Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

Exchanging Words on Little Santa Monica

8 Replies

photo by Georgia King


Exchanging Words On Little Santa Monica

There on that city avenue,
I watched you as I sipped my brew.
Not the woman you’d chosen to woo
as you read poetry so true,
so raw, so blunt, so rare and new,
the air around you turned to blue.
Your sad poems caressed and drew
us closer. All that motley crew.

For me, love was a new venue
that night I first set eyes on you,
but there was such a ballyhoo
around you, that you had no clue
that I had joined the retinue
of women waiting in your queue.
But as I left, oh yes, I knew.
My life took on a brighter hue.

And though you were far out of view,
your memory stuck to me like glue.
Thoughts of you both birthed and slew.
Our meeting was long overdue
that night I saw you in the pew—
there to hear the poems I grew
from words carefully chosen and few,
I drew you in by some voodoo.

Perhaps our muses conspired and blew
winds from exotic Xanadu
or Zanzibar or high Peru,
the air around us to imbue,
giving us the selfsame cue:
this is the lover meant for you,
your octoroon and kangaroo,
the heart you’ll break, the fat you’ll chew.

Of all words plucked from life’s rich stew,
the ones that I would never rue.
Never would they ring untrue.
Those words that, though we might redo them,
never could I overdo them.
The words I’d sought my whole life through.
The vow I’d renew and renew.
That one rare thing I’d finally do.

 

The prompt word today is continue. It is the first word I’ve ever found that has a rhyming word that begins with each letter in the alphabet! I discovered this without consulting Google or a rhyming dictionary, which I occasionally have to resort to when a word is especially hard to find enough rhymes for. I found 64 rhyming words. Still haven’t checked any dictionaries. They may have additional ones, but these are mine, all mine! The only rhyme that is repeated is the word “you,”

“The” Words: avenue ballyhoo blew blue boo (boo hoo) brew chew clue crew cue do (doo doo) drew due eschew ew few glue goo grew hew hue imbue issue Jew kangaroo Kew, knew  loo mew moo new  overdo  overdue Peru pew phew poo queue redo renew retinue rue screw shrew slew stew sue through true undo untrue  venue view vindaloo voodoo whew woo Xanadu you zoo

 

The prompt word today is continue.

Multiplication Fable

9 Replies

IMG_0519

Multiplication Fable

We were to memorize if able
the whole multiplication table.
I learned the ones to sixes fine,
yet still have trouble with seven through nine.
So when the cents approach a dime,
I always have an awful time.

It was during chicken pox
(when I, attired in gloves and sox
was simply trying to score an itch)
that my math skills developed a hitch.
As others mastered seven through nine,
I was there at home, supine.

Six times seven’s forty-two.
that’s the last sum I easily do.
Six times eight is forty eight–
determined after some debate.
But six times nine or nine times six
always leaves me in a fix.

Sixty-three, perhaps, or more.
Could it instead be sixty-four?
At nine times eight I’m surely lost.
Those sums I should have had embossed
upon my wrist in a tattoo.
These long delays just will not do.

I breathe a sigh when once again
the multiplier ends up as ten.
Ten is easy, so I strut
as I just add a zero, but
as I stumble through its next-of-kin,
I approximate, then write it in.

 

The prompt today was memorize.

Enamoured

11 Replies

This poem was written making use of only the letters of the word enamoured, which was the prompt word for today.

 

Enamoured

Mere man, mere dame,
a mean red moon.
A dream remade,
a mar, a dune.
Marooned and moored
and no end near.
Me enamoré. 
Me arrear.

(In Spanish, a”mar” is a sea or ocean, but “a mar” can also mean to love. “Me enamoreé“means “I fell in love.” “Me Arrear” can mean either “I got caught,” “drive me” or “Grab me.”  It also carries the connotation for me that the object of her affection’s love might be in arrears. “En arrear” can have that meaning in Spanish as well. Since I used the British spelling of the title word to increase my choices, I guess you could say this poem is trilingual. Comes in handy when limited in the consonants and vowels one can use.

Rhyming Violation

1 Reply

The prompt word today is rhyme.

 

Rhyming Violation

There is a reason and a rhyme
to the word they chose this time.
For though I am not in my prime
and don’t play tennis, do not climb
or stoop too low to conquer grime,
In any terrain, any clime,
my mind spins like a twirling dime.
If over-rhyming were a crime,
I’d probably be doing time.

 

(If you are a glutton for punishment, yes, you can click on these to enlarge them.)

 

Words Coming Together with Words

19 Replies

Words Coming Together with Words

This word right HERE is copacetic.
Not rancorous, angry or frenetic,
but because it is magnetic,
other words peripatetic
suddenly become kinetic
and join it to turn epithetic.

Postscript: I can’t help rhyming. It’s genetic!!!

My mother and I wrote rhymed poems together from the time I was small. I guess she was the one who put the magnetism into words for me. Thanks, Mom.

Now I only have Kukla as a collaborator. She leaves most of the word decisions to me.

The prompt today was magnetic.

Villains of the Universe

6 Replies

jdbphoto

Villains of the Universe

Before it had been pillaged–scraped and torn and rent,
nature had a dignity everywhere you went.
A hill remained a hillside and a stream remained a stream.
This was before the elements began their silent scream—
long before the advent of smog and acid rain—
before our exploitation of the earth became inane
with our damming and our digging, our culling and our raping—
before we had created a world that needs escaping.

Now we thrust out into space to find another place to plunder
to repeat inane histories. To ruin and tear asunder.
Any new place that we find, thinking it a haven,
will soon be altered as before with acts as crudely craven.
We do not learn our lessons. We never quite atone
for messing into matters we should have left alone.
Like children picking at a scab, then worrying the sore,
we’ll frack the universe apart and crack it at its core.

