Category Archives: Poem

Bipartite

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Bipartate

Pelted by the details of the busy world,
I lie within with half of me comfortably furled.
That flawless part that stays within, that flawed part I let out.
Trying to synchronize the two is what life is about.

 

Prompt words today are pelt, synchronize, flawless and bipartite. Also, Shining Your Light. for OctPoWriMo.

Few Regrets

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Image from front cover of Veils, Halos and Shackles : International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women

Few Regrets

The widow’s true feelings belie her black veil,
for the eulogy prompts no tears or no wail.
She remembers his fury and his raised fist,
so his mouth and his hands will never be missed.

That sustained keen from the front of the church
comes from his mother–a black crone on her perch.
Sitting alone in the very front row,
she continues to sob and to moan and to crow.

Hers the only wet eyes, most likely because
she was the reason he was as he was.
No person comforted to ease her pain,
for all felt her loss was the wider world’s gain.

Later, at the grave site, as they commenced queueing
to pay last respects during the final viewing,
the single men agreed the corpse was a louse
and dreamed of becoming the widow’s next spouse.

Word prompts for the day are fury, eulogy, sustain and belie.

Travel Fatigue Amnesia

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Travel Fatigue Amnesia

After ten hours of driving, he felt the car swerve
as his eyelids got heavy and he lost his verve.
With an accident imminent, he pulled off the road
to turn into a Starbucks for sleep’s antipode—
a double espresso with foam and a scone.
His purchase completed, he departed alone,
but fifty miles later, he’s been heard to confess
a thought popped into mind that caused much distress.
He did a fast U turn, feeling like a louse,
and drove back to the Starbucks to retrieve his spouse.

 

Prompt words for the day are froth, imminent, purchase and verve .

Verbless

24 Replies

Prompt words today are unperturbed, antipathy, quixotic and trophy.
(And, sadly, for the third day now, no prompt from The Daily Spur.)

Verbless

Today I am anything but unperturbed,
for the prompt words, I find, seem to be under-verbed.
We’re over-adjectived and over-nouned,
but is there a single verb to be found?

It’s hard to accept this sudden antipathy
displayed by prompt-sites’ crass lack of empathy
in shunning action words. I find a line
that is lacking in verbs, overly supine—

just lying there motionless, lacking in verve—
a mere trophy sentence, no guts and no nerve!
Perhaps if the Daily Spur came out of hiding,
heeding this gentle but most sincere chiding,

together, the prompt sites could conspire to curb
their Quixotic attitude towards that lost verb.
But, in the meantime, can anyone curb
my agitation by suggesting a verb????

 Image by Matt Walsh on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Sweethearts

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Rumored to be apocryphal, it was the honest truth.
A man named Mr. Goodbar married Baby Ruth.
With lives eerily congruous, it was no surprise.
The fact that they were sweethearts? Impossible to disguise.
He was a little brittle and she was a little nuts,
but still they loved each other—with no ands or buts.
It was such a juicy story that she found him oh so dapper,
and he could barely wait to see what was beneath her wrapper!
After they were married, we were sure there’d be no maybes
that with no delay they’d be producing Sugar Babies!!

.

Word prompts for the day are eerie, elucidate, apocryphal, congruous and juice.

Melania’s Revenge

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Teenvogue.com photo
Sun Photo

Teen Vogue and Sun Photos

Melania’s Revenge

As he descends the air stairs, his waving hand waving,
his wife walks beside him as though she is braving
the air that’s around her. She seems to be craving
release from a torment, but she is behaving
because of a settlement scored when he won—
more money for her and more for her son.

But they can’t make her smile a believable smile—
one that masks her boredom and covers her bile.
His hand swatted away, she walks on her own
due to numerous deeds for which he must atone.
The hole in her soul must be so hard to fill,
for living with a jerk is the bitterest pill.

