Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

The Day Cracked Open Like an Egg

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Sparrow?

The Day Cracked Open Like an Egg

The rain falls
fresh as cucumbers
on cobblestones and tiles,
the dust of summer
washed from crevasses
and curves of stone and clay.

The air is cleansed
of the scent of primavera,
jacaranda
and flamboyan trees
and the whole world
breathes easily again.

Clouds dried up
by sunlight,
the silent birds
are flushed
from their covering leaves
and open in chorus

to the booming crack
of cohetes, splitting the air
in celebration
of Saint John the Baptist
who has baptized all
this day.

 

Primavera and jacaranda are the names of colorful flowering Mexican trees. Flamboyan is the Spanish name for a royal poinciana tree.  Cohetes are very noisy aerial fireworks of the caliber of cherry bombs. This is a rewrite of a poem written two and a half years ago. The prompt today is egg.

Almost Ready to Stand-in

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Almost Ready to Stand-in

If I had a bit more moxie,
I’d be Kardashian by proxy.
I’d be less studious, more frocksie
and trade these garments long and boxy
for a mini dress that’s foxy,
wear heels less Oxfordy and soxy,
hang out with girls named Tess or Roxie,
more cool and definitely less poxy.
I’d be a cockette of the walksie!

 

 

The prompt today is proxy.

Neighbors

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No time to write this morning as we are heading out to Alabama to visit (coincidence) my good friends and former next-door-neighbors  in Mexico. Yay Tony and Allenda!!!  In lieu of fresh words, here are three old posts that dealt with neighbors:

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/06/21/companionshi/

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/12/10/flight-of-fortune/

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/12/02/vecinoscees-fun-foto-challenge/

The prompt today is neighbors.

 

“Simmer” (Unlove Spell)

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Unlove Spell

For relief from suffering­­­ and a cure for love,
pluck a feather from a dying dove.
Press the feather in a hemlock crotch,
then fill a cauldron with his favorite scotch.

Wait for dark and stormy weather
to stew the hemlock crotch and feather.
Then add as listed all given below,
stirring steady with flame turned low.

First you write your lover’s name
twelve times and then once again.
Shred this page of caustic prose
with a thorn you’ve pried from a withered rose.

Add the paper, shred on shred,
recalling what he’s done and said.
Cast in the pot, till your mind is freed,
each slight recalled, each dreadful deed.

Add a patch you’ve torn from his favorite chair
and a single strand of his pubic hair,
wedding pictures of Niagara,
nose trimmers, hair dye and Viagra.

Add his hernia girdle and knee-length socks,
his shoes, his T-shirts and his jocks.
Cut all his pants off at the knees
and add them to his soggy T’s.

Stir the cauldron round and round.
If music’s playing, turn up the sound.
Sing along to the lyrics of
song after song of broken love.

“Don’t come home a cheatin’ with a lovin’ on your mind.”
Let these lyrics fill your thoughts—or others of their kind.
Ring up his mother on the phone. Say what he’s done to you.
Record her comments, rip out the tape, and add it to the brew.

Call all his girlfriends, all his buddies, everyone on your block.
Tell them that he’s impotent and has a little cock.
Write a note of what you’ve done and tape it to the pot.
Turn off the flame. Walk out the door. Forget the whole damn lot!!!

This is a rewrite of a poem written 5 years ago, but the image is new. I didn’t notice until after I’d taken this photo how appropriate the name of the pot was!!! The prompt today was simmer.

This poem written over two years ago and edited a bit today seems to fulfill the requirements of today’s prompt word. As I look at those who have already read it, I see only a few familiar faces. (Hi, Marilyn) so I’ll risk running it by again. (The prompt word today was mystery.)

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

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Books

The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
it’s paper sprinkled with drops–
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory–
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.

Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.

Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages–
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink–
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a…

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Ghoulish Stew

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The neighbor’s goulash party was a yearly hit,
but as the new guy on the block, he’d never been to it.
And though he was a clothes horse—stylish, svelt and cool,
he wasn’t very good at spelling, as a rule.

So when he was invited for a goulash blast,
he didn’t know the party was for a mere repast.
Now here he was, dressed in his sheet, feeling pretty foolish
when no other party-goers showed up looking ghoulish.

 

 

The prompt today was ghoulish.

Sharing Mr. Teddy

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image from internet                              

Sharing Mr. Teddy 

Caught in baby’s neck creases, clinging to Grandpa’s cuff,
escaped from Mr. Teddy are these little bits of fluff.
These airborne little clumps of fuzz go anywhere they please.
They catch in Daddy’s nose hairs, causing him to sneeze.
They wind up in the pancakes–an artistic swirl of blue.
A few of them are tracked outside under Billy’s shoe.
When he climbs onto the school bus, they go along with him,
and everywhere that Mommy goes, to grocery store or gym,
a piece of Teddy comes along to be left behind
somewhere in the wide wide world, but he doesn’t mind.
He has so many fluffy parts that he can share a few.
And when you come to visit, you can take some home with you!!

The prompt today was fluff.

 

Gratitude

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Thanks Be to Pure Hearts

 Thanks be to that creator of the universe—
the one I can no longer pray to in a church
because of those powers who take truth prisoner
and lead the masses to be whoever can be most safely trusted
to surrender reason to those powers.

