Tag Archives: FOWC

Knave of Coins

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Knave of Coins

Bored with all his yesterdays, needing a new tomorrow,
grown used to fickle intimacies, much to all our sorrow
he stood upon a precipice where the whole world looked back
and declared himself the ruler of the whole damn pack.
That anybody listened is a sort of modern miracle.
He wasn’t very smart and he surely was not lyrical.
Though he understood but little, what he knew just seemed to work.
One can capture much attention by being a dumb jerk.
He pulled the haters to him—the fearful and the jaded.
All his moneyed cronies supported him, elated.
He’d pull apart the world we knew and put it back again,
but I fear that what few plans he had turned out to be in vain.
For when he’d knocked everything down, he knew not what to do
except to blame the mess he’d made on everyone he knew.
The whole world knows that he’s a knave, his mind and soul both dim.
The thing that is distressing is those who supported him.

 

 

Synonyms for knave on Merriam Webster Dictionary:

Word prompts today are overcome, fickle, intimacy, precipice and yesterday.

The Groom Dances with Grandma

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The Groom Dances with Grandma

She struggles to keep time as they circle ’round the floor,
her flushed face with its rosy hues signaling “no more!”
This dancing she once lived for has come to be a task,
whereas the problem once was whether any boy would ask.

Standing in the wallflower line, wishing for a fella,
whereas sixty years later, a chair and an umbrella
would serve to meet her wishes, for this dancing in the sun
at her grandson’s wedding has turned out to be no fun.

What she needs in her dotage is not cognate with the dreams
of those age fifteen fantasies that burst her at the seams,
spilling out her future hopes, sure they’d be the same—
that there would be no change of rules in this living game.

Memories of graceful maneuvers through the night
remembered at one’s leisure are a pure delight.
Yet all those youthful dreams of blithely swirling ’round the floor
have matured into her fantasies of sneaking out the door.

Word prompts for today are rosy hues, circle, dancing, cognate and umbrella. Image by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash, used with permission.

 

Meditations from My Room

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Click on photos to enlarge and view captions. A poem follows.

Art Studio
Today this new variety of swallowtail.
I have to catch them at rest. They whizz by too quickly to catch them in flight.
Now he’s not.
Diego and Morrie now think this is their studio as well.

Meditations from My Room

I share different  company in my isolation.
Dogs litter my studio floor,
and my backyard is
an in-between place for birds
passing as though at a freeway interchange,
this way and that.

A constant flutter of butterflies
stirs air around the orange and yellow thunbergia,
lush in this season that mixes sun and rain.
They soar down to the empty lot
and back again,
as though no creature can resist
collecting here in my domain.

Nature follows no rules of man.
It cannot learn obeisance or heed human leverage.
Our world, professional and polished—
how easily by nature now turned inward upon itself.

Our burnished world can hold no sway,
for nature heeds no golden cow.
Her empathy extended toward the broader view,
nature must change the things she can.
She has been patient  with us long enough. The time is now.

 

Prompt words today are empathy, leverage, patient, burnish and professional.

Grandpa’s Pronouncement at the Family Reunion

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Grandpa’s Pronouncement at the Family Reunion

“Pack up all your suitcases, we’re going on vacation.
Don’t forget your sleeping bags and some alimentation.
We’re heading out in two hours for the challenge of your lives,
so load up all your kids and hurry up your wives.
I’m making a pronouncement that perhaps you won’t agree with,
but since you are the folks that I most enjoy to be with,
I spent all of your legacies on this giant bus
that it is my fondest wish to fill with only us
and set out for the summer having various adventures.
Most likely we’ll get lost and perhaps Gram will lose her dentures,
but all-in-all we’ll have great times that no one will forget.
You’re going to spend this summer with the finer set.

I’ve cleared it with your bosses. I’ve contacted your friends.
No need to call anyone. No need to make amends.
You’ll live without your boyfriends for a month or two.
Just tell them that your family needs some time with you.
Go and find your places–kids all in the back.
I have some games to play with you while your mothers pack.
No phones, laptops or notebooks are allowed aboard the bus.
I want communication to be narrowed down to us.
I’ll teach you snakes and ladders, Monopoly and Chess.
You can beat your Uncle Tom and your Auntie Bess,
your grandma and your sisters, your cousins and your brother.
Why bother to beat someone else when you can beat each other?”

The ending you might well project. The mom’s find fault. The kids object.
But once he’d packed us all inside and started out on our grand ride,
we settled down and all joined in to get to know their closest kin
and all in all, that summer trip, each tent-pitching, each skinny dip
turned into one fine memory, just as Gramp knew it would be!

(Click on photos to enlarge and view as slide show.)

