Tag Archives: #FOWC

Kiddie Lit

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Kiddie Lit

Kids’ writers should not share advice or issue proclamations,
give retorts to news reports or deal with exclamations.
Pervasive thoughts that they promote should be more of the soul.
Promoting  thoughts of mermaids should rather be their goal.

Reality will find us no matter where we look,
in news stands or on Twitter or in every printed book.
It’s fantasy that needs support in this day and age
when bad news is what we get on every written page.

Early on, a kid is taught to exercise and hustle,
but it’s equally important to develop other muscle.
A brain needs exercising, too, and after its gestation
is best served by means of an active imagination.

 

 

 

 

Prompts today are mermaid, writer, pervasive, retort, advice and proclamation.

In A Society of Women

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2007

In A Society of Women

No patriarchal dominance rears its violent head.
Birth fluids and menses are the only lifeblood shed.
No lifted guns or measured gait. No uniform or boot
disturbs the regal silence of the calmness at our root.

Spontaneity rules the day. We follow no set path.
Not guided by testosterone, we do not extoll wrath.
The crack of no whip guides us. We can’t be led like sheep.
You cannot boss or bully us. We live by what we reap.

Your rules buzz around us like mosquitos in the brain,
centered around principals that we hold in disdain.
Dominance and power and unlimited riches
would not be an option in a world that’s run by bitches!

Prompt words today are crack, mosquito, spontaneity, patriarchal, root and moonlight.

Dietary Doldrums

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Dietary Doldrums

Her eating habits, luckily, were found to be most corrigible,
for her personality was found to still be porridgeable.
Oatmeal formed her breakfast and salads formed her lunch
as she foresook the bad foods on which she used to munch.

Buttery popcorn banished as an unhealthy mistake,
she snacked instead on kale chips for her figure’s sake.
Rare steak was  soon banished, for she relished it no more
once she foresook flesh meats, shuddering at their gore.

Her electric grinder ground chickpeas up instead
and this was the protein upon which she fed.
Healthy ever after once her war with food was won,
meals sugarless and greaseless, alas, were not much fun.

 

\Prompt words today are buttery, personality, gore, corrigible, Steak and electric. Image by Deryn Macey on Unsplash. 

Strappy Stilettos

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Strappy Stilettos

I languish in these pointy shoes with their flimsy straps.
My ankles teeter with their height, I poke out through their gaps.
I don’t appreciate the fact that they’re the current style.
You try walking in such shoes mile after mile!

The material that forms them is so sparing and so meager
that I’ll be darned if I can figure out why gals are eager
to teeter down the street in them or wear them out to dance.
Trying to walk on shoes like this is taking quite a chance!

The truth lies in the fact that shoes like this must be the fashion
of men for whom the look of things is their only passion.
Safety and walkability cannot be their goal,
for feet were not created to balance on a pole

held in by straps that mean the heels can slide from side to side,
prompting a proclivity to stumble and to slide.
Mr. Choo and Ferragamo, if they ever tried to wear them
might have found their shoes inclined to torture and to scare them.

There should be a special Hell made for designers who maintain
that for the sake of passion one must succumb to the pain
of shoes that are a torture. They should have to walk a mile in them
and while they are in agony, be forced to feign a smile in them!!!!

 

Prompt words today are: pointy shoes, languish, lie, meager, appreciate and flimsy. Image by Femme Spirit @Unsplash.

False Prospects

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False Prospects

The young are often credulous—open to chains of lies—
reaching out for the brass ring, desirous of the prize.

Hopeful, naive and buoyant, they flit from thing to thing,
desirous of the riches they hope that fate will bring.

With age their hopes are truncated as reason rears its head
and they discover the reality of what life gives instead.

Toil, sweat and labor and responsibility
supersede those youthful dreams of nobility.

Fuming with fate’s injustice, we are pulled into line,
as sour grapes replace youth’s hopeful dreams of honey wine.

This is a dreary little poem and not really reflective of my experience in life, but blame the prompt words and the fact that I have to be at art camp in an hour!!!!!

 

Prompt words for the day are buoyant, truncate, lie, credulous, chain and fuming.

Disposing of Grandma (In Accordance with Her Wishes)

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The Vacant Lot

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The Vacant Lot

The vapors of a morning mist rise from the vacant lot.
It is a tract forgotten— our neighborhood’s biggest blot.
Each person’s in denial as to their distribution
of building rubble and garbage that’s their daily contribution

to this precarious tumble of rubble, junk and weeds
that every year grows higher and in whose jumble breeds
mosquitoes, rats and killer bees that invade my yard
making neighborly coexistence exceptionally hard.

Good fences make good neighbors I’ve found to be a myth.
To see the truth of this old adage, we must strip it to its pith.
For the stone wall that borders it, alas, has been infested
by a million angry worker bees whose well-being’s invested

in invading all their neighbors, driving dogs and human folks
back into their houses to avoid their neighbors’ pokes.
A precarious situation, at best, dear reader, for,
there is a dilemma present at its core.

If we want to eat their honey must we put up with their stings?
Must we coincide with every danger nature brings?
For the ending of the story, if you care, you now must wait.
For I will recite it at a later date.

Today’s prompt words are vapor, precarious, myth, tract, denial and vacant lot.

Morning Cuppas

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Cup of Java?
Cuppa Tea?

Cups of Java or Cups of Tea? Me, I just need my:

Morning Couplets

Every single day for years, my morning’s not replete
until my poem is published—polished and complete.

I meander through my sentences until I think they’re done,
and then I herd them into shape—each metaphor and pun.

My need is pathological to get them all just right.
I love words’ sensuality, their pathos and their bite.

Though some have a reluctance to show up when I call them,
there’s a satisfaction when I finally recall them.

What would I do with mornings if I had no words to play with?
There’d be nothing else for me to find to fill my day with!

Prompts for today are meander, sentence, pathological, replete, reluctance.

First Crush

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Prompts today are understand, whim, approval, hinder, systematic and absolutley.

Lately I am finding that every other poem or so shows up in the reader in paragraph form rather than in centered stanzas. Has anyone else found this to be true? To try to remedy it, today I took a screen shot of the poem and published it as a media file rather than the regular way. I’d be interested in hearing your comments about how this affects your viewing and also hearing from those having the same problem.  Thanks, Judy

Belvedere

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Belvedere

Strolling through the belvedere at sunset, just with you,
I pretended that I’d brought you here for the uncanny view.

Yet I really formed a rapt audience of one.
You are the only view I seek when the day is done.

I’m just your part time lover, and yet I must confess
that when I see your line of jaw, your hair braid or your dress,

it catapults my heart into regions that are new.
I’d like to make a wallpaper of visions just of you

so that all the whole day long, whatever I might do,
I could live forever surrounded by your view.

 

Prompt words today are part time, Belvedere, catapult, wallpaper, audience and uncanny.

A belvedere or belvidere is an architectural structure sited to take advantage of a fine or scenic view. The term has been used both for rooms in the upper part of a building or structures on the roof, or a separate pavilion in a garden or park.  And, it is also a brand of Vodka!!!