Tag Archives: #FOWC

Art Imitates Nature

Art Imitates Nature

Suspended in this plastic world, my heart a gaping wound
if not for all the beauty in which it is cocooned.
How would we salvage anything from war and greed and lust
without art’s kind revision of all that is unjust
to make us reclaim hope in life simply because we must?
It’s the alchemy of nature to which we are beholden.
It takes our baser natures, transforming them to golden.

 

Prompts today are golden, salvage, wound, plastic, suspended, and revision.

Media Memorial

Media Memorium

I derive full pleasure from binge watching television,
even though it earns me my friends’ complete derision.

I’m crazy about mysteries, game shows and romances—
all those “cute meets,” chance encounters—all those furtive glances.

Outside bluegrass concerts draw my interest, but the air
is full of pollen, so I prefer watching from my lair

with a bathroom close at hand that I don’t have to share.
Somehow camaraderie’s more comfy from my chair!

For my memorial, when I die, be sure that I am there,
ensconced in front of my TV on my derriere.

Prompt words today are memorial, bluegrass, mystery,derive, full and binge watching. Image from Pixabay

What She Had Cookin’

What She Had Cookin’

A wizard in the kitchen, she performed well her thaumaturgy
by transforming  porridge into fine cuisine for me.
Each dish she served just seemed my hunger to inflate
as she put spells on my stomach and magic on my plate.

Her stew pot made by blood boil, her milk pudding made me purr,
every single dish a symbol of my love for her.
Then lying in her oaken bed, my hunger still intact,
She finally quenched my appetite. And that, folks, is a fact!!!!!

Prompt words today are: oak, intact, stomach, thaumaturgy,  symbol and porridge.

*Pronounced thaw’ muh tour gee,  with the accent on the first syllable, thaumaturgy is the performance of miracles; specifically : magic.

Say hey, good lookin’ – what ya got cookin’?
How’s about cookin’ somethin’ u
p with me?
Hey, sweet baby – don’t you think maybe
We can find us a brand new recipe?

I got a hot rod Ford, and a two dollar bill
And I know a spot right over the hill
There’s soda pop and the dancing’s free
So if you wanna have fun, come along with me
Say hey, good lookin’ – what ya got cookin’?
How’s about cooking somethin’ up with me?

I’m free and ready, so we can go steady
How’s about savin’ all your time for me?
No more lookin’, I know I been tookin’
How
s about keepin’ steady company?

I’m gonna throw my date book over the fence
And buy me one for five or ten cents
I’ll keep it till it’s covered with age
Cause I’m writin’ your name down on every page

Say hey, good lookin’ – what ya got cookin’?
How’s about cookin’ somethin’ up with me?

Tending the Zoo

Tending the Zoo

Grooming tasks inside the the zoo seem to go on forever
with so many body parts to clean or trim or sever,
but when it comes to manicures, one group must be exempted,
for when it comes to ungulates, the groomers are not tempted
to attempt to trim the hooves of rhino or of elephant.
Even the most burliest of manicurists find they can’t!!!

And in respect to dentistry, though elephants are easy,
when it comes to giraffes, zoo dentists are most queasy.
Giraffes are not unruly, capricious or uncouth.
The problem is the distance between the turf and tooth.
And thinning out a lion’s mane simply can’t be done.
Relinquishing their hairs? They won’t part with even one.

And every time the groomers’ van goes into parking gear,
far up in the shady green, the monkeys disappear.
For though every mosquito, every flea and every tick
that invades their body may itch or make them sick,
inter-monkey grooming is a method sure to please
better than the insect sprays, which only make them sneeze!

 

Prompt words today are green, ungulate, relinquish, capricious, shady and exempt. Image by Thomas Oxford on Unsplash.

Gain and Loss

Gain and Loss

I’ve found I simply must inure
myself to things I must endure.
I’m overweight and immature
and told my writing is obscure—
written in a dialect

that people find hard to detect.

I joined a gym, but now my trainer
says he cannot make it plainer
than to say I won’t lose weight
until I choose to fill my plate
with other food and smaller portions
to decrease present proportions.

I thought if I became a spinner
I’d become a weight-loss winner,
but in fact, no pounds I’m doffing—
only panting, wheezing, coughing.
But I didn’t waste the time.
At least I came up with this rhyme.

Now perhaps if you’d elect
to check my poem’s dialect,
you’d find that though my waist and thighs
have not decreased in girth or size,
perhaps I have lost one small thang.
Have I lost, perhaps, my Dakota twang?

