Category Archives: Poem

Jumping to Conclusions

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Photo by Ashwin Vaswani on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Jumping to Conclusions

She’s a lady of distinction. You can tell it by her walk,
in her whole deportment—her manners and her talk.
It seems it is a given, since she has a lot of dough
just where, in November, her vote is bound to go.
She lies back on her chaise, even graceful while recumbent,
but quickly springs erect when you mention the incumbent.  
If you ask her about politics, she’s apt to tell the truth.
She will not give allegiance to the stupidly uncouth.

 

Prompt words today are distinction, apt, allegiance and walk.

Guru

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Guru

So many worship at your shrine you should consider syndication.
You could make a pretty penny if this queue’s an indication 
of how many have decided that you are a modern prophet.
I believe you’ve found a sure way to turn prophet into profit.

Is it central to their growth that your followers contribute
all their worldly goods for their guru to distribute? 
We’ve listened to your bark, so now we’re ready for your bite—
that you need a bigger mansion to bolster your insight.

If only you had taught your hordes to look through their own eyes,
they might see their Messiah as a shyster in disguise.

 

Prompt words today are: bark, central, worship,  decide and indication. Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Picky

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Picky

“Prompt” does not associate with “tardy” or with “lazy.”
Those that are more “languorous” think “quick” people are crazy.
Life is made of opposites. The “sad” think they are right
and “cheerfulness” a symptom of someone not too bright.

“Smart” does not associate with “dull” or “dense” or “jocks.”
“Artistic”merely hangs around with other folks in smocks.
“Stolid” does not socialize with “lissome” or with “breezy.”
“Health freaks” eschew contact with folks “drippy” or “sneezy.”

It seems to be a symptom of our modern day and age
that “with-it” folks just hang around with others “all the rage.”
“Breezy” jogs with breezy. The “stagnant” prefer bars
where other stagnant people hang, or buzz Main Street in cars.

Knights hang out with their orders while polishing their lances,
giving men less “chivalrous” condescending glances.
Thus do the cliquish congregate, each thinking it’s the rightest,
not seeing that the hoi polloi are actually the brightest,

accepting the diversity that mixing-up can bring,
seeing what life offers and trying everything.
Life is not a single dish hoarded at the table,
but a mixed buffet where one should taste all they are able.

Prompt words today are breezy, lance, quick, symptom and associate.

Daily Diatribe

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An acquaintance recently commented on Facebook that I should “Give it a rest, Judy!” My answer is that I’m not rioting or burning buildings or occupying state capitol buildings with guns or expressing my feelings by licking meat in grocery stores or coughing in people’s faces. What I am doing is saying what I believe daily, hoping that somewhere, somehow, I’ll sway at least one person to reason. Probably won’t happen. Our country is so firmly divided now that even something catastrophic just seems to pull us more widely apart. It is perhaps the era of our decline that all great cultures in the past have fallen to, but there are ways to fight other than stubbornly and violently standing up purely for one’s own needs and this is my way. So here it is—my:

Daily Diatribe

I’m on permanent curfew, and I don’t give a darn.
I’ll sort out all my closets and finally sort my yarn
by strand size and by color. I’ve been wanting to for years.
I’ll attend to all those “To Do” lists I owe on in arrears.

I’m respecting all the rules—wearing face masks, washing hands.
I’m not rioting or protesting or taking racist stands.
I’m staying home and hoping justice will have its day.
I’m not quoting out of context but I am having my say!

For those who say it’s patriotic doing what you want to—
coughing in people’s faces in an effort just to flaunt you,
I want to say, “How infantile.” If you were mine, I’d spank you.
But for those living with reason, I want to express a “Thank you.”

Those led by a fool with be drawn to foolish action.
If you glorify a sociopath, you’ll be joined in that faction
by white supremacists and bigots. Kindly look around you.
How can the folks who share your views not shock you and astound you?

It’s said you may be judged by the company you keep,
and the seeds that you now sow will be the harvest that you reap.

Prompt words for today are curfew, yarn, respect, justice and context.

No Hints Given

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First the five-foot high undergrowth had to be dealt with.
The state of the lot in July, 2021.

Click on photos to enlarge.

