Bad Fortune
A superfluous excrescence to our sinking ship of state,
of all our past mistakes, I’m sorry to relate
that this uquiet jester is our biggest flub to date–
a fact that many voters cottoned onto way too late.
But if you seek a formula for change, there’s no debate.
Vote this fool out of office before he seals our fate!
Prompt words today are quiet, formula, jester, excrescence and past.
The Lowest of the Highest by Default
He was a homeless jester, a contentious feisty gent.
He shed a sense of triumph everywhere he went.
No amount of scorn and no superior air
ever contradicted his shabby debonair.
In a stovepipe hat, overalls and a tux jacket,
he played his mobile xylophone, making such a racket
that folks rushed out to pay him just so he would quit.
He felt no sense of shame in this, for he took pride in it.
He had the perfect racket. He felt he counted coup—
raking in the dough for what he didn’t do.
He had a fridge crate penthouse on a tower labeled Trump.
(Also a little pied á terre across town at the dump.)
Highest of the highest and lowest of the low—
his main address the finest though he had so little dough.
The key up to the rooftop he had scored out of a pocket
right after the janitor had gone up there to lock it.
He snitched a maintenance uniform and in the helter-skelter
of a tenant’s moving day, filched his plywood shelter.
It made a perfect domicile obscured in a back corner.
As a joke, on its front cornice, he wrote, “Residence of Horner.”*
But he dragged it to the rooftop’s front when the day was done
and had a view of city lights that was second to none.
You may think that he’s a shyster and the building’s lowest resident,
but only since the former lowest tenant became president!
*Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Xmas pie.
He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, “What a good boy am I!”
Words for the day are homeless, contentious, jester, amount and triumph. Image by Donald Teel on Unsplash, used with permission.
Struth
The world is swathed in horror. It vacillates between
ridiculous pronouncements both uninformed and mean.
Truth seems to be moveable. We store it here and there,
but rarely in an orange creature with unruly hair.
It seems he has no access to lexicon or brain
as everything he says is impossibly inane.
Prompt words today are horror, vacillate, moveable, ridiculous and access. Photo on Unsplash, used with permission.
Treacherous Butterfly
No matter what censure, no matter the talk,
nothing will cause the man to take stock
of each unbalanced act and nonsensical statement.
Nothing on earth can prompt the abatement
of whims that he tries to pass off as facts.
Who can measure what harm his spontaneous acts
have caused nation-wide and likewise to Earth?
He’s a treacherous butterfly whose wings give birth
to a hurricane violent in its effect—
its currents fanned wilder by his crazy sect.
Word prompts today are plant, treacherous, butterfly, censure and stock. Image by Arun Clarke on Unsplash , used with permission.
King of Fools
It’s a virtual world we sink into for fun
now that our worldly contact is done.
Facebook is our friendship and Skype our salvation,
Zoom our replacement for kids’ education.
It’s our succor in sadness, replacement for sport,
when others malign us, our means of retort.
Our childrens’ frondescence confined to Twitter,
how can they resist being surly and bitter?
We’re culpable, all of us, I must confess.
How could we let things get in such a mess?
Money our God and diverted by pleasure,
we sacrificed a more vital treasure,
giving up liberty, we were distracted
by a buffoon who reenacted
presenting reality just as a show—
impressing with posturing, bluffing and dough.
And those for whom books were replaced with a screen?
They couldn’t tell the difference between
what entertained and what was for real
and that’s how he managed to posture and steal
liberty—both on a scale that was national
making decisions stupidly irrational,
and our own liberty, now that we’re trapped
within our boxes, trussed up and wrapped
with only the foolish wandering round
making decisions, unmasked and unsound,
the dupes of a Mother who’s finally decided
that all of these humans whom she has abided
for thousands of years are on their way out,
aided by their foolishness, without a doubt,
and by their leader, that king of all fools
who will bring down the world with his asinine rules!!!
Prompt words for today are frondescence, culpable, virtual, succor and sink. All photos thanks to Unsplash, used with permission.
A Empirical Truth
I’m writing to our leadership–selfish, short-sighted fools
who are selling off our national parks and making other rules
about protected species, pollution and our health.
Saying it’s for our good while the rich expand their wealth.
If Nero fiddled as Rome burned, it’s also true today
that our most notable leader also likes to play.
As he’s shooting birdies on wild habitats turned tame,
his kids take off for Africa to shoot some wild game.
What we do to others turns back on us in time,
and Mother Nature will find a way of dealing with your crime.
I suggest that you use caution when visiting a zoo
lest the animals you threaten end up hunting you.
