Firm Ground
Between all of you and me,
I’ve no experience with scree.
Given the type of ground to walk on,
scree’s the surface I would balk on.
Other folks may be adventurous.
My choice is usually ventureless!
The RDP prompt is “scree.” (Image borrowed from the RDP prompt site.)
Getty Image
Given the task of writing with no set prescribed topic, my mind always goes to stories of the past. It serves them up like medicine—a treasured dose that blows away the control of a world too bent on bad news. They trigger gratitude for a simpler world that had recently dispensed with Hitler’s threat. Our country had regained control of the world, along with a union of nations bent on peace and the worth of every man, no matter what color or nationality or faith—practices seventy years later again considered something to prompt a shooting match with bigger guns as a new führer (this time our own) practices his strength, his guns aimed at whom? Next time, perhaps you. Perhaps me.
Words for the Sunday Whirl were: serve medicinal gratitude mind triggers blow control shoot practice treasure you stories
Dental Retaliation
Do you remember toothbrushes lined up on a rack
in the medicine cabinet, at the mirror’s back?
Your father’s brush was ocean blue, your mother’s brush was green,
your sister’s brush the reddest red that you had ever seen,
whereas your brush’s handle had no color at all—
as though it was the ugliest sister at the ball.
How you yearned for color, reaching for your brush
as the first summer’s meadowlark called to break the hush
of the early morning while you were sneaking out
to be the first one out-of-doors to see what was about.
Making that fast decision, your hand fell on the red,
thinking your sister wouldn’t know, for she was still abed.
You put toothpaste upon it, wet it at the tap
and ran the brush over each tooth as well as every gap.
Each toothbrush flavor was different, your older sis had said,
so you thought it would be different brushing your teeth with red.
Your father’s brush was blueberry, your mother’s brush was mint.
Your sister’s luscious cherry—its flavor heaven-sent.
“But because you are adopted,” your sister had the gall
to tell you, “they gave you the brush with no flavor at all.”
You waited to taste cherries, but that taste never came.
That red brush tasted like toothpaste. It tasted just the same
as every other morning when you brushed with yours.
You heard your sister stir upstairs, the squeaking of the floors.
You toweled off her toothbrush and hung it in the rack
and started to run out the door. Then something brought you back.
You opened up the mirror and grabbed her brush again.
A big smile spread across your face—a retaliatory grin.
The dread cod liver oil stood on the tallest shelf.
You were barely big enough to reach it for yourself.
You dipped her toothbrush in it, then quickly blew it dry.
Replaced it, shut the cabinet, and when you chanced to spy
your own reflection in the glass, each of you winked an eye.
Then you ran out to cherry trees to catch the first sunbeam
and brush your teeth with cherries while you listened for her scream.
(Not a true story, by the way!!!)
For One Word Sunday the prompt is “Teeth.” Image created with help from AI.
Bad Sport
I don’t do sports, nor watch them, either.
A one block jog? I’d need a breather.
At volleyball, I don’t excel.
Touch football is a sort of hell.
For passing time, by hook or crook,
Jog on alone. I’ll read a book!!!
The Stream of Consciousness Prompt for Oct 18 is “Hook.”
Click on photos to enlarge.
Lately, my water delivery has begun any time from midnight to 5:30 A.M. I drain the hot tub and remove about 1/3 of the water from the pool the day before as by then the water is cold. It streams into my cistern to be used for watering the garden and spare lot/sculpture garden below (no water wasted) and the nearly boiling-hot thermal water from Colima vocano 80 miles away comes streaming into my pool and hot tub to cool down a bit so I can actually make use of it by evening or the next morning.
Today I got up at 5:30 when I heard it streaming in. By 8, I noticed the hot tub was full and running over into the pool and when I went down to turn off the water, I noticed dozens of tiny black ants swarming over the 2-foot wide surface of the edging around the pool. Unable to see the purpose for their swarming, I nonetheless was able to see that a number of wasps were also swooping down to the stone surround. Then I realized that the wasps were actually feeding on the ants! I ran in to get my phone to take photos to document this surprising event, but alas, when I returned, only ants remained. No wasps. I then returned to the house to try to find something on the internet to back up what I’d viewed and Meta Al informed me that:
Yes, some wasps eat small black ants, while others do not. Some wasps are predators that hunt and eat insects, including ants, which can be a protein source for their larvae. However, other species are either parasitoids that lay eggs inside ants, or they may attack ants defensively when competing for resources, rather than eating them. (Info derived from AI)
(Image created with help from AI)
The Fibbing Friday task-at-hand is:
1. Why is there no ‘three quarters back’ in American Football (you have a quarterback, halfback and full back) ? Because you already have one quarterback. It would redundant to have two more.
