Words for a Formerly Rejected Would-be Lover
The prospects are quite iffy that you’ll shift my view,
but come equipped with custard and I’ll take a spin with you.
We’ll see if we have anything in common other than
a taste for boiled custard and a mania for flan.
Prompt words today are shift, spin, custard, iffy and equipped. Image by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash.
Face Off!
It’s always there in front of me, greeting people first.
With having to live up to it, I always have been cursed.
When I want to look pious, it breaks out in a grin
revealing that within me there is a bit of sin.
It blushes when that boy walks in that I don’t want to know it.
I’m trying to be mysterious, and then I go and blow it!
It heats up and blushes when I’m trying to be cool.
How can something a part of me break every single rule?
When I doll up in my finest, then spend an hour on it,
adding shadow, blush and lashes, it decides to grow a zit!
I’m tired of facing up to its erratic bad behavior.
It seems to be my enemy when I most need a savior.
I’d like to go before it to decide what people see
before my face inserts itself, claiming to be me.
Then Covid comes along and gives me everything I ask.
Ironic that it takes a plague to furnish me a mask.
Night Traveler
Beneath the moon’s rotation and a sky cobbled by stars,
I lie upon my back and search for Jupiter and Mars.
The Milky Way creates a bridge for my imagination
which journeys down its highway without any hesitation.
Sequestered as I am by walls and blackness of the night,
there are no other travelers to share my nightly flight.
Only approach of daylight can bring this traveler home
as the morning draws a curtain over heaven’s dome.
Prompts today are bridge, sequestered, rotation, cobbled and approach. Image thanks to Ibrahim Shabil on Unsplash.
Illegal Crossing
The impatient pedestrian does not have time to wait.
If lights don’t change immediately, he’s going to be late.
The airs of his entitlement swirl busily about him.
He goes into a tirade when events begin to flout him.
He’s held his breath so long that his face is cobalt blue.
The city should adjust these lights. In fact, he’s going to sue.
Bliss for him is getting exactly what he wishes.
He is the shark who simply devours all the littler fishes.
And so he puts his hand up to stroll against the lights,
thinking all the motorists will grant him crossing rights.
But in seconds he is flattened and this just goes to show,
even if you’re a big shot, you can’t go against the flow.
Prompt words today are cobalt, pedestrian, bliss, tirade and entitlement. Image by Pawel Czerwinsky on Unsplash.
Infestation
When she screams like a banshee, running through the house,
just because she saw a tiny little mouse,
the mouse bilks all her efforts to thus scare it away
by slipping in the closet where in time it may
produce many other creatures of its ilk
in a tiny nest it has established in the silk
contents of her drawer of sexy lingerie—
picking for its bed her favorite negligee.
So, if she’s so lucky as to score a kiss
and, planning for a night of amatory bliss,
she reaches in her drawer, completely unaware
of the little visitors housed in her underwear,
no doubt she’ll find reminders of that earlier day
and the previous companion she thought she’d chased away.
Then her latest conquest will beat a fast retreat
as her former screams she ventures to repeat.
Word prompts today are banshee, reminder, bliss, bilk and house. Illustration thanks to Frenjamin Benklin on Unsplash.
Admonitions from the Editor of The Southern Christian Monitor
Good gracious, sir can you not mend your pertinent demeanor?
Clean up your language, cease your slurs. Find language that is cleaner!
When you speak, why must you be such a surly gent?
For once why don’t you try to say something we can print?
Your thoughts are fine. It’s just the words with which you choose to state them.
It simply is your word choice that makes us excoriate them.
As my southern mama used to say, “For goodness sakes, y’all,
if you can’t say it politely, don’t say anything at all!”
Disclaimer: There is to my knowledge no such publication as The Southern Christian Monitor. This poem is pure fiction, prompted by the prompt words!!!
Prompt words today are gracious, slur, pertinent, mend and print. Image by Roman Kraft on Unsplash.
New Neighbor
We exercise due diligence, but still we find we can’t
avoid the proclamations and the daily rant
that we’ve had to put up with, lately, ever since
our new caustic neighbor started peering o’er the fence,
raising his head above it by standing on a stump
to spread the raving tirade that he loves to dump
on anybody present who’s so unfortunate
as to visit our back yard and encounter this nut.
Every time I go outside, I must absorb his spewing.
He seems to have some radar that tracks all that we’re doing,
so when I take the garbage out, he’s always out there, too,
spreading verbal garbage that he’s amassed anew.
I guess there’s only one way to get out of this groove.
It may seem excessive, but I think we’ll have to move.
We’ll find a brand new house that has a tall back wall
and rebuff any neighbors who should try to call.
We’ll be the sort of neighbors that no one seems to know,
but we’ll have blessed privacy when we go out to mow !
Prompt words today are stump, anybody, caustic, diligent and absorb. Image by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash.
7 A.M.
Their rebuke is most benign.
Cats yowl protest. The dogs all whine.
As outside dogs slip into gear,
Zoe wakes up and bites my ear.
Their stomachs are a timetable
that I will meet if I am able.
I drag myself out of my bed.
If only I could sleep instead!
The hour that I hit the hay
I fear was not so far away.
Three hours of sleep or perhaps four
were all I had. Surely, not more.
Just as I thought to jump sleep’s hurdle
I remembered, “Daily Wordle!”
Grabbed computer, filled every square,
weeding out vowels my only care.
Wordle in five or four or three?
I cannot sleep until I see.
But later, morning comes too soon
as animals begin their croon.
I move to kitchen to feed cats,
open the door, put bowls on mats,
fill with kibble and with wet
catfood, and they still their fret.
Move to back door, feed each dog
different portions, mind in fog.
Zoe inside, big dogs out,
fends off pilfering and pout.
What I gain in remuneration
is their ceasing excitation.
Whines replaced by scraping beat
of metal dishes on concrete,
clicking jaw and lapping tongue
as cats and dogs both old and young
enjoy results of their design.
Then, back to bed as they all dine!
Prompt words today are concrete, remuneration, design, rebuke and timetable.
,
Misnamed
I admit my name seems to lack a certain beauty.
I’ll never be an eponym. Who wants a town named Judy?
It’s clear that my name never makes it into poet talk.
No unfortunate child will be the chip off my old block.
Interlaced with second names —Agatha or Jeanette,
still that silly first name is as basic as you get.
The reception that it gets in lists is surely less than fine.
Somehow I always end up being sent to last in line.
It’s not correct to grumble over names, but all the same,
why give a perfect child such a clearly imperfect name?
Prompts today are interlace, correct, reception, eponym and chip.
Building Joy in the World
If I forgo mere toil and strife
for a more playful sort of life,
and live this playful sort of life
to the accompaniment of fife,
of fife and whistle, flute and drum,
my narrow life might expand some.
Expand from shard to full-blown bowl,
filled to its edges with more soul
’til edges of my soul have filled
the bowl from which it now has spilled.
Spilled out to change the world it touches,
wrested from my lonely clutches.
Freed from their clutch, to build a life
that has transcended mere toil and strife
Prompt words today are narrow, forgo, playful, shard and touch. This poem is also written to fulfill the NaPoWriMo2022 day 27 prompt to write a “Duplex”—a 14 line poem of seven two-line stanzas where the second line of the first stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the second stanza, the second line of the second stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the third stanza, and so on. Then the last line should be the same as the first line of the poem. Image by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 