Tag Archives: FOWC

Changing Places

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Changing Places

When I was just a little sprout,
I liked to boss my world about,
but now that I am old and gray,
I’m merely keeping it at bay.
Howbeit that life I used to rule
when I was a kid in school
has come to be the boss of me—
determining what I hear and see?

One-by-one, each faculty
just seems to be deserting me.
I find I’m often in the clutch
of a world that doesn’t listen much.
I’m less intrepid in my demands
as joints and organs, bones and glands
furnish surprises, glitches, quirks.
It’s sufficient if my body works!

 

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https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/rdp-wednesday-sprout/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/20/fowc-with-fandango-intrepid/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/your-daily-word-prompt-howbeit-february-20-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/clutch/

 

Midnight Tryst at the Horticultural Society Ball

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Midnight Tryst at the Horticultural Society Ball

In spite of our earlier indecision, when our eyes met in passing on the dance floor, they sealed the tacit agreement that we would slip into the garden at the set hour. Later, we would try but fail to furnish an adequate excuse to our spouses of the reason for our mutual midnight escape. Even our shots of the night-blooming  cereus could not adequately explain our defection. It was as though we carried the scent of our desire-—as heady as the scent of that rare flower-—back to the hall with us. A universal blanket of dispraise settled over the crowd, in spite of the excitement over our viewing of the rare bloom. Everyone knew. Our mutual fate was sealed.

The prompt words for today are garden, tacit, dispraise and desire. I also made use of Cee’s FOTD flower prompt.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/19/rdp-tuesday-garden/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/19/fowc-with-fandango-tacit/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/19/your-daily-word-prompt-dispraise-february-19-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/19/desire/
https://ceenphotography.com/2019/02/18/fotd-february-18-2019-crocus-2/

Evolution

14 Replies

 

See how tiny he is? He’s in the corner two bars over from the right.

Click on first photo to enlarge photos and see as series.

Evolution

If we took every advertisement
that we saw under advisement,
envisioning ourselves in cars
filled with TVs and guitars,
food choppers and Barbie dolls—
everything we saw in malls—
we might buy it all and after,
fill every house to every rafter.

Blenders, stereos and blouses
would pile up in our many houses.
Consumerism would be the key
to  how happy we would be.
Lethargic children would sit about
staring at phones in hands, not out
into the world their windows face.
Imagination would replace
a reality no one could cotton.
Our old world would be so rotten—
all it was so ill-begotten
that it had to be forgotten.

Our present world now so diluted
(nature being so polluted)
that the animals our kids would see
would not be out and roaming free
but in some zoo with air protected
and no fluorocarbons detected.
All these things that we could buy
would be what caused our world to die.
Plastic world and plastic lives
would seal us into plastic hives
where we could buzz around in cells
creating our own private hells.

How hard would it really be
to imagine this reality?
How close are we to it already—
Our brains scrambled into spaghetti
by barrages of consumerism?
Could we even heal the schism
that our plastic world has wrought?
Would we give up all we’ve got
for the greener simpler earth
of our great-grandfather’s birth?

Man will speed on toward his doom
in his air-conditioned room
that screens the poisons out while he
sits rapt in front of his tv.
His children, who can no longer stand,
sit, each with eyes glued to his hand.
Only robots will go out
to shop for us and walk about
in air that’s suited only for
machines to venture out the door.

They’ll greet each other in the street,
smiling at each bot they meet.
Perhaps the plastic revolution
was the next step in evolution.
They’ve locked us all within their lairs.
The world they sought is finally theirs
as every human sits and stares
at the unreal world he shares
with every other other fleshly being
that gave up doing for simply seeing.

The prompt words today were key, lethargic, advertisement and envision.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/rdp-monday-key/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/18/fowc-with-fandango-lethargic/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/your-daily-word-prompt-advertisement-february-18-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/envision/

Toilet Paper Blues (and Greens and Yellows)

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Toilet Paper Blues (and Greens and Yellows)

Once paper for the toilet came in every hue—
green or blue or yellow to wipe away our poo.
And though we all liked paper that was soft and squeezable,
most people felt that color wasn’t very feasible.

