Cancelled Flight
No architect of reason can save them from their plight.
No proffered catnip ransom restore their former flight.
When lethal paws unsheath their daggers, hummingbird and finch—
Their wings, stilled from their flight, lie scattered on the bench.
whirred
Prompt words today are architect, can, ransom, plight and paws.
A Privilege to Serve
They zoom around in airplanes, looking for support
for their favorite programs, which they soundly purport
are for the good of country, homeland, liberty.
They’re all there to help us for a very cushy fee!
Feeling very saintly, they sit upright in their pews
scheming on legislation they can use to abuse
all the common citizens that are so easily led
to line their betters’ pockets while children go unfed.
In their ivory towers, how the privileged must laugh
at all the bleating sheep as they gild their golden calf!
In the U.S.: The top one percent of the usual income distribution holds over $25 trillion in wealth, which exceeds the wealth of the bottom 80 percent. That is more than all the goods and services produced in the U.S. economy in 2018.Jun 25, 2019
In Congress: The total wealth of all current members was at least $2.43 billion when the 115th Congress began, 20 percent more than the collective riches of the previous Congress, a significant gain during a period when both the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose slightly less than 10 percent.–David Hawkings, Feb. 27, 2018.
Prompt words today are saintly, cushy, ivory, support and airplane.
Skinny-dipping in One’s Sixties
While driving on a country lane, I spy a little lake
and decide that I should skinny-dip, just for old time’s sake.
Lack of a suit is not a problem, for this spot is so secluded
that I jump into the water both nuded and deluded,
for after just five minutes, although the night is dark,
three cars pull up with lights full-on and proceed to park
directly in my exit spot with windows all rolled down,
music spilling out from them. Teenagers from the town
out here for the thrill of it to swill a little beer
and have a wild party with no parents near.
Like a deer in headlights, I am blinded by the glare.
I quickly put my hands back to obscure my derriere.
Then, desperate for cover, sprint for a nearby bush.
But when I cover up my front, I have to bare my tush.
Skinny-dipping simply doesn’t work with lookers-on,
and I guess that I am trapped until these partiers are gone.
With no hope on the horizon, I hunch and drip and cower,
forgetful of the blanket I had slung over a bower
just a few short yards away, but finally I sprint for it,
and wrapping it around me, I am grateful that I went for it
in spite of all the cheers and huzzahs and the blinding light
of the headlights of the teenagers who view my frenzied flight.
Once I reach my car, the far horizon is my goal.
I gun the engine and I speed over dip and knoll.
If I need to teach the lesson of this ill-advised adventure
of senior citizen skinny-dipping, I’m the one to censure,
for I was a solo-act swimming swimsuit-free,
and the only one that I can implicate is me.
I guess that skinny-dipping is best left in the past,
for the skinny body necessary simply doesn’t last!
Prompt words today are forgetful, horizon, desperate, implicate and deer.
Pot Luck
(Copacetic in Retirement)
We’re copacetic in retirement. It’s like back in the days
when pot first hit the sixties and our minds were in a haze.
Drugs made our dreaming groovy and our lives peripatetic.
Our clothes were loose and festive. Every day was copacetic.
With time to watch the raindrops dripping drip by drip,
we took life with a grain of salt. Worrying was unhip.
So now life’s cycled back again. Desperate days are done.
We don’t have to fight the traffic. We have more time for fun.
Once more, drugs are ubiquitous, although a different type,
with a pill for every malady, an herb for every gripe.
Now that they’re legalizing cannabis, we’re drowning in fine weed—
a type for every malady. A strain for every need.
Do they think if we’re sedated, we won’t notice what they’re doing?
Will it censor our displeasure? Will it stifle all our booing
as they reduce our Medicare to supplement their yachts,
will they recycle our dinero from the “have-nots” to the “gots?”
Perhaps they want us copacetic, for at last it meets their need
to sedate the angry masses and cover up their greed.
A car in every garage and a chicken in every pot
Got Herbert Hoover elected. Did he do it? He did not!
Now when we apply for licenses, sometimes they merely balk
and say to call a taxi, an Uber or just walk.
They’re cutting our “entitlements,” so we don’t have a lot
left to buy the chicken, but at least we have the pot!!
The prompts today are ubiquity, drip, desperate, festivities, copacetic.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 