Tag Archives: Daily Post

Triple Tricky

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Triple Tricky

Who knows what each new day will bring?
Three dogs wiggling outside my door–
my feeding them, them wanting more.

The world reaches out for me and more.
Those worlds imagination  brings
come whining louder at my door.

Now and always at time’s door
I offer words and ask for more
than what, I know, the years will bring.

Agape once more, that final door brings me at last to face my fears.
I bring myself to cross its sill, still hoping there will be some more.

The WordPress prompt is “Tricky” and and NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a tritina–a poetic form that involves three three-line stanzas and a final concluding line. Three “end words” are used to conclude the lines of each stanza, in a set pattern of ABC, CAB, BCA, and all three end words appear together in the final line. I cheated and used two concluding lines instead of one. This poem meets both prompts. Tricky.
http://www.napowrimo.net/day-seven-3/
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/tricky/

This Poem is a Sort of Street

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(Click first photo to enlarge, then click on arrows.)

This Poem is a Sort of Street

This poem is a sort of street.
I wonder who I’m going to meet
as I walk down the dust of it––
plod along the “must” of it.
I do not know where I am going.
I follow it while never knowing
what’s around the next blind bend.
I do not know how it will end.

Each line is a new adventure
leading to acclaim or censure.
The GPS that’s guiding me––
determining what I will see––
is lodged so deep and far inside
a road stretched out so long and wide
that it must guide or I’ll get lost
in ruts of words and pay the cost

of trying to control by mind––
a street that’s meant to twist and wind
guided by a force within
that is intuitive and yin.
It is a guide that’s mostly lost
in this world so tempest-tossed.
The drop of it that I infuse
in rhymes that others then may choose

to read and ponder is the way
that I have chosen to try to pay
the toll for this tremendous gift
of life where I have learned too well
the lessons of the school bell.
I’ve learned to turn a deaf ear to
what pedants say I need to do
and take each day a road that’s new.

I’m led by dreams and intuition
down streets with no thought of fruition
but instead careen and ramble
without an outline or preamble
into places I’d never go
if I just reported what I know.
Then I record all that I see
so you can learn along with me.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/street/

Sun or Moon and Smooth or Rough

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Sun or moon and smooth or rough,
old or young and clothed or buff––
opposites contrast each other––
tough or easy, breathe or smother.
Shadows can be made with light,
though sun is opposite of night.
Sarcasm depends on this:
words that praise, but really diss.
Life consists of contrasts that
give yin for yang and tit for tat.
If you can’t find a life to fit,
just change into its opposite!
Reach for the hidden, release the found.
Contrasts make the world go round.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/contrast-2/

Clarity: Words After an Armistice

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Words After an Armistice

I want to make this perfectly clear.
We are not close just because we are near.
There has to be more than proximity for
my heart to open its almost closed door.

Say something sweet to me. Say something rare.
I do not feel loved just because you are there
across a room that is filled up with things.
You must think of something and give your thoughts wings.

Speak playful words that will prompt words from me.
Then volley them back to me. Don’t let thoughts “be”
without giving them air to live in and grow
so they banish these shadows and fan fire’s glow.

Passion’s not something for us to remember.
It’s better a constantly glowing live ember.
Get up from your chair. Give that remote a miss
and speak to me now with a word or a kiss.

Remove my hands from the keyboard and say,
“Let’s give the internet rest for a day.”
Take me to water and take me to sand.
Take off my shoes and take hold of my hand.

Walk me to tide swell and gull cry and light.
Say you’ve forgotten our last brittle fight.
Banish bad thoughts in the now and the here
so I can feel close just because you are near.

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/06/20/fowc-with-fandango-almost/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/clarity/

Endangered Practices

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Endangered Practices

I fear the future will not stand
for communication writ by hand.
E-mail, Instragram and text
is current and what’s coming next
could well be texting brain-to-brain.
Practice your penmanship in vain,
for in most schools, it’s been junked.
Writing by hand has gone defunct!!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/handwriting/

Three Lunes / Three Loons

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Colored pencil drawing by Betty Petersen, photo by Judy

Yes, it’s April Fool’s Day, but it is also  the first day of NaPoWriMo, where participants are asked to write a poem a day.  This is the fourth year I’ve participated. Today’s prompt is to write a lune, a three-line poem with a 5-3-5 syllable count.  In addition, most days I’ll also be following the WordPress one-word prompt, which today is the word “colorful.”

