Category Archives: Poem

The Refusal

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The Refusal

Though you seek to amuse me, instead I’m aghast
when you stir up these tales from your vagabond past—
how you set out with no education
upon a path with no destination.

When you tell what you did when down on your luck—
what you’d do for a dime or a quarter or buck—
I don’t want involvement with one of your kind—
one who’ll do anything, caught in a bind.

How can you think that your tales of abusing,
of wooing, beguiling and loving and using
could be aphrodisiac is hard to see.
They only insure your next victim’s not me.

So I’ll say ta-ta, au revoir and so long.
I won’t be a lyric in any sad song,
and when I dress up in wedding apparel,
I’ll make sure my groom is a good deal less feral.

 

Prompt words are aghast, amuse, destination, involve and quarter. Illustration by Uyen Nguyen on Unsplash.

Tactical Failure

8 Replies

Tactical Failure

Cream whipped up frothy as air smothering chocolate cake—
how much more temptation is my rival going to make?
She knows that my true love is fond of skinny hips,
and yet she makes confections she knows will tempt my lips.

Tiny marzipan cherries adorn the cookies that
she knows that I will not resist and that they’ll make me fat.
She wants to exacerbate a rift she knows is there
ever since as a surprise I cut my knee-length hair.

His complaints resounded over the neighborhood.
Everyone heard his distress, so I’m sure she could
as she passed by on the sidewalk, walking very slow
on her way to the juke joint where they both liked to go.

I know she had designs on him for the very next day
she brought three dozen cookies lined up neatly on a tray.
They were for consolation for she knew we were in trouble,
and so she baked me cookies and made the frosting double.

Thus did this vixen hasten my love affair’s demise
by appealing to my weakness and doubling my size.
And thus because her tactics seemed so perfectly to work,
I wound up with a sweet life while she would up with a jerk! 

Prompts today are frothy as air, exacerbate, marzipan, resound and joint.

A Mismatched Love Story

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A Mismatched Love Story

He approached their assignation
with a bit of trepidation,
for she was gregarious
while he found talk nefarious.

With an air of resignation,
he forgave her education,
but though she loved a well-penned book,
he found, alas, she couldn’t cook.

She loved dogs, he had a cat,
but he could  get over that
if not the comments that she made
while strolling down the esplanade.

What he found impetuous
was her transforming “Me” to “Us.”
So, alas, they never wed.
He learned to cook himself instead!!

 

Prompts for today are resignation, lean, gregarious, impetuous and comment.

Bigot

7 Replies

Bigot

His doctrines are all rusty and anything but rational.
He does not know the meaning of thinking international.
If he’d rescind provincial ways to make his mind more spacious,
it might create a better man, both kinder and more gracious.

 

Prompts for the day are rusty relic, doctrine, gracious, rescind and international. Photo by muhmed-el-bank on Unsplash.

New Dress, Two Sizes Too Small

25 Replies

 

New Dress, Two Sizes Too Small

Once I hone my figure, this will fit me like a glove.
Not one curve will be awry. I’ll be in shape for love.
I’ll put myself in training and walk a mile a day.
I’ll pack up all my cake pans and stow them all away.

I’ll give up chips and chocolate and concentrate on kale,
and after just a month or two, be skinny as a rail.
I have such fine convictions. I know I’ll reach my goal,
and to celebrate, I think I’ll have another roll!

 

 

Prompt words are awry, hone, train, figure and  glove. Dress image by Sharon McCutcheon. Cinnamon roll image by Dilyara Garifullina, both on Unsplash.

Words and the Man

10 Replies

 

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

10 Replies

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

18 Replies

 

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

19 Replies


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.