Category Archives: Wordpress Daily Prompt

Rummy

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Upturned Noses—Even the most laid back and egalitarian among us can be insufferable snobs when it comes to coffee, music, cars, beer, or any other pet obsession where things have to be just so. What are you snobbish about?

Rummy

Forget my birthday or my name.
Beat me at my favorite game.
Insult my décor or my looks.
Ignore my artwork and my books.

Any coffee brand will do.
I am not snobbish about my brew.
If you must, you may be tardy.
Just serve me no rum but Bacardi!

If someone one day deemed to proffer
the finest Cuba has to offer,
there is no choice. I wouldn’t totter.
I’d just decline and ask for water!

DSC09633

Back and Forth

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Back and Forth

If I should find a time machine, I might or might not buy it.
And even once I bought it, I might or might not try it.
To think about the future always makes me sweat,
for I am trepidatious about how bad it might get.
I foresee live-in bubbles for one or two or three
who merely turn on YouTube for whomever else they see.
Pollution would be too advanced to venture far outside—
the world turned way too violent for most folks to abide.

If I visited the future, chances are I’d see
the death of friends and loved ones—perhaps the death of me!
See our country crumble due to earthquakes or to slaughter.
See Monsanto poison food crops after ruining our water.
Our seasons turned to drought, tornado, hurricane and flood—
by turn made dry or spinning or blown away or mud.
I know there are alternatives, but I can’t help but doubt
that current politicians will let it all work out.

But if I went into the past, perhaps I’d also rue it.
I might just be happier if I chose to eschew it
I might see as a toddler that I was just a brat—
a little squirming dervish—graceless, spoiled and fat.
I might hear that my singing voice was just a bit off-key
and see the looks the others gave as they were hearing me.
If I encountered me, we might just end up in a fight
like ones I had with sisters—and discover they were right!

Yet, this probably won’t happen and perhaps it might be fun
to have another look at what I’ve seen and what I’ve done.
And though to relive some things would leave me feeling queasier,
I know that it would certainly make memoir-writing easier.
What fun to relive Christmases from year to year to year,
To see my mom and dad again, what’s more, to get to hear
all the stories of my dad and this time to record them—
to spend time with my sisters and to show how I adored them.

What fun to watch me with my friends— Rita, Lynn and Billy—
to see when we were children if we were just as silly
as little kids I see today who just seem to be reeling
with energy and foolishness and excesses of feeling.
I’d drive on roads with fewer cars to spots no longer there.
Go roller skating in Draper gym. Fall on my derriére!
I’d have a Coke in Mack’s Café and then I’d shop at Gambles.
Buy love comics at Mowell’s Drug and then expand my rambles

down to the playground monkey bars, where I would do a flip.
Then to the Frosty Freeze where I would have another sip
of orange slush and then I’d have to buy a barbecue.
(I fear that in my tiny town, that’s all there was to do!)
I’d skip ahead, then, many years, to 1971,
and fly off to Australia for adventures in the sun.
Then Singapore and Bali, Ceylon and Africa.
See everything as it once was, when it was new and raw.

Regrets? Of course. I’m human, and so I’ve had a few,
but over precognition, I prefer déjà vu.

The Prompt: One-Way Street—Congrats! You’re the owner of a new time machine. The catch? It comes in two models, each traveling one way only: the past OR the future. Which do you choose, and why?

Hard Transit

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Hard Transit

My grandfather and his two teenaged daughters
drove a wagon to Dakota to claim a homestead.
I never asked how many weeks they traveled, or the hardships that they faced.
The young don’t know what answers they will wish for when it’s too late;
so only imagination serves to describe the heat,
day after day with no water except for what they carried,
coyotes, gray wolves and the glaring sun of the treeless prairie.
My aunts were just young girls dealing with the difficulties young girls face
in the sparsest of conditions. No mother. No water.
The jarring ride—grasshoppers so thick the wagons skidded off the tracks,
and that loneliness of riding into
the emptiness of a strange world.

Now, I stand impatiently at the immigration window,
then the ticket line and the security line.
I empty pockets, discard water bottle,
remove computers from their cases, take off shoes,
raise my arms for the check,
struggle up the escalator with bag and purse,
find the right gate,
negotiate the walkway to the plane,
lift the heavy carry-on and lower myself into the too-small seat.
“Plane travel isn’t what it used to be,” my neighbor says,
and we console each other about how hard it is.
“Nine hours from Guadalajara to St. Louis—
a plane change and a three-hour layover in Atlanta,”
I grumble, and he sympathizes.

The Prompt: In Transit—Train stations, airport terminals, subway stops: soulless spaces full of distracted, stressed zombies, or magical sets for fleeting, interlocking human stories?

College Daze

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College Daze

I should have been cramming for English—­reading Macbeth or Candide­
and finishing off all my papers on Shakespeare or Becket or Bede.
But I always put off all assignments until the last possible minute,
lugging around every textbook without really looking within it.

When final week came, I was panicked. I studied all day and all night.
Living on No Doz and coffee, my eyes were a terrible sight.
Bloodshot and ringed with dark circles, they read on and read on nonetheless—
Chaucer and Dickens and Somerset Maugham (and Cliff’s Notes, I have to confess.)

My very worst procrastination was ten papers in just seven days—
my mind racing onward and onward as I searched for each insightful phrase.
Biology, German and history, psychology and all the rest
battled to come to the front and be heard when they came to be put to the test.

