Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

Shut In

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Shut In

No longer is there any need
to leave my house for drink or feed.
Costco delivers, as does the son
of one I used to join in fun
to dance in bars and flirt with men,
but now those times are what has been.

Now I prefer my company
to what I used to do and see.
I hope to circumvent all trouble
By living here within my bubble.
I lay out solitaire alone
and socialize by screen and phone.

I’m done with yoga. Zumba is out.
I do not flounce myself about.
Here with myself, I pass my life
sealed off from politics and strife.
Though the world’s pleasures I don’t forget,
I choose to turn my back on it.

Safe in my bubble, I peer out
and I’m content, without a doubt.
Behind these shutters and barred doors,
I’m safe from robbers, rapists, wars.
I let in nature, and that’s enough.
It’s human nature that is too rough.

 

The prompt today is bubble.

Mentoring Poetry

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Since the prompt today is “mentor,”  I am going to send you back in time three years to a poem I wrote about mentoring that I have no memory of having written, so even if you were around way back then, perhaps you’ll be ready to read it again as well.  Here is the link.

 

The prompt today is mentor.

Neap Tide

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Three years ago I published this poem with no ending, asking commenters to construct an ending.  There were a number of excellent solutions, but unfairly, I never published one of my own, so I’m giving myself the additional assignment to finish the poem  since it also makes use of today’s prompt word of  “tide.” I’ve made many adjustments in the original poem and added the last stanza. 

Neap Tide

Borne, then born.
Clothed, fed, shorn.
Housed and cuddled,
Brain filled and muddled,
schooled, polished, allowed to roam,
to make the world into a home.

In my third quarter, now sedate.
Content to let my life abate.
Find worlds inside and there abide,
to let what happens be my guide.
To try to live with less precision.
To fear less the world’s derision.

Why so hard to be oneself?
Easier when on the shelf.
Now as I pull my world around me,
memories and dreams surround me—
my solitude a crystal jar
that lets me ponder from afar.

The current of my life, its tide,
reaches without and pulls inside
the things that help me try to see
where my life has taken me.
I contemplate and sometimes share
the truths that I’ve discovered there.

You come to read and judge each word
as wise, amusing or absurd.
You give new insights to what I’ve said—
poems not completed until they’re read.
Less in the world, ironically,
more of the world’s discovered me.

 

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If you’d like to see how others  ended the poem three years ago, go HERE.

The prompt today was tide.

Impromptu Gallery

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Impromptu Gallery

This tennis fact you might observe
when a certain lady goes to serve:
each man who passes tends to swerve
to watch neither her skill nor verve,
but her body’s line and curve––
(each one a visual hors d’oeuvre.)

They keep their thoughts well in reserve,
for no observer has the nerve
to risk the censure he might deserve
in revealing  himself as a perv.
And thus can Mel and Chuck and Irv
their conjugal harmonies conserve.

 

The WordPress Daily Prompt is observe.

Cruel Question

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Cruel Question

It bothers me, I must confess.
What happens to a wedding dress
after it’s had its opening day?
Is it simply packed away?
If so, you’d think once time has passed
they’d finally reappear at last
in church bazaar or resale store
or other places where things of yore
emerge from attic, basement, closet
or other area of deposit.
(In whatever dark place they’ve all lain,
thinking they’ll be used again.)

There should be rooms filled with selections
of these nuptial confections.
Warehouses stuffed full of them,
varied in neckline, cut and hem.
Why do we not see huge barrages
of wedding gowns sold from garages
along with strollers and kiddie toys
cast off by grown up girls and boys?
Surely every aging bride
has a wedding dress inside
a trunk or closet—way up high.
What happens when their wearers die?

Garments of satin or nylon net—
what could be the etiquette
that guides a family in such matters?
If the gown is not in tatters
and worn away by age and mold,
surely it would be resold.
If so, where are the warehouses
where gowns bereft of brides and spouses
lie stockpiled awaiting chances
for other wedding vows and dances?
Where is the wedding gown museum
where we might journey to go to see ’em?

I’ll now chance being thought abrupt,
unsentimental, cold, corrupt
by saying what I have to say.
Do families throw these gowns away?
Buried under hills of trash
is there a wedding veil or sash?
Satin bodices and trains
diminished by decades of rains?
Do gowns once virginally snowy,
and spectacularly showy
now lie buried like their dreams,
slowly decaying at the seams?

