Tag Archives: FOWC

Garden Gnomes and Other Decorating Blunders

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Garden Gnomes and Other Decorating Blunders

My taste in decoration eschews cute and adorable.
Cutesy hearts and  animals—designs I find deplorable.
When I choose to accentuate, fantasy is out.
It’s simply an esthetic that I choose to flout.
Whimsy in embellishment is not a problem for me.
It’s only sticky sweet that will irritate and bore me.
So keep your big-eyed children, your fairy, elf and gnome.
Their plaster effigies will never decorate my home.
My garden will not sport them. My butterflies are real.
Garden gnomes are merely things for passers-by to steal.

Photo by Sarah Brink on Unsplash,Used with permission. Prompt words today are fantasy, accentuate, elect, eschew, taste and decoration.

Do

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Do

This is the perfect climate. Now is the perfect time
to do all that you can to make your world sublime.
No more empty promises. No rain checks or excuses.
No masking of reality to obscure your abuses.
Look back in your history to see the full extent
of all the possibilities that in the past you meant
to “see about” tomorrow. Then tomorrow never came,
for when it did, it seems that you made it just the same
as the day that came before it, so now you’ll never know
what your life may have turned into if you’d only let it grow.
Relaxation’s fine if it’s used as a reward––
but it should be an end result that we are heading toward.
It cannot replace doing. Doing is what life is for.
Without learning and accomplishing, existence is a bore.

 

Prompt words today are promises, sublime, history, extent, relax and mask. (The captions on the photos below may seem disjointed, but I decided to leave all the captions from earlier times I’ve used these photos. They do, in a disjointed way, create a little story all their own.)

Paint your flower, or if you prefer, paint the strips before you cut them apart. I prefer to do the individual flowers because you don’t have to wait for the paint to dry.
Wonderful art cards made by the kids at LCS
I again lunched on baked beans from the bean pot from Hell. Every time I take a bite, two bites grow back. I was reduced to making my own pork and beans from scratch and no matter how many ingredients I add, they don’t taste like those of my mom, who started out with Van Camp’s canned pork and beans and then added her own magic ingredients. With no pork and beans available in any store in town, I started out with dry white beans and added ketchup, mustard, cider vinegar, bacon, onions, barbecue sauce, Worchestershire sauce and brown sugar–but they don’t taste like Mom’s.
The theme of the camp is “When you Wish Upon a Star.” This camper has taken the theme seriously on his mask.
This little girl may be one of the friendliest in camp, at least when it comes to the counselors. She has a hug and a kiss for me every morning and when she leaves in the afternoon.
Fill pan with enchiladas and if you wish, put a narrow stream of sauce down the middle of enchiladas and top with scallions, grated cheddar and black olives.
to find nature’s material for interesting sculptures.
Sometimes a guy needs his personal workspace, but glad I checked for paint and glue before I sat down in this chair afterwards.
The small framed piece upon the wall above her easel captured my interest because elements matched the current painting she was working on.
Possible addition to the center of the east facing wall. See the blank spot?
Planning

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

 

Bored of the Rings

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Bored of the Rings

I admit I am incurious about matters Uchronian.
When it comes to fantasy, my thoughts tend toward draconian.
Fiction is my genre but I like it more realistic—
my interest not quite stretching to themes that are more mystic.

Fantasy’s not toothsome. It’s lacking in its juice.
Give me fantasy or suicide, and I will choose the noose!
These plots I am averse to seem to have a different muse.
Werewolves in the moonlight? Characters I must accuse.

A Game of Thrones and Narnia are not a fit for me.
J.R.R. Tolkien is not my cup of tea.
I prefer Jane Austen, the Brontes and Anne Tyler.
But Ursula Le Guin? Please forgive if I revile her.

 

I beg forgiveness from science fiction/fantasy fans, as I know there are many I admire in this group, but I simply am not engaged by fantasy as I am by reality—even fictionalized reality (which I acknowledge as an oxymoron.) I must admit that I don’t really revile Ursula Le GuIn. It was either that or “file her,” which didn’t quite work as well. There are some limitations in rhyming, so I admit “revile” is harsh. And, to be fair, my husband and I once listened to the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on a trip back and forth across the U.S. and when we arrived home after that six-week trip, we sat in our driveway in our motor home for an extra half-hour to hear its end, but nonetheless, I was not motivated to wander farther along the paths of fantasy. And, to be fair, give a person a word like “Uchronia” as a prompt word and what do you expect?  Revenge was in order.  ;o)

Prompt words for the day are juice, fit, Uchronia, incurious, muse and moon. 

Cat and Mouse

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Cat and Mouse

My cat is feeling obdurate and that is no surprise.
I see it in extended claws. I see it in his eyes.
His back is hunched into an arc. His hair all stands on end.
His lips are stretched back in a hiss, his teeth ready to rend.

When he lets go a loud remark, it sounds more like a chatter.
I look up from my magazine to see what is the matter.
The prism on the windowsill reflects a flashing gleam
and he springs into action to try to catch its beam.

Like an arrow, straight and sure, he shoots across the room,
but when he does, his target’s gone. Vanished in the gloom.
It seems his prey has vanished. It’s nowhere to be found.
He’s wasted all his energy: his speed, his stealth, his bound.

The cat door closes with a swish. He’s off to other pleasures.
Out in the sultry cloud-swathed world, he’ll resort to other measures.
He saunters by the hen house, hungry, but it’s no use
He still bears the scars of the rooster’s last abuse.