By the end I was crazed and exhausted, craving only closed eyes and my bed—
putting authors and symbols and figures and facts right out of my overstuffed head.
I could have avoided this torment, the pressure, exhaustion and dread
If only I’d started three months in advance to prepare for each “big day ahead.”

In college I fear I was guilty. I put all things off just a smidge.
I majored in procrastination and minored in marathon bridge!

( This poem is dedicated to Marti, Yvonne, Patty, Ramjet, Karen Rea and all the house hashers, with whom I wasted many a long college afternoon and evening expanding my mind by playing bridge. I must admit that I haven’t played it since, which is why I have the time to write a poem a day and post it on my blog. Sometimes we learn more after college than during!)

The Prompt: Big Day Ahead—It’s the night before an important event: a big exam, a major presentation, your wedding. How do you calm your nerves in preparation for the big day?

News Blues

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News Blues

wars, tsunamis
murdered mommies
global warming
cancers forming
mad religions and heretics
engineering our genetics
drug cartels
emptying wells
mounting debt
nuclear threat

I hate to say it
but every day it
is getting worse
this global curse
and human capers
in all the papers
so all in all
it’s an easy call
I find less friction
in reading fiction!

The Prompt:The Great Divide—When reading for fun, do you usually choose fiction or non-fiction? Do you have an idea why you prefer one over the other?

The Indigestibles

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The Prompt: Mouths Wide Shut—Are you a picky eater? Share some of your favorite food quirks with us (the more exotic, the better!). Omnivores: what’s the one thing you won’t eat?

The Indigestibles

No room for mushrooms, can’t live with liver.
The thought of brains just makes me shiver.
Though I like pizza, my other law
is I don’t eat tomatoes raw!

Drinking milk’s against my wishes.
Fish is simply for the fishes.
I eat no veal or other baby,
and steak for me is simply “maybe.”

So if it’s your plan to invest
in things that I like to ingest,
I won’t make it any harder
for you to come and stock my larder.

All else you want to bring to feed me—
what edibles you wish to cede me:
Injera, curries, Thai, Chinese—
all are sure to tempt and please.

Except for one thing I just thought of
that in the past I’ve had a lot of.
There’s one more mouthful I won’t try.
I have no taste for humble pie!

Slackers

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The Prompt: Ready, Set, Done—Our free-write is back by popular demand: today, write about anything — but you must write for exactly ten minutes, no more, no less.

Slackers

If we knew what to write about, we’d do so every day;
but instead we come here hoping that you’ll tell us what to say.
Already you have proven twice your prompt site isn’t prompt.
And once again upon our trust you mindfully have stompt
by turning us away to find our topics on our own.
So once again, dear WordPress, all our trust in you has flown.
We do not go to clothes stores to buy dresses not yet sewn,
nor come here to this prompt site to be told to pick our own!

The Gauntlet

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The Prompt: Handle With Care—How are you at receiving criticism? Do you prefer that others treat you with kid gloves, or go for brutal honesty?

The Gauntlet

If brutal honesty’s your thirst,
please don’t throw down the gauntlet first.

I have no need for verbal sparring.
In fact, I find it rather jarring.

So please pick up your gauntlet and
just place it back upon your hand.

Kind’s my material of choice
with which to gird thy hand and voice

as you tell me how I’ve erred,
so please wear gloves and wear them paired!

And then I have one more request.
Other critics have found it best

while telling me how to comport
myself in life, to make it short!

Humor me!!!

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Humor Me!

The Prompt: Litmus, Litmus on the Wall—If you had to come up with one question, the answer to which would determine whether or not you could be friends with a person you’ve just met, what would it be? What would the right answer be?

Do they have a good sense of humor?

The answer?  Surely, you can guess.
Of course, the answer would be, “Yes!!!”

Of course, there would be many other qualities that would be necessary as well, loyalty, cleverness and honesty chief among them, but without a sense of humor, I don’t think we would become the best of friends.

A Bio Challenge

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The Prompt: Flash Talk—You’re about to enter a room full of strangers, where you will have exactly four minutes to tell a story that would convey who you really are. What’s your story?

A Bio Challenge

My name is Judy. I live alone.
I love computers but hate the phone.
I’m addicted to the Internet
and the literary set.

I’m allergic to dogs. They make me wheeze,
but I still have two to make me sneeze.
(Along with a cat who comes to eat
but spends the day across the street.)

I like to write and do my art.
I’m not very pretty, but I’m sorta smart.
I live on a mountain all up and down
above a little Mexican town.

When I wake up, before I stray,
I write a poem every day.
Upon my back, I tap with zest
with my computer on my chest,

for I believe without a doubt
that when I move, ideas fall out
before I get them to the screen.
If I leave bed, they’re never seen.

I dance sometimes, and volunteer,
but spend too much time on my rear.
I’m a member of four writing groups
that keep me jumping through their hoops.

I write a blog to please myself
but my novel sits there on the shelf,
three chapters long, not any more.
When November comes, I’ll start on four!

So about me, I think I’m through.
I want to come read about you!
Please use my “comments” box to show
some things about you I don’t know.

One fact or two, (they needn’t rhyme)
would make me feel more than sublime.
If sixty people read this post,
then sixty comments I hope to boast.

And I promise that I’ll reply to
each person, be there lots or few.
I’ll write a separate rhyme for each
that won’t pontificate or preach.

The more unusual your fact,
the odder with be my “react.”
A mere two-liner for each one—
Please comment now and join the fun!