Bad Date
The harmony’s broken. You’ve struck such bad chords.
You’ve the ego of kings, the demeanor of lords.
With that attitude, sir, I’m afraid you won’t score.
Here’s your hat. Here’s your coat, and there is the door!
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/harmony/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/11/fowc-with-fandango-attitude/
Breaking Her Diet
I measure her cat food with care from the vat,
but she has such an aptitude, my little cat
for flushing out lizards and others like that.
With delicate paw thrusts, she gives them a bat
’til they barely know where it is that they’re at,
then unleashes her claws for a more severe pat.
Be it lizard or bird or scorpion or rat,
she defeats it as though it were merely a gnat
and lays it out nicely on my front door mat:
one scorpion sting less or a feather for my hat,
then returns to the stool where she formerly sat,
licking her chops, and that’s why she’s so fat!!!
The prompts were cat, aptitude and delicate.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/rdp-72-cat/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/11/fowc-with-fandango-aptitude/
My vegan concoction
The Recipe
It was not in her nature to follow the dictatorial demands of the recipe. She cared not a piffle that it required a precise list of ingredients. She added a can of 7-up for effervescence and a can of plums for their pure aplomb. When she found a blank spot in the space where she usually kept her vinegar, she added sweet pickle juice instead. She mixed and then blended, added the finely chopped vegetables she’d found in her vegetable tray of the refrigerator, stirred as she cooked until the chunky ingredients were medium soft, the way she liked them. Now and then, she tasted—a vacant look in her eyes as she tried to decide if it was right or not. A bit of cinnamon. A whiff of curry. A handful of almonds, finely minced, white wine salt. And finally, it was perfect! That night when her dinner guests asked for the recipe, it was not in her realm of possibilities to give it. When she cooked, she entered another world and it was impossible to take anyone else there with her. (By jdb)
The words of the day are effervescent, ingredients, piffle and vacant. The above is fiction based on a reality of my personality re/ cooking. My 22-year-old nephew Ryan arrived yesterday. For the past few days, creating vegan dishes he could eat required some special shopping and a lot of chopping, but it was so much fun and I’m so grateful for these nine wonderful days we are going to have to get to know each other. We were up till 4 a.m. last night, sitting in the hot tub talking talking talking. When I discovered he kept a journal, I gave him today’s prompts for an assignment and he wrote the below little slice of life in about ten minutes. my piece, given above, took a bit longer. Here is what Ryan has to say to the prompts:
We woke one morning and the house was vacant. Trotting around, we made our way downstairs and began to talk, act, and be in a state of piffle. The energy of the night before rang within the home’s core. Any subtle changes in the air and atmosphere of the home could be noticed as fresh ingredients. Fresh ingredients that gave the surrounding walls, floor, ceilings and doors an auspicious sparkle and solace. The flow of the home exuded an effervescent and illuminated feeling of comfort and mystery. This home was to us unknown, but it never hid, it was always shown. (Judy’s note: This was written by my nephew Ryan Wilcox on the first morning of his Mexican adventure. Perhaps I’ll persuade him to share more of it as we go along. )
Ryan tucks into vegan Indian food at the Ajijic mall after a long flight with only a packet of cookies to sustain him.
Casa Domeneche’s vegan dish. Kristina and I decided to go vegan as well and this was what I ordered. It was incredible. Maybe Ryan will convert me! Would be good for my diet.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/10/rdp-71-effervescent/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/10/fowc-with-fandango-ingredients/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/10/piffle/
Thunbergia Grandiflora, Aug, 2018, jdbphoto
jdbphoto, badlands, South Dakota
Intergalactic Anthropology
Our world may be the nucleus of a constellation
viewed elsewhere in the universe, and to their consternation,
they may not be able to determine if we’re able
to support a life form both intelligent and stable.
They’ve watched as we developed fire and the wheel,
the industrial revolution , the ability to heal.
They’ve watched the growth of tyrants and they’ve watched our revolutions—
all our massive problems and our tries for the solutions.
But as the rich get richer, they’re more heedless of the poor.
The more that they accumulate, the more they lust for more.
Heedless of our artful world with beauties unsurpassed,
the practices that they pursue assure that they won’t last.
