Tag Archives: #FOWC

Wedding Dalliance

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Wedding Dalliance

Though it’s a lovely wedding, after the seventh toast,
you’re tired of the well-wishing and each new smart riposte.

You’ve had too much champagne. You can’t face another bubble,
so you ask for a martini and say, “Make it a double!”

You’re fatigued by the spectacle and need to get some air,
so you wander to the terrace to view the cloudscapes there.

Your shoes are less than comfortable, so you slip them off,
 and find that you are lost in dreams when you hear the cough 

of an interloper who has joined you in escape—
another wedding attendee who’s come outside to gape.

He joins you at the railing and elbows you for room,
and before you know it, you are flirting with the groom!

When you feel his arms around you, you take it in your stride.
You’ll have no regrets later, for luckily, you’re the bride!

 

Prompt for today are cloudscapes, attend, spectacle, riposte and comfortable. Image by Marcus Lewis on Unsplash.

Panty Girdles and Merry Widows

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Panty Girdles and Merry Widows

It was another day, another time way back when girls wore girdles
in which we sat tightly confined—no jumping over hurdles
or doing other boy things like breathing with great ease—
as waist-cinchers contributed to our daily squeeze.

Our efforts for confinement may seem to you as needless,
but your suggestions way back then would have turned out heedless.
Emphatically, we all believed in our need for constriction.
Our bodies couldn’t just hang out. They called out for restriction.

And what we squeezed and corseted lest parts of us might flop–
those parts down on the bottom and the other parts on top?
Those assets that were hidden in the past by all the rest of us,
today, by the Kardashians, are revealed as the best of us!

 

Prompts for today are another day, suggest, needless, emphatic and effort. A 
merry widow, by the way, is what we called the corset pictured above. 

Impromptu Shopping Trip

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Impromptu Shopping Trip

Drop everything you’re doing and come with me boutique-ing.
They have a drop-dead sparkling gown like the one you’re seeking.
Change your dress and grab your lipstick, mascara and a comb.
Dishes can wait and dust will still be there when you get home.

Luckily the shop  I found isn’t very far.
You can put your makeup on while I drive the car.
Looks can kill, you know, and you’ll be lethal in this gown.
It’s sure to make a smile of any fellow’s frown.

There’ll be no vestige of the housewife when you wear this gown.
Your spouse will want to take you out dancing on the town.
When he sees you in it, his objections will be nil.
Just make sure he sees you first before he sees the bill.

 

 

Prompt words for the day are: lethal, boutique, sparkling, vestige and drop. Photograph by Hush Naidoo Jade on Unsplash.

The One Thuosand Dollar Error

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The One Thuosand Dollar Error

It was duplicitous lithography that landed him in jail,
for he found the thousand dollar bill impossible to nail.
Mr. Cleveland’s mustache was a bit askew,
and he messed up the order of the “o” and “u.”

And even though he crows about his quality of paper,
sure he could subsist for life just on this one bold caper,
the first bill that he tried to pass put him in a cell.
If you’re going to be a counterfeiter, best you learn to spell!

 

Word prompts today are crow, duplicitous, lithography subsist and paper.

The Docent of the Midnight Gallery

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A little humor to dispel the effect of the paintings presented above: Mealancholy: The remembrance of the day’s repast.(Those meals taken before your diet began.) 

That silly definition was prompted by the fact that I noticed I’d misspelled the first prompt below while establishing the link. Here is the real word plus its companions:

The actual prompt words today are melancholy, Kafkaesque, gallery, cosset and black.

The Docent of the Midnight Gallery

Stark and grim and melancholy—harsh and Kafkaesque,
she ruled the midnight gallery from behind her desk.
Far from being cosseted, viewers were oft upbraided.
She moaned and screeched at visitors as though infuriated.
Skeletal and  shrouded, her visage veiled in black,
she insured no visitor ever ventured back!

Bridge Game

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Bridge Game

Free from any adversary, safe from all deceptions,
the captain ruled his ship without yielding to exceptions.
So the cruise proceeded with ease from day to night,
and if any denizen was made to feel contrite,
it was not the captain who was made to feel the shame,
for when upon the water, he was spared from any blame
and so felt no contrition for all that he declared,
no matter how incongruous or how reason-impaired.
He was not held accountable for any misjudged thing,
for within his dominion, he was undisputed king.

 

Prompt words today are adversary, exception, cruise, contrite and safe. Image by Daniele D. Andreti on Unsplash

May-December Marriage

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May-December Marriage

Your insistence that I swallow three times between each bite
is just one small example of directives that incite.
All your protective rules that others find adorable,
on the receiving side of them quickly turns deplorable.

