Category Archives: Poem

Jump!

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Jump!

The gusto we display toward life does much to enhance
our chances to experience adventure and romance.
If we view with precision everything we do,
evaluating closely and choosing to eschew,
instead of taking chances in discovering new fun,
choosing just to stay home to do what we  have done,
we’ll wast the opportunity to open up our eyes
to all the joys around us that have long been in disguise.

Prompt words today are gusto, enhance. precise and evaluate. Image by Adolfo Felix on Unsplash.

Miss Effie’s Tinder Bio

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Miss Effie’s Tinder Bio

I am far too wholesome to do anything shady.
I am an upright, straight-laced and morally pure lady.
I’m a domestic goddess, occasionally girlish,
who does not appreciate behavior that is churlish.

A knight in shining armor is what I hold out for,
I do not want just any man. I’m holding out for more.
If he would come along real soon, I think it would be nifty,
for I’d prefer my nuptials to occur before I’m fifty.

Prompt words today are wholesome, shady, occasion, churl, domestic. Image  and retablo by jdb.

Rejuvenation

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Rejuvenation

Albeit our guide was a bit of a boor,
nonetheless as I moved through the beautiful moor,
I was soon beguiled by the hush and the sight
of the heather that grows to a glorious height,
obscuring the heath that grew down below,
restoring my soul  from the world’s status quo.

When we stopped for a rest, I loosened the strap
of the pack on my back and took a short nap.
Then, rejuvenated, I set off again,
retracing the footsteps where I had just been.
Not the person I’d been when I’d passed there before,
ready once more to face the world’s roar.

Prompts today are hush, beguiled, rejuvenating, boor and strap. Cropped Image by Simon Forster on Unsplash.

Double Edged

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Double Edged

For each of us, our pasts are cast
in deeds that bore and flabbergast.
For every act that’s less than vicious,
there is one that’s more pernicious.
Scratchy flannel and itchy wool
are soothed by velvet’s softer pull.
Thus is the hurtful mindless quip
falling from a loved one’s lip
soothed over in our smarting mind
by words more loving and more kind.
Thus do we dig before we plant,
boldly declare and then recant.
Acts alternate from joy to strife
to build an ordinary life.

Prompt words today are wool, quip, pernicious, flabbergast and velvet. Image by Tingey Injury Law on Unsplash

Wars and Dogs and Teddy Bears

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Wars and Dogs and Teddy Bears

Cynophilists and andarctophiles are experts at collecting,
perhaps because they’ve flunked at other methods of connecting.
Wars are staged by countries that believe in hoarding arms.
Ironic that the means for hugs also maims and harms.

My recommendation is that those who make the rules
should be those sent to battle. Arm the presidents and fools
who start the wars—the despots and the senators and kings.
Then let them see what personal riches battle brings.

Let them take the chances fighting wars waged in their name,
so they are the ones slaughtered or made maimed or blind or lame.
The things that one collects should be what they are about
and what we put into the world be all that we take out.

Prompt words today are war, lame, arctophile, chance and recommendation.

Andarctophile, in cast you didn’t already know, is someone who loves or collects teddy bears. The term for those who love dogs is “Cynophilist”. And the love for a dog is called “Canophilia”.

Cold Assurance

12 Replies

Cold Assurance

I’m tired of writing alone in my safe room. I crave the cold mountain and my gasps in the thinner air. The threat of clouds. A bleeding sunset that seeps behind an obscuring peak.The small terrors of things heard but unseen in the dark. The press of stones in my back as I roll over in my sleeping bag. Evidence through sensation that I’m still alive.

The comfort of light,
but no form without shadow.
Nature’s cruel truth.

A Cold Mountain Haibun for dVerse Poets
Go HERE to read the prompt.

Hibiscus Twins, Feb 27, 2022 For FOTD

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For Cee’s FOTD

Death Knell

5 Replies

Death Knell

Living too near a factory
may cause distress olfactory,
thus magnifying baleful thoughts
in the minds of those “have nots”
of purdy sorts who need not smell
these odors from the fires of Hell.
Who cares what vapors invade air
in places where no rich are there?
The vile winds hum a savage tune.
Thus goes the world to pot and ruin
with mankind born, then gone too soon.
death knell
farewell

Prompt words today are purdy, magnifying, baleful and factory.
Purdy: disagreeably self-important (dialectal, England) or, alternate spelling of “purty,” or pretty.

Blood Sacrifice

4 Replies

Blood Sacrifice

The roar of the crowd
creates its own violent
poetry,
magnifying future pain
into a blood lust,
its hard edge
more than a mother could bear at times.

Its heart beats faster
as the football 
is launched and won,
carried like a communion loaf,
flawlessly,
swiftly
toward redemption.

 

Prompt words are hard edge, beat, magnifying, football. Image by Dave Adamson on Unsplash.

Fatal Obsession

18 Replies


Fatal Obsession

My father is an ogre and rather hard-of-hearing,
but I had the silly idea I could rise above my rearing.
All my friends were human and I had a strange obsession
for screening them from tendencies I had in my possession.

The result was that I scored a beau inimitably grand—
the sort of perfect boyfriend I thought I’d never land.
Vibrant, handsome, wealthy and inordinately smart,
he was the sort of catch that would melt any ogress heart.

In short, I could barely believe that Avery was mine,
but when I brought him pridefully home with me to dine,
after the aperitifs, the soup and the tossed salad,
I noticed that my father was looking somewhat pallid.

I stepped into the kitchen to find him food more savory,
only to return to find that dad had eaten Avery!!
I cried, “How could you do this to one who’s so indelible?
“I tried to prove you wrong,” he said. “I thought you said inedible!”

 

Note: An ogre (feminine: ogress) is a legendary monster usually depicted as a large, hideous, man-like being that eats ordinary human beings, Ogres are closely linked with giants and with human cannibals in mythology.

Prompt words for today are vibrant, indelible, inimitable, possess and pride.