Category Archives: Poetry

Imitations of Immortality

3 Replies

Imitations of Immortality

Lend my consciousness to an android—every feeling, thought, ambition?
Can I commit this practice without suffering perdition?
Why not replace the faulty parts? We do it with our car,
and with this perishable body, I won’t get very far.
So why not buy a new one if I have the cash to do so?
I may even treat myself to invest in a few so
I can change my body like others change their clothes.
I’ll put me in a fresh one while the other bodies doze.
I’ll live a life that’s double. I won’t waste any hours.
Twenty-four hours of every day, I’ll exercise my powers.
Will I still be myself? Yes. It’s plain as it can be
that I won’t be my android. My android will be me.

The prompt: Welcome to the future. We now have the technology to upload your consciousness into an android body. The feelings, thoughts, and ambitions that make you unique remain after the transfer. Do you accept this new reality given the opportunity, and why? 

https://normalhappenings.com/2018/10/21/getting-an-upgrade-daily-inkling/

Next Season’s Cancellations

11 Replies

 

Next Season’s Cancellations

Riches may not always be all you might expect,
for one thing that cash can’t buy is genuine respect.
One, in fact, that we are daily driven to inspect
daily causes masses to rise up and object.

Clearly something’s rotten, and we often get a whiff
of that decay in Washington that we’ll prove only if
we repossess the country that we’ve so clearly sold
at the ballot boxes, making choices that are bold.

Our country’s not a boxing ring, a bout or match or race.
Voting’s not a sport. It is a simple act of grace.
We should not vote on people, entertaining or magnetic,
whose ridiculous antics are crazy and frenetic.

Vote for those who truly have our country’s good at heart—
those with sincere values: charitable and smart.
Leaders not afraid to interrupt the status quo
to make our country more than a cheap reality show.

If you are considering not voting because you are tired of the fray or think it won’t make a difference, please read the following article and reconsider: 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/07/2018-midterm-elections-senate-races-to-watch/597965001/

Prompt words today are object, whiff, magnetic and grace.  Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/rdp-sunday-object/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/21/fowc-with-fandango-whiff/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/magnetic/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/daily-addictions-2018-week-41/grace

Stand Up For Verity

2 Replies

Stand Up for Verity

A fabulist can take the truth and spin it, change it, plan it,
but then it is no longer truth, for truth is carved in granite.
The real truth is indelible. Permanent. Etched in stone.
Don’t mess with it and call it truth. You must leave truth alone.
It can’t accommodate a stretch. It’s fierce in resolution.
It’s not right to bend it simply to find a solution.

Truth is truth and fabrication is another matter,
so do not conjure up a tale and claim it’s not the latter.
Though presidents and kings and poets scratching in their dormer
might for their single purposes stray away from the former,
there must be someone willing to call out their acts as ruthless,
for there’s no folly greater than to be led by the truthless.

 

The prompt words today are fabulist, fierce, accommodate and granite. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/20/rdp-saturday-fabulist/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/20/fowc-with-fandango-fierce/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/daily-addictions-2018-week-41/accommodate
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/20/granite/

Dressing for Attention

1 Reply

pc310039

Dressing For Attention

Purple pedal pushers and a yellow skirt.
For a hat, a fascinator, and a tartan shirt.
A fur stole that’s a relic of another age—
when they didn’t raise them in a tiny cage.

Platform shoes to raise me up in elevation
so the band will see me during their ovation.
Great big shades to block the sunlight from my eyes
and so my date can’t see me flirting with the guys.

Bright pink polish on my nails and rhinestones on my lashes.
A girl has got to dress up right for these special bashes.
I will match the music—loud and brash and brassy.
   Bands don’t notice groupies whose style is too classy!

 

Daily Inkling asks what sort of an outfit we’d wear to a concert.  Oh oh!!!!

Snow’s Epilogue

3 Replies

 

 

Snow’s Epilogue

We can’t codify the snowflakes nor put them into order.
They fall to make a blanket or a pile or a border.
They come in a blizzard and leave us in a trickle. 
There’s something about former snow that is so very fickle.
It drips in drops from icicles and surges down the gutters.
Our attempts to modify it end in futile mutters.
I need not be prophetic to state the truth of snow.
It starts out in a flurry and ends up in a flow.

