Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

Beating the Bans

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Beating the Bans

If you think that I’ve flunked at being a wife
and been 86’d from a domestic life,
was it the pie crust that I made too tough?
Might I have failed at life in the buff?
Didn’t I kiss right? Did I flub the pressing,
leaving a wrinkle in my husband’s dressing?
Did I speak out too much for my kind?
Not take into account that fellows might mind
if I had a career of my own to take care of,
not feeling it adequate I had a pair of
breasts you could fondle or legs I could wind,
an adequate body, a perky behind?
If I’m not the kind of lass you might marry,
the sort who leaves you rattled and wary:
brash and smart and outspoken and bold,
excellent negotiator, stubborn and cold?
If I am unfit as a humble home’s resident,
perhaps I might make you an excellent president!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/banned/

Too small

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That Small Feeling That Something’s Wrong

My intuition sounds its gong.
I have an inkling something’s wrong.
I look  around  for what’s amiss,
but cannot tell what signals this.
My arm and neck hairs stir and rise,
as if to warn me of surprise.
This tiny hunch keeps me alert,
but insight is a fickle flirt.
When nothing happens, it goes away
and I live out my normal day.
That tiny niggling little prickle
might lead to nought, for insight’s fickle,
and sometimes things are just so small
that they aren’t there at all.

 

The prompt word today is “tiny.”

Utilitarian Artifice

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Utilitarian Artifice

My sugar’s artificial. It’s a fact. So is my creamer.
A year ago, I had a little crackup in my Beemer,
and now I have an artificial ear and foot and femur.

Pretty soon my whole darn life will just be what it seems,
while the authentic “real” of me will be a thing of dreams.
I can’t find where I stored my leg, I left my fur coat somewhere.
I parked my car last week but can’t remember how to come there.

So if it’s really necessary—all this substitution,
I’m asking some inventor  to come up with a solution.
If artificial intelligence is the way it’s going to be,
please implant me with an artificial memory!

The prompt word today was “artificial.”

Millions

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Arms “Race”

Millions of planets go spinning around
out of our sight and making no sound.
Because we don’t see them, are they not there?
And if we do not see them, have we a care
of what lies upon them or what it’s all for?
Is the rest of the universe simply a snore?

We are so taken by the mess of our world
that we keep forgetting that we’re merely curled
like a fist of small planets thoughtlessly cast
into a corner of a system so vast
that we’re barely noticed in the scale of it all.
It is not so important, our spinning blue ball

as we all make it out to be, fussing and feuding,
warring and hating and bombing and shooting.
Like fleas on an elephant, thinking their bite
reveals such a showing of power and might,
our planet could vanish like that, in a puff,
and truly, the world would have planets enough.

Like millions of tiny balls spinning in space,
we’re in no competition. It’s really no race.
It’s nobody’s loss and nobody’s win.
We always return to the place we begin.
So put away guns and machetes and knives
and let’s simply live out our miniature lives.

The prompt word today is “Millions.”

Sand Castles

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Sand Castles

Under the sand are palaces. I’ve seen them in my dreams:
vast halls and empty chambers smoothly rounded at their seams.
Every wall is made of sand. Each ceiling, archway, floor––
as though carved by master craftsmen, digging at its core––
is so magnificent, you’d think they were the stuff of lore.
You may also see them, but you must provide the door.

Though the chambers are filled in, they’re there without a doubt.
You are the one creating them by what you will scoop out.
The beauty’s hidden in the sand, waiting in your sleep
for you to dig the castles out from where they’re buried deep.
All your day’s exhaustion your dream labor will abort,
for what you build in slumber is work of a different sort.

Sand brought to the surface is what you get to keep
of subterranean palaces dug out in your sleep.
As you build aboveground castles in the world that we all know,
you reveal the outward structure of the inner rooms below,
furnishing the magic that the world will see through you,
showing what’s inside of you by what you bring to view.

I’m going in for a medical procedure today, so no time to write a fresh poem. This is  a rewrite of a poem from a few years ago that fits today’s prompt of “underground.”

