Category Archives: Poem

The Building of a Legend

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The Building of a Legend

When there’s an event that attracts attention
worthy of notice and worthy of mention,
no matter how silly or boring or gory,
it’s a regional custom to concoct a story
that exceeds pure fact and creates a tale
with additional details added without fail
that with the recital of each new re-teller
becomes much more luminous, sadder or sweller
than at the last telling and so to the credit
of the last person who heard and resaid it,
it reflects the memory and education,
the sense of humor and imagination
of each one who passes the story along
as anecdote, joke or novel or song.
Thus are legends made of the simplest act
by using our fancy to swell out pure fact.

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Today’s prompt words are credit, regional, luminous, exceed and story.Image by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash.

Open Range

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Open Range

Most cowboys are beef-witted. They ride the open range
decrying life in cities, avoiding any change.

They scan the far horizon to detect changes in the weather—
rain or hail or funnel clouds and speculating whether

to move the herd to shelter, making noises that will soothe them,
wondering if moves down towards the south draw might behoove them.

Their horses part the tall grass like a boat might part the sea.
Their lives out in the open are kitchen and bathroom-free.

They cook over a campfire and when it’s time to pee,
they mosey over yonder where no one else can see.

Prompt words for today are: bathroom, speculating, beef-witted,  noises  and   boat,

 

I decry the usual definition of beef-witted and hereby expand its definition. I’m presently in South Dakota at my town and school reunion. Plenty of cowboys here and in fact I took this photo a number of years ago on main street  at another town reunion.

Nuptial Turnabout

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Nuptial Turnabout

The blushing bride’s the instigator of a lot of fun,
and she will have her victory before the day is done.

She’ll outfox her friends and kin with a turnabout,
completing her last antic as the wedding bells peal out.

Trust her to do her business as the  rice is thrown,
for in the deep folds of her dress, she has brought her own.

She’ll reach into her pockets to withdraw a sack
and as they they run through showers of rice, she’ll send a shower back!

Prompts for the day are: outfox, trust, business, bride and instigator. Image by Hermes  Rivera on Unsplash.

Mortality

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Mortality

Humidity turns toys to junk but makes the flowers grow.
Then they in turn must fade to be buried far below.
As we mature, this sobering truth comes to be clarified.
Our part in nature’s circle is therein bonafide.

 

Prompt words today are toys, junk, humidity, mature and clarify.

Point of View for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 560

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With travel friends in Timor

Point of View

It was a rainy night in March under a Timor moon.
We hunched in cruel misery beneath a wild monsoon.
Around one flickering candle, under a canopy
that formed a refuge for us, strung up from tree to tree.

Travelers all, and young and broke, we stalked a narrow line
creating our own magic with mushrooms, weed and wine,
working our way around the world on impulse and on grit.
Misfortune? Fortune in disguise when we accepted it.

Thus sighs transformed to laughter when shared with kindred mind,
following adventure’s road wherever it might wind.
A sudden thud behind us? Some flinched but others spun
around to see what new adventure came to swell the fun.

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 560 prompts:  library monsoon hunch sigh disguise cruel thud flickering impulse stalk magic line

Broadband Controversy

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Broadband Controversy

When he formed his “Broadband,” he wanted them all girly:
ruffles and boutique lace, and he wanted their hair curly.
But I fear that what he named them is a bit passé,
for no one ever calls a girl a “broad” today.

Still, he liked the name and said he would not cave
and make use of modern lingo, so the name he gave
remained in use as east and west they traveled on their tours.
Those shiny broads continued their bills and coos and purrs,

bravely enduring catcalls and pickets from their sisters
who proclaimed real women did not cave in to misters
who use insulting language like battle-ax, broad and bitch,
bimbo, bird and arm-candy, sheila, chick and witch.

An “all-girl” band’s acceptable, at least was in the past,
but women’s lib participants hope this band will not last.
Their music’s great and expressed according to their nature.
Too bad a guy decided on their clothes and nomenclature.

 

Prompts for today are shine, broadband, boutique, east and brave. Image by Zoriana Stakhniv on Unsplash.

Guess Who?

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Guess Who?

He deserves a place of residence
less lofty than the president’s.
I vote we lodge this evil clown
in a place of less renown.
Some hole with bars would suit him well.
No waver to escape this hell,
for there’s no cure medicinal
that his craziness can quell.

Prompt words today are: medicinal, waver, clown, presidential and hole. Image by Grant Durr on Unsplash.

Expired!!!!

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Forgottenman said I have to write a birthday poem, so here it is:


Expired

I will not curb my inhibitions, and so I will not sail
off on new adventures out beyond the pale.
That powerful compunction to be off on an adventure,
ever after, I declare to have my sincere censure.

Apathy is my new creed. I simply do not care
to meet with any challenges or answer any dare.
I’ll gaze upon my garden and watch its petals fall
and when faced with challenges? Reject them one and all.

I’ve officially retired. I’m taking up TV.
I’ll sit here eating popcorn, a cat upon my knee.
I’ll make up for a lifetime of my lack of viewing
and rail against what all the youngsters of today are doing.

I’m done with being active and current and involved.
I’ve lost my former need for being current and evolved.
Forget that I exist and let me moulder in my den.
I’m both used up and giving up on all that I have been.

Three-quarters of a century’s enough for being me.
Now I will investigate what else there is to be.
I’ll expire before the date that I am due for expiration,
and simply coast along for the rest of my duration.

(Don’t worry. It is meant tongue-in-cheek.)

Prompt words today are sail, apathy, powerful, suppress and petals.

Another Class Reunion

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Another Class Reunion

The housewife and her classmates have staged a small reunion
to munch and drink but mainly talk—an annual communion
wherein they build a campfire and the drunker that they get
the more that they tell stories they’re afraid that they’ll forget
if they don’t repeat them yearly, so they tell them to their spouses,
who, I must admit, wish they’d remained home in their houses.
Yet, most don’t blame their loved ones for their memories of the past,
although they know they’ll hear them for as long as memories last.
They are ambassadors of patience as they hear each tale again,
about the wild and zany things their spouse did way back when. 

 

I’ll be going back to my class reunion/ town reunion in less than two weeks, but alas, with no spouse in tow. Stretching the truth a bit above. They only occur every 5 years and actually not that much drinking goes on. Poetic license, you know. The photos are, however, from  my town and class reunions of the past.

 

Prompts today are: classmates, housewife, munch, ambassador, blame and campfire.

Tree of Love: For Wordle 559

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Tree of Love

Your hair, tangled in the breeze, streams wickedly away
as though that breath that moves the clouds has you in its sway.
The seeds of love that you have sown grow  branches that deceive,
for as I try to climb them, they offer no reprieve.

The song you cast upon the wind is no boon to me,
for as I climb ever higher in affection’s tree,
the effort steals my breath away and in my lovelorn greed,
both hands and heart are pierced by love and begin to bleed.

That mouth that bestowed kisses earlier on the heath,
as you turn to chart my progress, has suddenly grown teeth,
and as I recall your kisses, no matter how sublime,
I decide that their rewards are, alas, not worth the climb.


For The Sunday Swirl Wordle 559 the prompt words are: tangle breeze stream clouds sway reprieve teeth bleed seeds climb branches boon. First image by Adrian Fernandez on Unsplash. Second image by me.