 

jdbphoto

R.I.P. Mother Earth

 

 

The prompt word today was dignify.

The Divine Right of Kings

10 Replies

 

The Divine Right of Kings
(How Politics Makes for Strange Bedfellows)

I need to know this, Mr. Trump. What world is it that you inhabit
where if you want it, it’s okay for you to reach out and to grab it
and never share with others the wealth that you’ve purloined?
Except, of course, with other rich boys in the clubs you’ve joined?

I need to know this, Mr. Thune. What God gave you the right
to draft a secret health bill that overlooks the plight
of those littlest sparrows God witnessed as they fell?
What soothes your conscience as you now consign them all to Hell?

Mister Ku Klux Klanner, once you remove your hood
and navigate in daylight your well-lit neighborhood,
how do you salve your conscience? The crosses that you’ve burned there
must surely also burn you, once they’re exposed to air.

What happened to those finer parts your mothers saw in you
that might have loved their playmates, be they black, Arab or Jew?
All that innocence and love, surely you must mourn
as you join that beast that crawls toward Bethlehem to be born.

Mr. Jung has taught us that we all have everything within us: light and shadow, male and female, good and evil, cruelty and kindness.  Those parts are not exorcised within us just because we choose not to exercise them. I wonder at the dreams of the seemingly pious souls mentioned in the poem above. Are they as completely sure they are right as they seem to be?  Are their dreams untortured, their consciences squeaky clean?

If you are unsure who John Thune is, he is a senior U.S. senator from South Dakota who grew up the son of a born-again Christian family who happened to live across the street from me.  They broke away from the Methodist Church to form the Community Bible Church, preaching solid Christian values, eschewing the evils of movies and dance and even television.  They unsuccessfully mounted a big campaign to forbid dancing at our school prom and produced a son who now aligns himself with Mr. Trump.  What would Jesus say, Mr. Thune? Would he reaffirm that politics makes for strange bedfellows?

 

Sen. John Thune (R-SD)

What he’s saying: A common complaint about the Affordable Care Act is that the law has caused premiums to spike, and Thune told Fox News this month that South Dakota has seen premiums rise 124% since 2013. The fact that roughly 85% of Obamacare consumers receive premium subsidies to defray these increases has received less attention from critics. The House version of the American Health Care Act would switch Obamacare’s premium assistance to a flat, age-based subsidy, a change that would lower prices for younger, healthier consumers but hit some older, lower income ones with premium increases of more than 800% by 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Biggest donors: At number three and $40,246, Sanford Health is the only healthcare name among the top five donors to Thune’s campaign committee; Nextera Energy comes in first with $52,000 and Blackstone Group is next with $50,097.

 Isn’t it the main idea behind health insurance that those who can pay and who are less likely to become ill cushion the load for those who are the most ill and need it most?

The prompt today was inhabit.

Why I Dine Alone at Burger King

17 Replies

download


Why I Dine Alone at Burger King

I’d like a single cheeseburger with pickles on the side,
cheese but no tomato—a fruit I can’t abide.
Be sure there is no pink to see. I like my burgers brown.
You can also skip the cardboard hat. I do not need a crown.

Grilled onions on the cheeseburger and easy on the goo.
Give me a diet Coke with that. I’d like some French fries, too.
I sit down at a booth to wait, my number on the table,
but if I could, I’d supervise—that is, if I were able.

My sandwich comes. I have a bite. I see no pink or red.
I start to take a drink of Coke but have a fry instead.
It’s hot and oh so crispy. Redolent of grease.
I feel a surge of appetite. My hunger pangs increase.

I alternate the bites I take between the fries and meat.
As regular as clockwork. I do not miss a beat.
For when it comes to fast food, I do not equivocate.
My ratio of fries-to-burger I must calibrate.

I plan it down to the last fry. I don’t allow for glitches,
and woe to folks who borrow one. I do not abide snitches.
If you want a French fry, please buy some of your own.
I have plans for all of mine. I am not sharing-prone.

With one more bite of burger and only two more fries,
the ratio is one-to-two. I plan to synchronize.
I have it all planned out, my friend, so if you’re chancing by,
keep your fingers off my French fries, or somebody’s gonna die!

 

The prompt today was “synchronize. (stock photo.)

That Tiny Seed

4 Replies

That Tiny Seed

That tiny seed
in the garden of your being
plants itself
in a corner where you might not notice it.

Unplagued by your thousand obligations,
it gathers moisture unused by your arid life.

On that internal table,
its petals open to a visceral sun.

You can feel the flutter
feel its opening
and see it in your
dreams perhaps
or in a daydream, as a reflection in a shop window.

What you are inside of you
is something you should feel the wings of,
smell its faint aroma, be at least a bit discomfited
by that tiny annoying growth of petal
that is a message from yourself.

Sign language.
If you don’t listen,
it will whisper.
Then it will shout.

The prompt today is visceral.

J’accuse

6 Replies
 

J’accuse

Those who meander the paths of zoos
gain exercise as they peruse
the animals by ones and twos.
Whatever pathways they may cruise
will lead them to new rendezvous:
otters as they blithely ooze
through water as if to amuse.
They watch the bowerbird as it woos
with intricate patterns it pursues,
the aardvarks, elephants and gnus.

Did Mother Nature simply choose
to create hippos and kangaroos
with the intention to bemuse
these interlopers in tennis shoes?
Does our curiosity excuse
and give us license to abuse
koala bears and caribous?

We see it nightly in the news—
the ways that all of us misuse
the wonders of nature. We refuse
to stem consumerism, excuse
pollution, fracking and more taboos.
Imprison animals in zoos,
then honor them with our reviews
of fascinated ahhhs and ooos.

The prompt word today was ooze.