Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Prairie Grass” for Word of the Day

IMG_0108Prairie grass waves over the spot where my parents’ house used to be. Its roof was blown away in a tornado years ago and the house leveled, the basement filled in. What physical remnants of my past remain beneath this dirt I’ll never know as members of the family were all far-distant when the tornado hit and no one ever went to clear out items stored in the basement. I’m told townspeople came in and scavenged in the basement before it was filled in.  A friend took my childhood books for her children.  I have no idea where other letters, books, trophies and assorted treasures from my past ended up. Perhaps they are buried there.

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Across the dirt road is the cemetery where we all will lie beneath prairie grass one day. Yes, I was moved to tears both by the beauty and the inevitability that all our fuss and bother will result in this simplicity. We rise from the earth, feed on it and in return are fed upon. No person is so special as to survive the inevitable leveling force of nature.

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The Word of the Day prompt is “Grass.”

“Gradual Justice” For Blast from the Past, Sept 28

Gradual Justice

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Gradual Justice

Life metes out a gradual justice that we may not  see.
Not choreographed for one lifetime, not designed for you or me,
but rather, for the planet or the universe.
There’s no way to avoid it, circumvent it or rehearse.
We’re a part of something larger even as we make mistakes
as nature compensates for all  the snafus mankind makes.
Great men may be jaunty––swelled up with their great plan,
but nature has more problems than looking after man.
She has the heart of all within, seeing a scope broader
than the needs of man or any other great marauder.
There is just so much for any of us. When we grab for more,
we can be pretty sure we may be headed out the door.
What species will replace us, or how will we evolve
if we don’t act quickly our problems to resolve?
Even all technology is part of nature’s plan.
Perhaps it’s written that robots will take the place of man.
Micro chips for healing and mechanical hearts
are only the beginning. They are only the starts.
Species that overgraze domains bring about their endings.
So it may be with us with all our diggings and our vendings.
Machines spewing toxins in our air and putting poisons on our shelves
may only be the means of making more room for themselves!

“Blast from the Past” prompt asks that we post a prompt made on this date in an earlier year. This was my post on Sept 28, 2018.

The prompts today are justice, heart, jaunty and gradual. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/friday-rdp-justice/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/28/fowc-with-fandango-heart/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/jaunty/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/daily-addictions-2018-week-38/gradual

“First Dance” Wordle 776 for The Sunday Whirl

 

First Dance

Delerium o’er music swelling, 
trumpet blaring, cymbals belling,
audience with senses throbbing,
swallow tears, and suspend sobbing.
In a spell, just listening to
first one song, and then a few.
Faces pale with knowing glances
tag secret crushes for first dances.
Find the nerve and are rewarded
when the wishes they once hoarded
are now shared with people who
they enjoy a spin or two
and finally begin to woo.

Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl’s Wordle 776 are: swallow tag find music swelling bell 
delirium spell pales knowing just senses

This is a prompt I just can’t resist most weeks. Here is my solution to the word challenge.

 

 

 

Autumn Schmautum for dVerse Poets

Autumn Schmautumn

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Autumn Schmautumn

The only colored leaves I see are going to be faux,
for autumn never visits in my part of Mexico.
In fact, those piles of autumn leaves are far back in my past.
Green on the leaves in Mexico just lasts and lasts and lasts.
It’s true that each leaf everywhere must one day be defeated,
but down here where I live, the only way leaves are unseated
is not by frigid temperatures. There’s no cold to unglue them.
Our only leaf-removal means is cutter ants that chew them!
The ones who cut them down are all the bravest and the best.
Their comrades wait below to carry them all to their nest.
Their robberies completed without the slightest peep,
their piles of leaves depleted in the nighttime while we sleep.
Our guard dogs doze on soundly as ants pass by in the dark,
letting all these thieveries go on without one bark.
And so I fear that this far south no autumn colors are viewed.
Our trees create no spectacle. They go from green to nude!
And though ants harvest all our leaves—just chew them off and take them,
at least they grant us favors in that we don’t have to rake them!

for Dverse Poets, the theme is Autumn.

 

Should I or Shouldn’t I? for Lets Hit Rewind, Sept 26

Should I or Shouldn’t I ?!

 

The word prompts today are inspire, surmount, enthralling, mistrust and today I’m adding Matt’s new prompt site to my inspiration list.  His command is that we invent a new punctuation mark and write a post inspired by it. What would you do if you were given four words and a situation and told to use them in a poem or story? You’d probably wind up with a poem as ridiculous as this one is!!

Should I or Shouldn’t I?!

I am plagued by indecision.
Should I choose that vain incision
leading to the skin division
that might lead to the derision
of those who might choose nature’s pace
written on their neck and face?

I must admit I do mistrust
those who deal with jowls and bust
by removing parts of them,
and so I hem and haw and hem.
As enthralling as it would be
to be confronted with less of me,

I can’t surmount the fear that I
would be the first face lift to die!
Or,  lovely as other ladies look,
I fear I’d end up in a book
of great disasters and that mine
would be a face most leonine!

Or if I had a chest reduction,
all the cutting and the suction
would lead to results most distressing.
What would happen, I am guessing,
is that the surgeon would have the gall
to leave me with no breasts at all!

If I had need to punctuate
a sentence that concerns my fate,
I think that it would culminate
with a mark that had a mate.
Although I am inspired to do it,
another part seems to eschew it,

?! would be the punctuation
designating consternation.
It’s what  I’d have to use until
I decide if I won’t or will.
Half of it anticipation,
the other half, my hesitation!

Harmony for Lens Artists Challenge

 

For Lenz Artists Challenge #414, the prompt is “Harmony.”

Initial Diaper Duty for “Cracking Open the Time Capsule, Sept. 24”

From nine years ago yesterday! Oops.. I missed posting yesterday for “Cracking Open the Time Capsule.”

Initial Diaper Duty

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New fathers often balk at tampering
with their newborn’s inaugural Pampering.
But though he’d rather be out boozing,
He’d better learn, ‘cuz Mommy’s snoozing.

The prompt today was pamper.

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3 thoughts on “Initial Diaper Duty”

Twilight Throwback

Here’s a throwback to Sept 22, 2018. We were in the pool for hours tonight. The water was amazing and the sky, moon and trees looked exactly like this, 8 years later. 

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Twilight

That strange bird, making its chipping call again.
I open my calendar, hoping to find a blank square
promising the richness of time as an empty cup to fill.

I have come to recognize
the joy of my own company—
a simple diet filled only with my favorite dishes.

What to savor first? These expected words or an early morning trip
down to the garden before the day has warmed
and sound has found it?

The men will arrive at 8.
On each side of me, the chipping of concrete
and dry rub of concrete filler. Hours later, the brush.

Their day as productive as my day will be.
Seeing the empty square,
my choice when and how to fill it.

“With Style” for Rewind..a Reblog from this date in 2016.

Day of Reckoning for The Sunday Whirl

A cold hungry dawn ate up the darkness, allowing light to stream in. It was to be a day of reckoning. Evil would f nally be overcome by righteousness, folly with good fortune. There would be few casualities save for the profit margins of those who had long been complicit in bleeding the country dry. Interest rates would drop, gas prices plunge and a new phase begin where rich and poor would blend to reach some middle ground of affluence, shrinking that difference that had flourished in the two recent administrations of graft and corruption.
The Sunday Whirl: Wordle 775 prompts were:casualties phase profit drop folly cold hungry dawn complicit evil stream reckoning