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/underground/

Zits (A Cure for Acne): WordPress Daily Post: Urgent

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daily-life-color226-2I don’t know why we all look so pleased about that really big one on my chin.
Teenagers are a strange species. This photo circa 1961, summer camp.

Zits
(A Cure for Acne)

Hormones need an exit too,
and I fear, dear teen, it’s you
they choose to make their mark upon;
but rest assured, they’ll soon be gone.

The need for Retin-A is urgent
when a new batch becomes emergent,
and though you quell the vile insurgent,
all too soon it is resurgent.

The solution for you is not simple.
You might consider veil and wimple
that hide both blemish and that dimple,
or simply choose to pop the pimple.

And though your folks will foot your bill
to pop, instead, the pimple pill
or swathe your face with Clearasil,
another can show up, and will.

Most folks my age have reached concurrence,
so please accept our reassurance.
Against each crop there’s no insurance.
it simply takes faith and endurance.

You might obsess and cry and pout
and wonder what it’s all about;
but it will pass, without a doubt
when age replaces it— with gout.

The prompt word today was “Urgent.”

Treed

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Forgottenman gave me a prompt tonight, just for the fun of it. and said he’d do it, also. The word he gave me was cul de sac, and here’s my poem, for what it’s worth. (It’s 1:34 a.m., I had 4 hours of sleep last night and I hope I’m about to get a better night’s sleep tonight.)

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Treed

Stuck here in this cul-de-sac,
my mental skills are out of whack,
and I don’t seem to have the knack
for learning lessons as I look back.

I’m tortured as if on the rack.
My muscles wrench and joints all crack
my loosening bones go click clack clack.
With prospects dim, my soul is black.

Value in life is what I lack.
My life’s comprised of bric-a-brac.
I circle round and round the track,
until I’ve lost my will to quack.
Then
I
give
up
and
join
the
pack.

The prompt word today is “trust.” It may not be obvious what this poem has to do with the prompt word today, but actually it has everything to do with trusting yourself and your own unique views of life and to resist “losing your quack” and settling back into being like everyone else.  The narrator of this poem is not me. It is only who I am determined not to become.

Since both the illustration and the shape of the poem are trees, I think it is also appropriate for Becca’s Sunday Tree Challenge.

Skinny-dip

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Version 3

Skinny-Dip

If he’d been more well-imbued,
perhaps the ladies might have queued
to be the one he might have wooed.

Instead, when he swam in the nude,
all the women bathers booed,
making comments  crass and lewd.

His face turned pale, then roseate-hued,
his manner cringing and subdued
as he hurried to elude

each smug and cruel insulting prude—
the cat-callers who stood and viewed
that poor unfortunate naked dude.

As those ladies,smug and rude,
Departed, calling his act crude,
as each one passed me by, I mooed.

The prompt today was “Subdued.”

 

Clumsy II

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Clumsy

Since the first poem I posted today was really more about laziness than clumsiness, I’m posting another one about genuine physical clumsiness.  It is borrowed from an old Smiley Burnett skit. All these years later, and although I’ve grown to hate limericks, I’ve never forgotten this one. I guess we’ll forgive him for repeating a rhyme, since it is used in two connotations.

There once was a feller named Hall
Who fell in the spring in the fall.
‘Twould have been a sad thing
If he’d died in the spring,
But he didn’t, he died in the fall.

Thd prompt word today was “Clumsy.”

 

Promises

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Promises

When we first made our promises, our hearts were young and gay,
and all the things we had in life we thought we would parlay
from good fortune freely given for which we’d never pay.

But though the sun that lulls us with its warming ray
does not always scorch the earth, certainly, it may,
and all the tender shoots of spring by autumn turn to hay.

And so it is with promises, no matter what you say.
What I’ve noticed about promises is that they melt away,
for those who live by promising sometimes have feet of clay.

Promises lightly given sometimes start to weigh
upon the minds of those who have held their fears at bay.
Such things may cause the truest heart later to turn fey.

The lives we take for granted, sure we’ll always be okay,
in the end life complicates by answering with “Nay.”
So what you want to share with me, please share by end of day.

The prompt word today was “Promises.”