2. What is a stickleback? A French back-scratcher.
3. What is a boogaloo? Quarters for an Eskimo ghost.
4. What is Victoria’s Secret? Falsies.
5. What is in a Victoria sandwich? Coins kept in a tiny coin purse tucked into her cleavage.
6. What is the secret of the Black Magic Box? All of its magic leaked out long ago.
7. Why do mice squeak? Not enough oil in the cheese.
8. Where will you find a TRV? Usually, right after a TOPSY.
9. What is a Demo? Someone who didn’t vote for Trump.
10. What is a toadstool? A poorly-placed stool often run into in the dark. Ouch!
Meeting Mr. Right
Scrabble, Dice and Mexican Train—
I play them once and then again,
while he won’t play a single game
of any sort or any name.
I like to travel. He sits at home.
Walmart’s as far as he will roam.
Won’t go to movie theaters, clubs,
exhibitions, galleries, pubs,
museums, fiestas, meetings, for
such crowding makes him hit the door.
Tourist attractions leave him numb
and make him wonder why he’s come.
I fill my house with Mexican art
that drains my purse but fills my heart,
but my artful clutter makes him frown.
His décor? Purely hand-me-down.
I like people. He sits alone.
His desk chair is his chosen throne
where he supervises the internet—
the biggest nerd you’ve ever met.
I dance whenever I’ve the chance,
but you might have guessed—he doesn’t dance!
He’s six-foot-two. I’m five-foot-six.
Yet tall and short just seem to mix.
I know our friends and family
find us an anomaly.
for these differences are just a start.
We’re 1600 miles apart!
So how can he be my best friend
when our differences never end:
a scorpion talking to a crab,
a Chihuahua running with a Lab?
What makes our congress less absurd?
We’re both addicted to the written word!
We both love puns and definition.
Apostrophe errors? Pure sedition!
While others discuss films or drama,
we dissect uses of the comma.
We discuss dashes from en to em,
and how the world misuses them!
Splitting hairs but not infinitives,
sound editing advice he gives
for everything I write online.
If words were grapes, he’d strip the vine
of sour grapes and slugs and weeds
and after he had done these deeds,
the wine would pour more sweet and rare,
culled out by his loving care.
And so it goes here on my blog.
In its machine he is a cog—
mending lost links and feeling free
to cut that spare apostrophe.
To wrestle errant prepositions,
question faulty suppositions,
to polish off each word writ wrong
until a ditty becomes a song.
We meet each day on the cyber page
that is the parchment of our age.
While you meet others of your type
at coffee bars, we meet on Skype.
Our discourse clever, funny, rare.
We do not pine and ache and stare
eye-to-eye hour after hour.
For us, it’s words that carry power.
The Prompt for This Week’s Writers Workshop is: Meeting
A Modern Tale
Beware the headless horseman. He knows not where he’s going.
For without his brain or senses, he cannot be knowing
north from south or here from there. In fact it’s rather hopeless.
Instead of coping with his journey, he’s completely copeless.
Better to have a head man who hasn’t any horse,
for he can find another vehicle to aid his course
here and there and every where that he seeks to go,
for his brain can lead him, be his progress fast or slow.
Headless horsemen are, I fear, mostly made-up tales,
like the one by Washington Irving, which, I admit, pales
compared to the real-life tale of that living gent
who is a headless horseman and sadly, our president!!!
The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a poem about a headless horseman.
Advice to Folks in High Places
Of course, coarse words might prove a curse,
but words that weave a lie are worse.
So don’t use utterances truthless
as terrifying as they’re ruthless.
The Three Things Challenge asked us to include three words: COURSE COARSE CURSE
Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt is Reptilian
These are all reptiles I either visited in La Manzanilla (where some of them visited me) or found in my garden. Luckily, the larger ones I left behind when I came back home to San Juan Cosala!!! Oh, and you may have detected that a couple of them are artistic renderings.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 