Morning Menu
If you desire a breakfast that’s full of health and crunch,
that will cast away your hunger from awakening to lunch,
lay a corn ear perpendicular and mash it all to bits,
relinquishing it’s former shape to turn it into grits.
No one will guess its origin. They will not have a hunch,
but it will solve their appetite if they eat a bunch.
Prompts today are crunch, origin, castaway, perpendicular, breakfast and relinquish.
Here is a short reflection on New Year Resolutions:
New Year Resolutions
When the new year zaps us with our last year’s reflection,
it brings up all our defects and flaws for our detection.
It goads us to be better and to bend our crooked way
to plot a straighter game in life than we’ve been prone to play.
It’s January 1st that prods our consciences to make them,
giving us a whole long year in which to go and break them.
And here is a longer one: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/12/22/resolution/
For dVerse Poets: Resolutions
and if you want to read more poems on the subject, go HERE.
Poetic License
Pejorative words will not be allowed,
for poetry folk don’t assent to be cowed.
They want to feel wistful and somewhat romantic,
so they won’t put up with language pedantic.
Demur is acceptable. Artsy is cherished,
but flowery’s been banished and stilted has perished.
Inscrutable language is also passé
as is predictable. So déclassé!!!!
Step carefully, then, through the poetic world.
Take care before your words are unfurled.
For poetic license does not give permission
for outright acts of verbal sedition!!!
Prompt words are demur, pejorative, inscrutable, cherished, and wistful. Image by David Beale on Unsplash
Book Worm
My friend is loose but I’m demur.
She has more fun, you can be sure.
Her blinding smile can motivate
a guy to ask her for a date.
She’s best when she is center stage,
but I prefer the written page—
a square hole with a rounded peg
when I am asked to shake a leg,
I got the brains, she got the looks.
She parties on. I hit the books.
One of us was born to party,
but I’m the one who is the smarty.
Prompt words today are demur, loose, blinding, motivate, shake and stage. Image by Prasanna Kumar on Unsplaxh.
A Marital Discourse on The Subject of Light Exercise
You breakfast, lunch and tea and sup,
hardly ever getting up.
I say that we should take a ride
just to get us both outside,
and thus do I precipitate
a lively marital debate—
you flummoxed by my rude suggestion
that interferes with your digestion.
So I employ another means
to distract you from your franks and beans.
Feeling youthful and impulsive,
I chance your finding it repulsive
and suggest that we go dancing
and perhaps do some romancing,
whereupon you rise and shriek
that your demise I surely seek.
Dancing at our advanced age?
You spit and sputter, in a rage,
and since for minutes you don’t pause,
at least you exercise your jaws.
Prompt words today are precipitate, flummoxed, shriek, impulsive, employ and ride.
Fashion Reveal
Though once judged diabolical , with no rhyme nor reason,
my acts once labeled as commitments of the highest treason,
I have at last been vindicated, judgements now reversed
and I can hold my head up high—an action I’ve rehearsed.
Though once I cowered in my room, at the limits of my sanity,
waiting for the world’s conversion from its rude inanity,
I’m ready to come out again now all the world agrees
that it is cool to wear your jeans when ripped out at the knees.
Shredded around the ankles, slashed along the thighs,
butt cheeks half revealed to any passing viewer’s eyes.
What once I was reviled for, when down on my luck,
is the coolest fashion now that intact Levis suck.
Prompt words for the day are limit, vindicated, room, diabolic, ready and high. Image by Tyler Nix on Unsplash.
Vacation Plans
Since my store of giddy-up is no longer stellar,
I’m limiting vacation plans to rooftop room and cellar.
My travel guru’s dubious. She says I’ll change my mind.
She thinks I’m merely ground down by the daily grind.
Though I rehearse refusals, the practice doesn’t work.
She merely puts them down as a momentary quirk.
In fact she has been needling me to book a new vacation
and poo-poos my refusals to my great perturbation.