Morning brought Patti’s scrambled eggs

 

Prompt words today are pronounced, legacy, challenge, alimentation and suitcase. Sadly, this is fiction and the photos a compilation of various friends and family. I wish this had happened, but alas, it didn’t. The fourth photo is a picture of part of my actual family.

The Supervisor

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The Supervisor

He’s enamored of particulars, pedantic to the end.
Impressed by rank and privilege and rules ones can’t bend.
Though not swimming in his compliments, He’s lavish in critique—
always another detail he can find for you to tweak.
If you’re in constant contact, you have my sympathy
as well as sincere thankfulness that it’s not empathy!!!

 

Prompt words today are pedantic, rank, contact, lavish and swimming.

Old Friends

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Photo by Alessandro Bellone on Unsplash, used with permission

Old Friends

We are grappling with our friendship over difference of opinions.
My beliefs are liberal. He’s one of Donald’s minions.
He won’t put up with teasing. I can’t bear his iron will.
Of faux patriotic slogans, I fear I’ve had my fill.
How can it be that all those years I thought that he had heart,
he was harboring this meanness? When did it get its start?
This virus in our populace that masks as patriotism
spreads misinformation, creating such a schism
that no bridge can be long enough to bring us all together.
The strength of our convictions seems to hold us at short tether.
When will come the end of it, and if that end should come,
what will end this great discordance and restore the hum
of democratic harmony? Are voices so distorted
that we cannot reclaim the friends with whom we once consorted?
When I walk the streets where we once walked, my former friend and I,
he crosses to the other side if he sees me walk by.
When change comes, certain evils must come to an end,
but I don’t think it will mend the hearts of me and my old friend.

Word prompts for today are tease, iron, opinion, grapple and friendship.

Advisor to the Lovelorn

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Advisor to the Lovelorn

Although she was a novice, she had a trenchant wit.
No matter what the problem, she had a cure for it.
With very little practice, she had soon mastered the job
of advice to the lovelorn—that suffering, confused mob.

She composed her column while sitting in the tub,
dispensing rules and practices to her admiring club
of followers who hung their lives on her guiding words
from their first fumbling kisses to the bees and birds.

She gave names to their thingamajigs and taught them how to use them.
Taught them all the body parts and how to not abuse them.
Virgins forsook their single cots for their marriage beds
with thoughts of all her wisdom swirling through their heads.

But when it came to her own life? Up that proverbial creek.
No wiser soul advised her. No counsel did she seek.
Lover after lover was given a brief chance
to try to woo this very master of romance.

But, alas, their tactics never quite took hold.
This one was too timid and the next one was too bold.
So was it that, sadly, did this mistress of romance
miss out on on her own turn at the wedding dance.

So is it that our betters tell us what to do
whereas within their own lives, they do not have a clue.

Words for today are thingamajig, practice, novice, trenchant and composed.

Impotus

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Impotus

He’s up there on the platform acting crass and disagreeable.
That he will bring the whole world down around him is foreseeable.
Every single day I hope and pray for his quiescence,
but, alas, refraining from brash speech is not his essence.
He opens mouth and words fall out—disjointed, vague and dense.
He’d make a great orator if only he made sense.
Good that his mother cannot see the travesty she bore—
narcissistic, senseless, and rotten to the core.
His attempts at humor only render him more silly.
His stench sickening and cloying—like an Easter lily.
He’s like a wild animal: vicious, cunning, feral.
What more can he do to put our whole wide world in peril?
No good can be said of him. He’s rotten through and through.
Daily, the world waits for him to drop the other shoe.

Prompt words today are disagreeable, platform, mother, quiescent and Easter lily. And action!

Traveler

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Traveler

Nobody’s secretary, no one’s wife.
I’d be a nomad for all of my life.
Traditions converged as I traversed this earth,
discovering foibles, unveiling my worth.

What I saw as empty was something to fill.
Was it something to savor or something to kill?
It depended on choices of what I would savor.
Would I hold out for love or just curry favor?

The choices I made determined my life.
I was somebody’s secretary, someone’s wife.
But first was a nomad so when I came back,
the world was a memory, not merely a lack.

I no longer wander. I no longer roam,
for when I did, I brought it back home
so the whole world’s my neighborhood spread out around me.
From here in its middle, I let it astound me.

Prompt words today are nomad, empty, tradition, converge and secretary.

Hail Diego!!!

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Hail Diego!!!

He’s the king of dogs by his own choice.
Behold his ruff, Enjoy his voice!
He raises it in time of doubt
to assert his power and raise his clout.

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Bypassers make their passings brief
Their parting sighs denote relief.
And since he notes each falling leaf,
no way he’ll overlook a thief.

 

IMG_9501It is a fact that crime went down
the minute he moved into town.
All citizens should laud his fame,
and spread abroad his glorious name!!!

 

Prompt words today are relief, fact, king, behold and voice.