These images, you might guess,
seem calculated to depress.
Who wants these pictures in her head
as her wedding vows are said?
This poem is meant for crones like me,
bent of back and stiff of knee,
who’ve run out of memories to ponder
and so must journey over yonder
to the macabre side of pondering
for their mental wandering.
That said, past brides, will you confess
what happened to your wedding dress?

The prompt today is abrupt.

Unraveled

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“Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”—Wm. Shakespeare

Ravel can mean either to combine thread or to separate it (in linguistics, a word like this is called an auto-antonym). In the sense that it means to combine, unravel developed as a true antonym.—reddit.com

Unraveled

The pain of love unraveling? No one knows it better,
for she wears her heart upon her sleeve, knit into her sweater.
Each day her heart unravels and lies tangled down her arm.
They say it cannot harm her. Loosened hearts cannot do harm.
But she’s a prisoner of these tendrils of love that’s come undone—
the truth of it revealed to her each day by a new sun,
while each night in her dreams, sleep knits it up again
and the ardor of her lost love once more draws her in.
She forgets the present and relives what she once had—
what she imagines in her slumber cancelling out the bad.
This unknitting and reknitting can’t be what life is for.
She must search for her dream’s exit. She must try to find the door.
Cast her old garment on the flames. Burn up that raveled sleeve.
Real love stays firmly knitted. A true love doesn’t leave.

The prompt today is sleeve.

Pariah

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Pariah

His classmates found him bookish and his siblings found him odd.
There were no other similar peas within his pod.
Nobody understood him—not his parents, not his teacher.
He found no ally in his doctor nor his preacher.
Oftentimes the acts for which they should have been astonished
were the ones for which he had only been admonished.
They flunked him out of chemistry for blowing up the table
by concocting an explosive that was something less than stable.
They called him just a “ne’er do well.” It seemed he wasn’t able
to do what other kids could do and so he earned the label
of klutz and geek and doofus. He could do nothing right.
He couldn’t chug a beer down. He couldn’t win a fight.
He never ever dressed right. He was fond of oddball hats.
Other people shunned him. His best friends were his cats.
Even as an adult, bad luck didn’t abate.
He remained a pariah. He couldn’t get a date.
He failed at conversation and he was a lousy dancer.
His single social skill was that he found a cure for cancer!

The WordPress prompt today was astonish.

Past Prime

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Past Prime

She stamps her little foot down. A tantrum, I would guess.
She will not put these panties on. She will not wear this dress.
She doesn’t want to brush her teeth. Tangles swathe her head.
She doesn’t want her breakfast. She doesn’t want her bed.
Her grandma shuts the door on her. She’ll wait until she’s grown.
She used up all her patience on kids who were her own!!!

 

With tongue in cheek, I’d like to dedicate this blog to Karen over at her Momshieb blog. You might want to read her link as well!  She’s crazy about her grandkids but even grandmas have their limits. The WordPress prompt word today is tantrum.

Rivulet

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Rivulet

That tiny scarlet rivulet
descending from his bayonet
displays a horrid etiquette,
so minimal, it’s barely wet.

He lights himself a cigarette
with no remorse and no regret.
Overhead, he hears the jet
and speaks to it from his headset.

Mere days from now, a wife will set
out pieces of a wee layette
on the counter of her kitchenette
not having had the visit yet

that minutes later she will get.
Her country is much in her debt
for the end her husband met
caught in the enemy’s cruel net.

Her hopes and dreams they can’t reset
with military etiquette.
No lesser arms do to abet
tears falling in a rivulet.

The prompt today is rivulet.

July 3, 1947

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July 3, 1947

The date above is notable
for reasons that are quotable.
It marks the birth of someone who
has  brought these few words into view
to put them in her blogging queue.
(True, that is what all bloggers do.)

But if there is a blogging heaven,
four thousand one hundred fifty-seven
might certainly be in the running
for snapshotting, rhyming and punning—
all those things we bloggers do
to try to get a rise from you.

In fact, in numbers I’ve been sparing
in how my blog count has been faring.
Blogs four thousand one-fifty-nine
are the numbers I claim as mine
for former blog posts that are done.
The next will end in sixty-one!

With sixty, alas, nothing rhymes
and so it is the least of crimes
that I don’t quote it as a score.
A small malfeasance, nothing more.
As poems go, this is not the best,
so please just rate me by the rest!

 

The prompt today is notable.