Tag Archives: FOWC

Challenging Fortune

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Click on first photo to enlarge all and read captions.

Macho rules the world, and
to the powerful belong the spoils.
They have us in the palm of their hand.
Time for change?
Who will lead the way? Warrior
or holy man?
And who will profit from the change?
All of these:

Challenging Fortune

Just when we’re feeling cocky—superior and svelte,
fate dishes out an uppercut, or one below the belt.
Its fickleness is onerous. Its lessons often hard.
Some end up with a loving cup and others with a shard.

So if misfortune catches you and holds you in its grasp,
for sure, good fortune harbors another in its clasp.
Rejoicing in their happiness may bring your pain’s surcease,
and looking at a larger view may bring you some release.

Some men are accustomed to eating all the pie.
They see no good in sharing. They vie and vie and vie
to horde the opportunities. It’s their sign of success.
They profit on our labors, grow rich on our duress.

It brings a sort of balance, this giving and this taking.
It teaches us that fortune is not just of our making.
There may not be enough good luck to insist that they share.
Label him a “socialist”If anyone should dare.

Where is the one who’ll stop them? Who will come to show the way?
What warrior or what holy man will  lead us in the fray?
Those who’ve usurped religion seem to have lost the point.
They don’t champion the underdog.  It’s rich men they anoint.

Everything is power and perhaps it always was.
For eons we’ve forgotten this, probably because
the photos of these  greedy men reaching for the stars,
cruising in their massive yachts and their racing cars,

look so pretty on the page. The minute that we see them,
instead of censuring the greed, we simply want to be them.
They stage their wars and make their gains and young men die to aid it.
And instead of ruing war, we honor those who made it.

The prompt words today were shard, onerous, opportunity and uppercut.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/rdp-thursday-shard/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/17/fowc-with-fandango-onerous/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/your-daily-word-prompt-opportunity-january-17-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/uppercut/

Journeys

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

 

Journeys

Every conversation is a quest two people enter
from opposite  directions to converge at its center.
The hard part of the journey commences with their greeting—
an intricate endeavor not completed with first meeting.

With each new associate, we visit a new land.
With each conversation, our horizons expand
into lands exotic, tragic or entertaining.
Perhaps enemy territory—often with no training.

Do we take umbrage with their words or enter, unprotesting,
the world that they offer—experimenting, testing
new mental mountains, jungles where vivid birds might call,
beckoning us onwards, or do we meet a wall

that offers us no access—sealed up, rigid, cold—
closed to all explorers, nearly obscured with mold?
What journeys do we offer ourselves to those we meet?
Do we offer easy access or promise sure defeat?

Life was designed for journeying. Daily, new vacations.
Some conversations novels and others mere quotations.
Some trips an experience you wouldn’t choose again—
just another whistle stop on life’s commuter train.

 

The prompt words today are quest, umbrage, intricate and associate.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/rdp-wednesday-quest/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/16/fowc-with-fandango-umbrage/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/intricate/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/your-daily-word-prompt-associate-january-16-2019/

Out of Order

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Out of Order

If you’re an avid planner—an agenda sort of man,
life seems to have a fondness for screwing up your plan.
Ideology is fine so long as you take note
that fate seems to have other schemes than life lived out by rote.

Providence is naughty. It thinks irony is divine.
It likes to move our decimal points, nudge columns out of line.
It screws around with calendars, plays jokes with weather, too.
It messes up your Windsor knot, conceals one favorite shoe.

It messes up collections and puts them out of sequence.
confuses medication in its timing and its frequence.
So if life changes the rules after you think you’ve won,
learn what it seeks to teach you: spontaneity is fun!

 

Prompt words today were collection, avid, ideology and plan.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/ragtag-daily-prompt-tuesday-collection/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/15/fowc-with-fandango-avid/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/your-daily-word-prompt-ideology-january-15-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/plan/

Basking

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Basking

Cats love of apricity is more than just a fluke.
It is a vital tendency and so we can’t rebuke
our cats for lying prone a lot in any ray of sun.
A cat’s in need of toasting as much as any bun.
If you can imagine a Kardashian without
the flash of any flashbulb, you will without a doubt
be able to imagine a cat without the rays
filtered through venetian blinds, or fully in the blaze
of a scorching summer sun. A cat can withstand all
the heat that we can give them, in summer, winter fall.
And if there is no sun at all, a cat can just make do
with the full attention of a surrogate like you!!!

(Enlarge all photos by clicking on any one.)

