Category Archives: Poetry

Poems in many categories: Loss, NaPoWriMo

Winter Adventure Tour, for the Sunday Whirl Wordle 555

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Winter Adventure Tour

That first chilling sound of the ice’s warning crack
and that slithery pinprick feeling of ice water down your back
are sure to leave you feeling disturbingly distraught.
This is more of an adventure than the one you sought.

It’s the sort of trip you’d like to banish from your thoughts,
one devoid of “wants “and stuffed full of the “nots,”
yet it plays against your eyelids with a frequency you’d like
to round up in your head and tell to take a hike.

Your tour guide? He’s a rascal and they ought to string him up.
He’s a weasel, he’s a rat and he’s a mangy low-down pup.
They should brand him as a felon, this king of thoughtless vice
for selling you an outing to skate on such thin ice!!!!

The prompt words are pinprick slithery chilling distraught felon string yet banish lid trip with miss   For Sunday Whirl Wordle 555  Image by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash.

Evening Rush Hour Bus Ride

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Evening Rush Hour Bus Ride

Only one seat left, so I thrust myself within it,
beating out another boarding passenger to win it.
Adjusting all my packages, I didn’t chance to look
at my seat mate, for her face was buried in a book.

I used a lull in traffic to begin a conversation,
but was cut off by the bite of her brutal tongue’s serration.
She sputtered without compromise or mercy or a pause
about what she surmised were my weaknesses and flaws.

Her words sprayed out in spittle, unceasing in their venom.
She criticized my hairdo and my shoe size and my denim.
Not a thing about me pleased her. She was brutal in her spiel.
Had I considered a diet? Was my hair color for real?

At the very next bus stop, I finally took flight.
Miles from where I sought to go, I fled into the night.
It must have been a curse or bad Karma or a hex
that I would end up in a seat next to my boyfriend’s ex!!!

 

Prompts for today are traffic, compromise, flight, serration, spray and please. Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

Kissing With Eyes Closed

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Kissing With Eyes Closed

Though she was not disappointed by the fervor of his kiss,
 in fact it was misguided, for it was a total miss.
It landed on her lash extensions, eyelids to the tips, 
but it would have been more piquant if planted on her lips.

He mopped his sweaty forehead, which was damp from the exertion,
then went in for another kiss in spite of her assertion
that he needn’t do an update. One kiss was quite enough.
Perhaps they could go for a walk or do some other stuff.

Thus ended their first date which could have been a fine romance,
if only she had thought to give the chap a second chance.
Kissing with eyes opened, he was sure that he would kill,
but, alas, I’m fairly certain that he never will.

 

Prompts today are mop, fervor, bereft, piquant, extension and update. Click on prompt links if you want to read other poems to the same prompt or to discover the source to play along yourself.

Dream Perch

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Houndstooth Pillow

Dream Perch

When I can’t locate my pillow, my immediate reaction
is to galvanize my efforts in investigatory action.
I’m elated if I find it slipped behind my bed,
and I immediately restore it to its place beneath my head.

But if I cannot find it and do not have something better,
I have to improvise and use a wadded up old sweater!
When away from home, though, if I require a few
winks and have no sweater, any passing dog will do!

 

 

Prompt words today are pillow, locate, galvanising, elate and sweater.

As Above Not As Below: For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 544

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As Above, Not As Below

I’m plodding, I’m plodding to the sacred north.
It takes all my power as I journey forth.
Is it possible I walk on air? I must examine twice
the ground I pass over, then I see I tread on ice
frozen to translucence, so I see the world beneath—
another watery world below, protected ‘neath its sheath.

Spellbinding order reigns below with creatures slipping by,
protected from the thunder of a threatening sky.
When lightning hits behind me, I hurry helter-skelter,
searching for protection from any nearby shelter.
But alas, here up above is not as below.
So near and yet so far away is that undertow.

Caught in my world, I pass above where I would choose to stay.
It flows beneath me peacefully as I pass away.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 544 prompt words are: north order hits thunder search freeze journey spellbinding power sacred

When I see the disenfranchised and homeless passing through our town coming from South or Central America with nowhere to go back to and yet having no place here and no real place to go to, I wonder how they feel, observing us in our lives that must seem perfect and without problems. To see and not to be able to have must be a heartrending situation.

