Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

Two Facts Most Significant in Considering the Elephant

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jdbphoto, Kenya 1967

Two Facts Most Significant
In Considering the Elephant

Pity the poor elephant
whose nose is so extravagant
that he can’t reach the end to swipe it
when he sneezes and needs to wipe it.

And pity the poor wayfarer who
makes attempts to motor through
tundra where these beasts reside.
I fear a bad end to their ride.

If pachyderms have chanced to poop
on roadways where they drive their coupe,
and in the dark they do not view it
and by mistake drive right into it,

their chances of making it through
are driver zero and ten for poo,
for it is true the elephant
has turd piles most significant.

No accidents in Nature? I fear there are a few.
In engineering elephants, here is what I’d do:
In the front, I’d furnish the trunk a windshield wiper,
and for the other end I would have given it a diaper!

 

All photos taken in Tsavo Game Park, 1967.  jdbphotos

As usual, enlarge photos by clicking on any one.

Extravagant is the prompt word today. My apologies for this poem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Cozy in My Skin

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Cozy in My Skin

I seem to fit my life now, I’m cozy in my skin.
No matter how far out it goes, I always fit right in.
When I gain a pound or two, my skin grows out to hold it,
and when my skin begins to sag enough for me to fold it,
my flesh grows out to fill it in. It’s become symbiotic.
That state of growing me out to my skin’s become hypnotic.

When encountering fresh pastries, a fugue state might ensue.
A box of chocolates empties, though I only ate a few.
Whole pizzas vanish in thin air, to my midnight grief.
They left the box behind them, this culinary thief!
The thought of uninvited guests is not very nice.
I make much of the mystery. Could it be dogs or mice?

Perhaps once more the kittens have discovered a way in
and at night when the lights go out, pursue their lives of sin.
Feasting on my pizza. Gorging on my pies.
Surveying my milk chocolate with their greedy feline eyes.
I spin a pretty fantasy, but the truths of this tale
are revealed to me each morning as I step upon the scale.

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The prompt word is cozy.

The Confessions of Catwoman

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The Confessions of Catwoman

What’s happening tomorrow?
the same thing that happens every Friday
since I was forced into retirement last year.
I’m going to go make my collections.
It will be my first day off the diet
I’ve been on for a week––
and my leathers aren’t at all as close-fitting
as they were before,
so I deserve a small reward.

That diet was low-protein, low carb and low fat,
which left nothing but grass, right?
And the problem with that was that everyone thought I was sick
and so tried to trick me into a dose of this or that.
The cod liver oil wasn’t bad,
but I’ve never developed a taste for Pepto Bismol.
A neighbor lady once sneaked some into my cream
and I gagged so hard I coughed up a hare-ball—
just the nose and whiskers, actually, but it created a sensation, nonetheless.
I was at a party and no one was yet drunk enough
to take it in their stride.

I’ve washed my hair—
Well, no surprise. I do every day.
A bit OCD on that activity,
but today I washed all of me.
Every inch.
Ears, too.

I can’t remember when I first thought
of the lucrative business
I’ve been opurrrrrrrating since my retirement;
but I do remember that tomorrow is the day
I go from door-to-door doing collections.

I usually dress in leathers,
which I look pretty good in for a mature sex-kitten.
No, not a biker chick.
I am more of a femme fatale
with a haunting and mesmerizing voice.
Everyone says sends chills down their back—
a sort of backyard Les Mis.

I’m a night person.
I sleep for most of the day
and go out every night.
I park my Catmobile
then take shortcuts: leaping over walls,
soft-toeing it along the top edges of fences.

Sometimes I crouch in the bushes,
waiting for strangers to pass.
As I do, I sharpen my fingernails—
a weapon no one can take away from me.
Anyway, what good would a gun be
for a woman with no opposable thumbs?
Hey. Don’t feel sorry for me, okay?
I’m puurrrrrfectly happy with my lot in life.
I’m puurrrrfect without them.

