Category Archives: Poem

Film Legend

Film Legend

Once I was unstoppable, but now my moves are tentative.
My tones once sweet and wheedling have now turned argumentative.
My salad days gone limp, “cute as a penny” turned to brass,
people take as vitriol what once they saw as sass.
My image has been shattered. When I look in the mirror,
I prefer to view me far away instead of standing nearer.
I once was an ingenue with all the roles I wanted.
I faced the cameras brazenly, unfiltered and undaunted.
But now I find the only lenses on my face
are trifocals. The cameras? Gone without a trace.

 

Prompt words today are brass, tentative, unstoppable, benefit and shattered. Photos from Unsplash and other free sites.

Rainy Season Rag

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Rainy Season Rag

How can you be so cavalier
with so much lightning flashing near?
Do you not see? Can you not hear?
It’s raining harder. Have you no fear?
The dogs both circle, growl and peer.
This vigilance is their career.
They’re prodding you to move your rear,
Forsake your hammock. Grab your beer
and make a run. The house is near.
Vámonos ahora, my dear!

 

 

 

 

For the Weekend Writing Prompt: Cavalier in 64 words.

The Treacherous Butterfly

Treacherous Butterfly

No matter what censure, no matter the talk,
nothing will cause the man to take stock
of each unbalanced act and nonsensical statement.
Nothing on earth can prompt the abatement
of whims that he tries to pass off as facts.
Who can measure what harm his spontaneous acts
have caused nation-wide and likewise to Earth?
He’s a treacherous butterfly whose wings give birth
to a hurricane violent in its effect—
its currents fanned wilder by his crazy sect.

 

Word prompts today are plant, treacherous, butterfly, censure and stock. Image by Arun Clarke on Unsplash , used with permission.

Fallen Star

Fallen Star

Is it love or obligation? I am driven to inquire.
It’s the sort of information that I’m not going to acquire
unless I ask you bluntly. He’s a noxious sort of fellow—
shriveled-up and cranky, and his fingernails are yellow!

He’s a worn-out western movie star, but  I swear his past
is not the sort of glamor that’s been shown to last.
Marry a guy for former fame? My dear, it isn’t groovy.
If you want to see him at his best, may I suggest a movie?

Prompts today are shrivel, acquire, obligation, noxious and western. Photo by Guillaume de Germain on Unsplash. Used with permission.

King of Fools


King of Fools

It’s a virtual world we sink into for fun
now that our worldly contact is done.
Facebook is our friendship and Skype our salvation,
Zoom our replacement for kids’ education.
It’s our succor in sadness, replacement for sport,
when others malign us, our means of retort.
Our childrens’ frondescence confined to Twitter,
how can they resist being surly and bitter?

We’re culpable, all of us, I must confess.
How could we let things get in such a mess?
Money our God and diverted by pleasure,
we sacrificed a more vital treasure,
giving up liberty, we were distracted
by a buffoon who reenacted
presenting reality just as a show—
impressing with posturing, bluffing and dough.

And those for whom books were replaced with a screen?
They couldn’t tell the difference between
what entertained and what was for real
and that’s how he managed to posture and steal
liberty—both on a scale that was national
making decisions stupidly irrational,
and our own liberty, now that we’re trapped
within our boxes, trussed up and wrapped

with only the foolish wandering round
making decisions, unmasked and unsound,
the dupes of a Mother who’s finally decided 
that all of these humans whom she has abided
for thousands of years are on their way out,
aided by their foolishness, without a doubt,
and by their leader, that king of all fools
who will bring down the world with his asinine rules!!!

 

Prompt words for today are frondescence, culpable, virtual, succor and sink. All photos thanks to Unsplash, used with permission.

Mixed Bag


Mixed Bag

The gleam of ruby slippers, the taste of Jujy Fruit—
sensations of our youth that aging can’t refute.
Obliged to eat our green beans, jelly-roll came after.
Midnight loneliness gave way to breakfast table laughter.
Good and bad mixed up in each. The freedom of old age
compared to flexibility of youth? It’s hard to gauge.

Red wine or hot cocoa, a warm cat on your lap,
nodding off in hammocks versus a daily nap
prescribed by Mom no matter how unsleepy you might be.
Whether you sit under or climb the cherry tree.
All your life lived here in this same small town,
morphing from baptismal to your wedding gown.

Eight years old or eighty, good times follow strife.
All of them together making up a life.

Prompt words today are ruby, taste, aging, oblige and loneliness.

Mental Athletes

Mental Athletes

Some call us impetuous, but we suspect they’re jealous.
Others say we’re over-eager when we’re merely zealous.
Our acts are not illegal, though I admit we use
a thousand bits of trivia that all together fuse
to give us an advantage over what may be the norm.
In our minds they come together and we give them form.
Call it a theorem, a proof or an invention.
Such ends are never gotten to by following convention.
As athletes run the marathon and banners are unfurled,
we exercise within our minds and thereby change the world.

Prompt words today are impetuous, glimpse, trivia, suspect and illegal. Image by jeshoots.com  via unsplash, used with permission,

Animal Nature

Animal Nature

She had a penchant for excitement but discretion was a must,
for how her family worried and how her family fussed—
fingers tearing hair and both palms shielding eyes.
Was bungee-jumping safe? Did she think sky-diving wise?

They’d have her clipping coupons and baking cherry pies,
so she only did her favorite things shrouded in disguise.
A person in a chicken costume jumping from a plane
might have been seeking notice, might have seemed inane

if the chicken ever took off her feathers or her mask.
If she ever answered the questions they might ask.
But she only shed her feathers once safely in her home,
arranging them with fingers and a broad-toothed comb.

Snow-boarding in her fox costume, she knew they’d never know
how she banged up her left elbow, fractured her little toe.
She’d said it was at tennis—that family-sanctioned sport,
as they happily imagined her on golf course or on court.

They found other sport unseemly, inappropriate at best
when associated with their spotless family crest.
Thus did she live her life according to her nature
while never bringing shame to her family nomenclature!

Words prompts for the day are: eyes, penchant, excitement, discretion and coupon. Illustration from Pinterest.

Stale Humor


Stale Humor

A ubiquitous imagination is just like all the others
with no variation from your sister’s or your brother’s.
It does not twist or undulate. It runs a narrow course.
It has a sense of humor never varying from its source.

As Mother dreamed and Father dreamed, so does it dream as well.
It does not flaunt, cavort, carouse. It’s locked within a cell.
It doesn’t thrive on irony. It does not tease or bait us.
In lieu of furnishing fresh air, we flounder in its flatus.

God save us all from normalcy and those who are too dumb
to develop their own funny bone but who remain humdrum
by reciting age-old jokes to us and memorizing jokes
that haven’t drawn much laughter since they learned them from their folks.

 

Prompt words for the day are flatus, ubiquitous, imagination, carouse and twist.

An Empirical Truth

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A Empirical Truth

I’m writing to our leadership–selfish, short-sighted fools
who are selling off our national parks and making other rules
about protected species, pollution and our health.
Saying it’s for our good while the rich expand their wealth.

If Nero fiddled as Rome burned, it’s also true today
that our most notable leader also likes to play.
As he’s shooting birdies on wild habitats turned tame,
his kids take off for Africa to shoot some wild game.

What we do to others turns back on us in time,
and Mother Nature will  find a way of dealing with your crime.
I suggest that you use caution when visiting a zoo
lest the animals you threaten end up hunting you.

 

Prompt words for today are explain, empirical, zoo, caution and leadership.