Rude Reception
I don’t forgive the kidney punch, sharp and sure and quick.
Your sapless smile an icicle, cold and stiff and sick.
Once they’ve repaired the damage and my tactics I’ve refined,
I’ll return your greeting, in fervor and in kind.
Prompt words are sharp, repair, icicle, sapless, kidney and don’t. Image borrowed from the internet.
Vicissitudes
Vicissitudes of fortune occur to everyone.
At the very best of times, they snuff out all your fun.
You find the perfect dress and shoes then find that you are cursed
with a hellacious haircut that presents you at your worst.
Neither fame nor fortune is a perpetual state.
The only constant for each one is that they will abate.
You hop up on the carousel and grab the golden ring,
but can’t hold on forever to any precious thing.
Luck ebbs and flows like tidal waves, advancing and departing—
an ending just as sure in life as every action’s starting.
So get used to life’s vagaries, for you may be sure
that they are the only things certain to endure.
Prompt words today are hellacious, neither, vicissitude, grab, haircut and hop.
A Lemonade Stand!!!!
Teetotalers do not mind
refreshments of the softer kind.
A lemon sliced, plump and terete
once squeezed, they feel, cannot be beat.
A lemonade is sure to please,
their thirst to quench and thus appease.
On the other hand, some folks
consider drinks like this as jokes.
They prefer their lemons sliced this way
along with mint served in a spray
that serves as garnish or a kicker
for a drink that’s laced with liquor.
Liquids served with temperance
will rarely warrant a defense.
In short order, they will rate
demands at once for a rebate!!!
If you serve lemonade, please thin it
with hefty slugs of gin within it!!!!
Prompt words today are terete, rebate, lemonade, appease, spray and mind.
((Click on Photos to Enlarge)
Reinvention
Am I on a teeter-totter or an even plane?
Interestingly kooky or a bit insane?
I try to reinvent myself to fight off signs of dolor.
Does this mean I’m adventurous or that I am bipolar?
I stretch myself upon a rack, fresh insights to inspire.
Initiate new interests, hoping they’ll light a fire.
But there is no assurance that this new me will last
any longer than the other me’s that I have cast.
Prompt words are reinvent, rack, initiate, assure, plane.
I know I went a bit crazy with the photos. I had just a few and then kept filling in gaps.
Mismatched
By what draconian measures might you cure your spouse of snoring?
No amount of pushing, shoving, poking, shouting, roaring
will rouse him from his sleep, and it does no good to smudge him.
No pungent fumes from spruce or sage can do a thing to budge him.
As maddening as a girl might find a husband who is boring,
there is no match more irritating than one prone to snoring.
Prompt words today are it, spouse, draconian, spruce, push and pungent.
We’ll Be Having S’mores!
He’ll rid the cupboards of food he abhors
and refurbish them with the makings for s’mores:
marshmallows, Hershey bars and then for backers,
he’ll purchase a surplus of packs of graham crackers.
A triple pleasure, this snack is the star
of any snack found in packet or jar.
Let the unimaginative shop in stores
for pre-made snacks. He’ll be serving us s’mores!
Prompt words today are triple, unimaginative, marshmallow, refurbish, star, surplus. Photos by Autumn Mott and Jessica Rusce on Unsplash.
Cantankerous
Grandpa is displaying his usual disposition,
expressing all his anger with excessive exposition.
He’s feeling most litigious and says that all the dang
liberals and Democrats should be sentenced to hang!
To Hell with all the secrecy. Sound the fire sirens
and lynch all left wing voters found in our environs.
If it were up to him they’d draw and quarter, limb-from-limb
every gol-durn voter who does not vote like him!
Prompt words today are hang, litigious, secrecy, disposition, sound. Image by Charles Buchler on Unsplash.
Fiction, Dolly!!!!
Parting Manifesto
All the reasons you have vetted
(reasons I should feel indebted)
are reasons that I question, so,
I can’t accept your tales of woe.
Those monstrous acts you say I’ve done?
It is a fact that I’ve done none.
And all the things you say you’ve bought?
The fact is that I bought the lot!
Your bags are packed and by the door.
Load up that sports car you adore
and take yourself right down the road.
I’m closing up the mother lode!
For, though I’ll miss our hugs and smooching,
I won’t miss your constant mooching.
It’s time you joined the teeming mob,
got off your keister and got a job!!!!
Prompt words today are question, indebted, monstrous, like.
Vanity Mirror
Your grace leaves courters spellbound and at a slight impasse,
for they’d like to woo you, but they do not have the brass.
Ordinary fellows feel they’ve not the right
to ask you for a date in fear they may incite
a cacophony of laughter revealing your disdain
at their misguided efforts—that they would even deign
to think that they were worthy of such a one as you,
deserving of the honor to stoop and kiss your shoe.
Do you feel the portrait that I sketch deserving of your buzz?
Or do you get the message: pretty is as pretty does.
Prompt words today are grace, spellbound, cacophony, impasse, ordinary and sketch.
Christmas: A New Rendition
That the papers had a field day is totally explicable,
“Santa Stuck in the Chimney and for Hours Inextricable!”
So now he’s on a diet. No more cookies, no more milk.
He’s restricted to mere salads and others of their ilk.
He’s feeling way less boisterous. No more “Ho ho ho’s!”
So there’ll be fewer miracles in our stockings’ toes.
That year the Grinch stole Christmas just might be repeated
and socks hung on the mantel might have to be re-feeted.
Prompt words today are field day, inextricable, fireplace, boisterous, miracle and rendition.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 