Tag Archives: Daily Prompt

Jake

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Jake

First thing you think of when you wake
are his fingers scraping like a rake
over your shoulder–sure to make
your toes curl up and fingers quake.

You rise to bake his birthday cake
and choose to pack it up to take
it to him there out on the lake–
your fear of water faced for his sake.

The weight of oars. The sun’s cruel bake
revealing two sure truths as fake.
And oh the pain and oh the ache
of what he’s chosen to forsake.

The boat you row to shore and tether,
foretelling wind and stormy weather.
Love vanished like a plucked-out feather
when you saw your friend and love––together

The one-word WordPress prompt was “Fake.”
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/fake/

Double Snap!

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Double Snap!

“Clap hands,” they said, “Clap hands
to the music,” and we all obeyed
that 50’s and 60’s band
that we might have followed anywhere–
out the door and across the street into the ocean
like geriatric children following a Pied Piper.

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As we had when the music was new,
we gyrated and sweated,
bumped hips, jitterbugged,
did swing and wild improvisation

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at Palapa Joe’s.
Joe himself barefoot at the keyboard,

a bookend to Denise at the drums.
And we? We are as hot
as this February night.

“Oh to be young again” is not in anyone’s vocabulary,
for we are teenagers again below the Tropic of Cancer.
In the ocean or in front of it,
sipping the sunset from tiny cobalt glasses,

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watching children move toy trucks down sandy roads
of their imagination

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and teenagers elfin in the surf.

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The sun falling falling farther northwards every day
until that March day we waited for every year when it sank
directly behind the offshore island.

Snap. It is gone.
Double snap. So are we.

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Here’s more of a photo story about Palapa Joe’s if you are interested:
 https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/02/28/last-open-mike-of-the-season-at-palapa-joes/

The NaPoWriMo prompt was “double” and the WordPress prompt was “snap” so I combined them today…Here are links to those prompt sites in case you want to play along:
http://www.napowrimo.net/day-fifteen-2/
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/snap/

Lesson from the Garden of Eden––WP Daily Prompt/Writers Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge

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Lesson from the Garden of Eden

When Adam tripped on Eden’s portal,
Eve could not resist a chortle.
She found she loved this new sensation––
her first encounter with jubilation.

Day by day, she watched him jiggle.
Without clothes, he made her sniggle.
Meanwhile, he admired her wiggle
and secretly, he learned to giggle.

Day in, day out, behind their knuckles
they resorted to these chuckles
privately, not knowing the other
also had tee-hees to smother.

Where things before had made her bitter,
now they simply made Eve titter.
And when occasionally they bickered,
instead of shouting, Adam snickered.

Thus did laughter come to save
these first children of the cave,
and when they became ma and pa,
they taught their children to guffaw.

Then each succeeding generation
increased their sense of jubilation––
enjoying each others’ flubs and gaffes
with chuckles, chortles and belly laughs!

As friends and family still use humor
to solve discord and dispel rumor,
would that nations forever after
Replaced their guns and missiles with laughter.

 

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

https://silverthreading.com/2016/04/13/writers-quote-wednesday-writing-challenge-laughter/

Misplaced Meandering

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Misplaced Meandering

I’m asking you who is not lost in this life––
which child or mother or husband or wife––
our direction determined by machines and signs
that know our direction, but not our designs?
I think I’d prefer a simpler way
where I could just drift through each hour and day
turning right at the blue house, then going by guesses
without Google maps or those damn GPS’s.

Remember when maps could be lifted and folded?
If you were berated, corrected or scolded,
your wife was the one who said you’d gone wrong,
not a voice from your dash interrupting the song––
“Long Way Home” on your player, crooned by Tom Waits––
as your TomTom says you’ve gone through too many gates.
No more do we lollygag, detour or amble.
We can’t program Garmin to dawdle or ramble.

Lost in our motor home, lost in our car
though we know precisely just where we are.
Lost in our lives, no direction our own
with nüvi on our dashboard and Waze on our phone.
They point us in their choice of route and direction
while never inquiring of our predilection
for scenery, museums, or byways or diners.
When spontaneity beckons, they are decliners.

Remember those trips when you were a kid
when your dad would pull over whenever you bid,
take off on a side road to see what was there
and wend this way and that way with nary a care?
Now that sort of journey is bound to excite me,
but to take off today with these systems to fight me?
The thought of their voices is bound to incite me
to turn them all off and scream, “You can just bite me!”