While the men are busy milking, he’ll crouch there in the dirt
hoping if he’s lucky to receive a friendly squirt.
He’ll troll the barn for mice and rats, then comb the prairie grass
for game that’s more digestible than prey that’s made of glass.

Prompt words for today are prism, scream, sultry, obdurate, letting go and cat.

Advice to Myself at 73

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It’s never too late to experience growing pains. If it is our onus in life to grow and to change, with no cutoff point after which we are absolved of this duty, then why are we dumbfounded when those pains of adolescence occur again and again at each stage of life? We perhaps grow more serious over the years, but need we become less sensitized? Does the snub, the willful wounding, the being overlooked, the derision become less important? If so, why? Perhaps it is a mark of self-worth, and that is good, but if it is merely the building of a cocoon around ourselves, except in the direst of circumstances, it becomes more of a punishment than a defense.

We are born into this world to experience and therefore, are given defenses to deal with the negative, but when those defenses grow to isolate us, then they become more than protective blankets. They become walls which become our prisons. We were meant to experience and to be vulnerable to changes. And lest we atrophy, from the cradle to the crematorium, we need to fight to keep ourselves open to those experiences that invite change.

 

Prompt words for today are: serious, dumbfounded, cremate, onus and growing pains.

Bipartite

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Bipartate

Pelted by the details of the busy world,
I lie within with half of me comfortably furled.
That flawless part that stays within, that flawed part I let out.
Trying to synchronize the two is what life is about.

 

Prompt words today are pelt, synchronize, flawless and bipartite. Also, Shining Your Light. for OctPoWriMo.

Melania’s Revenge

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Teenvogue.com photo
Sun Photo

Teen Vogue and Sun Photos

Melania’s Revenge

As he descends the air stairs, his waving hand waving,
his wife walks beside him as though she is braving
the air that’s around her. She seems to be craving
release from a torment, but she is behaving
because of a settlement scored when he won—
more money for her and more for her son.

But they can’t make her smile a believable smile—
one that masks her boredom and covers her bile.
His hand swatted away, she walks on her own
due to numerous deeds for which he must atone.
The hole in her soul must be so hard to fill,
for living with a jerk is the bitterest pill.

Even she has her pride. It’s an act of sedition
expressing her angst for four years of perdition—
a vehement act that expresses her pride
that though docile outside, she’s a rebel inside.
Some say she’s a dreamer, as though in the dreaming
she escapes a life over which she’d be screaming

if she really cared —but she doesn’t, you know.
If it weren’t for the valium and all of that dough—
she’d no doubt go crazy. Stark raving mad,
over having to spend her whole life with this cad,
but the latest new fashions and a life on the lazy
make up for a husband certifiably crazy!

And as for the people who make her life hell?
She’ll just crook her pinkie and ring her small bell
and tell them to rip out the damnable roses
and then flaunt her power in all of their noses,
by creating a garden—a dull boring park
that will prove that Melania’s at last left her mark.

courtesy #Getty and @marycjordan

Prompt words today are hole, vehement, wave, sedition and dreamer.

Fruitless Interrogation

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Fuitless Interrogation

When they lampooned the bully, he nearly slipped a gasket.
They had made his effigy and put it in a casket.
When he finds out exactly who engineered this jaunt,
He’ll know whose school locker that he’ll have to haunt
to find retribution—to torture and harass.
When he finds out who did it, he’ll surely have their ass!
But when it comes to sleuthery, he’s not doing so well.
The entire school was in on it. Nobody’s going to tell!

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash. Used with permission. Prompt words today are bully, lampoon, jaunt and basket.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

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flying-heart

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

If you want my love, dear, you’ve got to give me space.
Love’s so much more likely when not always face-to-face.
Even the paranormal works better when the fright
occurs when not expected instead of every night.

That familiarity breeds contempt is not, dear, mere codswallop!
Love is more exciting when taken as a dollop.
How many great love stories were romantic interlude—
those long-remembered periods when we were briefly wooed?

Love can be a lifelong trip or one terrific bash
where two bodies crash together and then burn away to ash.
The bodies that are left to us may then be wooed and married,
the memory of past flaming passions sealed away and buried.

But in a vault within us, those past interludes are kept,
and now and then the present they are bound to intercept.
They do not rival constancy—that lasting love or marriage
that is the coach that carries us. They’re just the undercarriage.

But that daily diet that regularly nourishes
cannot but be improved upon with a few spicy flourishes.
Like an appetite that grows the stronger with the fasting,
love delayed may well make even married love more lasting.

 

Just for the fun of it this time, I decided to look up one prompt word at a time and write a couplet that contained it before looking up the next word, then do the same each time. So much fun. I always say I rarely know where a poem is going until I finish it, but this time is the proof of it! I didn’t know from couplet to couplet where it was going.

Sam found THIS POEM that bears a remarkable resemblance to the poem above. I guess when I start repeating myself, it is time to stop. I had no memory of writing this poem. Guess it is time to start worrying as well.

Words of the day are space, paranormal, codswallop, interlude and crash.

Fatal Persuasion

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Fatal Persuasion

Don’t ruffle up your pinions as though I’m about to strike.
Although my bite is lethal, I am kind to those I like.
They say in certain circles that I am quite a catch,
and I await you at your doorway. Just open up the latch.

 

 

Word prompts today are catch, pinion, strike,