Category Archives: Poem

She Passes By

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She Passes By

Each variation in your eyes
betrays their normal veiled disguise.

Wistfully they follow one
by whom you have been undone.

As they follow, hither and nigh
each time your former love walks by,

she who trampled on your heart
once more upsets the apple cart

and affection tumbles out
and draws you like a waterspout,

wistfully to tumble there,
your tender hopes high in the air.

But false illusions must fall to earth
where they discover their true worth
as they are trampled into earth.

Prompt words today are eyes, tender, trample, nigh, variation, wistfully.

Parasite

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Parasite

Mankind has been no bargain. They’ve scorched the living earth,
determined to exploit it to improve their worth.
Bargaining for diamonds, drilling for fossil fuels—
with each new excavation, proving they are fools.

They release noxious gases into the atmosphere,
and with each new admonition, shift to a higher gear.
Who will console our children as they forge ahead
following our example after we are dead?

We leave them with a dying world, and who is to blame?
First, off, those politicians who see it as a game
to increase their power in spite of consequences,
building up their war toys, strengthening defenses.

Extending greedy fingers, needing ever more.
Selling off our future, profiting from war.
While the wise men warn us, who in power listens?
Too busy filling pockets with everything that glistens.

 

Prompt words today are: fossil, scorch, gas, console, example and bargain.

Tourist Trap

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Tourist Trap

“Any gremlins hereabout?” a tiny woman queried,
inspecting piles of autumn leaves for any bodies buried.
I’d feared she was a tenderfoot when she had signed up
for this Halloween adventure, but I evilly quipped, “Yup.”
Every freckle popped out as her face blanched to pure white
and her muscles tensed up to prepare for fight or flight.
She surveyed every shadow on the path that led us up
to the haunted mansion where the group of us would sup.
The scene was dark and moonlit and the shadows all reached out.
A most effective scary atmosphere, without a doubt.
The spooky creaking of the door as we reached the house
was echoed by the squeaking of every resident mouse.
The furniture was draped with ghostly sheets covered with dust,
and every metal object wore a crumbling scab of rust.
Eerie portraits on the wall. Thick drapery that soon
we’d draw back so the diners could view a harvest moon
as they supped on boiling cauldrons of steaming witches’ stew
and rich red wine in lieu of blood would simply have to do.
What is it about Halloween that makes folks crave a scare
so much that they would pay us to bring them to this lair?
Mortals are so gullible, and now the time draws near
when they’ll become the spirits who’ll conduct the tour next year!

 

Prompts today are tenderfoot, scene, gremlin, hereabouts, freckle and furniture. The photo is of the Lord Crewe Arms in Scotland, an abbey built in the 12th century and later turned into a hotel. My mother and I slept in its haunted room overlooking the graveyard in 1985. If you want to hear what happened, go HERE.

The Waystation

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The Waystation

Awakening in the half light, upon investigation,
I find the sun is still in early stages of gestation.
As the day swells out her stomach from its early morn enclosure,
her womb is still half empty, eschewing full disclosure,

I sink into my pillow and wait for the full light,
held prisoner by the darkness, promised freedom by the light.
One part pulled by sleep, the other rues this hesitation,
caught here once again within the dawning day’s waystation.

 

Prompt words today are half light, eschew,  stomach and investigation.

Familial Disapproval

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Familial Disapproval

When he swears when the champagne cork hits him in the eye,
my brother’s new fiancee utters a “My, my!”
then swipes the bubbles from her upper lip with  polite tongue.
(She’s squeamish about swear words and she calls the cork a “bung.”)

Her brow furls with referrals to anything unsavory.
(She prefers her history minus genocide or slavery.)
“If you can’t say something good, then don’t say anything at all.”
she says, and then says little but “Oh, really?” and “Y’all!!!”

She’s a proper southern girl with mild disposition.
She would not think to put you out or cause an imposition,
yet when I ask if she is hungry, she admits, “Yes, just a bit,”
and when I put the tea cake out, she eats three-fourths of it!

She never wastes her precious time when visiting by sitting
and conversing with the family. Instead, she brings her knitting,
and bottom lip between her teeth, she counts her knit and pearling.
concentrating on her knitting needles’ rhythmic twirling. 

You might surmise she’s not my favorite, or second, third or fourth
girlfriend he has brought home from East and West and North.
This Southern girl sticks in my craw, I just cannot get used to her.
And you can bet I’m dreading the day my bro’ gets fused to her.

Prompt words on this Solstice morning are: hunger, disposition, squeamish, bung, referral and knitting.

Excessive Angst

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Excessive Angst

He suffers not from nuance. His moods are all too blatant.
He bares his anger to display a violence once latent.

His colossal fits of rage reveal that he abhors me.
His reputation slips a notch, and in the end, he bores me.

 

Prompts today are colossal, display, reputation, bare and nuances.Image by Alessandro Bellone on Unsplash

Solstice Memory–For Wordle 557

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Solstice Memory

One dark starless Solstice night
devoid of stars or moon or light,
cross my heart and hope to die,
I saw a blackbird flying high
with wings of flame that fanned the air
and rode the wind to spark the hair
of a woman, meek and mild
who stood beneath holding a child
who seemed to search the sky as though
it held a creed for those below.
It passed two times and then the bird
spiraled higher, but not a word
escaped the lips of those beneath,
pinned  below to earth and heath.
The flames that fell sparked out and died.
The mother took the child inside
and combed the ashes from their hair,
and though that night was splendid rare,
was the fire gleaned from Heaven or Hell?
So mother told me not to tell
about that night the sky was lit
and nothing more was said of it.

,
For Wordle 557 the prompt words are: blackbird flame wind time cross me woman meek seem creed search earth  Image by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

Pink Lights and Tequila

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Pink Lights and Tequila

She met him in a barroom. His first contact was a wink,
and their time of courtship was over in a blink.
She didn’t note his platitudes and chauvinistic thinking.
That’s what comes from being wooed when a girl’s been drinking.
The impact of tequila shots has done in more than one girl,
making one who’s ordinary seem to be a fun girl.

A current ran between them. Rainbows issued from the lights,
giving a pink glow to cheeks and lower sights.
Thus did soft lights and alcohol add to their delight.
She seemed to him a princess. He seemed to be her knight.
They wed just six months later and divorced within a year.
Sparks ignited in the tavern fizzle out in life, I fear.

Prompts today are rainbow, impact, platitude, current, chauvinist and pink.

Fleeced and Avenged

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Fleeced and Avenged

When first my antagonist burst upon the scene,
he was an enterprising human sales machine.
I was his favorite client, an accomplishment for sure—
innocent and gullible and open to the lure.
I had little experience foreshadowing the end.
No idea at all what lay waiting ’round the bend.
But I fear his achievement was unduly brief,
because Daddy called the sheriff, declaring him a thief.
Now he’s living in the jailhouse and his board and room is free.
He’s living on the county now—not on little old me!

 

Today’s prompts are achievement, foreshadow, antagonist, enterprise, burst and accomplishment.  Image from Pinterest.

Foolish Pride

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Foolish Pride

He folds his arms.
She seals her mind.
Their last contact
back-to-back.
Each sure the other
meant to wound,
pride seals their futures.
Sad ending remembered
for a lifetime.

For The Things Unsaid, 30 words or less
Painting by Ron Hicks