Hue was always optional, for you could still find white,
which had the best capacity for capturing the light.
Of all the other choices, white was still the best
to help you find the toilet on your midnight quest.

Now in the tissue aisle, no color meets our sight.
Green and blue and yellow seem to have taken flight.
We use our toilet paper for what it’s created for
without the added problem of matching our decor.

My poem isn’t delicate, it mentions words like poo.
I hope this does not put off such proper folks as you.
You will perhaps forgive me for my word choice this one time,
for feces’s not poetic and caca doesn’t rhyme!

Prompt words for the day are color, optional, squeezable and quest.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/17/rdp-sunday-color/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/17/fowc-with-fandango-optional/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/17/your-daily-word-prompt-squeezable-february-17-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/17/quest/

Doling out the Punch

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Doling out the Punch

If you construct your paradise at the cost of others—
build it on the suffering of children and of mothers—
do you really think that it is worth the cost
of creating your own heaven on what others may have lost?

You may feign indifference as you sally back and forth,
but do you really think that your soul’s increased its worth?
Do you even think of things like this as you amass
your fortune or is the very core of you this crass?

Heaven can’t be heaven, in fact it’s really wrong
if you don’t want to pull the least of us along
on your pilgrim’s progress toward riches and toward fame.
Life’s composed of more than making wealth a game.

It should be so obvious that it does not need telling
that happiness cannot be found in buying and in selling
so long as what you’re selling is the suffering of another.
Every nationality and race is still your brother.

How can you enjoy  riches and revel in it all
then seek to keep it for yourself by building up a wall,
hoarding all your plenty behind your man-made ridge?
Instead of building fortresses, we should build a bridge.

I know this has been said before, but still I must relate
all of this just one more time to our dense heads of state.
Some of us cannot believe that you have the nerve
to still be insisting that you are there to serve

as you grab all the pie and say there’s not enough
to share with the others because times are so tough.
What’s more, you try to get us to build your wall for you
so you can keep on doing all those shell games that you do,

insisting that we’ll profit by tax cuts for billionaires,
assisting all the bloodsuckers to become zillionaires.
Making up the deficits by cutting our security
and calling it entitlement? We question your maturity!

Are you simply spoiled boys playing with our nation?
Have you made a private playground of your God’s creation?
Do you get to pour the punch, determining the ration?
One percent is what you dole out for our satiation.

While you “one percent” gulp down all the ninety-nine
portions of the elixir that you find mighty fine,
children thirst and suffer. The homeless face the cold.
Have no doubt.  It’s our security that’s being sold!!!!

!

The prompt words today were lost, paradise, indifference and worth.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/rdp-saturday-lost/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/16/fowc-with-fandango-paradise/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/your-daily-word-prompt-indifference-february-16-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/16/worth/

One Rhyme Friday: Rude Awakening

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Rude Awakening

I must say that I don’t believe and in fact, I eschew
your variety of reasons for doing what you do:
cutting right in near the front of a lengthy queue,
breaking into conversations never meant for you
or gobbling down two cookies when there are just a few.
All of these rude actions are things that make me rue
the day that you arrived in town and first came into view.
You shuffled ‘cross the dance floor, doing the old soft shoe,
asked if you could have a dance and then commenced to woo.
Oh, if only that was something that I could undo!
I’m tired of your rudeness that you seem to do on cue
whenever there is someone interesting or new
that I’d like to get to know. You just don’t have a clue.
But stuff this in your big mouth, please, and then begin to chew.
You be the ass. You be the monkey. Be the kangaroo.
I no longer want to be the trainer in your little zoo!

 

Want to try doing a poem that makes use of only one rhyme?  Write one and send me a link to it in my comments.

 

https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/15/fowc-with-fandango-variety/

February 13

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February 13

This morning, upon waking,
I kissed my pillow and imagined it was you.
There was no sadness in the act.
It was a simple act of adulation.

If there had been a real person here,
I would wish that it were you,
but I’m content here in my solitude—
writing tributes to past lovers—

a bit puffier (me, not you)
than even that last time we met,
when I waken, joints are stiffer.
The cat more crabby in demands for food.

