Category Archives: Poem

Words and the Man

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Words and the Man

The words lie pinned upon the sheet, mistress to his demands,
only brought into the light by his complicit hands.
They may want to wage battle or to stray off and meander,
but they have given power away to a new commander.

The glut of letters marches straight across the written page,
tip-toeing or stomping off in a pent-up rage.
They are but the eggs of thought contained within the shell,
but he knows how to scramble them. He’s learned the method well.

Words may portend the future or they may reflect the past.
He may hide them deep in steerage or fly them from the mast.
And whether it’s a novel, a poem or a song,
With words he weaves a cable to tow us all along.

 

Prompt words are mistress, glut, egg, portend and cable.

The Spin

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The Spin

I like your luminosity, your gusto and your style,
and I hope your personality is lacking in its guile.
They say that you are driven to prosper at your game
so all the folks who put you down will come to know your name.

But fame is not the whole of it. Other things count more.
One who strives for fame alone turns out to be a bore.
How you get to where you are means more than where you get.
Those doubling down on kindness almost always win their bet.

 

 

Prompts for today are luminosity, gusto and driven. Photo by Derek Lynn on Unsplash.

Blossoming Creed

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Blossoming Creed

Life, let me be a conduit to a positive future.
Let me not be bound by tradition even though I honor it.
Let me not be deterred by the lack of success
of those who went before me,
but let me learn from their experience.
Let me take pleasure from small successes
but aim for larger ones.
Let me create my own path
in a manner pleasurable to me,
be it bulldozer or pruning shears,
drawing pencil or paint brush.
Let my world be a new one
never before seen
and let me fit within it
with joy and open arms
for those who wish to join me in it.

 

Prompts today are conduit and tradition.  Image from Unsplash.

New Baby Blues

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New Baby Blues

I rue the day my mom acquired my new baby brother.
I wish that she’d return him and come back with another.
When I first saw him, he was cute and I was rather proud,
but that’s before I knew the fact that he would be so loud.

When he cries, he makes a sort of ear-splitting sharp bleating
all the time Mom’s in the kitchen seeing to the heating
of the bottle used to apportion out his dinner.
You’d think for all the fuss he makes that he was growing thinner,

Yet I swear that day-by-day, to my great disgust
that he’s growing bigger—fatter and more robust!
And when he isn’t sleeping or drinking or deranged,
he is damp or poopie and insisting to be changed.

I think this baby’s broken and I think we need a new one.
I asked if I could go along when they go to view one,
but Mommy says there’s no return because this one is used,
while Daddy uttered not a word—just stood looking amused.

It really isn’t funny, though. In fact, I’m most annoyed
that they have less time for me now that they’re employed
taking care of baby—making sure he’s fed and well
while all this time I’ve been here too, living in baby Hell!

He’s diapered, held and cuddled, sung to and adored
while his older sister sits here feeling bored.
They say that I’ll feel different once he’s more grown up,
but if it were up to me, I’d trade him for a pup!

 

Prompt words today are proud, heating, apportion, damp and rue.

Air Conditions

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Air Conditions

Grandma was neither meek nor mild and she was not abused.
The thought of any man ruling her makes me most amused.
But she was parsimonious when it came to waste,
scraping each bit of cookie dough to give us all a taste.

The weather could be sweltering before she used the fan.
“No need to run the light bill up just because I can!”
she’d quip when we expressed our feeble pleas for cool air,
but she allowed no wasteful behavior in her private lair.

Though she was far from venal, one tactic seemed to work,
for along with penny-pinching, my grandma had one quirk.
Her appetite for sugar was beyond compare,
so we’d produce the chocolate and then flip on the air!!!

She’d rifle through the chocolate box for caramels and nuts,
for when it came to favorites, she expressed no ifs or buts.
For summer after summer, this was Grandma’s rule.
So long as supplies lasted, everything was cool.

Prompt words today are sweltering, parsimonious, meek, venal and abused.

Reconnections

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Reconnections

What has been severed can be reconnected.
Stitches can stitch up what has been dissected.
Humans are fallible. All make mistakes.
Thus we are given a chance at retakes.

When we strictly label an act as “The End,”
we only signal our refusal to bend.
When a solution’s offered and we refuse it,
we’ve been offered a chance and chosen to lose it.

We’ve denied a lesson and chosen defection
in lieu of a chance to learn reconnection.
Consider the paperclip—invention most clever
that helps to rejoin what we once chose to sever.

Granted, some things may be better off parted,
but things we think ended can still be restarted.
Some things are clearly better off righted,
and after small partings should be reunited.

Prompt words today are paperclip, fallible, strictly, sever and lesson.

To Bee or Not to Bee

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To Bee or Not to Bee

Busy little honeybee adhering to each flower,
collecting all their nectar for hour after hour.
Will exhaustion stay your flight, your rubbing and your nuzzling
so there will be less honey to fulfill our need for guzzling?
Your antennae look disjointed, your hairs are slightly grizzled,
but I’m waiting for my crumpet with its honey lightly drizzled.
Do you find it pertinent that we are debating
whether you’re aware that your consumers are all waiting?

 

Prompts for the day are honeybee, adhere, grizzle, pertinent and exhaustion.

Hermit’s Creed

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Hermit’s Creed

Although they stand stiffly at attention,
these walls reach out
and hold me safe within their middle.
They stand guardian,
cushioning sound,
deflecting sharp edges.
Lucky me to have their protection.
Foolish me to leave their arms.
Yet the butterfly
soars over and away.

 

For dVerse Poets “Stand” Quadrille prompt. The only rule for a quadrille poem is that it must have  exactly 44 words. If you want to read other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.

Return to Sender (For the “Let It Bleed” Prompt)

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Return to Sender

Tell it, please, to Cupid and to the cooing dove.
I don’t require a second chance at the game of love.
I’ve said goodbye to mystery, nostalgia and the moon.
I find the very topic of love to be jejune.

Once I was its addict, but I’ve quenched my lovelorn thirst.
I’m immune to its magic, its betrayal and what’s worst,
its transitory nature which conspires to betray
all those yearning feelings one collects along its way.

I hereby vent my sorrows and hold a mirror to
all those scattered memories to bring them into view.
Zesty looks that falter and  vows that always fail
fly away to shadows and the wintry gale.

Passions pause with time and hearts once flushed and tender,
offered up with love are now “returned to sender.”
Love blinding in its brilliance is destined to depart,
creating that inevitable sunset of the heart.

 

In the above poem, I used all of these words given for the Randomness Inked, Let It Bleed prompt :
addict, always, betray, conspire, fail, fly, goodbye, love, magic, mirror, moon, mystery, nostalgia, pause, scatter, second chance ,shadows, sunset ,thirst, time, transitory,, vent, winters and zest

For Randomness Inked, Let It Bleed.

Nature’s Tithe

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Nature’s Tithe

Cold drafts inspired carpet and swift winds gave birth to walls.
Thus, human folk keep warm and dry in their shopping malls.

A transcript of the weather might reflect our evolution.
Good turns to bad and bad to good with each revolution

of a world that seems to extract her scheduled tithe.
Nine days in ten we celebrate. The other day we writhe.

And yet we find solutions to all of her disaster.
Trials affecting change to make development go faster.

 

 

Prompts for today are inspired carpet, transcript, keeping, tithe and affect.