Swingers
Romance is better on the swings
for it’s true Cupid has wings
and if he inspires a kiss,
it’s clear that you don’t want to miss
that moment on your mutual ride
where your lips might coincide,
and on the teeter-totter or slide
it’s harder to go side-by-side.
For the Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge: Side-by-Side
Image by Brandon Couch on Unsplash.
What Goes Around Comes Around
The facts at your disposal are ones you should review,
because truth may vitiate the strength of what you choose to spew.
Your toxic comments are perhaps ones that you may rue,
for like a brick thrown in a whirlwind, they may come back at you.
Prompt words today are whirlwind, brick, disposal, vitiate and toxic. Image from Unsplash.
Drop-ins Not Advised
“Don’t be a stranger” said the pair
when I met them at an affair.
Nobody knew this introduction
would give rise to such a ruction.
When I strolled into their borough,
inquiries were swift and thorough.
Was I peddling pot or meth?
How did I say shibboleth?
I passed the pat-down, said the word,
then joined the swirling passing herd.
Clearly, it is not a lark
to try to enter Borough Park!
Prompt words today are Shibboleth, thorough, nobody, ruction and introduction.
Two of the prompt words today were a bit tricky, giving rise to this strange little poem.
If you, don’t know what “Shibboleth” means (as I didn’t) HERE is a link to its explanation.
Borough Park is a largely Orthodox Jewish section of New York City and a ruction is a disturbance, quarrel, or row.
Playing with Fire
In the circles she lives in, she’s queen of the realm.
Wherever she goes, she must be at the helm.
They call her the Admiral, head of the fleet.
She’ll hear no debate and she’ll bear no defeat.
When she is challenged, she’s ready to fight.
Incadescent with anger, she’ll insist that she’s right.
Once her rage is incited, she could drive you to drink.
Your role is to follow. Her role is to think.
When you rub her together with one of her kind,
they’re bound to express a difference of mind,
and since neither can bear an opposing notion,
it’s bound to lead to explosive emotion.
Rub them together and they’re sure to fight.
Like sulphur on sandpaper, they will ignite.
So keep them apart, these glorious dames,
or one or the other will go up in flames.
Prompts today are in the circle, realm, incadescent, fleet and drink.
Image by Olga Bast on Unsplash.
A Day at the Beach
My hairdo is unraveling in the ocean’s spray,
and the men are talking fishing so I haven’t much to say.
I do not know their language and the sea breeze makes me cough.
My skin’s at risk in sunlight, but a stone-throw’s distance off,
in the shelter of a palm tree, I find shade, at least,
open up my backpack and partake in a small feast.
Then after I have eaten, when the sun has reached the rim
of the far horizon, I finally have a swim.
For once the sun’s not flaming, it creates a lovely glow,
sinking toward the ocean and vanishing below.
The sea has pleased the fishermen all day, cast after cast,
but as the sun sinks into it, it’s pleasing me, at last.
This week’s Wordle words are language, eat, feast, fish, unraveling, spray, shadow, flame, stone, risk and off.
Difference of Opinion
If I were being altruistic, I’d meet you halfway there,
but your overbearing manner is more than I can bear.
You have me in a dither and so it’s true, I fear,
that it’s the end of our discussion, because I am out of here!
Prompts today are halfway, altruistic, dither and fear.
Good Dog
Before they strapped a chain link trinket around his coal black throat,
a hundred loving strokes a day smoothed his black fur coat.
He had a special diet stacked neatly on a shelf,
and though it was placed low enough for him to reach himself,
he never helped himself to it, and right up to this writing,
I never heard one word of his barking or his biting.
A paragon of virtue, he expelled no doggie farts,
and though his nose was yearning to explore some private parts,
he kept it strictly to himself, polite without a lapse,
and came running with his flouncy gait to whistles or to claps.
In short, he was the perfect dog—sleek and trim and dark,
so when his master took him running in the park,
he always got a special treat in his own private cup,
and to reward his human, he lapped the whole thing up!
I photographed this good boy in the park in Sheridan, Wyoming, where I went with my friend Marti, and since I am a good girl, I lapped up a cup of chocolate and salted caramel ice cream myself as well!
Prompt words today are expel, trinket, self, flounce and writing.
Ephemera
Time drips off its pendulum from three to four to five,
trickling off the minutes that we’ve been alive.
Vapid little seconds are flung off with each tick,
hardly ever noticed as their passing is so quick.
The richest man on earth cannot buy more than he’s accorded.
Hours can’t be put in storage and so they can’t be hoarded.
Days can’t be the building blocks of a fine estate,
for they are just chalk marks wiped daily off our slate.
Prompt words today are trickle, pendulum, storage, vapid and estate. Illustration: The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali.
Catnap
I’m in the tidepool of repose, floating on my dream—
Hushed and very far away from exhaustion’s scream.
The telephone’s not ringing, I have nowhere to go
except to float in currents of my dreaming’s flow.
All my finicky habits stream out ahead of me
and vanish in the currents, to leave me calm and free.
My head falls to the chair back, waking me from my nap,
but as if to calm me, the cat jumps in my lap.
I fall in with his plans for me, do not avoid his scheming,
but as I gently stroke him, I fall back to my dreaming.
Prompt words today are tidepool, repose, telephone, finicky and exhaustion.
Somehow, Things Just Seem to Work Out
Sometimes the world’s a slippery slope as though it seeks to best us—
its calumnies and trials just meant to try to test us.
But I have found the hard knocks that seem about to break us
are really just the tempering by means of which life makes us.
Life at its extremities of temperature and weather
tests our very limits and makes us stronger whether
the regions where we find ourselves be boiling hot or frigid ones,
cooling off our hot spots and warming up our rigid ones.
When we are exhausted, life has a way of slowing,
as though it has known all along the direction we’ve been going.
Although we meet with floods and gales, there is a sort of knowing
that’s somehow able to predict the way our winds are blowing.
Prompt words today are calumny, slope, exhausted, extremity and region.
