Category Archives: Poem

Still on the Nickel?

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Still on the Nickel?

Four hundred thousand for a pension, a million for his travel.
More for his security, McConnell, pound your gavel.

Give him not a penny. Not a nickel nor a dime.
He deserves no further payment for his life of crime.

May the senate use its Trump card to deal out his comeuppance.
When it comes to a pension, he should get nary a tuppence.

We’re tired of his finagling, the lies and all the trouble.
It’s time we drew the needle out to burst his four-year bubble.

If I may be pauciloquent, I’ll simply say, “IMPEACH!!!”
Finally do the right thing. Kick out the sonnofabeach!!!!!!

Prompt words today are comeuppance, trouble, pauciloquent (terse, using few words) and finagle.
“On the Nickel” in this context means “On the dole.” The Nickel is a street in San Francisco where a lot of homeless hang out. That Trump should have his hand out for further entitlements after his term is over just seems unconscionable to me. Let him earn his own nickels from now on. Impeachment will insure this. Here is one of my favorite Tom Waits songs that I drew my title from.

Immodest Proposal

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Immodest Proposal

The busy restaurant suddenly as silent as a tomb—
my “No” resounding clearly all across the room.
It was this blunt refusal that brought him to his knees,
begging my forgiveness and finally saying “Please!”
Tenderness exuding from his every word,
he repeated his offer in a manner less absurd.
His sangfroid left behind him, he presented me the ring
with proper reverence as though it was a sacred thing.
It was a better proposal than the first one he had pitched
when he tossed the ring box at me and said, “Wanna get hitched?”

Prompt words today are sangfroid, instead, tenderness and lapse.

First Friends

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Click on photos to enlarge.

First Friends

Friendship need not be dazzling at every bend and turn.
It can be a placid river, devoid of roil and churn.
It can merely listen—a sympathetic ear
can be enough to cancel out sorrow, anger, fear.

Friends are one of life’s delights that nothing else replaces—
initials in a school desk that nothing else defaces.
School assignments dreaded, but then attacked together,
countless outings faced as one in mild or stormy weather.

Dazzling feats accomplished: sports, exams and proms. 
Secrets shared together that we’d never tell our moms.
Giggling under covers, far into the night,
regretful tears and tight embrace after a childish fight.

What can replace a friendship in which every secret’s known?
Even after years apart, when we’re matured and grown?
In every single mother, grandmother or wife,
there are those kernels of  memory of the first friends of her life.

 

Word prompts for today are assignment, delight, dazzling and friendship.

Final Cure

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Final Cure

Her health was being challenged by a constant series of woes.
She had chilblains on her fingers and corns between her toes.
She suffered migraine headaches, and her joints became rheumatic
during the rainy season, when she also turned asthmatic.
Since her approach to cures was stubbornly heuristic,
the remedies she chose to use tended toward pluralistic.
Her health care ran the gamut from Kabbalah to holistic.
One day she saw a doctor and the next she saw a mystic.
And since the switching back and forth became a sort of Hell,
in the end she gave them all up and decided to get well!

 

Prompt words for the day are health, series, heuristic and woe.

Winds of Change

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Winds of Change

I’m picking at my cuticles and gnawing on my nails.
The winds behind my worries are puffing out their sails.
Operation Trump-bump may require a necromancer
to resurrect some aid to rid us of this monster’s cancer.

Lincoln, Roosevelt and Truman may have words to tell
how to rid our country of the past four years of Hell.
I’m eager to be rid of them and feel some consternation
over just how long it’s taken for this operation.

May less self-serving leaders at this long-awaited date
seize the wheel and take control of our ship of state.
May our country come together, most hoping for the best
and set our past divisions, hopefully, to rest.

 

 

Prompt words today are gnaw, operation, picking and eager.

Married to the Sun

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Married to the Sun

One ray makes an incision through a layer of cloud to land
like a stream of gold upon my outstretched hand.
It is no illusion that its trail of liquid gold
winds around my finger. It’s a beauty to behold.

All my life, it’s true I’ve not belonged to anyone,
but now it is official. I am married to the sun.
Why else would just one sun ray make the decision to linger
of all the places in the world, only upon my finger?

 

Prompt words for today are trail, liquid, illusion and linger.

Natural Beauty

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Natural Beauty

She’s so ravishing that she needs no adorning,
so lovely that she should come with a warning,
“Don’t alter or ornament, polish or buff.
Just as she is, she is more than enough.”

Don’t give her a fringe. Don’t mascara her eyes.
She’d be less than she is. Don’t attempt to disguise
what nature has given. It cannot be bettered.
Just let her perfection be seen thus unfettered

by ribbons or ruffles or buttons or bows.
Leave her with the ornaments that nature chose:
bright eyes and long lashes and raven-black hair,
slim ankles, long legs and a trim derriere,

a smile that is innocent, mind without guile,
an inborn sense of movement and style.
She’s a rich vein of gold not in need of refining—
a natural girl not in need of defining.

The traits she was born with should not be waylaid.
Don’t betray the choices that nature has made.
Look around at perfection that’s all around you.
Just by itself, it’s enough to astound you.

 

Prompt words today are fringe, ravishing, warning and betray. Unless otherwise stated, all images on this blog are by me.

Pieces of Toast

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Pieces of Toast

They dip into
the smooth
round yolk
of a fading dream.

They interfere,
these conscious words,
an uninvited jentacular
mob that enters

without invitation,
shedding their crumbs.
I make exception
and surrender
control,

accepting
their sharp crisp corners
into the broken centers
of my smooth round
subterranean
stanzas.

Words for the day are mob, interfere, jentacular and exception. Image by Mae Mu on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Also, for dVerse Poets Open Link Night

 

Lighthouse Point: Lynn’s Tuesday Picture Prompt

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Photo by Lynn

Lighthouse Point

A rocket shape
stabs the landscape,
white and stark.
But in the dark,
its road of light
cuts through the night.

Strong and sure,
confusion’s cure,
it guides the lost
and tempest-tossed
to safety’s shore,
the stuff of lore.

A beacon streaming,
bright and beaming,
guiding lost souls
past coral shoals
through froth and foam,
securely home.

For Lynn’s Tuesday Picture Prompt, Week 30

SWC Challenge: Winter Weather

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Snow’s Epilogue

We can’t count the snowflakes nor put them into order.
They fall to make a blanket or a pile or a border.
They come in a blizzard and leave us in a trickle. 
There’s something about former snow that is so very fickle.
It drips in drops from icicles and surges down the gutters.
Our attempts to modify it end in futile mutters.
I need not be prophetic to state the truth of snow.
It starts out in a flurry and ends up in a flow.

 

SWC Challenge: Winter Weather