Tag Archives: daily addictions prompt

Generational Reunion

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Generational Reunion

Those stern-looking ancestors with furrowed brow—
if they saw what they’ve evolved into now,
would they be shocked at how I spend my day
toiling for hours on tasks that don’t pay?
Would my sense of humor be found too offensive?
Would they be shocked and would they feel defensive
if I told them the truth about what I believe?
Would how I turned out just cause them to grieve?

Would they swim in my pool, enjoy my strange home
with odd paintings and statues beneath a great dome,
or think me a heathen and pray for my soul?
Would my redemption be their only goal?
Would the truth of their progeny cause them to balk
so they were loath both to laugh and to talk?
Transposed to my setting, I’m sure they’d be shocked
but similar traits might come out as we talked.

One might be an artist, another a writer.
The atmosphere might turn out closer and lighter.
I’d see their high cheekbones and they would see mine.
We’d compare our physiques and our tastes as we dine.
Surely there’s something in genes that would bind us,
draw us together, unite and remind us
this is my past that is visiting me
and I am the one that they turned out to be!

 

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These are photos of my Dutch and Scottish ancestors. The prompts are setting, loath and ancestor. Here are the links:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/07/fowc-with-fandango-setting/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/loath/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/ Ancestor

Guinea Pig

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Guinea Pig

That my doctor has a practice is not too reassuring.
For when it comes to how accomplished he is in his curing,
I’m a little worried, and I must admit the fact is
I’d prefer an expert doctor who’s already done his practice!

 

 

The prompt word was practice. Illustration by Petco.

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/

Clerihew, Two-on-Two

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It may be I will live to rue
the day I wrote each clerihew.
They may invite derisive snorts,
yet here they are with all their warts!

Below is a reblog from three years ago. The Daily Addictions prompt word today was “rue.”

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Clerihew  Two-on-Two

The word is out that Geoffrey Chaucer
never bothered with a saucer,
for though he raised many a couplet,
he always held them fully uplet!

Some have charged Truman Capote
with writing that is too emotey.
but though he was no macho stud,
I know that he wrote in cold blood.

The prompt today was to write a clerihew. A clerihew has the following properties:

  • It is biographical and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an unusual point of view; it mostly pokes fun at famous people
  • It has four lines of irregular length and metre (for comic effect)
  • The rhyme structure is AABB; the subject matter and wording are often humorously contrived in order to achieve a rhyme, including the use of phrases in Latin, French and other non-English languages[2]
  • The first line contains, and may consist solely of, the subject’s name. According to a letter…

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Once a Week

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My hat rack

Once a Week

To be eccentric every moment takes too much from me,
so I limit my oddness to every Saturday.
On that day my zany hats come out from their hiding,
anxious for one day a week they get to go outsiding.

I don my feathered boa and stick on rhinestone lashes.
I wear my fringe-tiered flapper skirts with neon colored sashes.
I hop onto my bicycle, my cockatoo inside
the wire basket on the front and take him for a ride.

When we drive by the playground, at first the children balk,
but I pique their expectations as we have a little talk.
The cockatoo speaks bird talk and does a little jig.
Then he does impressions of a donkey and a pig.

He does a little rap routine that every child loves
and then I don my riding hat and my driving gloves
and pedal off to other adventures up the street,
expressing eccentricity to everyone I meet.

Later in the afternoon, I pedal us back home,
turning up the driveway by the garden gnome.
I put my bike into the shed, the bird behind his bars.
I put my rhinestone eyelashes in their storage jars.

I strip off all my finery and pull on my old jeans.
Microwave a hot dog. Open a can of beans.
I sink into my Barclay lounger, flip on the T.V.
turning once again into the ordinary me,
having exorcised my cravings for eccentricity

The prompts for today are expectation, moment and eccentric:

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/expectation/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/28/fowc-with-fandango-moment/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/eccentric-july-28-2018/

Time Out!

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Time Out!

He was an avid sports fan. Alas, his wife was not.
With box scores and with averages, his mind was fully fraught.
Tennis, football, cricket? It mattered not a whit.
If a ball was fought over, he had to witness it.
Basketball and baseball and soccer were the same
as golf to him. Whatever. For all sport he was game.
At last, his wife had had enough and did what she was able
to cure his wild obsession. She cut the TV cable.

