Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

Exquisite Creatures

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pa060073

Exquisite Creatures

Another exquisite creature lies yonder on the hill—
just beyond the pampa horse, okapi and spoonbill.
All the lovely creatures we are here to see
imprisoned behind barriers, just for you and me.

Polar bear goes pacing, as does lioness.
What they might be thinking, I can only guess.
Now that they know their freedom mainly by its edges,
one dreams of the tundra, the other icy ledges.

All day as they view us, in their eyes are gleams
revealing  what they’re thinking—a pathway to their dreams.
Stalking their next meal— the waiting and the hush,
before the final pounce, that old familiar rush.

Ferrets with their kits and camels with their calves
are showing us their natures by quarters or by halves.
We see the way they eat and spy on how they pee,
but we’ll never see the whole of them in captivity.

Nature that is cageless has more of a savor.
Both the viewed and viewer spontaneous and braver.
With no bars between them, they’re part of the same world
as they retrieve their wildness from corners where it’s curled.

Hear a might roar, a hiss, a screech a chatter—
all exotic sounds that tell us what’s the matter.
If we are approaching, wandering too near,
they are simply telling us they don’t want us here.

Of all of the animals, they’ve heard we are the worst—
the primary reason our world’s about to burst.
Viewing all our actions, now and through the ages,
if they had their druthers, they’d put us all in cages.

The prompt word today is “exquisite.”

The Great Unseen

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img_2237jdbphoto, La Manz. 1/10/17

The Great Unseen

Life without the Great Unseen
is merely nature’s grand machine—
things replicating with no end,
a road built straight without a bend.
No mystery or wondering when
there’ll be an end to where we’ve been
and a future reckoning
with all that has been beckoning
to lead us from this world more lean
to the richness of the Great Unseen.

My reason says there is no God.
After death, merely the sod.
And yet I yearn and wish and hope
when I descend life’s slippery slope
that at the end there’s more to see
than crumbled earth and rocky scree.
Another road on rocky shelf
that leads me deep within myself—
life being a long venture out
to see what life is all about
before we pull once more inside
to that deeper world where we abide.

Legend reckons heaven above
to be a well-lit place of love.
Those nearly dead have seen the light
welcoming and broad and bright
with familiar faces there,
free from hate and free from care.
What a lovely scene they weave.
If only I could just believe
their version of a paradise
so pure and perfect and free from vice.

I can imagine the purpose of
a world comprised purely of love,
but why this different world before—
this world of torture, hate and gore?
These things I ask are questions old,
gleaned from stories often told.
I do not ponder puzzles new,
bringing fresh problems into view.
It’s simply that we can’t resist
attempting to work out the gist
of what our being here might mean
and trying to solve The Great Unseen.

The prompt word today is unseen.

Nativity

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dsc09921

Nativity

It was some day, that day when light came into my world.
Reaching out my arms and legs as they came uncurled,
so many lovely colors bursting into sight.
All this brilliant pigment where formerly was night.

All the parts familiar still attached to me—
my ankle and my navel, my elbow and my knee.
But no longer together, curled into one tight ball.
I never knew that I could be so wide and tall.

Stretching out to fill this square I wonder when
I will be forgetting the curved world I’ve been in.
My mother now beside me instead of all around.
At other times she’s simply nowhere to be found.

My father’s arms around me—arms brand new to me.
All the other others coming to see what I may be.
Scratchy things now touch me—dry things and things with fluff.
Everything a new thing until I’ve had enough.

Then I find my power and make some kind of noise.
Soon I’m joined by other infant girls and boys,
and the whole room fills with sounds of our distress.
Very satisfying, I fear I must confess.

The nurses all come running, the fathers and the sisters.
The orderlies and doctors, the misses and the misters.
And when they lift us up, each one in different arms,
all our cries desist as they cater to our charms.

“Some day,” they’ve been saying, and now we are all here—
a fresh new crop of humans arrived for them to rear.
Once more we exercise our lungs and make each father cower.
Fresh to this new world, we have already found our power.

The prompt today was someday.

Call to Arms

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Things That Cling


Call to Arms

Sweaters do it, slips do it.
Even crackers and clam dips do it.
Let’s do it. I want to cling!!!