Thanks be to that man who turned water into wine.
Not a teetotaler. Not even abstinent, or so some say.
That man who loved all and who would not strike anyone
except for merchants making a living from the church.
Two thousand years ago,
he saw that merchants and moneylenders
would lead the world wrong—
using the little minds of frightened men
to turn faith into a weapon.

Praise be to those at the beginning of it all
who tried to set a true course but made the mistake
of leaving the compass in the hands of human fools
who saw, over all, how to use it for their own glory,
making power their god and oiling their way upward
not toward salvation
but toward ever higher places in this world.

Those who are not fools might speak our enemies’ names
yet be shouted down by those
Dunning and Kruger have named as their adjutants—
the countless mindless who speed the world toward ruin.

Yet for this day, I want to turn my back on those I’d rather curse
to thank pure hearts who still can see the way.
There is still, I know, a part of them in all of us,
evident in everyday things: a mother’s sheltering arms
or in as simple an act as taking the smallest piece of pie.

So when we give thanks today,
thank those who remain kind within the world,
carrying along the spirit
of those first beneficent acts
that started with the dust of stars
and from it created consciousness
and then implanted some good turn of will
so as to give hope in a world
that feels divided in the blackness of the universe,
lonely in this night
but steered by those pinpricks in its cover
through which light shows, even in the darkest dark.

 

This is a rewrite of a poem written three years ago. The prompt today is gratitude.

Blasts from the Past: Past Preferences

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I foud a number of posts from the past five years that were about preferences, but chose to share these with you:

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Rum Dumb

Beer is tacky. Wine’s a joke.
My preference is Rum and Coke.
Squeeze a lime in. Take a sip
to cool your throat and wet your lip.
My favorite form of inebriation
is always Cuba Libre-ation.\

 

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Lick for Lick

Ice cream is my weakness—my favorite sort of sweet.
A flavor that I don’t adore is one I’ve yet to meet.

Mandarin orange or licorice, tequila or dill pickle?
I am not true to any of them, for I fear I’m fickle.

When choosing ice cream flavors, it’s impossible to pick.
I simply am incapable of choosing which to lick.

And so I’d like a flavor that has a bit of each:
chocolate and vanilla and a little touch of peach,

strawberry and mango and lime and toffee crunch—
why choose just one flavor when you can have a bunch?

Throw some tangerine in and some pineapple sorbet.
Licorice and banana? Who am I to say nay?

This flavor would be popular with those who cannot choose
whether they prefer the flavor of pickles, fruit or booze.

Though some of you may scoff at it and laugh in your derision,
the name of my new flavor? I call it “Indecision.”

Spider Solitaire

How I (Don’t) Lay Me Down to Sleep

At 2 AM, when others sleep,
computer solitaire I keep
in front of me on lap or chest,
for part of me decrees it best
to put off sleep an hour or so.
That precious time I often blow
on playing Spider Solitaire.
At my computer screen I stare,
moving little clubs or hearts
here and there in fits and starts,
trying to beat my own best time,
this silly game becomes sublime.
I know not why I love it well—
and so I cannot really tell
why I prefer it over all.
Deluxe Free Cell can be a ball,
In fact, I play it hours on hours
trying to deplete those towers
of mismatched cards, quickly I bring
them from below, from Ace to King.
Card by card, I pile them high—
my laptop balanced on my thigh—
until the cards become hypnotic,
my moving of them now Quixotic.
Too sleepy to beat my own time,
my need for rest becomes sublime.
Then sleep fills up my empty cup
till seven or eight, when I wake up
to spill night’s cards clear of my screen
so this day’s daily prompt is seen.
And this is how I start my day.
This time, it’s words I choose to play!

The prompt word today was: prefer.

You Can Have All the Oranges

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You Can Have All the Oranges

Pink’s been reserved for babies. Black and blue are much abused.
You need only look at nature to see green’s been overused.
You would not like the fuchsia, it is gaudy and distracting.
And yellow’s like an ingenue who’s been caught overacting.
White’s not really there at all and scarlet is too flashy.
Tan can be depressing. Gold lamé is simply trashy.
Silver strands among the gold by some are found distressing.
Flesh a color that’s best seen only while undressing.
Gray is simply nondescript. It looks like white that’s dirty,
and day-glo colors best reserved for people under thirty.
Deep purple is too moody and mauve is also glum,
as are other purples like heather, puce and plum.
Taupe’s a mousy color—too boring to be worn,
and gold they’re holding in reserve for bankers (and for corn.)
But you can have the oranges from tangerine to peach—
all the tints and shades and tones that are within your reach.
Pluck oranges from the color tree a dozen at a time.
I’ve no use for a color that has no words that rhyme.

This silly poem came about as a result of a family story much-told.  When my mother and father made a trip to Appalachia, they were waiting at a train station and saw a woman with a number of children. One little boy was especially fussy and kept pulling at a lumpy and heavy-looking bag that his mother was carrying in the arm that wasn’t holding the baby.  The train was pulling into the station and that little boy was balking and holding up their progress toward the train platform when the mother called out to him in a harried voice, “You can have all the ahr-anges you wants when you git on the train!”  It has been a much-used family saying ever since, especially useful when someone is holding up the act!
My ending line actually came about as I was trying to find a word to rhyme with orange and realized there weren’t any.  I believe it is somewhat famous for this fact.  Well, that and the sunset!

 And koolkosherkitchen brought this other “orange” poem from two years ago to my attention as well: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/03/22/hue-bris/

The prompt word today was orange.