Category Archives: Wordpress Daily Prompt

Casting Reality

3 Replies

The Prompt: Cast Change—You’ve just been named the casting director of your favorite television show (or movie franchise). The catch: you must replace the entire cast — with your friends and family. Who gets which role?

Casting Reality

Instead of casting TV shows with folks you’ll never know
I’d rather cast my life with actors from a TV show
that all of you have seen and so you’ll understand the jokes
better than if I had cast TV with common folks.

A lot of Grandpa Walton might go into making Dad—
plus one ounce of Archie Bunker (though he wasn’t half so bad).
He was a rugged rancher and an avid storyteller.
One day he’d recite Shakespeare and the other, he would beller
a song of mountain bootleggers or “Old Chief Buffalo Nickel,”
then construct towering sandwiches and top them with a pickle.
So I’d add some Leon Redbone and a bit of old Mark Twain,
a little bit of Dagwood and a whole lot of John Wayne.

Though my mother cooked and ironed, often with no thanks,
she also was a jokester who loved to think up pranks.
Though she was often zany, she wasn’t dumb at all—
a sort of Gracie Allen all mixed up with Lucille Ball.
Add some Cagney and some Lacey and a little Nancy Drew
and of another side of her you’ll start to get a clue.
She always loved a mystery and crossword puzzles, too—
and UFO’s and Halloween—things scary as a “Boo!!!”

Stacey London is the next to join my family cast.
“What Not To Wear”—the show that she has starred in in the past.
Her role of saying “No” to this one, then a “Yes” to that,
(as in, “That one makes you skinny, but in this one you look fat!”)
was just exactly how my sister used to talk to me.
That this skirt did not go with that was plain for her to see.
As an older sister, she was free with such advice;
but often loaned me her own clothes which, I admit, was nice.

Though my oldest sister Betty’s not accustomed to go last,
she’s the one last family member that there is for me to cast.
She was my boss from my first breath, as she was then eleven.
And if she could, she’d boss me still, though I am sixty-seven.
And so I try to figure out whom she would choose to play her.
And though I’d pick Bette Midler, maybe I should Doris Day her.
She was a singer and a blonde, so guess that she will do.
And now I’ve finished casting a whole film you’ll never view!

Stoned!!!

4 Replies

Stoned

I don’t like enclosed spaces or rooms that are too small.
Elevators? Closets? Small caves?  I hate them all.
A cellar where no air moves is a place I won’t be found,
and can’t imagine spending days low beneath the ground!
I have a fear of smothering someplace where there’s no air,
so I won’t go spelunking, even on a dare.
And though I know gold jewelry’s expensive—nothing finer,
nobody would have any if I had to be the miner
who went below the ground to try to free it from the stone;
for if left up to me, I’d simply leave that gold alone.
I’ll remain above the ground in the sunshine and the breeze—
not venturing below the ground where sometimes when I sneeze,
the earth and stones might start to move and bury me alive,
streaming down around me like hornets from a hive.
So, no matter what the riches  that down there might be found,
I’ll spend my life in penury, here—above the ground!!!

The Prompt: Nightmare Job—In honor of Labor Day in North America, tell us what’s the one job you could never imagine yourself doing.

My Promoter

5 Replies

The Prompt: You, Robot—You’ve been handed a robot whose sole job is to relieve you of one chore, job, or responsibility you particularly hate. What is it?

                                                                        My Promoter

Since Ray Bradbury wrote of one in “There Will Come Soft Rains,”
the list of things robots can do seems to have made great gains.
Some are made to wash our hair. Others shave our heads.
They build our houses, clean our floors and even make our beds.
I grant that it is handy that there’s one that scoops dog poop,
and one to stop our snoring, another to cook soup.
Lonely? One shoots billiards and perhaps it lets you win;
but do not gamble with it, for I hear it cheats at gin.
It’s great that there’s a robot that lifts patients out of bed,
but since I am still mobile, I have other needs instead.
I want a robot that can read and surf the internet
to send out my submissions and to guarantee I’ll get
an agent and a publisher to dispense all my writing
and send it to reviewers so my words they would be citing!
Send it out to libraries, to Amazon and Kindles.
Keep track of my royalties so there would be no swindles.
In short, I want a robot that will publicize and fight
so all this writer has to do is write and write and write.

As far-fetched as these robots sound, they are all based on reality.  For more information, go to: http://mentalfloss.com/article/30898/10-robots-very-specific-tasks

 

Rum Dumb

13 Replies

Rum Dumb

Beer is tacky. Wine’s a joke.
My preference is Rum and Coke.
Squeeze a lime in. Take a sip
to cool your throat and wet your lip.
My favorite form of inebriation
is always Cuba Libre-ation.

The Prompt: Pick Your Potion—What’s your signature beverage — and how did it achieve that status?      http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/pick-your-potion/

Let There Be Light

9 Replies

 

Let There Be Light


My mind is a growling dog.
While I stew and fuss,
fulfilling lists,
she jumps the screendoor,
beckoning.
Rude me, to turn my back
on the only playmate
who wants to play
the same games I do
every day, every hour,
because I fear that initial
plodding through silt
page after page
in search of the stream
of words.

