Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

Spot Amnesia

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Spot Amnesia

How can I sort the world out to when I was only ten?
I’ve taken my mind back there and come back here again.
Eleven I remember, and I also recall nine,
Grades one through four and six through twelve, I remember fine.
Why can’t I remember that year when I was ten?
I opened up an album to take me back again.
I see that I was chubby and had unfortunate hair.
Maybe that is reason enough to keep me out of there.
To live just in the present can block a lot of pain.
Sunny days are better without memories of rain.
Perhaps this digging in the past is something to be curbed,
and certain memories are not meant to be disturbed.
Whatever blocked my fifth year out will be allowed to die.
There’s wisdom in the adage to just let sleeping dogs lie.

 

The prompt word today is “ten.“

Devastation Station

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IMG_0223 Devastation Station

Our beautiful world licks her wounds
and limps around us, twirling her skirts
to blow dry dust, then empties her wash water
in deluges that flush away even more.
Not content with the bounty she provides,
they gauge her skin and pick her scabs,
feeding her poison every day.

Rich men lauded for their tax-deductible charity, get richer
by purloining more of the earth’s bounties
that they call their own.
Super yachts and super models  
give testimony to their greatness,
obscuring lurid details
of their journeys to success.

Their trophy wives marry desolation,
then furnish it themselves ever after—
future alimony little enough reward
for the sale of life and dignity.
The social pages full of the same old story—
old men professing their virility
by photos taken with presidents and starlets.

They  reillustrate their own lives with
records of success on study walls,
like rich wallpaper obscuring scars
they’ve left around them in the world.
Hiding stories of devastation
the world keeps choosing
to reward them for.

 

 

The prompt word today was “devastation.”

Oversight

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Oversight

There’s more in life that you can view
than what folks say and what folks do.
Deeper meanings hang in the air.
You can always see them, they’re always there.
More to be learned from what’s not said—
more to the meal than what we’re fed.

I note expressions, nuance, glances.
I’m an early spotter of romances
that others seem oblivious to.
A quick expression can be a clue,
a tone of voice a giveaway
of what a person means to say.

Those who see farther can be a bore.
Always looking and seeing more
than what folks would have them see,
noting life’s disparity
between what is and seems to be—
said behind backs or vis–á-vis.

So though you haven’t told me that
you find me boring, crass or fat,
I know as clearly as though you had.
And when I seem withdrawn or sad,
it’s not that I have ESP
that tells me what you think of me.

It’s simply that I pay attention
to more than what you choose to mention.
Though these extra perceptions take their toll,
they’re nothing that I can control.
I can’t shake them, try as I might.
It seems that I have “oversight.”

 

The prompt word today was “oversight.”

S-U-C-C-E-S-S

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S-U-C-C-E-S-S

“S-U-C-C-E-S-S—that’s the way you spell success!”
These words still rouse me, I confess,
though fifty years now (more or less)
have passed since I last heard the chant
that quickly turned into a rant
when we saw the basketball soar
through the net and become lore.

It was the year they won it all—
those high school kings of basketball,
with last-second ball thrown from mid-hall.
Both those who watched and those who played
cheered  and ranted, chanted, brayed.
The day that ball swished through the net?
It was as good as sports could get.

The prompt today was “successful.”

Private Lives

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Private Lives

Private lives and private dreams
fill our world and burst its seams.
Many wants and many wishes
like an ocean full of fishes
For one to live, one more must go
to maintain the status quo.
Each fish feeding on another:
mother, sister, uncle, brother
all competing  for their lives
One fails while another thrives.
Thus it goes with private lives.

The prompt today was “privacy.”

Southern Exposure

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dsc07117Southern Exposure

Although my north end’s fully cloaked,
when rain clouds come,  my south gets soaked.
I guess the fault is really mine.
The raincoat that I bought, size nine,
that I insisted would fit fine,
combined with excess when I dine
means that though it swathes my seat,
the buttons in the front don’t meet
the holes they’re meant to go into
no matter what my fingers do.
That’s why my front side’s sorta soggy
when the weather ends up foggy.
If you approach me from the back,
I swear, you won’t see any lack.
You’ll only see my dripping clothes
If we meet up nose-to-nose
I just can’t get myself together
to protect myself in stormy weather.

The prompt word today is “exposure.”

Overworked or Labor Shirked?

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Overworked or Labor Shirked?

It’s hard for me to find the middle
between hard labor and the fiddle.
Work? I either overdo it
or endeavor to eschew it.
Work all day and then all night,
being very erudite—
putting words down on the page,
imprisoned in my muse’s cage.

Perhaps I fear my distant past
when good work habits didn’t last
and days were spent in dreaming or
novels read behind closed door—
midnight radio a chance
for fantasies to spin romance.
Whole days stretched as though to catch
an errant dream of true love’s match.

I feared such days were sloth, and yet
perhaps they were just roads to get
to the place where I would tell
the stories that I knew so well
because I’d lived them first in dreams
or days just bursting at the seams
with doing nothing but living life—
its pleasures, problems, romance, strife.

First the doing at my leisure,
then the writing, and the seizure
of all the details of the past
that, once down on paper, are made to last.
Overworked or over-lived,
life first collected, then finely sieved.
Panned like gold to find the treasure—
leisure and work in even measure.

“Overworked” is the prompt word today.

Original Style

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Original Style

Is your aesthetic pop or funk?
Waterford crystal or Goodwill junk?
Whatever may be your aesthetic,
copying I find pathetic.
Find your style and follow it.
Originality and wit
will pull you through where money won’t.
Express yourself, but copy? Don’t!!!!
Expressing yourself is aesthetic.
Following trends mere anaesthetic.

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The prompt word today is aesthetic.

Gourmand

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Gourmand

His smile an invitation I could plainly see,
I very promptly answered his implied R.S.V.P.
But later on I wished that I had just let it be,
for that smile was for another girl the minute he had me!

An open invitation is his modus operandi.
Every social gathering provides him more eye candy.
Once seen, a tiny little lick is what he seems to savor.
He likes it when each taste he takes presents a different flavor.

Every toothsome girl he sees stirs his appetite,
and even though his smile suggests he’d like a little bite,
no matter what the tasty dish is that you choose to serve,
you’ll never be a main course, but merely an hors d’oeuvre.

The prompt today was “invitation.”

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Marathon Confusion

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Marathon Confusion

There stands my wimpy neighbor John
next to that tall bronzed Amazon.
He’s looking sort of pale and wan
there on the local courthouse lawn
wishing the others would be gone
so he could vanish over yon.
He’s feeling rather put-upon,
for when asked by his buddy Ron
to join this charity marathon,
he thought it was a phonathon!

Imagine his extreme reaction,
for he has not the slightest fraction
of running talent nor attraction
to any sports-like interaction.
To him, athletics are abstraction.
Since he’s much given to inaction,
mobility’s a mere distraction.
He’d commit some lane infraction,
suffer a spinal compaction,
and probably wind up in traction!

For, although his finger’s ready,
his running legs are less than steady.
He knows this charity’s a good one,
and though he wishes that he could run,
wishes do not equal training,
and he’s not into muscle straining.
Prepared today to call for them,
he’s not prepared to fall for them.
He will not join this running faction.
instead, he’s calling in his action.

 

The prompt today was marathon.