The TV went as black as night. The sports fan sat in shock.
He did not move a muscle. He did not blink or talk.
Then he began to jerk and shake as though having a fit.
Withdrawal from his sports fix seemed the cause of it.
As his delirium tremens overtook his life,
 things were getting better for his kids and wife.
His wife could watch her soap operas, the kids watched their cartoons.
No longer did a sports announcer fill their afternoons.

This furtive arrangement lasted for awhile
until our ballgame junkie figured out their guile.
He moved into a condo to catch up on his sport
and his wife remarried to another sort
who did not know a baseball from a hockey puck.
That such a man existed, she could not believe her luck!
The blessed quiet of her house with no announcer shouting
made her glad she turned her spouse’s inning to an outing!

The Prompts:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/27/fowc-with-fandango-arrangement/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/avid-july-27-2018/

Treasure Hunt

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Treasure Hunt

At Rudy’s Scrap and Salvage, you’ll find the junk of dreams.
Sewing machines with treadles and pants burst at the seams
that you can mend upon them.  Dining sets with mismatched chairs.
In his clothing section, shoes seldom come in pairs.

Lovely one-eyed dollies and lop-eared careworn rabbits,
uniforms and costumes, surplices and habits.
Little pails of misplaced parts like nuts and bolts and widgets.
Chairs fit for a giant and little chairs for midgets.

Crankshafts, axles, handlebars for 50’s era Schwinns.
Housegoods by the bushel and tools by the bins.
Whoever was responsible for making all these things
would barely recognize them with their scratches and their dings.

It’s a place for dreamers, for artists or inventors—
those a few steps out of time who lack corporate mentors.
Those bent on handing back our junk with which we tried to part
as startling new inventions or else objets d’ arte.

Taking worthless bits of junk and making priceless treasures
is, I must admit, one of my most primary pleasures.
You can keep your Bergdorfs, Neiman Marcus or your Saks.
I prefer my treasures in orange crates or gunny sacks!

 

The prompts:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/rdp-56-salvage/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/25/responsible-july-26-2018/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/26/fowc-with-fandango-dreamer/

Reflections

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I think I was 12 or 13 when this was taken, playing dress-up in my older sister’s dress!


Reflections

I do not seek out mirrors, for I don’t like what I see.
That pudgy older woman barely resembles me.
I prefer reflection of the memory kind,
rooting around within my brain to see what I can find.

Old lovers all hang out there, frozen as they were,
and when I break into their worlds, I create quite a stir,
for I am as I was as well, less inches ’round my waist,
my hair much longer and my skirt length much more to their taste.

I’m thinking just how fortunate it is that we should meet,
both of us together on this familiar street.
What are the chances we’d be here at the selfsame time––
drawn in from our different lives to join here in this rhyme?

Then of course I realize it is by my orchestration
rather than a miracle of synchronization.
At first, our talk is  shallow, our conversation bland.
What causes  a big flurry is when he takes my hand.

It’s then that I remember what it is I miss.
It’s not the conversation, but rather it’s that kiss
that sent my senses spinning off to some future land
where I imagined he would ask my father for my hand.

But when that event came for real, that time for plans and rings,
I found my mind was turning to many other things.
College and then travel to many foreign strands—
things that wouldn’t happen if we wore wedding bands.

So we parted directions—off to different lives,
adventures with different spouses, children with different wives.
Building separate futures that led us both to this:
to fifty years thereafter and that same remembered kiss!

Written for these three prompts:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/rdp-54-reflection/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/25/fortunate-july-25-2018/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/25/fowc-with-fandango-shallow/

 

In the Blood

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Image downloaded from Internet.

Remember Walter Palmer, the dentist who shot Cecil, the lion lured out of a game park in Tanzania  in 2015?  This is a poem I wrote and dedicated to him at the time. I was wondering how he is doing now and if he ever had the nerve to mount Cecil’s head in his trophy room, so checked up on him again via the link above.  I dedicate this poem again to him and to all who profit from the spilling of blood in sport, be it war games or other blood sport.