No Hints Given

Outdoors is bright and sunny. The rain has ceased its patter.
The pecking birds are pecking and the chattering birds chatter.
Butterflies stage a homecoming around the tabachine
announcing the retirement of the big machine
that worked the big lot next to me with giant rolling claws,
For eight long hours, it it scooped and scraped without a single pause.
It trounced the giant boulders and put them in their place,
crushed the weeds and tree limbs, leaving not a trace
of all the weeds and rubble, the stones and the debris,
burying it within the earth so we cannot see
all the ugliness of nineteen years’ accumulation.
of our neighborhood’s detritus, so here’s a small ovation.
What new event will crown this lot? What may be coming next?
I guess you’ll have to read about it in upcoming text.

 

I finally got my lot next door cleared of all the debris neighbors have been piling on it for 19 years. Wish I’d gotten a better photo of the “before,” but here are a a few Johnny-come-lately shots.

Prompt words today are outdoors, homecoming, sunny, trounce and text.

Animal Voices

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Animal Voices

My cat is very subtle, so I named her Innuendo.
Not so for the dogs, who always speak in a crescendo.

When they feel romantic, cats may wail an eerie tune,
but dogs need no testosterone to prompt their nightly croon.

Cats vocalize for grand events. Dogs blather on at small things:
a squirrel on the garden wall–literally all things.

Every passing siren causes canine howls to bloom.
They seem to herald catastrophe–to signal the world’s doom.

If cats should chance to dream a tune, they keep it in their bosom,
but I think dogs release their songs simply to amuse ’em.

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Word prompts today are: innuendo, bloom, bosom, blather and tune.

Fourteen Minute Challenge

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Ever played a word in Scrabble that you didn’t know the meaning of? They acknowledged it as a word but you hadn’t the foggiest? This happened to me a short while ago. The word was siriasis and extra points to you if you know what it means. Quadruple points if you can write a poem making use of it within the next 14 minutes. Here is my 14 minute poem:

 

Rainy Day Reminder

You rue those rainy nights and days
when everything is in a haze
and you cannot go out the door
without whiffing petrichor.
Your hair is soggy, face too ruddy,
raincoat sodden, rain boots muddy.
And suffering from all this damping,
girls are in no mood for vamping.
It’s hard to flirt, I must confess,
when one is such a dripping mess.
But consider now the opposite.
When all day in the sun you sit,
you’ll never find men making passes
at girls who suffer siriasis!

 

(To save you the bother of your looking it up,  siriasis means sunstroke, but it was Bushboy who gave me a hint that led me to investigate the very interesting Australian origins of the word petrichor.)

Duranta Erecta (Verbena): FOTD May 21, 2020

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I had never learned the name of this flowering tree that I planted 18 years ago, and I thank Grace at broadwaymatron.com for telling me its name. I don’t know why it photographs as  blue as it is actually a dark purple. Perhaps too much sun. I like this blue color even more than its actual color, so I’ll support the illusion. Although the description calls it a bush, it says it can grow to 20 feet high. I think mine is about ten feet high–maybe higher.

Click on photos to enlarge.

 

For Cee’s FOTD

Reconnaissance

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Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash, used with permission

Reconnaissance

Enter our shell-shocked hero, all his battles won.
His glorious sorties over, his service finally done.
The stash he found cathartic? He stole it from his son.
Exulting in this final raid, he thought he’d have some fun.

He only took a bit of it. Each day he took some more.
He chewed the bag a little bit, as though to make a door.
He saw his son’s perplexity, searching through the house.
Had a rat made off with it? Could it have been a mouse?

He found his son’s new hiding places—where he had been loitering,
making use of thirty years of army reconnoitering.
The freezer in the garage, a tea tin in the drain.
What enemy made raids into such difficult terrain?

His son could believe sorties over mountaintop and ridge,
but how might a mouse invade a freezer or a fridge?
This mystery went unsolved for at least a decade more,
at which point it was finally told and became family lore.

How his father returned home, fatigued by years of war
and found relief from raiding his teenager’s secret store.
And how these retirement maneuvers against his puzzled son
helped salve the scars of battle with a little fun.

Word prompts for today are fatigue, stash, cathartic, exult and hero.

Fault Line

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Fault Line

When the call comes,
I feign ambivalence,
one more maneuver
to deny fault.

I did this
and you did that.
Who understands
the whole gestalt?

Back and forth we
thrust and parry
’til no one knows
who started what.

When did our love
became a battlefield?
That crest we aimed for
a well-worn rut?

Writing prompts today are: call, ambivalent, understated, maneuver and fault.