Tag Archives: #FOWC

Gleaning

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Gleaning

His precipitous departure and subsequent defection
belied earlier avowals of his most sincere affection.
As usual, his action in doing so was heartless—
his cruel revelation of his apathy most artless.

The opposite of nuance, he was blatant to the bone
as he crassly left her weeping to hit the road alone.
Doing her a favor, for he left the door ajar
for another suitor who had loved her from afar

from the time that they were children, but who had never spoken
who now seized this opportunity by handing her a token
that all of his affection he hoped he might expose:
a declaration of his love— single long-stemmed rose.

Carefully, he’d trimmed each  thorn, then ringed the single stem
with his mother’s engagement ring—a brilliant diamond gem. 
And so her recent heartbreak of being the one left
gave way to an elation so she felt much less bereft.

For unbeknownst to him, she had always felt the same,
although she had not shown it, for she feared the shame
of unrequited love if she had revealed how she felt,
but when she saw his token, her heart began to melt. 

And so they were soon married and the day their son was born,
her former love crested the hill, tattered and forlorn
to try to win the love back that he’d cast away so breezily,
only to find abandoned love was not won back so easily.

We learn from all life’s errors, both our own and those of others,
so I want to share this wisdom with my sisters and my brothers.
The moral of the story is be careful what you toss,
for a more farsighted lover may glean profit from your loss.


Prompt words today are nuance, subsequent, revealing, precipitous and heartless.

Glean: to gather leftover grain or other produce after a harvest.

 

Different Strokes

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Different Strokes

I believe I’ve lost my juju. I’m throwing in the towel.
If I were a mason, I’d be throwing in the trowel.
I’m too light on pragmatic and strong on fanciful.
I’m not achieving much but my life is never dull.
I’m terrible at numbers, organizationally lax—
a non-controversial drawback when it comes to paying tax.

I have a different point of view based on imagination
which works for writing poems but does not work for pagination
where “one” must always lead to “two” and “nine” must follow “eight.”
If I were timekeeper, the whole cosmos would run late.
The fact that I’m disorganized cannot be debated,
but it’s going way too far to say I’m addlepated.

The world needs many opposites to balance out each other.
For every north there is a south, for every dad a mother.
Sober’s stirred by silly and warm thaws out the cold.
Calm smooths out the erratic and meek balances the bold.
So if I tend toward fanciful, don’t issue an indictment.
There’s way too much reality. We need some more excitement.

 

Prompt words today are pragmatic, terrible, controversy, juju and towel.

Homeless

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Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.

Homeless

Incomplete women and incomplete men
schlep up the avenue and back again
bearing their bundles over their backs,
the remains of their lifetimes stuffed into sacks.

Patiently trudging with impassive faces,
trying to find the impossible places
where they may rest, be they new ones or prior,
to find a safe haven and build a small fire.

What have they done to warrant this life?
To live out existence that cuts like a knife?
A wife who couldn’t put up anymore
with an abusive husband? A bully and bore?

Are his brains addled? Is he confused?
Were they once children neglected, abused?
They sit collected, their backs to the wall.
What will society do with them all?

Collect them in shelters or drive them away
from Interstate medians where by night and day
they lie hidden by bushes, secure, so they think,
to dream away days or to shoot up or drink?

Such wasted lives that have slipped through the cracks,
stripped of their power, defined by their lacks.
They line our sidewalks, devoid of our riches,
to show us society’s obvious glitches.

Prompt words today are incomplete, bundle, patiently, schlep and prior.

Enough

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Enough

At six o’clock, glib comments start to fill the air.
We’re hungry for frittata, but the table’s bare.
Darkness fills the kitchen, for mama’s gone on strike.
She’s gone off to the city. Alone, on papa’s bike.

It’s dicey whether she’ll return. She says she’s tired of cooking.
She’s in need of a vacation and so she made a booking
at a posh hotel that has its own cafe
where she will dine on coq au vin followed by crème brûlée.

For once, serving the rest of us will not be her fate.
Someone else will  wait on her and she’ll just sit and wait.
In the morning she will order service in her room
where she’ll not even make her bed or wield dust cloth or broom.

Her note says then she might come home, or she might just wait
and find a nice seaside resort where she can cogitate
for another day or two. She says we shouldn’t worry.
The pizza place delivers if we’re not in a hurry.

Her recipe book’s on the shelf. The stove is  under it.
Her apron’s in the closet and she’s sure that it will fit
each and every one of us while she is on vacation.
She says that fending for ourselves will be an education.

She says to wash the dishes even though it is a bore,
for if she sees a messy kitchen when she walks in the door,
she’s going to walk right out again until we prove we’ve learned
that things will be real different after Mama has returned!

 

 

 

 

Prompts for today are six, glib, frittata, dicey and darkness.

Small Towns in the Fifties

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Small Towns in the Fifties

Tight pants were forbidden. Baggy trousers were the rule.
And if you ever broke it, they sent you home from school.
Even the most nervy girls didn’t take the chance
to show up in assembly wearing sexy pants.

There were no vivid colors in our little town.
The houses that weren’t painted white for sure were tan or brown.
All the local color resided in its folks.
Their foibles and their oddities comprised the local jokes.

Gullible new arrivals were sure to take the lure
and all the timeworn stories, therefore have to endure.
The time that Arlan Boe did this and Ellen Jones did that.
The time that Shirley Carson put Bon Ami in Dolph’s hat.

