POTUS
He’s just a phase in history, but when will this phase end?
The whole world’s breath is being held. When will he round the bend?
As he jogs on in his next race, we wish that it were ended.
Surely as he gains in girth, he must be getting winded!
Yet our domestic maniac goes on planning his crazies.
The world will not be sane again ’til he’s pushing up daisies!
Word prompts for the day are domestic, maniac, history and phase. Image by Visuals on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Bunglery at the Ritz Apartments
We’re making the assumption that this ritzy part of town
is the perfect place for our next heist to go down.
Jimmy has it in his noggin that we’ve gotta hit the best,
so it should be the penthouse. We should forget all the rest.
But I think he’s a blockhead. We should choose another floor.
Penthouses have alarms in every room, on every door.
So we settle on the first floor, but still wind up in jail,
and I’m in here for the long term ’cause I cannot meet my bail.
The docs have sewn up gashes on my arm and my left calf,
but my wounds don’t equal Jimmy’s, not even by a half
And when he pays his own bail, he tells me,”Go to the Devil.”
I forgot folks with the biggest dogs live on the lowest level.
Prompt words for today are settle, block, noggin, heist and assumption.
Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash, used with permission
Reconnaissance
Enter our shell-shocked hero, all his battles won.
His glorious sorties over, his service finally done.
The stash he found cathartic? He stole it from his son.
Exulting in this final raid, he thought he’d have some fun.
He only took a bit of it. Each day he took some more.
He chewed the bag a little bit, as though to make a door.
He saw his son’s perplexity, searching through the house.
Had a rat made off with it? Could it have been a mouse?
He found his son’s new hiding places—where he had been loitering,
making use of thirty years of army reconnoitering.
The freezer in the garage, a tea tin in the drain.
What enemy made raids into such difficult terrain?
His son could believe sorties over mountaintop and ridge,
but how might a mouse invade a freezer or a fridge?
This mystery went unsolved for at least a decade more,
at which point it was finally told and became family lore.
How his father returned home, fatigued by years of war
and found relief from raiding his teenager’s secret store.
And how these retirement maneuvers against his puzzled son
helped salve the scars of battle with a little fun.
Word prompts for today are fatigue, stash, cathartic, exult and hero.
Knave of Coins
Bored with all his yesterdays, needing a new tomorrow,
grown used to fickle intimacies, much to all our sorrow
he stood upon a precipice where the whole world looked back
and declared himself the ruler of the whole damn pack.
That anybody listened is a sort of modern miracle.
He wasn’t very smart and he surely was not lyrical.
Though he understood but little, what he knew just seemed to work.
One can capture much attention by being a dumb jerk.
He pulled the haters to him—the fearful and the jaded.
All his moneyed cronies supported him, elated.
He’d pull apart the world we knew and put it back again,
but I fear that what few plans he had turned out to be in vain.
For when he’d knocked everything down, he knew not what to do
except to blame the mess he’d made on everyone he knew.
The whole world knows that he’s a knave, his mind and soul both dim.
The thing that is distressing is those who supported him.
Word prompts today are overcome, fickle, intimacy, precipice and yesterday.
Advisor to the Lovelorn
Although she was a novice, she had a trenchant wit.
No matter what the problem, she had a cure for it.
With very little practice, she had soon mastered the job
of advice to the lovelorn—that suffering, confused mob.
She composed her column while sitting in the tub,
dispensing rules and practices to her admiring club
of followers who hung their lives on her guiding words
from their first fumbling kisses to the bees and birds.
She gave names to their thingamajigs and taught them how to use them.
Taught them all the body parts and how to not abuse them.
Virgins forsook their single cots for their marriage beds
with thoughts of all her wisdom swirling through their heads.
But when it came to her own life? Up that proverbial creek.
No wiser soul advised her. No counsel did she seek.
Lover after lover was given a brief chance
to try to woo this very master of romance.
But, alas, their tactics never quite took hold.
This one was too timid and the next one was too bold.
So was it that, sadly, did this mistress of romance
miss out on on her own turn at the wedding dance.
So is it that our betters tell us what to do
whereas within their own lives, they do not have a clue.
Words for today are thingamajig, practice, novice, trenchant and composed.
Impotus
He’s up there on the platform acting crass and disagreeable.
That he will bring the whole world down around him is foreseeable.
Every single day I hope and pray for his quiescence,
but, alas, refraining from brash speech is not his essence.
He opens mouth and words fall out—disjointed, vague and dense.
He’d make a great orator if only he made sense.
Good that his mother cannot see the travesty she bore—
narcissistic, senseless, and rotten to the core.
His attempts at humor only render him more silly.