Prompt words for today are explain, empirical, zoo, caution and leadership.
Today’s post is dedicated to all of you who labor every day to post your prompts and to read our responses. You and your predecessors have been my motivation for seven years now, every day, and I have probably rarely thanked you, so for Ragtag Daily Prompt, Fandango, Your Daily Word, Word of the day and The Daily Spur, this one is for you. And Ragtag, your prompt today wasn’t meant to be taken personally, right?
Prompt words today are windbag, (Hope this one isn’t personal,) begrudge, futile, inspire and ease.
Five Little Words
Lest you think I’m a windbag and lest you begrudge
my words meant for chuckles, to inspire or nudge
for social reform and for giving the boot
to public servants who pillage and loot
our public coffers and fill up their pockets
with money or spend it on guns, walls and rockets.
Better the money be spent on our own
in stead of a POTUS who sits on his throne
dreaming of golf games and bragging of pussies,
berating mask-wearers as alarmists and wussies.
OK see how I’m off on a whim or a breeze,
raving again with remarkable ease?
I can’t seem to stop, even though I’m retired.
I simply can’t shut off the words when inspired.
So long as the world is so stupid and brutal,
efforts to stifle my words would be futile.
Just five daily words will inspire the rest.
I write all the others at their behest.
Photo by Ashwin Vaswani on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Jumping to Conclusions
She’s a lady of distinction. You can tell it by her walk,
in her whole deportment—her manners and her talk.
It seems it is a given, since she has a lot of dough
just where, in November, her vote is bound to go.
She lies back on her chaise, even graceful while recumbent,
but quickly springs erect when you mention the incumbent.
If you ask her about politics, she’s apt to tell the truth.
She will not give allegiance to the stupidly uncouth.
Prompt words today are distinction, apt, allegiance and walk.
An acquaintance recently commented on Facebook that I should “Give it a rest, Judy!” My answer is that I’m not rioting or burning buildings or occupying state capitol buildings with guns or expressing my feelings by licking meat in grocery stores or coughing in people’s faces. What I am doing is saying what I believe daily, hoping that somewhere, somehow, I’ll sway at least one person to reason. Probably won’t happen. Our country is so firmly divided now that even something catastrophic just seems to pull us more widely apart. It is perhaps the era of our decline that all great cultures in the past have fallen to, but there are ways to fight other than stubbornly and violently standing up purely for one’s own needs and this is my way. So here it is—my:
Daily Diatribe
I’m on permanent curfew, and I don’t give a darn.
I’ll sort out all my closets and finally sort my yarn
by strand size and by color. I’ve been wanting to for years.
I’ll attend to all those “To Do” lists I owe on in arrears.
I’m respecting all the rules—wearing face masks, washing hands.
I’m not rioting or protesting or taking racist stands.
I’m staying home and hoping justice will have its day.
I’m not quoting out of context but I am having my say!
For those who say it’s patriotic doing what you want to—
coughing in people’s faces in an effort just to flaunt you,
I want to say, “How infantile.” If you were mine, I’d spank you.
But for those living with reason, I want to express a “Thank you.”
Those led by a fool with be drawn to foolish action.
If you glorify a sociopath, you’ll be joined in that faction
by white supremacists and bigots. Kindly look around you.
How can the folks who share your views not shock you and astound you?
It’s said you may be judged by the company you keep,
and the seeds that you now sow will be the harvest that you reap.
Prompt words for today are curfew, yarn, respect, justice and context.
Bird Chorus
Birds perch on countless branches, each a separate bell
ringing out the cadence of stories they must tell.
Around them, eerie silence, for no other sounds compete.
No calls of children playing. No pattering of feet
up and down the pavement. No playing girls and boys,
for all the busy humans, infamous for their noise,
are staying in their houses and no amount of blustering
from their scattered leaders is bound to stop their clustering.
Families draw in closer as friends all fade away
into their particular intentions for the day.
Offices turn cyber. Schools are merely screens.
Mothers sit at kitchen tables, perusing magazines.
Fathers pace on carpets and worry about money.
How are they to make it now that the world’s gone funny?
Now and then, the silence split open by a bell
tolling for the human race who haven’t done too well
at going with the scheme of things. They prefer to take over,
making malls and parking lots out of fields of clover.
Trashing up the landscape. Peppering the tide
with their plastic mountains grown too big to hide.
Is it any wonder how nature responds?
We’ve held her prisoner long enough. She’s sloughing off her bonds.
She’s given us broad hints, but still we do not mind her.
So she’s erasing her mistakes and putting us behind her.
Prompt words today are countless branches, amount, eerie, infamous and bell.