I am sexy, fit and nimble.
I fill out my leathers in all the right places.
I can jump to the ground from a rooftop,
land on my feet and be off before you see
any more of me than a shadow.
I am a thief by birth and inclination, and I
I pre”fur” my daily fare to be purrrrrrloined.

I can take swift revenge and kill mercilessly,
or curl up and enjoy
a long petting session,
as docile as you please.

Actually, I don’t know why I’m giving you this sales pitch.
I usually ignore people,
so when I actually notice them,
they are honored.

Anyway, I’ve gotten distracted.
I’m just going to smooth my hair a bit
and then go to bed and get rested up
for tomorrow’s collections.
What kind of brilliant feline was I to create a job for myself like this?
“Cat Woman Pest Disposal––You trap them, we collect them.”

I actually get paid for going from door to door,
collecting a course here and a course there.
No of course, no matter how hungry I am after my week’s fast,
I will not reward myself in my client’s presence.
I always wait until I get to my catmobile to have my first nibble.
After all, even a retired superheroine has to watch her image.

This poem was actually one of the first poems I wrote for my blog almost five years ago, so if you remember it, that means you are one of my first viewers ever.  This is an edited version. The prompt today is confess.

A Proclivity to Rhyme

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A Proclivity to Rhyme
(All the Time)

You may guess there are drawbacks to writing as I do,
for lately, I must find a rhyme for everything I view.
This matching up of words that rhyme has come to be compulsion.
A harmless one, but still one sometimes met with some revulsion.

When making jokes or making bread or making whoop-de-do,
I always think of words that rhyme and then I voice a few.
So when a lover bites my neck and with my hair is toying,
and the only word that I can find to rhyme is “cloying;”
it certainly gets in the way of my successful “boying!”

Or when a good friend feeds me and under-cooks the meat,
as I run through my retinue to find a rhyme that’s neat;
and she happens to hear me just as I curse the red,
wishing she had opted for a well-done steak instead,

my sincere protestations do not seem to be accepted.
If only that one choice of rhymes had not been intercepted,
perhaps she would still ask me to her luncheons and her dinners,
Instead, I’ve wound up on her list of culinary sinners!

As much as I like rhyming, sometimes it is a curse,
for what is my best habit may also be my  worse.
If only long ago I’d learned how not to rhyme each word,
the last one in this poem would not need to be “absurd.”

Another very golden oldie that happens to fit the prompt perfectly. The prompt word today is proclivity.

Less Spice is Nice

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Less Spice is Nice

Once I liked my dishes spicy,
but lately it is getting dicey.
As time progresses, I find it’s not
advisable to dine on “hot.”

Somehow, my tastes have seemed to tame.
It’s all those extra years I blame,
that turn me once more into child.
Please, make my taco extra mild!

 

Rerun. Lots to do today!The prompt today is mild

Kids’ Tribunal

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Kids’ Tribunal

When wind howls like a banshee to fill the dark night air
and monsters lurk in closets or in creakings up the stair,
when your brother knows they’re out there––these creatures he can’t see,
when nightmares wake you up at night and you have to pee
but daren’t leave your bed in fear those creatures will come “getcha”
(all those night-born monsters that come out at night to fetch ya,)
or when sister wets the bed again and seeks a drier nest,
for lying on her soggy sheets, she knows she’ll never rest––
it’s times like these when all the kids form a small tribunal
and determine that their parents’ bed should be declared communal.

 

The prompt word today is communal.

Torn Love

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Torn Love

Still standing close,
each on our own side of this terrible rending,
how can we see things so differently?
This little flap of skin
you keep pulling open
wants to close.

This is how cancers start—
this worrying and worrying of an old injury.
My darling. Leave it alone
and let us heal.
This is only a biopsy
of our changed love affair.

If it is cut out of us,
it will be by your decision;
and no number of late-night arguments
will ever change that fact.
What you need to remember
the next morning,
you will remember.

If it were up to me,
we would still be friends,
but if you need an enemy
to console you in your actions,
I guess I must be that too.
I always was a figment
of your imagination.
Believe that
if it makes this easier for you.

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Cicatrix

I know better than you
what lies buried under
my healed-over self.