Sometimes boredom
yawns so wide
that I have to enter it,
to wander its inner closet
where for decades
only cobwebs
have stirred.
In some dark corner
where I spank the dog
or search the bedside table drawers
of a lover called out at midnight,
I find the river’s source,
but then
the phone
rings and I’m off
gathering crumbs from a forest path,
leaving lost children
stranded in their own story.

Stray puppies—I collect every one,
wild orange funnel flowers
and guava
washed in an afternoon kitchen
just before the invasion
of five o’clock sunlight.
All of them I carry back
to hidden places
to rub against each other
and ignite
into the language of this place
where life goes in,
plays dress-up,
but emerges
nude,
like poetry.

 

The Prompt: Is there a cause — social, political, cultural, or other — you passionately believe in? Tell us how you got involved . The cause I most believe in is getting in touch with your authentic and true inner voice.  This is what I do when I write. Would that more people involved in making decisions that will alter our world would do so. This poem is really about the creative process where, when done right, there is only truth. It is also about all the things that get in the way of this process.

Mostly Nameless in Mexico

12 Replies


The Prompt: The Name’s The Thing—Have you ever named an inanimate object? (Your car? Your laptop? The volleyball that kept you company while you were stranded in the ocean?) Share the story of at least one object with which you’re on a first-name basis.

Mostly Nameless in Mexico

Though Apple named my laptop “Mac,”
I don’t name things that don’t talk back!

(Since my prompt is longer than my poem today, hope you’ll go back and also read one of my earlier prompts.  There are 211 others posted prior to this shorty!!)

 

Compulsion to Rhyme (All the Time)

8 Replies

Compulsion to Rhyme
(All the Time)

You may guess there are drawbacks to writing as I do,
for lately, I must find a rhyme for everything I view.
This matching up of words that rhyme has come to be compulsion.
A harmless one, but still one sometimes met with some revulsion.
When making jokes or making bread or making whoop-de-do,
I always think of words that rhyme and then I voice a few.
So when a lover bites my neck and with my hair is toying,
and the only word that I can find to rhyme is “cloying;”
it certainly gets in the way of my successful “boying!”

Or when a good friend feeds me and under-cooks the meat,
as I run through my retinue to find a rhyme that’s neat;
and she happens to hear me just as I curse the red,
wishing she had opted for a well-done steak instead,
my sincere protestations do not seem to be accepted.
If only that one choice of rhymes had not been intercepted,
perhaps she would still ask me to her luncheons and her dinners.
Instead, I’ve wound up on her list of culinary sinners!

As much as I like rhyming, sometimes it is a curse,
for what is my best habit may also be my  worse.
If only long ago I’d learned how not to rhyme each word,
the last one in this poem would not need to be “absurd.”

The Prompt: Not Lemonade-When life gives you lemons… make something else. Tell us about a time you used an object or resolved a tricky situation in an unorthodox way.

As a writer, almost any bad situation may be improved by writing about it! It doesn’t always solve the problem, but at least something positive may be gained out of something negative. This poem makes light of this tendency, but the truth is that I almost always feel better after writing about something, no matter how it has turned out in reality.

(This post is dedicated to Laura and Mamta, who prompted it by commenting on my proclivity to rhyme. And because I cannot waste even a mediocre product, to Duckie!)

 

 

 

Firefly II

26 Replies

The Prompt:  What favorite cancelled TV Show would you like to see them create a sequel to?

Firefly II
Although there has already been a movie sequel, I’d like to see at least one more season of the TV series “Firefly”  and have all the characters come back as the characters they now play in newer series. Captain Mal Reynolds would be replaced by “Castle.” Inara would return to her former place as paid companion fresh from her divorce from her notorious terrorist husband in “Homeland,” and Saffron, having resigned from her high-profile job on “Mad Men,” would return to continue to make trouble for Mal Reynolds (er, Castle.) Zoe would return as the high-profile lawyer she is as Jessica in “Suits” and perhaps bring an anti-trust “suit” against the Alliance.

Pining for the Prompt

15 Replies

Pining for the Prompt

Checking e-mails, cooking curry.
Where’s the prompt? Please hurry, hurry!
Not a mother, not a wife,
But still, WordPress, I have a life!

I need to go to buy some rice,
and a shower would be nice.
I’d like to take a swim and then
comb OkCupid for some men.

Instead, I sit like some blog glutton,
staring at my “renew” button.
Is every minute too excessive?
Every hour too regressive?

I understand this sleeping in
on Sunday’s really not a sin.
For, however, those who wait,
it feels like you’ve stood up your date!

That we adore you goes unsaid,
(We know you probably aren’t paid.)
But if all Sunday you plan to snore,
could you please prompt the night before?

(Note:  The prompt was finally posted at 11:43 PM.  Now the question is, is this today’s late prompt or tomorrow’s early one?  Always a new thrill in the world of blogging!!!  Since I’ve already written four poems today, guess I will think of this prompt for tomorrow, or not at all.  Anyway, I think with a prompt this late it was fair to choose my own, don’t you? Happy blogging.)

Sunday Morning Addendum

4 Replies

Sunday Morning Addendum

I used to go to church on Sunday, natural as breathin’,
but when the Daily Prompt is late, I turn into a heathen!
I wait and wait and look and look, refreshing up my browser.
So if you know our prompter, kindly call her up and rouse ‘er?
The end result of sleeping in is one I know too well.
Though she will get her beauty sleep, it’s I who’ll go to Hell!