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

Mr. Green Jeans Takes on Monsanto

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Captain Kangaroo promotional postcard, 1961

Mister Green Jeans Takes on Monsanto

David confronting the giant,
he has both the hammer and the stepladder
with which to confront the colossus.
Once the school bell rings
and I have vanished halfway through
Captain Kangaroo’s lilting theme music
that signals that one last commercial––

barreling out our front door
towards the vintage wooden elementary school
that leans so close
across the gravel street that divides us
that I can start out on the first ring of the final morning warning bell
and be in my seat on the second floor
by the time the last dong sounds––

Mr. Green Jeans is going to take on Monsanto
in a wrestling match––
transformed by his color
and that ladder
into a Jolly Green Giant
who will save the world
for future generations.

Of course, this is a dream I had.
Each brave nation not our own
must take on the task for itself––
saving the world one enlightened country at a time.
Anyway, even in fantasy, any kid of the fifties and early sixties
knows Mr. Green Jeans was a handyman, not a horticulturist.
It is poetic license that wrote this poem.

See Mr. Green Jeans here:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_nrfpPcxQw

Triple Tricky

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Triple Tricky

Who knows what each new day will bring?
Three dogs wiggling outside my door–
my feeding them, them wanting more.

The world reaches out for me and more.
Those worlds imagination  brings
come whining louder at my door.

Now and always at time’s door
I offer words and ask for more
than what, I know, the years will bring.

Agape once more, that final door brings me at last to face my fears.
I bring myself to cross its sill, still hoping there will be some more.

The WordPress prompt is “Tricky” and and NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a tritina–a poetic form that involves three three-line stanzas and a final concluding line. Three “end words” are used to conclude the lines of each stanza, in a set pattern of ABC, CAB, BCA, and all three end words appear together in the final line. I cheated and used two concluding lines instead of one. This poem meets both prompts. Tricky.
http://www.napowrimo.net/day-seven-3/
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/tricky/

This Poem is a Sort of Street

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(Click first photo to enlarge, then click on arrows.)

This Poem is a Sort of Street

This poem is a sort of street.
I wonder who I’m going to meet
as I walk down the dust of it––
plod along the “must” of it.
I do not know where I am going.
I follow it while never knowing
what’s around the next blind bend.
I do not know how it will end.

Each line is a new adventure
leading to acclaim or censure.
The GPS that’s guiding me––
determining what I will see––
is lodged so deep and far inside
a road stretched out so long and wide
that it must guide or I’ll get lost
in ruts of words and pay the cost

of trying to control by mind––
a street that’s meant to twist and wind
guided by a force within
that is intuitive and yin.
It is a guide that’s mostly lost
in this world so tempest-tossed.
The drop of it that I infuse
in rhymes that others then may choose

to read and ponder is the way
that I have chosen to try to pay
the toll for this tremendous gift
of life where I have learned too well
the lessons of the school bell.
I’ve learned to turn a deaf ear to
what pedants say I need to do
and take each day a road that’s new.

I’m led by dreams and intuition
down streets with no thought of fruition
but instead careen and ramble
without an outline or preamble
into places I’d never go
if I just reported what I know.
Then I record all that I see
so you can learn along with me.

 

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

Sun or Moon and Smooth or Rough

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Sun or moon and smooth or rough,
old or young and clothed or buff––
opposites contrast each other––
tough or easy, breathe or smother.
Shadows can be made with light,
though sun is opposite of night.
Sarcasm depends on this:
words that praise, but really diss.
Life consists of contrasts that
give yin for yang and tit for tat.
If you can’t find a life to fit,
just change into its opposite!
Reach for the hidden, release the found.
Contrasts make the world go round.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/contrast-2/

Clarity: Words After an Armistice

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Words After an Armistice

I want to make this perfectly clear.
We are not close just because we are near.
There has to be more than proximity for
my heart to open its almost closed door.

Say something sweet to me. Say something rare.
I do not feel loved just because you are there
across a room that is filled up with things.
You must think of something and give your thoughts wings.

Speak playful words that will prompt words from me.
Then volley them back to me. Don’t let thoughts “be”
without giving them air to live in and grow
so they banish these shadows and fan fire’s glow.

Passion’s not something for us to remember.
It’s better a constantly glowing live ember.
Get up from your chair. Give that remote a miss
and speak to me now with a word or a kiss.

Remove my hands from the keyboard and say,
“Let’s give the internet rest for a day.”
Take me to water and take me to sand.
Take off my shoes and take hold of my hand.

Walk me to tide swell and gull cry and light.
Say you’ve forgotten our last brittle fight.
Banish bad thoughts in the now and the here
so I can feel close just because you are near.

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/06/20/fowc-with-fandango-almost/

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

Endangered Practices

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Endangered Practices

I fear the future will not stand
for communication writ by hand.
E-mail, Instragram and text
is current and what’s coming next
could well be texting brain-to-brain.
Practice your penmanship in vain,
for in most schools, it’s been junked.
Writing by hand has gone defunct!!

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