Whatever you may label them by your own nomenclature,
your “loving” rules are symptoms of extreme controlling nature.
So I’m galvanized to action. Since I’m tired of your caring,
I’m making a decision that’s both personal and daring.

I’m going out without you for a little drive alone
and I’m not taking my pager and I’m not taking my phone.
I might drive without a seatbelt and who knows what else I’ll do.
If I see some flowers by the road, I’ll stop and pick a few

without worrying about the fact a passerby might see
and park his car behind me and decide to kidnap me.
I will talk to every stranger and eat in greasy spoons,
drive out to the ocean and walk barefoot in the dunes

forgetting the sharp objects that might lurk beneath the sand,
neglecting to wear sunscreen and if I get deeply tanned,
I won’t worry about wrinkles or cancer or a burn.
All your careful rules for once I’m going to spurn.

I’m going to eat sugar and perhaps get round and fat,
enjoying all the broken rules involved in doing that!
If you treat me like a kid, then guess I’ll be a teen
and when you tell me what to do, I’ll stage a little scene.

I’ll get home when I want to and go out with whom I wish.
I’ll dine alone on Szechwan food and order every dish.
When you ask when I’ll get home, I’ll shrug and say “Whenever!”
And if you do not change your ways, the answer will be “Never!”

 

Prompts for the day are swallow, between, symptomatic, galvanize and adorable.

Cold Snap

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Cold Snap

When Autumn winds its avant course and takes its paint box out,
Winter with its probity pursues another route.
Freezing all connections between the leaves and limbs,
it snaps off all Fall’s paintings crisply at the stems.

It is as though the bourgeoisie has seized the reins at last
and expunged the riffraff artist with a single blast.
If Autumn’s the iconoclast, Winter must seal the norm
by covering its statements with a winter storm.

When Spring speaks out its message through the meadow lark,
stodgy frigid Winter ceases making its mark.
Then after Summer pales Spring’s green and dries the colors out,
it is the turn of Autumn to throw pigment about.

Season after season, the colors build and fade,
every new stage cancelling progress the last one made,
then building up its opposite thinking it might win,
not seeing life’s a painting that all of them are in.

 

Prompt words for today are autumn, course, bourgeoisie, probity and speaker.

Hallofourthofvalenmas: How It Came to Be.

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Okay! Prompt words for the day are knockers, combination, festival, beseech and sentence. What in the world would you do with a combination of words like that? Think of that before you  judge me for this:

Hallo-fourthof-valen-mas

This festival’s the weirdest of any that I’ve seen—
a crazy combination of Christmas and Halloween.
The hire-a-Santa in the mall wears bear paws on his feet
and when the kids climb on his lap, they mutter, “Trick or Treat!”
Below the Christmas wreaths above, door knockers are kept busy
as grandmas baking Yule logs are kept in a fine tizzy 
by swarms of little carolers who can barely reach
the door knockers, who gather with arms up to beseech
the homeowners for candy after every song,
then stuff it in the Christmas stockings that they brought along.

Scores of scavengers dressed  up like shepherds or like kings
as well as Virgin Marys or angels sporting wings
abandon Christmas pageants to Trick-or-Treat instead.
You might ask me by what edict the world was made to wed
Halloween and Christmas? What legislative body
chose two celebrations equally over-gaudy
and mixed them both together to try to regulate
the number of occasions  on which we celebrate?

I think it was the W-H-O that thought up this solution
to try to deal with Covid and to try to curb pollution,
then issued this weird sentence and made us all comply
to celebrate all holidays on the fourth of July!
And so in combination with the skeletons and holly,
as witches and small ghosts are enjoined to act more  jolly,
fireworks are exploding in the sky far up above,
and as they trick-and-treat they also express love
by handing out their valentines—kill two birds with one stone
by trading hearts for Hershey bars with a ghostly moan.
And that’s how Hallo-fourthof-valen-mas has come to be
the only time when we’re allowed a group festivity.
And since part of it’s Halloween, without being asked
every guest, no matter what their politics, comes fully masked!!!

Prompt words for the day are knockers, combination, festival, beseech and sentence.

The Perfect Man

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The Perfect Man

I know from what his kind is cast.
He’s fearless as he is steadfast.
He does not vaunt his strength or looks,
excels at sports and reads good books.

Sexy and mysterious, 
he’s musically serious—
motivated from within
to play a wicked violin.

He is as solid as a rock.
Nobody needs to wind his clock.
And yet I had to choose another,
for, alas, he is my brother!!!

Prompt words today are fearless, steadfast, digitally, vaunt and wind. Photo by Silas Tolles on Unsplash.