Tag Archives: FOWC

Black Sheep

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Black Sheep

Your baseball cap conspicuous among the Easter hats,
you intersperse beatitudes with sounds of batting stats,
and when you are not muttering, you whistle or you hum.
Everywhere we’ve gone, you have stuck out like a sore thumb.

I try to introduce you to acquaintances or friends,
but your chatter never ceases. Your prattle never ends.
These one-end conversations are getting rather dry.
We cannot get a word in, so in time we do not try.

Last year you kidnapped Grandpa and took him to a bar,
then left him in an upstairs room—teeth floating in a jar.
Once we had reclaimed him, we gave thanks that you had vanished,
and this note is just to tell you we’ve decided you are banished.

You’ve embarrassed us at Christmases, at Easters and Thanksgivings,
so we have decided that we have certain misgivings
regarding future visits. In short, we hope you’ll never
seek to reattach past family ties we hereby sever!

Prompt words today are sound, carriage, conspicuous and baseball.

Letter from the People of America

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Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Dear Elected Representatives:
(A Letter from the People of America)

We ventilate our dwellings of many different kinds,
but may not have the sense to ventilate our minds.
Perhaps we fear we’d stir up something that has died—
some milk of human kindness that’s buried deep inside.

As kids sit scared in cages and countless forests burn,
you think you’re given license to hoard all that you earn,
protecting it from others who have need of it,
flailing around in luxuries of your money pit.

Yachts and cars and mansions should not buy peace of mind
when they leave our planet in a lethal bind.
Our plastic world is flailing. It chokes on its excess.
How can you turn your backs on its extreme duress?

We elect our rulers. They are not born to reign.
In return we must demand that they share our pain
and do not profit by it with cash for legislation
leading to their betterment and our consternation.

Look at where we’re going and look at where we’ve been.
Open up your minds. Let truth and justice in.
During your term of office who’s advanced as far as you have?
It seems the teeming masses did not profit as a few have.

We’re taking back our government, abolishing each clause
that gives you the entitlement to profit from the laws
you enact for self-interest. It’s time that you were outed
and all who vote against our interests were routed.

You defend bad judgement, support your corrupt clown.
Now all who stand behind him must also be brought down.
You overlook the obvious for motives all your own.
You’ve opened up the cage and the dove of peace has flown,

stalked by a bald eagle who feeds on those for whom
it should serve as symbol of something else but doom.
We must bring back our liberty, nobility and pride.
Resuscitate a country that many fear has died.

The truth is there before you, so open up your minds
to see there’s a solution for our present binds.
If you refuse to topple that one on whom you dote,
we’ll topple you one after one–when we go to vote!!

 

Prompt words today are ventilate, scared, stir, licence and earn.

Escape from the Day Spa

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Photo by Adrian Motroc on Unsplash, used with permission

Escape from the Day Spa

Our hair is neatly coiffed and our fingernails are lacquered,
but they’ve been at us for hours and, frankly, I am knackered.
They’ve elevated eyebrows and plucked chin hairs at random.
Two people worked an hour, massaging me in tandem.

This day trip to the beauty spa once seemed a good idea,
but I’ve found it as annoying as a junket to Ikea.
Everything goes on and on. There simply is too much.
First there’s this and this and this and then there’s such and such.

And though it’s meant to calm me, I find I’m feeling goaded.
When it comes to things and services, I’m simply overloaded.
“I know” I tell my friend, “I should be finding it relaxing,
but I feel the opposite. I find the process taxing!”

I need to steer us out of here before she finds another
way for them to soak us or to pluck or curl or smother.
Before this spa day started, she’d assured me it was fun,
but now its time for me to declare that it is done!!!

I need a gin and tonic and perhaps a wild dance
to loosen all the hairpins and give my hair a chance
to escape the close confinement of gel and goop and spray.
I’m tense with relaxation. I need wildness in my day!

Give me a seedy roadhouse and some honky tonk guitar.
Some cowboys with their cowboy boots propped up against the bar.
Some line dances and two-steps to work up a little sweat,
and I’ll be about as relaxed as I’m ever going to get.

IMG_1017jdb photo of the Mint Bar, Sheridan, Wyoming

It

Prompt words today are trip, knackered, random, elevate and steer.

Novice Kidnappers

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Novice Kidnappers

I fear they were incompetent for asking such a ransom
for a victim so loquacious and something short of  handsome.
He was opinionated, scrawny and rather long of tooth,
smelly and most bothersome. In fact, he was uncouth.
If they had been more prudent, they might have had the skill
to choose a better target whose wife hadn’t had her fill,
but as it was, she wouldn’t pay, and so they changed their tack.
They demanded a much larger fee–or else they’d send him back!

Prompts today are incompetent, prudent, ransom, loquacious and tooth.

Cancelled Flight

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Cancelled Flight

No architect of reason can save them from their plight.
No proffered catnip ransom restore their former flight.
When lethal paws unsheath their daggers, hummingbird and finch—
Their wings, stilled from their flight, lie scattered on the bench.

 

whirred

Prompt words today are architect, can, ransom, plight and paws.