My stubborn change of attitude regarding foreign travel,
she’s sure that she can pick at till it starts to unravel;
but these are the travel plans for which I’d like to vouch.
The scenery is gorgeous between my bed and couch!
Prompt words today are travel, roof, guru, dubious, needle and rehearsal.
“Depauperate” ed
Depauperate? I must admit, I’ve never seen the word.
Nor is it an adjective that I have ever heard.
Did I de”pauper”ate the beggar when I handed him a twenty?
Transform him from a pauper into a life of plenty?
My command of language ranks from “pretty good” to “better,”
and usually prompt words leave me in fine fetter,
but when I see a word like this, I end up fuss and fretting.
Just how obscure are prompt words likely to be getting?
Exactly where on Earth did the prompter find this word
that you might admit is overly absurd?
If one needs a dictionary and still cannot use it,
you can bet that some of us are likely to abuse it.
We’re thankful for each prompt word, but when you cook it up,
kindly choose one that makes sense when we look it up.
A prompt word should inspire us and make us want to use it,
but with words like “depauperate” some of us will abuse it!
Note: Meant in good fun…but you will admit it was a hard word to use?
Prompt words today are depauperate, exactly, fret, command and need.
Poor Spousal Support
His espousal of a single life was open to debate,
for with a wife and three small girls, it came a little late.
But he lusted for the “good life” now that he earned a lot.
He yearned for wild night life and planned to buy a yacht.
That their spousal settlement was measly, it is true,
but her husband was a lawyer, so what was she to do?
She made the children T-shirts with an acronym
that best described their father and what she thought of him.
When people were inquisitive, she told them they should say
that CHEAP was an acronym, and without delay,
that the meaning of it was “Chump Husband Earns A Pittance”
and that is why he’s often late in sending their remittance.
And on the T-shirt’s back, she reserved another space
for another acronym for their dad to face:
There it spelled out HUNGER, whose letters expressed fairly
the naked truth: “His UnderNourished Genepool ‘s Eating Rarely!!!
Prompt words today are measly, reserved, acronym, espousal, settlement and inquisitive.
Alibi
There’s an untrue rumor that I can’t dispel
about a certain ruby ring found within my cell.
They’ve just heard from my lawyer, but haven’t heard from me
about why that ruby ring was not beneath the tree
with my lawyer’s wife’s name on it, for she’d seen the receipt
in his bottom desk drawer and, thrilled with the deceit,
thought, “It is a gift for me. I’d better feign surprise.”
But in fact she had no need at all for this disguise,
for there was no tiny box with her name upon it—
no ruby ring within it, waiting for her to don it.
Instead, a brand new blender turned out to be her present,
and can you guess that her reaction wasn’t very pleasant?
Just where was the ruby ring? Her angst knew no restraint
as former suspicions resumed with no constraint.
His frolics with his secretary he’d declared long over.
Was he lying to her? Was he still a rover?
Her honeyed voice escaped her. Her shrieks grew shrill and scary.
How could her husband leave her arms to screw his secretary?
That’s how one more deception about the jewel missing
ended with me out on bail and my lawyer kissing
his wife for once, declaring how he preferred her culture
to any lowly secretary, then went on, the vulture,
saying how I stole the ring right out of his pocket
before he left my jail cell and heard the jailer lock it.
Now he said he’d go and if the warden didn’t mind it,
he’d do a search through all my cell to see if he could find it.
Then quickly, he reclaimed the ring to slip upon a ledge
underneath my mattress, at the very edge.
The fingers of his mistress and his wife were the same size,
and so his wife was placated as she slipped on her prize.
And the diamond ring that he bought his secretary
after he took her ruby back was indeed so very
much bigger and expensive that she didn’t mind
exchanging her first Christmas rock for a better kind.
And rudely roused and blamed, fresh from my Christmas nap,
I had no objection, charged with another rap.
For my lawyer paid my bail and also said that he’s
defending me pro bono—foregoing any fees!!!
Prompt words today are just, dispel, frolic, constraint, culture and ruby.