Prompt words for today are vital, rebuke, apricity and imagine.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/rdp-monday-vital/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/14/fowc-with-fandango-rebuke/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/your-daily-word-prompt-apricity-january-14-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/imagine/

Ta Ta

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images-1                                                jdbphoto

Ta Ta

It’s an exquisite loss, your going away,
and it’s also timely, I’m given to say.
You may find it inane that I’m saved while you’re lost,
but it’s true that some friendships come at a cost.
You’ve departed, it’s clear. This I so plainly see,
but your leaving has given me something back: me!

 

Prompt words today are timely, inane, lost and exquisite.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/rdp-sunday-timely/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/13/fowc-with-fandango-inane/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/your-daily-word-prompt-lost-january-13-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/exquisite/

Truth Serum

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Truth Serum

I’d like to form a splinter group of all the friends I know
to reconnoiter memories and then to tell and show.
Candidness, of course, would be most elemental—
telling truth and all the truth merely instrumental
in getting to the crux of things, in solving all the puzzles.
Life’s not got at best with blinders and with muzzles.

Our lives are rivers that we’d float together, in snug boats
comprised of past anecdotes from sagas to mere quotes.
Who hasn’t lived a movie if they’ve lived a life at all?
If only we had the courage, trust and gall 
to reveal our true life story—both its triumph and its shame
and to share it with each other with no censorship or blame.

The prompt words today are river, instrumental, memories and splinter.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/rdp-saturday-river/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/12/fowc-with-fandango-instrumental/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/your-daily-word-prompt-memories-january-12-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/splinter/

The Memento

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The Memento

Yes, I received your letter and the enmity enclosed.
And yes, it has accomplished what you probably supposed.
I here enclose your photograph. I have no further need of it.
If I want to end the grieving, I must dispose of the seed of it.

I’m burning all your letters and crumbling your dried roses,
disposing of your paintings of me in different poses.
I’m in need of no mementos to bring you back again.
I need no souvenirs to remember all the pain.

These ashes are the lovelock you asked me for that night.
I found it in your pillowcase the morning of our fight.
Its cremated remains were easiest to send.
They are so easily scattered to signify our end.

The prompt words today are letter, enmity, photograph and accomplish.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/rdp-friday-letter/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/11/fowc-with-fandango-enmity/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/your-daily-word-prompt-photograph-january-11-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/accomplish/

Upon Losing a Friend or Lover

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

Secret

Upon Losing a Friend or Lover

It does no good to have remorse for partners you are missing.
Better that you concentrate on ones you could be kissing.
Be not forlorn. Frustration is something you can fix.
Just engage with life again and get back in the mix.
Life was meant to be lived out, no matter what the cost,
though it might take many friends to replace one you’ve lost.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/rdp-thursday-partner/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/10/fowc-with-fandango-remorse/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/your-daily-word-prompt-frustration-january-10-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/forlorn/

An Ode to the Annoyingly Ebullient

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* jdbphoto

An Ode to the Annoyingly Ebullient

Her ebullient nature sometimes seemed a little cloying.
Others less endowed with cheer could find it most annoying.
It seemed that her ambition was to slipcover the earth
with a shell of levity—a monologue of mirth.
That others didn’t seem to have her appetite for humor
based on romance serials and hearsay and on rumor
didn’t seem to faze her. Her allusions’ rarity
coupled with her seeming lack of storytelling clarity
fazed her not a bit. Though no one else seemed to be buying it,
she kept on unrelentingly with her “pie in the sky” ing it.

 

But, there is hope. Click on the below arrow to learn more:

 

Prompt words today are ebullient, ambition, clarity and appetite. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/rdp-wednesday-ebullient/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/09/fowc-with-fandango-ambition/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/your-daily-word-prompt-clarity-january-9-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/appetite/

The Self-made Woman

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The Self-made Woman

Her metamorphosis complete, she found it all a bore.
No longer did she slurp her soup or lumber ‘cross the floor
when executing dancing moves like a gliding waltz.
She’d perfected her curtsy and all that other schmaltz
She had no real resentment for all that they had taught her,
but rather had a grudging sense that all these manners caught her
securely in a web of a great subterfuge she’d learned
simply to insure there was no way that she’d be spurned
when she chose to exercise her wiles on some poor chap
looking for a trophy wife to perch upon his lap.

And so the day she graduated, she set out to prove
that all these pretty charms were not all that might behoove
a clever girl in life, and she got her law degree,
opened up a practice and then set out to be
the smartest woman charm school ever set out on the path,
by adding jurisprudence and biology and math
to her former curriculum of poise and table setting,
thus curtailing some of her yachting and Corvetting,
by building a sure future dependent on her self
and turning into more than just a trophy on a shelf.

 

Today’s prompt words are lumber, resentment and metamorphosis.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/07/rdp-monday-lumber/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/07/your-daily-word-prompt-resentment-january-7-2019/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/07/fowc-with-fandango-metamorphosis/