Tag Archives: FOWC

The Banker, the Doctor, the Rabbi, the Priest

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PhPhoto by Ryan O’Niel on Unsplash. Used with permission

The Banker, the Doctor, the Rabbi, the Priest

The banker, the doctor, the rabbi, the priest
used to jam back back in high school and never ceased.
They’ve been meeting on Saturday nights all their lives
leaving their girlfriends and bishops and wives
to drink beer and rap and have deep discussion
about riffs and choruses, notes and percussion.
The priest is the drummer. He wields a wild stick.
The rabbi’s a string guy. The cello’s his schtick.
The banker plays sax and the doctor’s on keys,
but they’re all pretty good at  shooting the breeze.

It’s as hot as a sauna and still they play on.
All through the night and into the dawn.
the priest squeegees his glasses off with his left thumb
while his right is engaged in beating the drum.
He’s a stickler for rhythm, enthralled with the beat.
He stirs a small zephyr while stomping his feet.
When they’ll stop playing is anyone’s guess.
It’s obvious they overlook my duress.
They’ve had a good jam. A most excellent session,
but the priest better scoot or he’ll miss my confession!

Prompts for today are stickler, squeegee, zephyr, enthrall and guess.

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Empty Datebook

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Empty Datebook

Another lonely Saturday. The singles are all vexed—
a world of restless wallflowers, feeling they’re surely hexed.
If I may be candid, Corona’s not at fault.
You’re not some precious treasure, sealed up in a vault.
If we did our homework, we’d know the truth of it.
You didn’t have that many  dates  before the virus hit!

 

Prompts today are Saturday, Candid, Lonely, Vex and Homework.

Kissing Lessons

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Kissing Lessons

How you structure your kisses is boringly normal.
Your lips are too tight and your stance is too formal.
Your lips are all dry and your beard like a cactus.
If you’d like to get anywhere, you’d better practice.

In girl’s locker room buzz, I’ve heard it expressed
you’re least likely to see any female undressed.
You’ve been tagged a poor lover—unexpressive and rigid.
If you were a woman, they’d label you frigid.

The shower wall validates you’re a cold fish,
but perhaps I could help you with this if you wish.
A night on the town with a few margaritas,
watching the tango moves of senoritas.

Then a few shooters and you will be ready
to learn how to render your “kissee” unsteady.
Untense your lip muscles. Relax each shoulder.
As you relax more, your kiss will grow bolder.

Look into her eyes when you are not kissing.
Give her time to regret what she has been missing.
If your kiss seems successful, go up one more rung
and carefully dare to try out some tongue.

No slurping and sucking. She isn’t a sucker.
Try to instill some class in your pucker.
Be soft and be hard, alternating the two,
and  you won’t need me to tell you how to woo!

Prompts for today are normal, express, tagged, validate and structure.

Morrie

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Morrie

He displays such fierce bravado, barking at the man
who dares to try approach me. He’ll bite him if he can.
If he does not get his nuance, perhaps he’ll get his grasping.
If he can’t heed the exposed teeth, perhaps he’ll get their clasping.

If that human could but read the globes of Morrie’s widening eyes,
he’d need no communication in any other guise
from this dog that has decided he is his only rival
for his mistress’s affection. Every time, there’s a revival

of his barking and his lunging should this man dare approach me.
It’s as though he fears he’s coming with intentions to come poach me.
With everybody else, he is a charmer through-and-through.
He cannot wait to make a friend of anyone who’s new.

His emotions are a crazy-quilt of trying hard to please—
of greeting you with ball in mouth and jumping at your knees.
He cannot wait for you to sit to jump up on your lap
and insists on long ear rubbings before he takes a nap.

He’s every visitor’s best friend. Greets strangers on the beach,
and will bring a ball to anyone he finds who’s within reach.
Never will he wear out when chasing after balls.
He goes to bed when I demand and answers all my calls.

But why he feels my gardener of nineteen years duration
is a threat to me, and such a threatening aberration
that he flies to my defense whenever he is near,
is a mystery that I’ve not solved, and never will, I fear.

 

Prompt words today are bravado, globe, quilt, nuance and grasping.

Tableau

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Tableau

She found him obnoxious, he found her inane.
Their thirty-day marriage, suddenly insane.
Both were fatigued by exhausting routine.
The breakfast, the paper, the washing machine.
A giant moth fluttered, beating the screen
and the window glass— imprisoned between.
The cryptic message it beat with its wings
sang of detachment and other sad things.
Both heard its struggles and both moved to free
anxious to end at least one tragedy.
Her hand touched the clasp and his moved the screen.
The moth vanished into the fresh morning green.
A brush of his knuckles on the hair of her arm,
his gentle reminder that he’d meant no harm.
Her turning toward him, a touch and a kiss.
Their world straightened out with nothing remiss.
A silent tableau—solution with no words.
A moth soaring free. A chorus of birds.

 

 

Word prompts today are flutter, screen, obnoxious, cryptic and routine.