Today’s prompt words are winner, dialect, coughing, proportion, trainer and obscure. Image by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash.

Spray-paint and Poetry

Spray-paint and Poetry

Written as calligraphy or scrawled upon a wall,
a book tucked in our pocket or extending down the hall,
expressed as tight couplets or as an angry stew,
words impart great insight and volunteer a view
into minds of wisdom or the hapless few
who unfortunately have little else to do

but to spray-paint imprecations of gender or of race
here in public places where all of us must face
those dark spots of the soul brought into public view
so volunteers of vitriol can share with me and you
those murky muddy sentiments better buried deep
instead of out here in the world to cause us all to weep.

If left to steep within the soul perhaps some inner magic
might turn them into poetry—profound and deep and tragic.
Some inner mental chemistry performing that gestation
that makes insight of vitriol, transforming imprecation
into understanding to write upon the pages
of potential misanthropes transformed now into sages.

 

Or, in a nutshell:

Metamorphosis

imprecation
perturbation
emanation
vacillation
gestation
germination
education
equation
mutation
anticipation
excitation
elation
maturation
new creation

True, probably more graffiti is about love than hate,
but these poems are written in response to the latter.

Guiding words today are hapless, imprecation, insight, volunteer, mud and calligraphy.

Reading Challenged


Reading Challenged

Diana Gabaldon’s romances are way too historic.
Koolkosherkitchen‘s recipes? Delicious, but caloric.
Mo Willems counts on pigeons to chase away the blues,
but I’d never volunteer to fill any pigeon’s shoes
due to my fear of flying, so even in a pinch,
to read of being  airborne causes me to flinch.

Can’t read Cormac McCarthy or Murakami either.
When violence erupts in books, I have to take a breather.
Harlequin romances are too mushily romantic,
for I prefer my novels less sexually pedantic.
All-in-all you might have guessed I’ve little left to read
and so instead I write all day to satisfy my need

to hang out with a word or two that has not been written
by writers such as those above by whom I’ve not been smitten.
And though my poems aren’t edible or sexually explicit,
violent or airborne, I feel it is implicit
that I need an appointment with my therapist to see
if I can even stomach silly verses penned by me!

Prompt words are pinch, historic, appointment, volunteer, and flying. Image by Brendan Stephens on Unsplash.

Escargot

Escargot

I am an ally of the truth, which lives the whole world over,
hiding beneath leaves of grass or hyacinths or clover.

A tiny snail detective, sliding slowly with no sound,
scoping out a food source over every edge and mound—

with its single jaw at work, nature’s innovation
cleans up all her messes with its constant mastication.

Cutter ants march by like time, disposing hour by hour,
of beauty we aren’t finished with, flower after flower,

but the snail goes gliding by, almost beyond detection,
eating everything in sight—less picky in selection.

From animal waste to fungus, and even other snails,
the appetite of gastropods seemingly never fails.

And then, ludicrous humans, knowing not what they do,
themselves devour these creatures who deign to dine on poo!

 

Prompt words today are snail,  innovation, detective, march, ally and clover.

Dreamworld

Dreamworld

My dreams are irregular and I cannot control them.
Every night I enter them in order to patrol them.

Sometimes I feel marooned there, like a miner with no pick,
a writer with no pencil, a conductor with no stick.

Vanity is left behind. No room for it in dreams.
Life’s garment that we’ve sewn with care is ripped out at its seams.

It does no good to gripe or moan that you have lost control,
for dreams move us outside ourselves as though that is their goal.

On the outside looking in, our life becomes a role
in which we play ourself in our quest to find our soul.

Prompts today are dreams, irregular, maroon, gripe, miner and vanity.

Process of Elimination

Process of Elimination

The child asked her grandpa to teach her how to spell,
and he could not deny her, though he knew good and well
that spelling class for him had been a different sort of Hell.

They had not been his forte, the chalk board and the book,
and so this was a challenge he timorously took. 
He had to find a method to help, by hook or crook!

He said to make a menu of all the words she sought
and he would make a list of all the spellings they were not—
a reverse teaching method that, thankfully, she bought! 

So, she gave her assent to all his ballyhoo,
discounting his misspellings of “tuthbrush”  “taribul” “hoo,”
on her route to finding  spellings that were new.

Thus she learned to overlook solutions that he sold her
in the loving ill-contrived way he sought to mold her
and used the dictionary, ruling out spellings he’d told her. 

Prompts today are: timorous, toothbrush, ballyhoo, assent, spell and menu.