Three Lunes

I search for yellow,
whereas blue
comes looking for me!

Life paints a black frame
around white
to draw our eyes there.

That fuchsia flower
in the pond
floats on life and death.


Three Loons

The crying of loons
in chill air
turns the water blue.

 

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/colorful/

Refresh Me

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Refresh Me

If you hope to make conjunction
with me at your little function,
serve potato chips with dip
and also, I’d appreciate a sip
of Diet Coke or Seven Up
in a waxy paper cup.

No one likes a fete that lacks
sweet or salty little snacks.
Pizza, nachos and popcorn, too,
are appropriate things to chew.
Leave caviar to lords and kings.
I’d much rather have onion rings.

Refreshments are an absolute must.
Without them, parties are a bust.
And any date becomes an upper
when it includes a little supper.
So if you wish to win my heart,
my stomach is the place to start.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/refresh/

Disparity

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Disparity

The moods of blogs have verity
that ranges wide from a to zee.
From pathos to hilarity,
the mundane to rare oddity.

Some blogs practice idolatry
which some see as frivolity
when all they read and all they see
is film stars and celebrity.

But I say we should all be free
to write about whatever we
want to think about or be
without the charge of heresy.

I applaud the rarity
of blogs that flaut disparity
and flood the interweb’s wide sea
with a rich diversity.

So show yourself for what you be
as you are formed––from mother’s knee
to what the world has made of thee.
Express your angst or jollity

for all the world to share and see.
for no entrance price or fee.
This cyber world should be kept free
in thought and cost–that is my plea!

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/frivolous/

 

Mute Assistance

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Mute Assistance

Trapped in a lake under the kelp,
I’m gonna need a little help.
While climbing ladders, as I stand there
I could use a steadying hand there.
A sous chef’s nice when cooking meals,
a strong arm needed when I wear heels;
but when I tell a funny story,
or one that’s scary, tense or gory,
as towards the denouement I’m wending,
don’t help by blurting out the ending!

 

 

The prompt today was HELP!

Nerve

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The prompt today was “nerve.” Here is where that one word led my mind.
 Version 3

Curve

I admire those who have the courage and the verve
to choose a filmy cut-out dress that shows off every curve,
for I admit I have neither the figure nor the nerve!

  There is no scale for bravery, no ruler and no gauge
for those who memorize their lines and stand up on the stage
reciting without benefit of the printed page.

Some men face off lions in the lion’s den,
and women face off dangers from the selfsame men,
while I sit home and face the dangers of the brush and pen.

Some may find their courage in the finest wine––
others at the bottom of a tankard or a stein,
but my imagination is where I go for mine.

Conviction is so easy when it’s written on a page
unhindered by imprisonment in cell, compound or cage
or the threat of facing zealotry’s cruel rage.

Some of us are lucky in the details of our birth:
our health, our parents  and our looks–our beauty and our girth,
but most of all the place that we are given on this earth.

There are others not so lucky, born to famine and to drought
or to repressive governments where those who have the clout
give no room for self-expression or enquiry or doubt.

This is where it takes pure nerve to stand up to the strong
who’ve exercised the cruelty of power for so long
to say at threat of life and limb what you feel is wrong.

I say these things in safety from a place that is secure.
I need not rage in silence.  I need not be demure
or face punishment for thoughts that others deem impure.

I’m lucky in the problems that I face from day to day,
for nothing that I want to drink or wear or do or say
is labeled with a “thou shalt not” or listed as a “Nay.”

I admire those who have the courage and the verve
to speak truth as they see it and face the cruel blade’s curve,
for I admit I have neither the valor nor the nerve!

Version 2

(For Raif Badawi–– sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashings for writing his beliefs on his blog and Ali Mohamed al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon, and Abdullah al-Zaher—all minors sentenced  to death by beheading simply for attending demonstrations.  Incredible to realize I would be put to death for what I am saying right now if I lived in Saudi Arabia or Egypt.)

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/nerve/