A Guide to Good Service in a Snotty Restaurant

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A Guide to Good Service in a Snotty Restaurant

If you thought I was obsequious, have another think.
I was merely being cordial to get another drink.
The wait staff there was surly so I thought I would be nice,
although it seemed that in this joint, being cuddly was a vice.

There was some ambiguity in regards to being served.
It seems as though they gave the service they thought we deserved.
We couldn’t get attention with our arm-waving and hooting,
but luckily, before we came, we’d done some target shooting.

I put a bullet in the chamber and aimed it at the ceiling, 
and when our waiter heard the blast, he changed his way of dealing
with the placid customer at table number five.
It seems the way to win respect was leaving him alive.

He brought my gin and tonic with nary a snide quip.
He brought my crudités and even brought an extra dip.
And he didn’t raise an eyebrow or even curl his lip
when I left the restaurant without leaving a tip!!

 

Prompts for today are: chamber, blast, cuddly, obsequious and ambiguity. Image by Lefteris Kallergis on Unsplash.

Influencers

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Influencers

If we could not scan the internet for the scandal of the day,
what could we find to substitute to pass away the day?
With no tempest in a teapot stirred up for us by Kim,
the lights of inspiration in the world would surely dim.

We need these rich exemplars of the way that life should be—
these folks in their cathedrals more “with it” than you and me.
Without them, we would have to make decisions all alone
figuring out how to act and dress all on our own!

Prompts today are tempest, internet, scan, exemplar and cathedral.

An Apologia for Gasconade*

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An Apologia for Gasconade*

This poem, per se, is not profound, in fact it’s rather frowsy.
As poems go, I fear that it is going to be lousy.
Pretentiousness in meter, a travesty in rhyme,
I really fear that reading it will be a waste of time.
Its sheets will become linen, its walk a promenade.
The entire verse will turn, I fear, into a gasconade.*
If you see more than this in it, you’re seeing pareidolia.*
If you don’t know what this is, kindly refer to the scholia!.*

 

Prompts today are frowzy, per se, pareidolia, gasconade and linen.

*A gasconade is extravagant boasting or bragging. *A pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon in which the mind perceives a specific image or pattern where it does not actually exist, such as seeing a face in the clouds.

*Sesquipedalian  describes someone or something that overuses big words, as some of the prompt sites have lately.

*Scholia are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the manuscript.

Blame the “Sesquipedalian” on me, as well as the  “scholia ,” which  was very handy as a rhyme for “pareidolia,” which I’m not responsible for.”

The Behavioral Linguist in Love: May 17, 2022

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The Behavioral Linguist* in Love

A thoughtful, scientific man, he chose his words with care.
No ordinary words would do. Only ones most rare.
He first spied her in the springtime, finally met her in the fall—
a simply gorgeous maiden—comely, willowy and tall.
But months of choosing his first words seem to have done him in.
What should have been his saving grace turned out to be a sin.

Enthusiastic in his love, he just had to express
his much-gone-over feelings about her loveliness.
He’d formerly determined not to use just any word,
but his final declaration turned out to be absurd.
He should have called her beautiful and just left it at that,
for when he called her pulchritudinous, she thought that he meant fat!

 

*Note: New to the world of behavioral science, Behavioral Linguistics is the science-based use of language to persuade. It’s rooted in nudge theory combined with psychology, sociolinguistics, and principles of marketing. Language is a powerful way to change behavior.

Prompts today are behavioral, enthusiastic, pulchritude, fall.  Images by Fabio Lucas and   Mandy Zhang on Unsplash.

Impressionable Dozer

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Impressionable Dozer

The whole house is sleeping—the dogs and the cats
on the chair and the sofa and their cushy mats.
Even the air seems stilled in its rush.
I am calmed by its torpor and lulled by its hush.

Although there are labors I know I should do,
I survey my agenda and plan it anew.
It’s hot in my bedroom, but the sofa looks nice.
I go to the kitchen for water and ice.

Then I grab my computer and spread myself out.
With no one to disturb, as there’s no one about,
I may nod off myself before long, but I hope
that I’ll finish this first, but as you can see…..

Nope.

The dVerse Poets prompt today is to write a Quadrille on the topic of sleep. Ironically, just before looking up the prompt, I had just taken the above photos and was thinking of writing about exactly that topic. Thus, this poem that half-fills the bill. Not a quadrille, but I really did fall asleep before finishing it so I should get double points for succumbing that fully to the prompt..

Now, guess where I am headed?