotherhoo is not much fun.
Cliques are just a machination
Dumbing down imagination.
Each misanthrope must find his own
Final method to disown
Galas thrown to feed the poor
Hawking excesses they abhor.
In jewels, ladies you could die of,
Jostling to catch the eye of
Kings of minor countries or
Lords who are the things of lore.
Meanwhile, gents in tux and tie
Nod to try to catch the eye
Of that next lady in Dior
Possessed of means to feed the poor.
Quickened now, they move to kill,
Ready to restore their till.
Society’s main charity
Trying for a parity
Under the understanding that
Verisimilitude is boring.
What’s important is just scoring
Xcess being all the norm
Yielding to those who most conform.
Zero, then, goes to the poor.
You must admit, they are a bore.
Xtravagence is what they come for.
Widows they won’t waste a crumb for.
Very likely that the starving
Urgently needing this feast’s carving
Taste not one small bite of it,
Still hungry now in spite of it.
Rich charity spends what’s allowed on
Quality that draws the crowd on.
Pheasant under glass costs more.
Only beans left for the poor.
Not a charitable hope
Mars ponderings of our misanthrope.
Let not one charitable thought
Knit his brow.With doubts it’s fraught.
Jarring thoughts are all he thinks
In between ironic winks.
Hear well the stories he might tell—
Gory threats of burning hell
For that well-heeled society
Eating up the profits of
Doubtful fund raisers of love.
“Charitize” to feed the poor,
But really serve their own needs more.
Ask the misanthrope at the door.
Zero is left to feed the poor!!!!
The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a 6 line alphabet phone, using 6 letters in sequence to begin lines. Here is the link: https://www.blenza.com/linkies/links.php?owner=dversepoets&postid=12Sep2018&meme=12493
Mother’s Pocket
“Not your average peddler,” my mom was heard to say,
as she paid him for the prism that she promptly tucked away—
her pocket an oasis where my hand would go to play
when other things went wrong or on a sunless, rainy day.
In her pocket I found magic things—smooth stones that were magnetic.
Pulling them apart calmed hands otherwise frenetic.
Cherry-flavored Lifesavers and pretzels clothed in salt.
If they vanished from her pocket, it never seemed a fault.
Words written on grains of rice, hankies trimmed in lace
that I liked to hold against my lips and arms and face.
Tiny detached doll heads to put upon one’s fingers.
The memory of their spirited dialogues still lingers.
But that magic prism was the best of all her treasure.
Once I drew it from her pocket, I kept it for my pleasure.
Still it sits upon my shelf where it invites my gaze,
still transmitting mother’s light on sunless rainy days.
The prompt words for today are oasis, prism, peddler and average. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/rdp-thursday-oasis/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/13/fowc-with-fandango-prism/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/peddler/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/average
I love this door spotted at the Herradura tequila distillery in Tequila!!!
For the Thursday Doors prompt.
Water Fetish
From my time of birth up to my years septuagenarian,
if it were my choice, I always chose to be riparian.
I hate the sound of silence, for I find it rather static,
but I love the sound of water, be it tidal or erratic.
A little water rushing by or falling from a height
is lulling to my hearing and pleasing to my sight.
It contributes to my happiness, creates a sense of calm—
a sensory diversion that serves me as a balm.
So to add to my contentment, no need for feast or cake.
Just plant me by a river or a waterfall or lake.
There is only one thing that you need to know.
If you want to make me happy, just provide the H20!!!
Click on any photo to enlarge all.
The prompt words today are erratic, feast, riparian and contribute. Here are the links:
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/12/fowc-with-fandango-erratic/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/wednesday-rdp-feast/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/riparian/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/contribute
The dVerse Poets prompt today is to take something we’ve written on September 11 of another year and to take a word or idea from that piece and write a new piece. Here is my Sept. 11 essay from 2015 that I am going to draw from. There is a link at the bottom of that post that will bring you back to the poem I’ve written today based on that post from three years ago. Wow. Complicated. Here is my present-day poem based on the word “handwritten.”Panned by Hand
Words slowly written out by hand
will in future years be panned
as much as petroglyphs in stone
carved out by flint or sharpened bone
are an anathema today,
now that we have a simpler way
to write with pencil or with pen.
Will kids remember way back then
when moms and grandmothers and dads
wrote out notes on legal pads,
or will they only go to see ’em
in a history museum?Cell phones don’t run out of ink,
spew words as fast as you can think,
don’t use up paper, wood or lead,
just use up gigabytes instead.
