Category Archives: Daily Prompt

Sinning Lessons

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Sinning Lessons

I am a paragon of virtue. I have no other choice.
I do not have a figure.  I have no sultry voice.
I’ve no talent at kissing. The boys leave me alone.
I have no lovers calling me nightly on the phone.

I get my thrills from scripture. I embroider and I tat.
The creature that I cuddle with is an old grey cat.
Sometimes virtue’s chosen, but it isn’t so with me.
I’d rather spend my weekend nights on some feller’s knee.

But it isn’t in the cards. It’s just my Ma and me.
I guess I’ll just be buttoned up instead of brash and free.
My ma found a new hired man. He isn’t very tall.
A moustache but no muscles. Not swashbuckling at all.

But he has a good strong back. He carries water for me.
And for reasons I can’t fathom, he seems to adore me.
It’s one morning in the cow barn, milking Bossie, that I miss
the bucket with the milk stream when the hired man plants a kiss

on my neck as I bend over. It makes that old cat’s day.
He opens up his mouth and drinks as I just dream and sway
then turn to open my mouth, too, and see how kisses feel
when they are given mouth-to-mouth. It makes me almost reel.

But Hank the hired man catches me, sets me straight again,
and that’s the starting of my life as a paragon of sin!
Sinning’s not so bad at all. You can’t believe the preacher.
And it’s not so hard to do when you have a teacher.

Lessons started in the milking barn but ended in the loft.
The hired man got handsomer as he took his clothing off.
I think he liked me better, too, when I was in the buff 
for no matter how much more I showed, it never seemed enough.

We had a lovely time up there, the hired man and me.
As testament, now seven kids cluster round my knee.
The hired man’s beside me. As I sit and hold his hand,
he runs his fingers back and forth across my wedding band.

The old gray cat’s still happy, for sometimes he still gets lucky
when I’m distracted in the milking ’cause my husband’s feeling plucky.
Married life is lovely. We’re happy, him and me.
We are paragons of loving for perpetuity. 

 

The prompt today is “paragon.”

Miss(ed) Popularity

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Miss(ed) Popularity

Her inflated ego received its puncture
just precisely at the juncture
of her ego colliding with
the truth that contradicted myth.

That she was hot was not debated—
just whether she was educated,
for it was clear to any fool
mere heat does not determine cool.

 

The prompt today was “punctured.”

About that picture. I was walking along the shore and saw a man sitting in this chair drinking a margarita.  “That’s the life,” I said to him and at this point he got up, offered the chair to me and gave me his margarita.  With the other hand he took the camera from me to snap this photo.  As he did, this woman came out of the ocean and posed in front of me.  I swear this was not set up–at least by me!!!

There is a rear view I will spare your from.  Well, what the heck.  Why spare you from anything?

 

Attracting Notice

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Attracting Notice

Where she should  bulge, she seems to taper,
so when her tailor sought to drape her,
he had to stuff with rags and paper
in an attempt to reshape her.
But alas, this futile caper
ended with not a singe gaper.

The word prompt today was taper.

Outspoken

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Outspoken

When you tell your truths en masse,
what you may choose to see as brass
others might perceive as crass.
You may think you’re just a truthful lassie,
but what to you is cute and sassy,
the rest of us consider gassy!
Sometimes, just let the impulse pass.
You’ll be less of a horse’s ass!

 

 

The prompt word today was “brassy.”

The Reveal

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The Reveal

Even when she’s in the buff,
he feels she’s not revealed enough.
He wants to know her heart and soul—
to know her entire being, his goal.
But, alas, she cannot do it.
If she does, she knows she’ll rue it.
Much as she loves a certain sir,
there is a certain part of her
that must remain a mystery.
For in this maiden’s history
are other suitors it behooved
to have her secrets all removed.
But when she revealed it all,
one by one, they did not call.
And thus she learned a maiden’s rule:
Men are fickle. Men are cruel.
Lest you be put up on a shelf,
keep parts of you safe in your self.
To keep him interested in your stuff,
Most of you is just enough.

 

 

 

The prompt today was “buff.”

Sifting Time

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Sifting Time

Suspended between her life and her death,
she measures the intervals from breath to breath,
noting the bed cover’s sinking and lift,
wondering when life will set her adrift.

After a lifetime of effortless health,
she is surprised by the contrasting stealth
and the strength of the grip of what waits at her ending,
no matter what care friends may take in her tending.

As the sands of her life escape through her fingers,
she treasures each grain that stubbornly lingers.
She cannot give up. She has to hold on
until the last grain is fallen and gone.

All of those pleasures that cling to her past
are pleasures now gone. Such pleasures don’t last.
Her life like a book, pages grown stiff with age—
it grows harder and harder to turn the next page.

Her life has turned gritty––a pain and a pleasure.
Each grain that remains both a curse and a treasure.
Afraid to give up what she has for what’s next,
she can’t see the ending. She can’t read the text.

There is no escape and there isn’t a cure,
and though every day goes by in a blur,
yet these last scraps of life still act as a lure
not to give up on life. To simply endure.

The prompt today is curiously similar to yesterday’s.  It is “adrift.”

Notorious Begins with “Not”

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Notorious Begins with “Not”

Though I’d love to be more notable
for poems that are more quotable,
I’d find it far less glorious
to simply be notorious.

Paris Hilton of video fame.

I’m in no sexy videos.
No married presidents for beaus.
I have no shocking tales to tell
of hobnobbing with the cartel.

I haven’t knocked off any banks,
or perpetrated major pranks.
I leave my bosoms in my blouse.
I’ve never “offed” my folks or spouse.

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Menendez Brothers & O.J. Simpson

I simply have no talent for
larceny or sin or gore.
So even if I yearned to be
notorious—it’s just not me!

“Notorious” is today’s prompt.

(The featured photo is of Bonnie and Clyde, perhaps the most notorious female/male bank robber team of all time. All photos borrowed from the internet)

Parsing Warshington

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Translation: “Donald, we are watching you!”  jdb photo, solidarity march, La Manzanilla, MX


Parsing Warshington

Politics became a farce
the year that voting brains were sparse
and we elected that damn narc-
issistic, cretinous horse’s arse!!
It’s clear we couldn’t have chosen warse!!!!

The prompt today was “farce.”

In the Pink: Mismatch

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Mismatch

When a certain fella has had a drink
or two or three, he’s bound to wink
at the little lady dressed in pink.
Her drink’s cubes give a subtle clink
as she decides what she might think.
Is he a stud or just a fink?
His clothes are sort of rinky-dink,
yet her long lashes, swathed in ink,
flutter in a come-on blink.
One fingernail is seen to sink
into her glass. He’s at the brink
of coming over to seal the link.
She checks her breath.  It doesn’t stink.
She reaches down and dons her mink.
But then he stops and seems to shrink.
In this sure deal there seems a chink.
It’s clear that when she deigned to flirt,
she missed the writing on his shirt.
“Be kind to animals,” it said,
“Who’d be caught wearing something dead?”

The prompt word today is “pink.”

Sad News for the Bearded Lady

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Sad News for the Bearded Lady

That your girlish form is rather cute
is not a fact we would dispute;
and though you’re held in good repute,
yet every male’s lack of  pursuit
from callow youth to crusty coot
is a subject that is moot.
The men would be more resolute—
more determined to press their suit—
if only you were less hirsute!

The prompt today was “pursue.”