Category Archives: Poem

At a Distance

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At a Distance

In these months of social distance, it seems lazy does not matter.
We grow our hair and fingernails and stir the cookie batter.
The main excitement in our lives is whether gravy’s thickening
and when our waistlines do the same, the truth of it is sickening.

Out in the world there’s conflict when factions take to task
the all-consuming question: to mask or not to mask?
Confined to home, we find conflict in books or television
or when we try to teach the kids the facts of long division.

Our galas are all in the past as are the school fetes
as social life is narrowed down to children and to mates.
Whether our lives have changed for good is open to debate.
The only way to know for sure is just to sit and wait.

Prompt words for today are lazy, matter, sickening, gala and conflict.

A Fine Fit

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A Fine Fit

I’m enamored of the morning. I am giddy with myself.
The rain is nearly over and the bowls up on the shelf
cry out to me for oatmeal. Steam is dancing in the pot,
and I am so content with the blessings that I’ve got.
I need no fine adornment and diamonds have I none.
I have dogs and cats and nature, and when the day is done,
swinging in the hammock with a small dog for my covering,
cats mewing from the roof and the big dog closely hovering,
the world seems good enough. In fact, it feels just fine.
Nobody else’s life would fit me half as well as mine!

Prompt words for today are dancing, nearly, giddy, adorn and self.

Struth

11 Replies

Struth

The world is swathed in horror. It vacillates between
ridiculous pronouncements both uninformed and mean.
Truth seems to be moveable. We store it here and there,
but rarely in an orange creature with unruly hair.
It seems he has no access to lexicon or brain
as everything he says is impossibly inane.

 

Prompt words today are horror, vacillate, moveable, ridiculous and access. Photo on Unsplash, used with permission. 

Film Legend

8 Replies

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

16 Replies

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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

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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

1 Reply

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

6 Replies


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

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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

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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,