For Cee’s FOTD
Memory
The excavation of our memories can glue us to the past,
unearthing shards of former lives into which we’ve been cast.
Our mind a virtual theater that draws us through its curtain,
sometimes half-remembering and hardly ever certain
of what is fact and what is mind’s creative fabrication—
the truth eluding us a bit in time’s confabulation.
Its draw narcotic, we accede once more to its allure.
Is it history or fable? How can we know for sure?
Prompts for the day are theater, allure, elude, excavation.Second Image by Tsunami Green on Unsplash. All others by me.
A thoughtful, scientific man, he chose his words with care.
No ordinary words would do. Only ones most rare.
He first spied her in the springtime, finally met her in the fall—
a simply gorgeous maiden—comely, willowy and tall.
But months of choosing his first words seem to have done him in.
What should have been his saving grace turned out to be a sin.
Enthusiastic in his love, he just had to express
his much-gone-over feelings about her loveliness.
He’d formerly determined not to use just any word,
but his final declaration turned out to be absurd.
He should have called her beautiful and just left it at that,
for when he called her pulchritudinous, she thought that he meant fat!
*Note: New to the world of behavioral science, Behavioral Linguistics is the science-based use of language to persuade. It’s rooted in nudge theory combined with psychology, sociolinguistics, and principles of marketing. Language is a powerful way to change behavior.
Prompts today are behavioral, enthusiastic, pulchritude, fall. Images by Fabio Lucas and Mandy Zhang on Unsplash.
Impressionable Dozer
The whole house is sleeping—the dogs and the cats
on the chair and the sofa and their cushy mats.
Even the air seems stilled in its rush.
I am calmed by its torpor and lulled by its hush.
Although there are labors I know I should do,
I survey my agenda and plan it anew.
It’s hot in my bedroom, but the sofa looks nice.
I go to the kitchen for water and ice.
Then I grab my computer and spread myself out.
With no one to disturb, as there’s no one about,
I may nod off myself before long, but I hope
that I’ll finish this first, but as you can see…..
Nope.
The dVerse Poets prompt today is to write a Quadrille on the topic of sleep. Ironically, just before looking up the prompt, I had just taken the above photos and was thinking of writing about exactly that topic. Thus, this poem that half-fills the bill. Not a quadrille, but I really did fall asleep before finishing it so I should get double points for succumbing that fully to the prompt..
Now, guess where I am headed?
Word Friendly
I have a rabid interest in snazzy ways of talking.
Sauntering or loping are more interesting than walking.
Dew is more refined than mere sweat or perspiration.
In short, words are much juicier infused with inspiration.
I isolate my favorite words, then bring them back together,
joining unacquainted words with hyphens as a tether.
I guess that I write poetry as an excuse to use them,
for words become your friends as you’re struggling to fuse them.
(If you’d like an illustration of this type of word-joining, go HERE.
Prompt words today are guess, rabid, isolate, dew and snazzy,
Flower Power
As it slipped off the shelf, the flower gave a growl.
It never intended to go on the prowl.
It’s against flower ethics to go off on one’s own,
unopened, unblossomed and not fully grown.
No flower’s a star. They’re all one of the bunch,
but given a shot at it, I have a hunch
that beneath every garden, the flowers below
are driven to rise up—to open and crow,
to greet the new morning and bask in its heat,
and that then they ‘d be off if they only had feet.
Their one chance at freedom is if they are clipped
and bunched into bunches, then bartered and shipped
to exotic places where the minute they’re sold,
they’ll be off to adventures and their world will unfold.
Then if perchance they are placed up on shelves,
they may tumble to earth to be all by themselves.
Short-lived as they are, they might think as they fall
from their limited knowledge, that they’ve seen it all!!
For Sunday Swirl’s Wordle 553, the prompt words are: star shelf growl slip open flower crow against prowl beneath beat shot.