In the Blood!!!
(Dedicated to Walter Palmer)

Don’t you just love football—the running and the tackling?
The sounds of hamstrings pulling and the crunch of femurs crackling?
We sit up in the bleachers eating hot dogs, drinking beer,
comfortably viewing blood sport—the kind we hold so dear.

Aren’t dogfights lovely–the growling and the whining?
Too bad they aren’t more elite, so we could watch while dining.
So amusing watching canines being dished their due.
Dying is so entertaining when it isn’t you!

Better still are bullfights, though they’re few and far between.
The bull so lithe and dangerous, the matador so lean.
The best part of the sport is that the dying is so slow.
I feel its thrill suffuse me from my head down to my toe.

We adore big game hunting in such exotic lands–
our chance to prove our manliness with our own two hands–
handing over money to those trackers in the know
who guarantee an easy kill with rifle or with bow.

Easy on the hunter, but not the animal,
for just because he’s hit the prey’s not guaranteed to fall.
We get more for our money if he’s hard to track,
and war games are more pleasant when one’s foe doesn’t shoot back!

All these minor titillations just a prelude to
the main event and the most major way of counting coup.
Once all the good old boys are finding life is just a bore,
they round up all the younger men and send them off to war.

See how the valiant struggle, see their stripes and purple hearts–
apt pay for missing arms and legs and other blown off parts.
Lucky to be home at last and lucky to be living–
the products of that blood sport that just somehow keeps on giving.

The Daily Addictions prompt for today is dedicate.

Blind Date

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Blind Date

With an air of abandon, she threw off her clothes,
rolled up her hair and night creamed her nose.
She was sure she’d see no one ’til morning at work,
so she removed her bridge with a tug and a jerk.
She peeled off her eyelashes, creamed off her blush.
Did all  this slowly with no need to rush.
A natural girl now, her face put away
for her to reclaim the very next day.

She’s snugged up in flannel, propped up in her bed.
By the end of this evening, her book will be read.
The large bowl of chili that rests on the table
right by the bed, she’ll devour when she’s able.
In between page turns, she’ll take a big bite.
She’ll feast and she’ll read ’til she puts out the light.

Until the night’s silence is shattered by ringing.
The strum of guitars and some romantic singing
completes all the ruckus occurring outside
as she pulls up the covers to cower and hide.
For she has remembered, alas and too late
that this was the night that she had a blind date.
She springs to the bathroom to try to redo
all that she’s lately hastened to undo.

“Just a minute!” she calls, and she hears his reply.
Her beauty procedures are done on the fly.
She rips out her curlers, unwinding, unfurling
the locks she’d just put there for overnight curling.
The mascara wand flies. Rouge is rapidly swiped
across the same cheeks she has recently wiped.
She throws on her clothes, grabs her phone and her purse.
No more time to prepare, and no time to rehearse.

She opens the door to survey her date.
He has a nice face and a shiny bald pate.
She consults her watch and she scolds, “You are late!”
Her side of the tale, she’ll neglect to relate.
They’ll have a fine evening and he will take care
not to mention the curler in back of her hair.
Some things best unspoken are things her date knows—
like her one missing eyebrow and cream on her nose.
These slight imperfections he took in his stride
Which is why one year later she wound up his bride.

.

The Daily Addictions prompt is abandon.

Unclear Agenda

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This poem, written thirteen years ago, chronicles a situation I encountered when I was trying to hire men in California to clear brush to help me ready my house for selling in the U.S.

The Daily Addictions prompt is Revenue.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Note: It has come to my attention that the setting of this poem isn’t clear.  It is set in CA, U.S.A. and the initial character is American, as are the protesters.  The men standing outside the lumber yard are Mexicans looking for work. Thanks, Marilyn and Patti for letting me know that this was not clear.

Unclear Agenda

His denims worn and torn, his hair unshorn,
he sat on a fruit crate near a stop sign
on an exit road just off the California interstate.
“Will work for food,” his sign said, so I stopped.
“Jump in,” I said, and he looked confused.
“I have a city lot taken over by castor beans,” I told him.
“I’ll give you a meal and ten bucks an hour to clear them.”
“Lady, that would take me a day or more,” he said.
“I can make more than that in a few hours, just sitting…

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