For Cee’s FOTD.
Food for Thought?
Waiting for the words to prompt that thrill of excitation
that produces more words that lead to motivation,
I clutch my loose leaf binder, hoping for a new addition
that will bring another poem to final fruition.
Yet no gleam of insight shines within my brain.
All the words that join the prompt words seem to me inane.
So, though today a profound poem I probably won’t carve,
I don’t work for payment, so at least I will not starve.
Today, prompt words were culled from five different sites. Click on each word to find its site: gleam, payment, produce, motivation and loose leaf.
Dear Daughter:
Your frenetic new admirer is not my cup of tea,
for even though I told him that he’d have to let you be,
he resorts to tactics like climbing that big tree
to gain visual access to our property.
You, too, must be incisive in telling him to cease
if you’d like his constant efforts to come to a surcease.
For though I am your father, he allots to me no power
but simply remains stubbornly in his leafy bower.
His persistent efforts prove that he is from that faction
that they label OCD, for he shows no reaction
to my constant pleas, so do you agree with me
that it’s necessary to just cut down the tree?
Dear Papa:
Alas, though my new suitor is not your cup of tea,
I find that his flavor is agreeable to me.
I am not your teenage daughter, for I’m almost thirty-three.
So please do not molest him, and do not cut down his tree.
It is a fact, dear parent, I’m of marriageable age.
So cease with your obsession and curb parental rage.
It’s time to cut the apron strings and set your daughter free,
for I prefer another perch to my father’s knee!
Prompt words are frenetic, incisive, faction, allot, and almost.
A Tinder Rebuttal
Stranger conversations may have taken place,
presenting arbitrary details with vehemence and haste.
With insubstantial logic spouted too close to my face,
the slab of beef in front of me was sure to go to waste.
I rued the day I’d made the swipe on Tinder to the right.
I knew that if I answered it would end up in a fight,
but if I was too lenient in pointing out the flaws
in his conspiracy theories, it might be worse, because
one inch given, one foot taken with such crazy sorts of gents,
and so I shoved my plate away and jumped down from the fence,
packed my steak into my go-bag and decided not to linger,
shoving back my chair to leave, I proffered him my finger.
With folks like him, I’d realized, logic is absurd,
so I made my rebuttal without a single word!
Prompt words are stranger, insubstantial, arbitrary, lenient, slab and conversation.
Image by Alessandro Bellone on Unsplash.
Blade and Balm
Here in a crevice near my heart,
the grief I field does not depart.
Lodged in the depths beneath my skin,
it harbors pain trapped tight within.
Lifted from the depths below,
my heart succumbs to thoughts of woe.
Its edges cut like sharpest steel
insisting I recall and feel.
The wild tides tumble me again,
salting my tears with waves of pain.
Its murmurs stir, then rock me calm.
offering me a soothing balm.
Ancestors reach up from the deep
to lull me to a restful sleep.
These bruises that I bear today
are the price that generations pay
for life that harbors treasures, too,
along with sadnesses we rue.
For Wordle 575 the prompts are: grief field skin depths edge salt murmuring bruises ancestors lifted crevice wants
Mutable
No matter how we grovel, time marches staunchly on.
You do not need to call it, for it will come anon.
Moment after moment, we can’t avoid its flight.
It segues from each morning to afternoon and night.
We can’t exceed its time limits, for it determines when
we pass from pretty newcomer to become a has-been.
It is the plan of nature. We can’t escape the way
that time chooses to change us day to day to day.
Prompts today are flight, grovel, pretty, exceed, moment and segue. This post, I realize, seems a bit self-centered, but I couldn’t find photos of anyone else that showed this many stages. I had more photos that included people from different stages, but unfortunately I forgot to save it so after an hour of work, lost it. These are hurried photos briefly illustrating the mutability of life.
(Click on photos to enlarge.)
Fishermen
On platforms built over the bay,
the fishermen begin their day.
In spite of last-night’s sordid fun,
they’re up before the day’s begun,
ready to join their fishing fleet
so later we can leave replete
with fish from platters piled high
with clams and shrimp and codfish pie.
Wild fishermen of bar or tavern,
in days of old in inn or cavern
drank their wine and emerged bleary
to their boats, hungover, weary.
Simon and Andrew were the first
to leave their fishing nets and thirst
for cups of wine filled to the brim
to change their lives and follow him.
Joined after by the other ten,
they all became fishers of men.
And even though eons ago
they, too, had their wild oats to sow,
these fishermen would be surprised
that since then they’ve been canonized,
thus feeding souls with other than
can be dished out in dish or pan.
Prompt words are platform, sordid, bash, canonize, fleet and platter.
The most autumn color we get in my part of Mexico is the vibrant African Tulip trees that are in full bloom right now.
For Cee’s Autumn Colors prompt and also in answer to Jez’s fantastic photos of turning trees on his Fan of Autumn 178 Post.
