Tag Archives: FOWC

Damning Science

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Damning Science

Wisdom newly learned or tribal,
from Koran or Scroll or Bible
demarcates a line between
what shouldn’t or what should be seen
or said or listened to or done.
No matter how seemingly fun,
some things cannot be integrated.
No masterpiece is tolerated
if banned by the censor’s tool.
Thus do bigots thrive and rule
spouting truths long since belied—
asserting them as bonafide.


These half-truths to reason’s sorrow
may dictate how we live tomorrow—
our whole world screwed up by some fools
who bend the laws to their own rules,
spouting words skewed to their favor,
creating slogans dullards savor.
There is one rule for what the zealots shout.
After you have heard them out,
use your good sense to judge the acts
of those determining the facts.
Use your powers of reason to test
those who rule at our behest.

Prompt words today are masterpiece, tribal, integrated and demarcate

Change of Taste

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image by Debby Hudson on Unsplash. Used with permission

Change of Taste

I must renege on my vows of devotion.
What was said in the spring was only a notion.
I found in the summer that it had run thin
and by fall I regretted the mess I was in.
Now that my devotion has lessened in force,
I fear I was driven to file for divorce.
So ta-ta to the one who was formerly favored.
Good bye to sweet love so recently savored.
I’ve found the same meal offered each day
does not suit so well as a daily buffet.

Prompt words today are spring, renege and devote.

 

Beets

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Photo by Nick Collins on Unsplash. Used with permission

Beets

They say there’s a conspiracy in our retired community
to try to form a sort of dietary unity.
Go easy on potatoes and cut down on your beef.
They say such limitations bring intestinal relief.
Cut down on your sodium. Eat fish instead of meats.
Eschew bread and pastry, but double up on beets.
You’ll assuage all your ailments, cut down on your weight,
and a much longer lifetime will likely be your fate.
More years without chocolate. More years without bread.
More years of deprivation. And then you’ll still be dead!!

 

Prompts for the day are retire, conspiracy, community, assuage and beet.

Change of Tune

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Change of Tune

A new aesthetic each few years from dead head to new waving.
It seemed a change of music was to be his signature craving.
Disco led to hip hop, new age to heavy metal.
When moving to new rhythms, he felt in finest fettle.
Some found his music vile and others found it strange,
but at least within a year or two, it was bound to change.
The prestige of being “with it” was probably the reason
he changed his favorite style of music every other season.

 

Prompts today are aesthetics, strange, vile, prestige and wave.

Magic Circle

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Magic Circle

Pardon my astonishment that rhyme and allegory,
as well as words like firmament and comminatory—
billions of rules and concepts, laws and definitions,
as well as music, laughter, a mother’s hands, munitions,
all evolved from stardust—clouds and soil and lake,
bow tie, fingernail and love, liver and wedding cake.

Movie star and  surgeon, macho, bi and femme
evolved from cosmic particles that wanted to be them.
A baby’s cry and earwax. Ribald jokes and laughter,
all the plots and schemes and lies to get what we are after—
all were once identical and so they’ll be again,
as after our becoming, we go back to what we’ve been.

Prompts today are rhyme, allegory, astonishment, define and lake.

Flimflam

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Flimflam

It was a wretched theory. They postulated that
if we’d all collaborate, we’d lose all our fat.
They weren’t very subtle. They gave us tubes of stuff
to squeeze over the food we ate, but never quite enough.
We had to buy the second batch, and prices just kept rising.
Whereas we never lost a pound—a result not surprising.
Later, they skipped out of town—an act our friends found funny.
They told us from the first the only thing we’d lose is money!!!

Prompt words today are wretch, subtle, collaborate, postulate and tube.

Unnamed

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Unnamed

Perhaps it was a blunder. He could be a stubborn mule.
A myriad of actions branded him a fool.
Scarce as they were, his virtues always managed to redeem him.
Some fools with little foresight even seemed to quite esteem him.
Still, a vulture is a vulture, and his dark side always won.
Self-serving minions always saved him when the day was done.
How do these soulless tyrants ever rise to power?
How long before he topples from his golden tower?

dim Jim Kim Limb rim stem tim vim  beam seem dcream seem team ream esteem him.

Prompt words today are blunder, scarce, vulture, myriad and mule.

Cyber Tragedy

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Cyber Tragedy

Much as they wished that she would wander, their child was otiose,
Glued to her computer, growing tissue adipose.
They wistfully imagined a life where they were free
to wander on their own in perpetuity.
In vain her parents waited, but their freedom never came.
They watched her eat and then begin one more computer game.
Her mother darned her hose and her father worked to feed her.
If she were a plant, there is no doubt that they would weed her.
They’d raised a human vegetable, capable of more.
If only they had earlier rushed her out the door!

 

Prompts today are hose, wander, wait, wistful and otiose.

Suspicious Coloring

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                          Suspicious Coloring

If those of foreign ethnicity around our sacred nation
are being questioned over their passport identification,
are others far more grandiose being questioned, too?
Are those of nordic extraction locked up in a human zoo?
If chain migration must end now, will the extraction rope
extend around the family of our grand misanthrope?
Or is there exemption for folks of wide renown?
Are these rules only extended over people who are brown?

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/405017-with-trump-administrations-denial-of-passports-to-latinos-in-south-texas

Prompts today are nation, ethnicity, identify, grandiose and rope

Nose Job

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Nose Job
The precipitant of my angst is this macro of my nose.
I didn’t vie for this when my friend asked me to pose.
I thought she’d use my profile in a locket or some token,
not knowing that she’d use it for purposes unspoken.
If she had told me earlier what the shot was for,
I would not have been compliant. I’d have shown her to the door.
It’s true my nose is cone-shaped, but no one has ever rated it,
disparaged it or laughed at it or scoffed at or debated it.
So, her dad’s a plastic surgeon and what did he use it for?
Someone else the “after,” and my nose the “before!!!”
Yesterday a letter came–inside two hundred bucks
for my rights to the photo from the clinic mucky-mucks.
I’ve discovered I’m no beauty, and yet I’m charmed in life.
I just got a “nose job” without suffering the knife!!

 

Today’s prompt words are macro, profile, precipitant, cone and unspoken.