Empty Spaces

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Empty Spaces

The world has stilled its hectic pace, although its clocks tick on.
We stand at windows peering out, imagining what’s gone.
Rapid passings night and day, our reachings and attainings
have made way for the meantime to leave us our remainings.
There is a little secret the Swiss learned long ago
that has to do with leaving space—the worth of going slow.
Their cheese that is the richest is full of empty spaces—
its flavor made the tangier by what nature erases.
The holes are not just emptiness, for factors that have made them
create a richer cheese than the cheeses that evade them.
The blocks with larger spaces have a better taste.
In short, the empty room they leave is anything but waste.
Perhaps it is the same with the new spaces in our lives.
Perhaps the empty spaces are where the meaning thrives.

Note: Holes in Swiss cheese are created by the bacteria which change milk to cheese. Propionibacterium uses the lactic acid which is produced by other bacteria, and produces carbon dioxide gas; the gas slowly forms bubbles which makes the holes. In general, Swiss cheeses with larger eyes have a better taste.

Prompts today are Swiss, hectic, attain, secret and clock. Image by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Solitary Wanderings While Listening to Kottke on Echo

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Solitary Wanderings While Listening to Kottke on Echo

I’m feeling rather whimsical in spite of guidelines given.
Somehow I can’t remain in the direction I’ve been driven.
I have to hitchhike elsewhere to somewhere I have chosen.
When I go where I’m told to go, I wind up slightly frozen.
I’m sensitive to music. Leo Kottke’s playing now.
Alexa found him for me, though I do not know quite how.

I needed background music that would not completely bore me,
so I gave her directions to play some Leo for me.
Then, feeling sort of friendly, and a little low,
when I asked her favorite music, thinking that she would not know,
she said, “Same as most people, it depends on how I’m feeling.”
With “Sweet Emotions” playing, her comment sent me reeling.

Since even cyber entities seem to have emotions,
I need to be more sensitive in my directive notions.
The afternoon is waning and my thoughts are prone to wander.
I wonder what they thought of as they rambled over yonder?
I guess I’ll never know as I am onto the next thought.
That’s why I never do these poems exactly as I ought!!

Prompt words today are whimsical, guidelines, sensitive, music.

Rebuffing Human Nature

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Rebuffing Human Nature

Nature is overwhelmed by us, regretting what we’ve cost.
We’re clouding up her atmosphere and melting all her frost.
She’s showing she’s indignant now by arming every gun.
Before we even see them, I fear that they’ll have won.
Her armaments are minuscule, but nonetheless they’ll beat us.
Weapons need not be visible in order to defeat us.
Determining their actions, our leaders often stumbled.
They find it hard to face they’ve been outstrategized and humbled.
When this mess is over, one more mess will be presented.
Mother Nature will not quit ‘til mankind has repented––
cleaned up all its messes, ceased drilling for her oil,
stopped polluting water and messing with her soil.
If we do not listen and stubbornly persist
in annoying Mother Nature, we may cease to exist.

 

Prompts today are overwhelmed, indignant, now, determine and frost.

 

Love’s Allusions

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Illustration by King Lip on Unsplash, Used with permission

Love’s Allusions

I fear that my Adonis became an Achille’s heel.
His charms were an illusion. He wasn’t the real deal.
His bombastic bearing was one I could not bear.
I plumbed his deepest psyche and found it wasn’t there.

His attempts to woo and win me were perfectly rehearsed,
We were Samson and Delilah, but the ending was reversed!
I was the one who lost my head. Thank god it was not literal,
for when he sought to wield his sword, his target was just clitoral.

My romantic Odysseys give precious little peace.
At times I’ve felt like Jason, seeking the Golden Fleece.
A female Don Quixote, with endless optimism,
If I’d met Dr. Jekyll, I’d have overlooked the schism.

I’ve felt passion ignited via heroes from the telly,
but then found out that my Clark Kent turned into Machiavelli!
My Bat Man became a vampire, which was most disillusioning.
So at least for the present, I swear off romantic fusioning!

I have a feeling that the prompt was meant to be about the illusions of life, but perhaps not, and since the prompt said “life’s allusions,” I took them literally and tried to fit in as many allusions from legend and literature as possible. The allusions are presented in boldface. The theme, however, dealt with my romantic illusions and the rest of today’s prompt words were fit in as well. Prompts for today were: life’s allusions, bombastic, precious, ignite and present.

Gifts

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Gifts

Every day
is the anniversary
of something,
our lives a potpourri
of past occasions
left to dry in memory.

We traverse
the calendar of our lives
like a game of hopscotch,
dipping into pockets
for a means to play the game
and one day finding chocolates,
the next bitter almonds, 
one made sweeter by that other
that is made more bearable
by the promise of  its opposite.

Today is the anniversary
of seventy-two other days
that added to the rest of the days
granted me by a generous fate,
add up to 26,403
 anniversaries
and a life that daily 
has been given to me
like a present
whose contents
I get to choose.

Prompts for today are anniversary,potpourri, generous, traverse and chocolate.