Broken

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Broken

All of my injuries told with such relish—
all so severe that I need not embellish.
I broke my tibia, tore my meniscus.
My feet pads are swollen. My eyes are non viscous.
My doctor has told me that there is no doubt
that I’m suffering rickets, edema and gout.
My bottom parts swelling, my top drying out.
I guess that the truth is I’m just wearing out.

 

(Hyperbole and humor, folks. I’m fine.)

Prompts today are embellish, doctor, tore.

6:54—Six Minutes to Spare

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6:54—Six Minutes to Spare

These prompt words wag their tales at me and scamper here and there.
Each sits upon its haunches, issuing a dare.
The distance that’s between them grows vaster with each stroke
of my fingers on the keyboard. I decide to go for broke.
Nearby the clock hands tick and tock. Time edges toward the wire.
The time left for this challenge is starting to expire.
Comminatory judgment awaits me if I fail it.
I cannot face that verdict. I simply have to nail it!
I must rely on humor to help me tame this mob.
Herding words, as you must know, is such a thankless job.
But now they throng about me, tongues extended for the licking.
I’ve met the challenge, time to spare. My alarm is still ticking!

 

I’m still at my writing retreat, but I got up early to try to fulfill the blog prompts before our first meeting of the day. Prompt words today are vast, rely, wag, comminatory and wire.

 

 

Empty Windows

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Empty Windows

When it comes to neoteric, it is something that she’s not.
Way back in the fifties she’s permanently caught.
Travel to new countries? Definitely no.
She won’t have other countries profiting from her dough!

She has no curiosity about the human race.
Her interest in humanity ends in her own face.
She sits before her mirror like a window to the world.
Is her lipstick even—her hair correctly curled?

Bravery to her is answering the door.
She walks out to her mailbox, but further? No. No more.
She boils all her bed linen, lest creatures linger there
to creep onto her body and nest within her hair.

All the wounds her life will bear long ago were healed.
She’s a preserved specimen of life, hermetically sealed.
She’ll face no other heartache, no risks of being hurt.
She will not chance a world of germs, bacteria and dirt.

Cats are unhygienic and dogs an equal threat.
A goldfish in a bowl is her single lonely pet.
No companion goldfish to fill its tiny bowl.
Its full attention trained on her seems to be her goal.

All those empty windows with their draperies pulled tight.
All those single bedside bulbs burning through the night.
Behind each building’s blinded eyes, how many just like her—
sealed inside a bell jar, safe from the world’s rude whirr?

 

Prompt words today are bravery, window, travel, neoteric and boiled.

I’m leaving in 15 minutes for my writers’ retreat with eight friends at a resort across the lake so probably won’t be blogging until next Friday. Although I forgot to ask him ahead of time, perhaps Forgottenman will once again be my guest blogger. If not, see you Friday, and if you miss me, go back to some of my earlier blogs from 5 or 6 years ago or any year prior to your following my blog. I’ll miss you all. See you Friday with some new tales. Now, I’m off!!!

4 A.M.

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4 A.M.

The old cat yowls a caustic moan—a banshee’s rough lament.
It rips my slumber wide apart. My gentle dream is rent.
A night comprised of eight-hours sleep would now seem heaven-sent.
My friends urge euthanasia, but I’m of another bent.

I toast the bread and spread the jam. I let my coffee vent,
then take a sip and watch the cat sip oil but not dent
the surface of the tiny can of shrimp and cod I’ve bent
to plop into my grandma’s dish that was never meant
to house a meal for animals—that family heirloom leant
power by its years of use—everywhere it went.

No human family member can know the full extent
of what this antiquated vessel means in its descent.
It is a loving blessing. A secret grand event—
a little ceremony to honor her ascent
to wherever old cats go when it’s time to absent
themselves from an easy life that’s turned into torment.

Why can I not cut loose the cord? I am a dissident
regarding being left once more. Those other loves that went
more silent into that good night, finally content,
somehow have not prepared me for this coming event.
I cannot be the agent hastening her demise.
The cat and I return to bed to close our stubborn eyes.

 

Prompt words for today are comprise, tout, lament, antiquated and bread.

 

Relaxed

11 Replies

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Relaxed

The punch of youth deserted me a few birthdays ago.
My pace is not so rapid, my activity rate slow.
Though I’m really rather crafty at covering up my laziness,
the truth is the sharp edge of life has dissolved into haziness.

My fashion style has graduated from shabby chic and Goth—
loose batiks and rebozos that provide forgiving swath
to obscure a body settling into a comfort zone
that leaves room for a donut, popcorn or a scone.

I do the things I used to do, though in different proportions.
I exercise within my pool with minimized contortions.
My parties have grown smaller with the menus simplified,
and when I am out shopping, I am easier satisfied.

No longer do I seek out that perfect styling mist.
“This will do,” I soon decide, and cross it off my list.
I put off a few years ago my three nights on the town.
The nights I used to dance away, I love to lay me down.

Sorting through a milling crowd has become a bore.
My friends have dwindled to a few, but I enjoy them more.
Swinging in the hammock has become a meditation.
Looking at garden denizens a form of education.

Life filtered down is full of grace. I love its sway and hush.
Who knew that it would be such fun away from life’s mad rush?

Prompt words today are punch, youth, craft, birthday