Even she has her pride. It’s an act of sedition
expressing her angst for four years of perdition—
a vehement act that expresses her pride
that though docile outside, she’s a rebel inside.
Some say she’s a dreamer, as though in the dreaming
she escapes a life over which she’d be screaming

if she really cared —but she doesn’t, you know.
If it weren’t for the valium and all of that dough—
she’d no doubt go crazy. Stark raving mad,
over having to spend her whole life with this cad,
but the latest new fashions and a life on the lazy
make up for a husband certifiably crazy!

And as for the people who make her life hell?
She’ll just crook her pinkie and ring her small bell
and tell them to rip out the damnable roses
and then flaunt her power in all of their noses,
by creating a garden—a dull boring park
that will prove that Melania’s at last left her mark.

courtesy #Getty and @marycjordan

Prompt words today are hole, vehement, wave, sedition and dreamer.

Deadly Pick

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Deadly Pick

His coat size has been swelling as his fame keeps shrinking down.
His goal of being lionized has not earned him a crown.
His attempts at speech are aggravating, branding him a fool.
The “facts” he states extraneous, and fiction, as a rule.
He proved to have no budding talent, in fact he’s never bloomed.
From the day they picked him, our country has been doomed.
The seeds he’s spread are poisonous, the ground they fall on blighted,
but hopefully we’ll see the light and his wrongs will be righted.
The seeds of fairness sown again. Our course once more set straight.
And all the horrors he’s planted will wither and abate.

 

Images by Deviant Art and GoodEarth Plants.  Prompt words today are bud, extraneous, aggravate, lionize and coat.

Give Me That Blue (Quadrille for dVerse Poets)

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Not the blue of a heart before forgetting.
The blue of the sky above Colima Volcano,
no other clouds in it except one puff
of earth’s hot breath becoming visible
in the cool morning air.
Like blue caught in icicles.
Give me that blue.

 

A personal note of interest. The water in my house is heated by this volcano!
For dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Sky

School Reunions

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School Reunions

Entangled in the distant past, we recall and illuminate
those fifty-year-old stories as we gather to ruminate.
Pranks, first loves and scandals so far back in our past,
it’s as though it was a movie in which we all were cast.

That thumbtack “someone” placed upon our history teacher’s chair.
Will the scoundrel confess at last? But no, he doesn’t dare.
And in our sixties, will we snitch? No, there is not one.
Not one of us reveals the answer to that smoking gun.

The raided slumber parties, the trips up England’s hill,
we tell the stories of our past until we’ve had our fill,
then jump to doleful stories of tragedies and sorrows—
the few of those lost in their youth, deprived of all their morrows.

Hayrides by the river, pep rallies and school dances,
boys passing girls in cars on Main, pondering their chances.
Wild Homecoming raids on barns where we were building floats,
whisperings in Civics class and furtively passed notes.

Both schools we passed those years in have been felled by wrecking crews,
replaced by newer buildings, erasing all the clues
of years we spent within them, the carvings on the desks,
all our various antics as we lived out youth’s burlesques.

Our memories getting dimmer, each five years, we choose to meet
to reminisce and chew the fat. To drink and dance and eat.
We don’t discuss the present. It’s as though it’s in a haze
as we go back to live our half-remembered yesterdays.

Prompt words today are entangle, doleful, ruminate and jump.

Agastopia

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Agastopia

I simply cannot reconcile that glimmer in your eyes
with any look that I’ve received from any other guys.
My friends say you’re perfidious, yet I don’t get that message.
“Danger” is an ending that your gazes do not presage.
If the frustration that I’m feeling is transmitted in my gaze,
perhaps you will decipher it while wandering its maze.
For every time you’re present, I’m a prisoner of pondering
that question in your eyes that always sets my mind to wandering
down pathways we meander, walking hand-in-hand.
So long as you are in my thoughts, my heart is in remand.
We need a kind interpreter to set our looks aright.
Perhaps there’s a happy ending for him to expedite.

 

Prompt words today are frustration, reconcile, agastopia, perfidious and message.

Agastopia: Admiration of  or a fixation on a particular part of someone’s body.