I wouldn’t say time marches on.
It turns its pages, shifts its screens.
The world, more innovative since the Internet,
spins us a new tale second by second.

Vicariously, we speed through life.
Other people’s lives become our own.
We feed ourselves and perform daily functions,
our minds in one world and our bodies in another.

In that manner,
one thing substitutes for the other.
Over and over, like shuffled cards.
This reality and that one.

Tomorrow the busy street outside my bedroom window
will be full of vendors: hearts and flowers
marking half the world’s celebration
of romantic love.

Upon awakening, I kiss my pillow—
not a conscious act. Not one I will repeat.
A simpler act and one unplanned
to remind myself, perhaps, what’s in my heart.

 

Click on photos to enlarge.

 

The prompt words today are innovative, tribute, adulation and puffy.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/rdp-wednesday-innovative/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/13/fowc-with-fandango-tribute/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/your-daily-word-prompt-adulation-february-13-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/puffy/

The Perils of Memory Lane

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The Perils of Memory Lane

I’m taking a vacation with my mother and my aunts.
On their sentimental journey, we’ll visit their old haunts.
I’m afraid I have my worries, but I’m hoping all goes well,
and I’m trying my hardest my anxieties to quell.
Our travel plans will take us from the east coast to the plain
of wild South Dakota, and then back home again.

We’re going in September to see the lovely sight
of brilliant autumn colors falling from great height.
Then their favorite Japanese garden will include a bonsai florist
and an attraction of their youth: the Badlands Petrified Forest.
First will be Connecticut to see the falling leaves.
They’ll rain down on our bodies: shoulders, faces, sleeves.

The tiny bonsai gardens will not pose a threat.
When leaflets fall upon my feet, I will not fuss or fret.
Of these stops on our journey, I am not scared at all,
but I worry what will happen this year in the fall
when we tour the petrified forest. Will its trees begin to shed
leaves turned to stones and pebbles that will fall upon my head?

The prompt words today are leaflet, petrified, sentiment and hope.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/12/rdp-tuesday-leaflet/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/12/fowc-with-fandango-petrified/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/12/your-daily-word-prompt-sentiment-february-12-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/12/hope/

Love Spell

12 Replies

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Definition of spell: 

—a state of enchantment
—a strong compelling influence or attraction
—an indeterminate period of time waited
—a continuous period of time (did a spell in prison)
—a period of bodily or mental distress or disorder
(spell of coughing, fainting spells)

Love Spell

As with so many, their flirtation
started over a libation.
Tequila conquered hesitation
and augmented jubilation
Minutes later, infatuation
 roused their hearts to palpitation.

Palpitation turned into lust,
a string of cans pulled through the dust,
a sign: Niagara Falls or bust!!!
Their honeymoon’s great joy and thrust
made every day a celebration
with not one hint of love’s cessation.

A single simple act of treason
ended up being the reason
why true love’s flare and excitation
turned into a conflagration
that started as an agitation
and ended up as litigation.

The judge soon granted the decree
that set the bonded lovers free
with a newfound realization
that a certain titillation
brought about by alcohol
could be the rise before the fall.

The prompts today are flare, reason, infatuation and trust.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/rdp-monday-flare/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/11/fowc-with-fandango-reason/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/your-daily-word-prompt-infatuation-february-11-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/11/trust/

Hearts Adrift

5 Replies

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Hearts Adrift

You’ve piqued my curiosity, riled up my blood.
Brand new possibilities surge in like a flood.
Sages say enchantment is magic of a kind
that brings down your defenses and permeates your mind
with fantastic possibilities that make it fully probable
that heavy hearts inflate until they are light and bobbable.

See them on the tide line, floating all about—
free of any tether and free of any doubt.
A sea of love ‘s an image once rendered in a song
that catches in our hearts and makes them sing along.
They form a soft accompaniment to the real world’s roar
that’s telling us we’re not the type a lover would adore.

But you’ll find that hearts may come in many makes and guises,
and when you set your heart adrift, it just may yield surprises.

 

The prompt words today were sage, pique, enchantment and blood.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/rdp-sunday-sage/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/10/fowc-with-fandango-pique/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/your-daily-word-prompt-enchantment-february-10-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/blood/