The trick that old Jeff Halverson played on the new teacher.
Crank phone calls that the Watts boys made to the new Baptist preacher.
It seems rules of propriety extended just so far.
In a small town what you look like matters more than what you are.

 

Prompt words today are baggy trousers, lure, forbidden, nervy and brown. (The names and acts are all fictional, although the message perhaps is not.)

Weird Little Doomsday Poem

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Weird Little Doomsday Poem

This window is my namesake if you take out the “n.”
Although I must admit it is just where I begin. 
If you conduct an interview to cull me from the throng
and ask me what one item I would take along
to insure my survival if doomsday were to come,
to bolster my intent to live and pain of loss to numb,
it wouldn’t be a photo of any person past.
The only item that insures that I would want to last
is simply pen and paper, for I still insist
that this is where the future will continue to exist.

Strange where these prompts may lead you if you just get out of their way, and I admit readily that this one is very strange. It was written in about 5 minutes. It took longer to find the photo in my iPhotos file!! Prompts for today are window, namesake, interview, throng and item.

Just Desserts

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Just Desserts

Was my brother ornery or was he merely dumb?
Once he told me rubber bands were a new sort of gum
that didn’t blow good bubbles, but at least you could rechew it,
saving you the money of having to renew it.

Given any option, he was bound to choose the crazy one,
and if the choice involved some work, sure to choose the lazy one.
He always had ideas about how to do work faster,
and without exception, they resulted in disaster.

Like the time he used Dad’s blowtorch to trim all of our trees,
not taking into full account the briskness of the breeze
and set the house on fire, slightly singing the outside,
and when the firetrucks arrived, he asked them for a ride!

Once when men came to fix the roof, I heard the kitty mewing
and knew at once there was a chance that more mischief was brewing.
Whatever put it in his head to waterproof the cat
by dipping it from tail to neck in the tarring vat?

He’d do things like putting red ants inside my skirt,
and when my folks weren’t watching, he’d spit on my dessert,
then eat the rest himself when I asked to leave the table.
He found ways to torment me whenever he was able.

Entertainment such as this was what amused my brother,
giving ulcers to my dad and white hairs to my mother.
But growing up with brother turned out fortunate for me,
for he gave a clear pattern of what I shouldn’t be.

And now that I have kids myself to tend and love and cook for,
I have a sure advantage, for I know just what to look for.
I see things with my brother’s eye and remove such temptations
that might lead to misdirections in their moral educations.

And as for my brother’s childhood deportment flaws,
just desserts were finally served. I know this because
fate dished out the punishment for his childhood errors
by giving him two sons that I hear are holy terrors!

Prompt words today are waterproof, idea, head, ornery and option.

Special Delivery

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Special Delivery

Fetch the doctor and bring him home.
I’m giving birth to a new poem.
If he gives you the runaround,
I guess I’ll be hospital-bound,
for I’ve got fever, cramps and chills
that can’t be cured by any pills.

I’m falling into a big pit
and I can’t get rid of it.
The lacuna waits for me.
It is the well of poetry
that I’ll fall into if no saint
comes to rid me of the taint
of words that rhyme or words that don’t.
 I fear that if the doctor won’t,
surely I’ll be ripped apart
by narratives that must depart.

They’ve been gestating so long
that I fear something will go wrong.
So call the doctor. Tell the fellow
that my fingers have gone yellow
from the words that can’t get out.
I’m getting rheumatism, gout.

I’ve got a mass within my heart
and I don’t know how best to start
to free the words that must be born—
that from my body must be torn.
Womb and brain and heart and spleen
stuffed full but yearning to be lean.

Emptied of words, stripped to the core,
then I”ll have room to sprout some more.
For though I grow the poems right well
and have fine stories I can tell—
although I’m bursting with the stuff,
I know that words are not enough.
For years they have been telling me
it’s all in the delivery.

 

 

Prompt words are fetch, runaround, chills, yellow and lacuna.
Photo by Freestocks on Unsplash.

Helpmate

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Helpmate

I treasure your good nature—your kindnesses and grins.
How you do not fustigate me for my many sins.
You tackle my complexities and understand my meaning,
sort through my poor excuses and somehow end up gleaning
positive from negative, just remembering what
in any lesser person would be the details cut.
You bring out the best in me so I’m a better man—
living by not what I did but by what I can. 
You help me aim for goals that without you I’d disdain,
constantly reminding me of what I can attain.

Prompt words are tackle, treasure, fustigate, category and glean

Mall Mode

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Mall Mode

Shopping malls and market finds are sites of great commotion.
They thrive on hype and slick techniques and tactics of promotion.

They are keen on chicanery that brings you in to buy.
You simply cannot wait to get your portion of the pie.

Pizza Huts and Burger Kings vie for your attention
if you seek a little break to ease the shopping tension.

But you must know the lingo that goes with hot new styles.
The modern world depends on more than simply fashion’s wiles.

When you see a friend’s dope shoes as well as her new hat,
you know enough to call them goat and not to call them phat.

Prompts today are market finds, keen, technique, chicanery and promotion. I might even try to squeeze in some prompts from Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Her prompts today are: “hat,”  “hit,” “hot,” and “hut.” Image by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash, used with permission.