Missed Americas
Now that they are runway-bound,
those extravagantly gowned
are oft-driven to expound
with words not overly profound
about beliefs they’ve newly found
(overheard and swiftly downed)
just because they love the sound,
hoping in the final round,
their golden tongues will get them crowned.
For the dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Crown.
Image from BBC.
Extra! Extra! Forget All About it!!!
Once daily papers split the air, landing with a “plop”
on each house’s stairway, two steps from the top.
Truth was dispensed each morning for a price tag nearly free—
a neatly packaged bundle wherein we all could see
how the engine of the world moved forward bit by bit,
and the shiny torch of journalism helped us witness it.
But while we strove for justice and fairness and the truth,
other forces in the world were fighting nail and tooth,
trying to pollute the facts, and we all know why.
They were simply greedy for their share of the pie.
Did fair reporting save the day? Blind justice serve us all?
Or is it now too late to try to save us from our fall?
Rhetoric now flies freely at us through the air.
No more is it delivered daily to our stair.
Any mother’s son expounds with words twisted and ruthless,
all too often based on hate with logic cruel and truthless.
Words winging through the internet too easily meet our eyes
without the screen of logic to filter out the lies.
Reality is now for sale, scripted and rewritten,
that phony glamorous almost-world with which we all are smitten.
Our politicians, movie stars and buffoons playing roles
all have ulterior motives and short-sighted goals
wherein they build their egos, getting richer year by year,
and news of it just fades away into the atmosphere.
Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 529 are free, papers, morning, price, wings, split, truth, shiny, engine, witness, why and strive. Top illustration by Melpo Tsiliaki, bottom illustration by Logan Weaver, both on Unsplash.
The Rear Admiral Earns His Title
The ensign and Rear Admiral, together in a boat,
after their ship’s sinking, the only ones afloat,
were trying to determine what caused their craft to sink,
dumping them at midnight from their sleep into the drink.
“Who’s at fault?” they speculated.
What misdeed had instigated
this horrific interlude
that left them soaked and nearly nude?
What meeting could be worse?
Could any tryst be more adverse?
And thus they squandered precious time
in expostulations and in mime
when they could have better plotted
in the time they were allotted
how to get out of this mess,
for it’s true, I must confess
that the boat they were in now
had a knothole in the bow
and as they fussed and fretted,
their feet and then their legs were wetted
by seawater seeping in
that was soon up to their chin,
and of the highest and the lowest
the one who turned out to be slowest
was cast out upon the sea,
claiming his priority,
while the one who was most rapid,
keen of eye and much less vapid,
grabbed the only life vest there
where there should have been a pair,
and shifted into his high gear
leaving the admiral in the rear.
Prompts for today are: meeting, squander, instigate, ensign and fault.
New Messiah
From whom among the worldly scrum
will Earth’s brighter future come?
Who’ll point a twitching finger to
a skyline of a sickly hue
and before our future’s gone,
transform it from its dull and wan
pallor to a richer hue?
What newer race will then renew
as their fathers failed to do?
Who forms these saviors of the world?
In what infant brain lies curled
the savior of the human race?
Or will we vanish without a trace?
Prompt words today are twitch, skyline, scrum, wan and finger.
Holiday Reprieve
Do you approach with trepidation
all this Christmas titillation?
When all its plans start to congeal—
the presents, decorations, meal,
all the usual preparations
and the usual perturbations—
perhaps you need to curb frustration
by taking off on a vacation.
Life is short. Don’t hesitate
if you’ve no wish to celebrate.
So much of Christmas’s elation
is a mere regurgitation
of the things, year after year,
we’ve done to try to raise some cheer.
If neither presents opened nor
those Yule carolers at your door
bring you peace and joy and cheer
even at this time of year,
more ways than one to cook a goose.
Open the cage and let him loose,
then pack a bag and take off, too,
to Zanzibar or Katmandu.
Go find a place that is less spangled,
simpler and less Xmas-angled.