Saran wrap was made for it.
Lonely hearts first lust then fade for it.
Just put your arms in a ring.

Hold me and squeeze with them.
I’m the thing that you should seize with them.
Want all the hugs you can bring.

Monkeys in trees do it,
pointer fingers when you sneeze do it.
Let’s do it. Let’s do that thing.

Don’t hesitate o’er it.
Gotta tell you that I adore it.
Let’s do it.  Let’s have a fling!!!

The prompt word today is “cling.”

Off-Kilter

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img_2063Nude Descending the Beach. Wall sculpture and photo, jdb

Off-Kilter

Who cares if your bangs are uneven,
your hem hanging down on the left?
If the picture frame’s a bit off-kilter,
who here would feel most bereft?

Who fusses and dithers whenever
the pizza’s unevenly cleft,
or in the new rug he just purchased,
if the warp is not square with the weft?

When it comes to most talents,
he’s not especially deft.
He has little talent at singing,
and he has neither looks, charm nor heft.

Yet if your smile is crooked,
my dear, I fear you are effed.
for with our friend “Even Steven,”
a mil off is as bad as a theft.

 

The prompt today is “uneven.”

Cruel Infinity

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p8170150

Cruel Infinity

I cannot face the infinite—
that colossal haunted house—
too many rooms seemingly empty
that teem with invisible somethings
that I can’t comprehend.
How could I find myself in such vastness?
What in those giant corridors knows I exist?
Ego, finally, my undoing, as I fear
becoming part of what I find impossible
to grasp.

Everything I am
yearns towards the specific—
fine detail being more or less
how I have spent my life.
How can such a life be reconciled
with the infinite? Everything
cycling up and up from nothing
and, we fear, back down again.
He who says that nature is not ironic
lies or simply refuses to face the truth.

It is a cruel infinity that has included
such a tiny space
for me.

The prompt today was “infinite.”

Check List for a Budding Poet

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Check List for a Budding Poet

If you want to be prolific,
better that you be specific,
and when you choose to state each fact,
try to make each word exact.
Don’t use time-worn words or wilted.
Avoid pretentious words or stilted.

Never try to force a rhyme.
Do not fail to take the time
to make your lines scan smoothly for,
uneven meter is a bore.
Words written for effect are hollow,
but where heart is, the head will follow.

So write your poetry from the heart.
Put your horse before the cart
and let it pull you up the hill.
Let your words express their will—
you following blindly, just to see
what the next line wants to be.

Let words of different shapes and sizes
furnish pleasure and surprises.
Make your poems resemble zoos
of striped okapis and kangaroos.
Delight yourself and then your reader.
Follow words, then be their leader

by whipping them in line and order,
shaping them within your border.
It never is too late to change
an errant line that’s out of range,
but editing is not what you
initially should seek to do.

Words give hearts tongues to share their pleasure
and their pain in equal measure.
Essayists and authors strive
to make their writings come alive.
They show us where their minds have been,
but poets put the music in.

The prompt today was “specific.”

Float Trip

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img_1906
Etching, p/a by Isidro Xilonzóchitl, jdbphoto 

Float Trip

When I feel life’s wear and tear
and wilt before rude gossip’s stare,
feeling vulnerable and bare,
as though I cannot get my share
of fresh, unviolated air,
I rise above the jarring glare
in search of space that is more rare,
willing to pay whatever the fare
to rise above the world’s nightmare
and hang suspended, without care.

There I soar, I risk, I dare.
It does not matter what I wear.
I don’t regret my thinning hair,
my widening waist or derriere.
I do not fear that speeding mare
that cuts the night to bring despair.
Rue not that life has been unfair.
Need neither mask nor nom de guerre,
for when things get too much to bear,
I float myself right out of there

to revel in my inner lair.

 

img_1903painting by Salvador, jdbphoto

The prompt word today was “float.”

 

Float

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The prompt today is “float.”

midnight chocolate

8 Replies

img_1164

midnight chocolate

just one crumb
of temptation
left

lying on yesterday’s
pristine
white floor

proof of last night’s sin
today
lapped up happily

by the
smallest
black dog

 

 

Temptation was the prompt word today.