Should they contact and help us or leave us as we are—
an anthropological study of another distant star?
The prompt words were: contact, nucleus, constellation, practice
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/rdp-70-contact/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/09/fowc-with-fandango-nucleus/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/constellation/
I don’t know what this lady is doing blooming way down here on the ground, but she seems to be doing okay, in spite of traffic on the brick pathway.
Endangered Species
It bore investigation, the gods all seemed to think
to see what’s happening on Earth that’s raising such a stink.
The clouds of poisonous vapors seemed to obscure their view
so they had to come much closer to see what they could do.
Here everyone seemed eager to screw the other guy,
sure that complete happiness was something they could buy.
They’d have to think of something to divert them from their wrath,
to deflect them from their lust for fortune to another path.
What if they gave them something to redirect their thought
from this mania for wanting what the other fella’s got?
They created Martin Cooper and made two guys named Steve,
gave them creativity and something up their sleeve
to invent these gadgets to connect us all together
so we could help each other in times of stormy weather.
But the plans of men and deities often go astray.
Even gods in heaven do not always know the way.
How could they know that iPads and tiny little phones,
the Internet and Facebook would turn us into drones
staring at our open hands or clicking selfie shots,
intent more on ourselves than in helping the have-nots?
While skulking in the background, cronies of corporation
plotted most unnoticed in corrupt cooperation
to keep the masses busy with their puzzles and their games,
their TV and their movies and their lists of contact names.
We all would be so busy staring at our palms
that no one would be worried. No one would suffer qualms
about what was happening—the greed and the pollution.
Our leaders all the problem and never the solution.
We sold our world for cyber toys, believed their staged reality.
Traded in our real world for scheduled banality.
Kardashians and Candy Crush, sitcoms and solitaire,
Twitter, selfies, Instagram—a virtual nightmare.
Have we really botched it? Will no one come to aid?
Will our species all die out? Sicken, fall and fade?
They say after Chernobyl the animals returned.
The grass and tees grew back where they formerly were burned.
Only humans can’t abide the mess that they have made.
as though they have created their own end by their charade.
It’s the way of evolution. Species come and species go
Those who do not worry as they vanish tell us so.
The thing that they don’t realize, just waiting round the bend
as species after species is herded toward its end,
of all endangered species, another they have hexed
may be homo sapiens, whose extinction may be next.
The prompts were below, investigation and eager. The links are below:
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/08/fowc-with-fandango-below/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/investigation/
Unseen Forces
A sneeze is how a poltergeist gets outside of you.
At night a different stinky elf sleeps inside each shoe.
Every creaking rafter supports a different ghost,
and it’s little gremlins who make you burn the toast.
Each night those tricky fairies put snarls in your hair,
while pixies in your sock drawer unsort every pair.
Midnight curtain billows are caused by banshee whistles.
Vampires use your toothbrush and put cooties in its bristles.
Truths all come in singles. It’s lies that come in pairs.
That’s a zombie, not a teenager, sneaking up the stairs.
Generational Reunion
Those stern-looking ancestors with furrowed brow—
if they saw what they’ve evolved into now,
would they be shocked at how I spend my day
toiling for hours on tasks that don’t pay?
Would my sense of humor be found too offensive?
Would they be shocked and would they feel defensive
if I told them the truth about what I believe?
Would how I turned out just cause them to grieve?
Would they swim in my pool, enjoy my strange home
with odd paintings and statues beneath a great dome,
or think me a heathen and pray for my soul?
Would my redemption be their only goal?
Would the truth of their progeny cause them to balk
so they were loath both to laugh and to talk?
Transposed to my setting, I’m sure they’d be shocked
but similar traits might come out as we talked.
One might be an artist, another a writer.
The atmosphere might turn out closer and lighter.
I’d see their high cheekbones and they would see mine.
We’d compare our physiques and our tastes as we dine.
Surely there’s something in genes that would bind us,
draw us together, unite and remind us
this is my past that is visiting me
and I am the one that they turned out to be!
These are photos of my Dutch and Scottish ancestors. The prompts are setting, loath and ancestor. Here are the links:
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/07/fowc-with-fandango-setting/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/loath/