Go examine life’s ecologies,
and I’ll make your apologies.
Prompts today are life, congeal, usual, trepidation and celebrate.
Sacred Heart
Eternal is a mist that doesn’t lift.
It is a wish, a sigh, a dream, a promise made,
a promise kept. A goal for some, for others
a dark cloud that will not lift.
Yesterday, today, tomorrow,
what we make of this life
makes eternity.
We can blame it on no other.
Gods do not make eternity
but only furnish directions
often misinterpreted
or lost to time.
Look within
to find it,
for it is neither there
nor there.
For: Tuesday Writing Prompt: Eternal 7: 06
and https://godoggocafe.com/2021/11/16/tuesday-writing-prompt-challenge-tuesday-16-2021/
The Rocky Road to Maturity
A state of ataraxia is simply not the norm
when a particular condition has taken you by storm.
It makes you feel ungainly and your customary grace
seems to gather syllables and turn into disgrace.
Moodiness and hormones and pimples and the rest
of the ills that mark this state don’t put you at your best,
and there’s a bigger problem once you survive your pubescence,
for it is just a prelude to the state of adolescence!
Word prompts today are customary, ungainly, prelude, ataraxia (tranquility) and particular.
Protected Zone
Our new pet’s experimental—
its domain an environmental
zone that’s been declared protected
ever since the kids detected
the cobweb that is stretched out there
between the wall and etagere.
The spider that constructed it—
every gossamer sticky bit—
and its process of mastication
is the object of much fascination.
Though I’d like to be done with it,
the kids have too much fun with it.
The spider, finished with its knitting,
spends the rest of its time sitting
surveying new bugs caught in it,
then eating what they’ve got in it.
And though I find this plot most grim,
it seems it’s more than just a whim.
We’ve been told we’re not to maul it
since Sis found a name to call it.
And that is why we’ve been adjusting
areas that we’ve been dusting,
and the web that’s stretched from shelf to picture
has become a permanent fixture.
Prompt words today are cobwebs, experimental, maul and picture.
Also, for dVerse Poets Open Link.
The Afterlife
When it comes to thinking about the afterlife,
differing opinions are likely to run rife.
Norse warriors were rewarded by a ticket to Valhalla.
Muslims aspire to Jannah after judgement day by Allah.
In order to prepare for it, a Catholic confesses,
hoping to atone in time for all his Earthly messes.
A protestant believes in heaven but not in confessing.
He deals with sins within his prayers and leaves his preacher guessing
about what he’s been up to, storing misdeeds in his head,
atoning for his weaknesses in private, before bed.
He fears if he’s a sinner or a selfish reprobate,
access might be denied to him at the pearly gate.
Atheists are cavalier, not needing a solution
to the ills they do on Earth, fearing no retribution.
The good they do in life is not for heavenly reward.
The charity they practice, done of their own accord.
Whether there’s an afterlife, they don’t pretend to know.
Comminatory actions limited to life below.
Afterlife or not, however, animals don’t worry.
They graze and swim and procreate, swim and fly and scurry,
unaware there’s anything wrong in what they do.
They do not pray on bended knee nor frequent any pew.
They live the lives they’re given, just following their nature,
not fretting over afterlives of any nomenclature.
Prompts today are afterlife, cavalier, coalesce, comminatory and weakness.
Smiths
Like a seal or fish or otter
slips into its world of water,
so do smiths of any sort—
(word or metalsmith) cavort
in their shops or in their minds
to create wonders of two kinds.
The smith’s returns of mind or hammer,
while they may create a clamor
by their constant stimulation,
forge in us a strong sensation,
opening our minds and eyes
to thoughts formerly in disguise.
Never underestimate
those born to shape and malleate.
They build our knowledge, blow on blow,
to show us different ways to go.
The words or metal that they wrangle
into book or silver spangle,
swell the whole world’s education,
then add to its decoration.
Prompt words today are spangle, malleate, otter, sensation and return.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 