 

 


I’m finally in Missouri after a day on planes, airports and car. Ready to tackle today’s prompt words which are: blizzard, former,modify and prophetic. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/rdp-thursday-blizzard/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/18/fowc-with-fandango-former/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/daily-addictions-2018-week-41/modify
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/prophetic/

Bad Sport

1 Reply

This photo of my hometown team was taken a few years after I graduated. It was taken in the school auditorium.  I’d recognize that floor anywhere.  I’d come in close contact with it the one year I played girls’ basketball and another time when the school principal threatened to make me scrub it with a toothbrush when I walked across it with street shoes after a school pep rally. The auditorium was named for this longtime teacher and coach, Harold Thune, but the auditorium floor was named for  Jerald Applebee, who was coach from the time I was a Freshman in high school in 1960 until a few years ago. I swear, this is true.

Bad Sport

I don’t do sports, nor watch them, either.
A one block jog? I’d need a breather.
At volleyball, I don’t excel.
Touch football is a sort of hell.
For passing time, by hook or crook,
Jog on alone. I’ll read a book!!!

 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/rdp-wednesday-sport/

Flunking Exotic

9 Replies

Flunking Exotic

When I was young I had an idea I could be exotic,
but when in fact I tried, I found my goal to be quixotic.
For even though I thought that I could be like Theda Bara,
My skirt rode up, my nylons ran and so did my mascara.
I spent a fortune for “vamp” clothes, but had no place to wear them,
and they were so tight and scratchy that I could hardly bear them.
This is what finally prompted me to settle for what’s normal.
Exotic’s harder than it looks, as well as way too formal!!!

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/17/fowc-with-fandango-prompt/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/daily-addictions-2018-week-41/exotic

Serendipity

13 Replies

Serendipity

Seated at the movies in the last row of the balcony,
I couldn’t hear the dialogue and the man in front of me
was so tall that captions, too, were impossible to see.
But all of this, indeed, was just a part of serendipity
that played out as I exited the door they’d marked “Emergency”
that led out to the lobby where I’d decided that I had to flee.
There I found a bench and with a paperback upon my knee,
I passed five minutes during which I read with such intensity,
I didn’t even notice a man exiting to go to pee,
until he left the Men’s room, and I looked up as he passed by me.
He was a very handsome man—the very one who  formerly
had blocked my view but who now sat beside me and delightfully
soon engaged my interest with his wit and his sincerity.
And that is how our “he” and “me” quickly turned into a “we,”
and also how, ultimately,  you two children came to be!

The prompts  today are serendipity, balcony, emergency and caption. Here are the links:
/https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/rdp-tuesday-serendipity/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/16/fowc-with-fandango-balcony/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/emergency/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/daily-addictions-2018-week-41/caption

Ill-fitted

21 Replies

Ill-fitted

He dragged his feet along the floor until
his brand new bride decided she’d her fill.
She pulled his shoes off of his feet and said,
“If I had known the truth when we were wed,
I might have had a very different goal—
to find a man who had a better sole
instead of feet so swollen and so red.
I might have had a cobbler’s son instead
if I’d paid less attention to your bod
and chosen me a groom much better shod!” 

For dVerse poets iambic pentameter prompt.

https://dversepoets.com/

The Old and Unrested

3 Replies

IMG_4795
The Old and Unrested

The old and unrested return to their beds,
propping their pillows under their heads.
Pulling their blankets up to their ears,
they let up on the gas and go into low gears.

Setting their brandies or porters or gins
on their bedside tables, they settle their chins
upon their chests and watch some TV
on laptops that sit where their boobs used to be.

Life is confusing when you are too near it,
especially ’cause it is so damn hard to hear it.
Then when you’re alone, it’s entirely too loud.
These neighborhood noises should not be allowed!

They turn up the volume to drown out the noise
of the car alarms, weed eaters and screaming boys.
They lie all morning, secure in their beds.
Life is much easier lived in their heads!

For Daily Inklings, Objects at Rest.