The raised part of me
grown to protect the wound
creates this distance
that I once warned you of.

I need to thicken that part of me
where part of you remains,
and if for this time you gasp for air,
it is my thick skin growing over you,
like an orb spider winding you in my web

until you become
the one in me hidden so deep
that even you
believe you’ve disappeared.

 

Yes, another reprint of a poem from over four years ago. The prompt today was torn.

World I Cannot Hold Thee

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World I Cannot Hold Thee

The dolphin tail of the wing cuts into the orange sky.
Brilliant deep orange fades to gold with dark islands of clouds
rising like trees above pale blue, medium blue, dark blue fading to black.
A thumbnail moon,
one star bright like a planet just far enough above the horizon
to be set in the darkest shade of blue.
Scenes like this break my heart. I don’t know what to do with them.
I’ve moved to the window seat now,
unable to resist that first flash of orange revealed over the shoulder
of the man who now sits in front of me––
that vivid sunset with no one looking at it
such a waste, yet now here I am, watching yet still wasting it.

I used to feel like this holding my sister’s child––
tiny newborn baby, so beautiful, so in my power.
I wanted to hug him tighter to hold on to this––
to do something to express this feeling
that I knew was vanishing even as it happened.
Yet this fading sunset now flares more brightly than before
as we keep catching up with it, flying west.
It may be that the dolphin wings, jets protruding like fins,
will swim for hours into the orange sea with all of us,
kin inside of her, waiting to be born.
Sleep. Read. Move to the bathrooms and back again
shepherding children––small brown sheep and black sheep,
eyes like berries turned toward windows reflecting back fire.

I want to run to the cockpit to feel orange wrapped around me,
cannot get enough of these colors, want to paint something significant––
colors like vivid embers against ashes, firey colors bleeding into blue
like fire staying alive as it bleeds into ocean and then into deeper ocean.
All of these things that are––what are they for?
Their purpose lost as soon as light has faded into darkness
through that incredible palette that means nothing, but is everything
above us all and under us and in us swelling us,
reminding us to hug the world tighter.
Squeeze life into it or out of it.
Hold it closer, needing no meaning except
being of it, with it, in it, having it in us.
“Oh world I cannot hold thee close enough!”
Understanding that.

The prompt word today is miraculous.

Calling Uncle Duckie

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Picture 24 copySometimes I suspect I drive Uncle Duckie to drink. (Photo a selfie by okcforgottenman)

Calling Uncle Duckie

I can’t get my link established. Guess I’m just unlucky.
Luckily, I have a fix. I just call Uncle Duckie!
He can fix most anything from formatting to routers;
but you’ve got to stay real calm. He doesn’t work with pouters!

“Uncle Duckie, dear,” I say via email or on Skype.
“I want to post my post now, but I have a little gripe.
I can’t get my poem to post in single space, my dear.
It looks too long when double-spaced, and I have a fear

no one will read a two-paged poem. Long postings are no fun.
Is there any way that I can get it down to one?”
“Hit shift-return at ends of lines,” he tells me really pronto.
On my blog he wears the mask. And me? I’m merely Tonto!!!! **

** Note: In Spanish, “Tonto” means stupid. In other words, if viewed in Guadalajara, our favorite childhood program would be called, “The Lone Ranger and Stupid!”

If you’ve been perusing my blog for over three years, you’ve read this before.  Time you read it again as Uncle Duckie, also known as OKCforgottenman is still the one I turn to whenever there is a problem and in-between problems as well. This is a perfect chance to thank him again. The prompt today was calling.

Relating Old Stories

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Old Stories

Like the lyrics to a favorite song,
half-remembered as we sing along,
the stories that we love the best
and relate with the strongest zest
are those that we have half forgotten–
misplacing details ill-begotten.
Like wrinkles smoothed with Photoshop,
we know where truth is meant to stop.
We smooth the bumps and oil the friction
by sugaring the truth with fiction.

As well as the photo album shown above, this poem is a golden oldie from a few years ago. The prompt today is relate.