Tag Archives: FOWC

Hard Knocks

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Hard Knocks

That first triumphant journey of a toddler on a trike
predicts his future conquering of a two-wheel bike.
Despite his mom’s temptation to grab his overalls
to whisk him off from crisis and save him from his falls,
nothing can be gained from this. He needs to face his spills.
Part of education is dealing with the ills
that he’ll be called upon to deal with in his future life.
We cannot live our children’s lives or guarantee no strife.

 

Prompt words today are nothing, crisis, temptation, triumph and bike.

Wild Oats

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IMG_6925.jpeg

Wild Oats

What he is up to, nobody knows.
He bought a new sports car and wears flashy clothes,
but all his good judgment seems to have died.
He’s capricious and willful and daffy and snide.

The smile on his face seems lacking inside.
If he’s passing by and you ask for a ride,
he’ll go off on a tangent and then leave you stranded
with no idea of where you have landed.

I thought midlife crisis was only in books,
but judging by clothes and behavior and looks,
it’s something he’s caught, albeit quite late,
for if humans were stamped with an expiry date,

I think you would find his nearly expired.
He should be feeble and mostly retired,
but instead, he’s determined to have a new life
minus perspicacity,  minus his wife.

Not one can tell him what’s fun in one’s forties—
the boozing, carousing and other wild sorties—
Can be lethal at eighty, for it’s the truth
that youthful behavior’s best done in one’s youth!

 

Prompt words today are daffy, tangent, complete, caprice and ride. Photo used for illustrative purposes only. 

Absolution

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Absolution

A pen her only weapon, she brandished it at life.
From within her cave of thoughts, she used it as a knife.
Cutting out the sadness, filleting the pain,
she served them out on pages sacrificed to rain.
Let the press of water wash them clean again.

 

Prompt words today are press, brandish and cave.

Cutting Loose

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Cutting Loose

When daylight breaks, bring in the paper
and over breakfast, plan a caper.
Crazy plans are fun to bake up.
Do your nails, put on some makeup.
Call in sick. Forsake your labors
and boggle all your friends and neighbors
by doing something crazy wild.
Reconnect your inner child.

A vital element in fun
is do not stop until you’re done.
Paint your house a vivid hue.
Then why stop there. Why not paint you?
Go for a boat ride, buy a bike.
Buy hiking boots and take a hike.
Wear funny clothes. Get a tattoo.
No end to things that you could do.

Turn your hems up, cut your hair.
(No one can see what’s under there.)
Take Santa Claus out on a date.
Most months he’s bored. Don’t hesitate!
When you are letting loose, please just
only do the things you must.
It’s vital that at least just once
you dare to play the fool or dunce

and take the chance to try to binge
and do what makes the whole world cringe.
It’s fun sometimes to be unique
in what we do or how we speak—
to be that person standing out
with anything that you can flout.
Life’s too short to always do
what the world expects of you!!!

 

Prompt words today were daylight, paper, boggle, vital and bake.

Won by Wit

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Won by Wit

South sea island cruises do not stir up my lust.
I fear that all my passions have succumbed to mold and dust.
All that iron will to love has come to naught but rust.
To date, there is no counter urge that says, “My dear, you must!”
It never was my temperament to plot and scheme and plan
complicated maneuvers to try to catch a man,
but still I found that now and then one drifted into view
that caused me to examine my attitudes anew.

Perhaps my behavior included one or two
of the tiniest maneuvers by which I hoped to woo.
It may be that in passing, I allowed the slightest brush
of my arm and his arm and blamed it on the crush
of bodies in the elevator, even though the fact
is that the elevator was not so tightly packed.
Nonetheless, my hints were subtle, for I rarely pined
for a lustful body over a brilliant mind.

So if you want to woo me, do it over books.
For me a silver tongue will always win out over looks.
Write with wit and logic, original and kind.
Fan my imagination. Seduce my wild mind.
My upper arms are flabby, but my mind is sharp and taut.
To woo me, try to judge me not for all that I am not.
The only one to win me would be one of my own kind.
The only nuptials I seek are marriages of mind.

 

Prompts today are south seas, brush, lust, temperament and date.

The Scheme

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Photo on 7-4-14 at 12.20 AM

The Scheme

By the seat of my pants I’ll accomplish my scheme
which some may consider to be too extreme.
Avoiding the bridge, I’ll have forded the stream
in the dark of the night to the moon’s guiding beam.
As I find the right path, if only by chance,
small rivulets will stream down from my pants—
evidence that will dry up in the day
with the breeze’s collusion and each dawning ray
of the sun as it shrugs off the night’s blinding hand.
Permit me to hope that by then all I’ve planned
will be finished and done. I’ll have reached the far ridge,
crossed down to the road and fled over the bridge.

Extreme measures are sometimes all that can be done
to enact revenge. In the end, I’ll have won.
The news will corroborate all of my acts.
They’ll furnish the details, establish the facts.
My crime will go down in the annals as one
that everyone’s heard of but to this day none
will have heard who accomplished it. No one will know
that I orchestrated that fabulous show.
How can I be sure you won’t let it be known
that I did the act and I did it alone?
This vengeful act that I so aptly hid?
You’ll know I did something, but not what I did!!!

Prompt words today are hope, permit, scheme, corroborate and pants.

Confluent Fidelity


Confluent Fidelity

It’s true that she was lusty, outlandish and gregarious,
with her behavior more or less branded as nefarious.
Her dance in life was often described as arabesque,
and when it came to marriages, her tale was Kafkaesque.
She mixed up her chronology, forgetting which came first.
Divorce or remarriage? She knew not which was worst:
bigamy or loneliness. She simply couldn’t stand
to be without a husband readily at hand.
She often stood with tearful eyes before a judge’s desk—
seemingly an angel, albeit, picaresque.
Somehow when it came to love, right and wrong conflated.
True love made her dizzy. She wound up addlepated.

A comely wrinkling of her brows, a pout, a tear, a sigh
and the judge forgave her. After all, he was a guy.
A simple tiny slap upon her unrepentant wrist
and a heartfelt promise that she would desist
from practicing plural marriage was always the decree—
guaranteeing her misdeeds in perpetuity.
So went her personal history. It seems that she was fated
to spend all her romantic life being  inundated
with husband after husband—one or two at a time—
for courtships left her weak-kneed and weddings were sublime.
Honeymoons her speciality, she found no fault with life
until it came to living it as just one man’s wife!

 

Photo by Alvin Mahmudov on Unsplash, used with permission

 

Prompt words today are gregarious, zest, personal, conflate and desk.