Forked Tongues
These messengers speak words
that can slap you awake,
then abandon you
as they return
to the problems
of the privileged rich.
For Weekend Writing Prompt: Speak (limited to 22 words)
Not dead..just stuffed full and taking a rest.
Cleanup Crew
They eke their living out of our scraps
purloined while we are taking naps
or out for walks or just aren’t looking––
so intent upon our cooking
that we fail to see them scamper
(from where they hide behind the hamper)
out to gather crumbs they seek.
But instead, they prompt an “Eek”
as Mom goes one way, they the other
off to find, they hope, another
kitchen where the cook’s more willing
to ignore their needs for filling
rodent jaws and rodent tummies
with some errant human yummies.
The SOCS prompt is eek/eke
Click on photos to enlarge and see captions.
For the Which Way Challenge
The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Paul Rubens
For Fibbing Friday, this week’s challenge is:
1. What is a winklepicker? A fairylike creature who comes around at night and picks sleepers out of your eyes.
2. What is a pipsqueak? The sound your nail makes against your teeth as you remove blueberry seeds from them.
3. What is a beatnik? An outdoor meal for hippies.
4. What is a sequin? What one does when one enters a competition.
5. What is spiel? The shape the skin of an apple assumes when you use a knife to cut it off in one long peel.
6. What is asphalt? I hate to be indelicate, but it is a rude term for a fart.
7. What is a hologram? Your father’s mother just before her first meal of the day.
8. What is a dickie seat? The chair your ex chose to sit in.
9. What is sinew? Another name for Adam accepting the apple. Also called original sin.
10. What is a collage? A place of advanced learning after high school..specifically for budding artists.
It’s also available on facebook, if you prefer: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/16QBg9JToP/?mibextid=wwXIfr
For FOWC the prompt is “incident.”
Wordless
I wish that I could wow you with putting prompts to rhyme,
but I seem not to be able to do so at this time.
“Amplify’s” been silenced and refuses to fight back,
while its potential author is revealed as just a hack.
It seems my old acuity at making words behave
has somehow deserted me, branding me a knave.
The truth that I am lacking in *vocabular agility
has left me slightly flummoxed with a new vulnerability.
(*For all I know, some lexicographer’s already dissed
my coinage of a brand new word the dictionaries missed.)
This poet, once ferocious, has been worn down by time.
and I’m thinking in my next life I might come back as a mime.
The Word of the Day prompt is: “Amplify.”
Dateless Saturday Night
Her face an apparition
in the mirror of
her window,
she sits alone, apart from the
cool crowd,
plucking petals.
“He loves me. He loves me not.”
Her hand holds one more piece
too many,
the whole world
plucked nodes
on an empty
stem.
The prompt word for the dVerse Poets quadrille challenge is: petal.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 