Thus handwriting’s a bygone art—
i’s carefully dotted with a heart,
those flourishes at ends of lines—
those curlicues and hearts and vines
scribbled in the margins? Vanished.
All our doodlings soon banished.It is the truth that progress brings
technology to replace things
dear to our hearts we thought would be
carried on by progeny.
But, alas, it is not so.
Typewriters were the first to go,
then cursive followed recently,
and soon I’m sure the powers that be
will decide all writing’s out,
and soon technology will tout
communication via brain
and then my friends, once more again
the means we’ve used to share our thought
will be outmoded, no longer taught
by school or university.
Mere ESP will surely be
worked out so we need only blink
to transmit all that we might think.Imagine, then, the problems caused
by thoughts inadequately paused.
Words penned in ink can be crossed out,
or crumpled up and then tossed out.
Not so words received as we think them—
flirtings known before we wink them.
So long, subtlety and tact.
Hello, naked glaring fact.
No thoughts scrawled or written with care.
All meaning caught in truth’s harsh glare.
The truth is, friends, that each advance
may neither further nor enhance.
Some advancement only fetters.
All in all, I prefer letters!Here is the link to dVerse Poets Tuesday Poetics in case you want to see what others did with this prompt: https://dversepoets.com/2018/09/11/poetics-on-a-loop/
We Fill in the Blanks
I write notes three times weekly in my limping Spanish for Yolanda, not because I won’t see her, but because I probably won’t remember by then what I need to tell her. She has asked me to order more vacuum cleaner bags from the states. I use the words I know, and tonight the word for vacuum has escaped my memory. So I leave this note on the kitchen island, taped to a filter I’ve found in the laundry room:
“Is this the bag for the machine for clean the floor?”
Es este la bolsa para la machina para limpiar el piso?
Then, taped to the stove top:
I’m sorry, Yolanda, but a potato broke in my oven and it is very bad! I worked for one hour and a half but it is still bad now.”
Lo siento, Yolanda, pero una papa romper in…
View original post 142 more words
Click on first photo below to enlarge all and to see captions on some of the photos..
For: https://ceenphotography.com/2018/09/11/cees-fun-foto-challenge-red/
Excuse # 2
Quick, take my hand before I float off
on a breeze or a sigh or a sneeze or a cough.
No telling what currents are swelling today
to pick a girl up and float her away.
Oh, excuse number one?
Hand holding is fun!
For DVerse Poets: https://dversepoets.com/2018/09/10/quadrille-64-quickwrite-something/
Click on first photo to increase the size of all and to read captions.
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My mother was the hero of Christmas. Decorated waste paper baskets from the church bazaar, that “Skunk” game I’d been begging for, played once and never again, that one last doll when I was eleven, purchased more for her own nostalgia than my need. The tree went up as the orange and brown of Thanksgiving was disposed of, and the jubilation of Christmas stretched on until New Years, when the tree came down.
For my dad, however, the end of Christmas was never quick enough. The tree lights hurt his eyes, he said, but I always wondered if there was more to it than that: some sparsity of the Christmases of his past that had broken its spirit in the heart of a young boy raised on a South Dakota prairie that furnished few rewards, let alone extravagent Christmases, but still expecting more, perhaps, than an orange in the toe of his sock. A pony, maybe, or a stick of hard candy, a jaunty new blue winter stocking cap or simply a mother more given to Christmas than his own busy midwife of a mother, always off to somewhere else.
In our mad months of enthusiasm over tinsel, ornaments resurrected from the attic and the mystery of wrapped boxes, we overlooked the remnants of that little boy’s pain, but some part of each of us, detecting it by some subconscious radar, never gave up trying to heal those hurts of former Christmases with tiny Black Hills Gold tie tacks, new wallets and papier-mâché sculptures meant to prod him from his apathy. It never quite worked, except for that sculpture, ugly in its craziness, laughed and pondered over, then left to age and weather on their unroofed patio until its demise, giving one small hope of reviving a small boy’s wonder over Christmas and the unexpected. His forbearance over the years made him, perhaps, another subtler hero of Christmas, just in his putting up with it.
The prompt words for today are orange, game, hero, jubilation and quick. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/rdp-tuesday-prompt-orange/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/11/fowc-with-fandango-game/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/hero/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/jubilation
https://dversepoets.com/2018/09/10/quadrille-64-quickwrite-something/
For 
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 