His stench sickening and cloying—like an Easter lily.
He’s like a wild animal: vicious, cunning, feral.
What more can he do to put our whole wide world in peril?
No good can be said of him. He’s rotten through and through.
Daily, the world waits for him to drop the other shoe.
Prompt words today are disagreeable, platform, mother, quiescent and Easter lily. And action!
Hail Diego!!!
He’s the king of dogs by his own choice.
Behold his ruff, Enjoy his voice!
He raises it in time of doubt
to assert his power and raise his clout.
Bypassers make their passings brief
Their parting sighs denote relief.
And since he notes each falling leaf,
no way he’ll overlook a thief.
It is a fact that crime went down
the minute he moved into town.
All citizens should laud his fame,
and spread abroad his glorious name!!!
Prompt words today are relief, fact, king, behold and voice.
Spring Cleaning
It’s that time of the year when I want to come clean
and turn into a virtual sorting machine.
I’m emptying closets and clearing out shelves.
Disposing of all of my former used selves.
Keeping the best of me. Tossing the worn.
Keeping the new me that’s daily reborn
and discarding the jaded, the bored and forlorn.
I’m renouncing old habits and starting anew.
I’m not limping along in my regular queue
of things to accomplish and deeds I must do,
and I’m making a list of things I’ll eschew—
things that inevitably make me blue—
politics, violence, things all askew
that have turned our whole planet into a zoo.
I’m making an outline to use as a guide
with all the things that I’ve certified
will make my life better and straighten it out.
They’ll make me happier, without a doubt.
Troublesome people I’m going to avoid.
Life is too short to spend it annoyed.
What is life for if not to be enjoyed?
I’ll go on a diet and I’ll become svelt.
Shorten my hemlines and tighten my belt.
I’ll take all the tactics I’ve learned in this life
as daughter and student and girlfriend and wife
and put them together into a rich stew
of what I have vowed that I’m going to do.
Then tackle my life with this new retinue.
Or else I’ll stay home and not worry about
having a gorgeous body to flout.
I’ll cook puddings and pastries and share them with friends,
put on a few pounds without making amends.
Taking more time to stare at the birds.
I’ll do fewer shoulds and do more absurds—
cavort with my art and play with my words.
Consort with the dogs and cuddle the cats.
Issue fewer “No’s!” and give way more pats.
Since this is my life and I am the boss of it,
I’ll make a vow to get rid of the dross of it.
Clean out the dreads and stock up on the wants.
hang out at all of my favorite haunts,
believe what praise comes and ignore all the taunts.
Word prompts today are limp, outline, new, renounce and politics.
Enforced Reflection
I’m keeping my composure and compensating for
the fact that they won’t let me venture out my door.
Given lemons, I make margaritas—take the opportunity
now that I can’t wander about in the wide community,
to revel in the riches that abound right here at home,
watching Jesus painting murals all around my dome.
I’m baking lots of cookies, although their fate is sad.
After painters ate just one or two, Diego was so bad
that he raced into the kitchen and made off with all the rest.
One friend suggested delicately it might have been best.
Would I have eaten any that remained? Yes, it’s true, I might.
I must admit my waistbands are getting sort of tight.
Perhaps it’s lack of exercise. Perhaps it’s medication.
Since I so rarely don street clothes, I have no indication.
I avoid the scales because, you know, they are so changeable.
Up one day but rarely down. (Wish they were more arrangeable.)
With nature as our trainer, perhaps we will be changed
in other crazy pastimes in which we’ve become deranged.
Fracking and polluting, casting all our trash
out there in the ocean, making a god of cash.
Nature has to teach us to change our foolish ways
by sending us all to our rooms to pass our “time out” days.
And perhaps now I’m sequestered and set upon the shelf,
Diego’s her reminder to take care of myself.
The image of Diego with a cookie in his mouth is from a retablo/art collage I’m making that is recording my time spent in Mother Nature’s Time-Out period. Why don’t you join me? Mine was finished but then I have to keep adding to it. At least a story a day. Diego was that day’s.
Prompts for the day are composure, compensate, opportunity, revel and trainer.
And, for dVerse Poets Pub prompt: Solitude.
Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash. Used with permission
Two Faces
There’s a twinkle in his eye in spite of higher education,
and although he is hard-headed, there’s an air of jubilation
whenever he is in a room. There’s magic in his laughter
that sets you all to wondering just what it is he’s after.
He’ll bathe you in attention. His queries will resound,
but his answers to your problems are likely to rebound.
He’ll write you up on charges and you’ll wish you gave a pass
when he inquires about your problems, then fires your whiny ass!
Prompt words for today are twinkle, education, hard-headed, resound and bath.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 