Tag Archives: FOWC

Our Newest Emperor’s New Clothes

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Our Newest Emperor’s New Clothes

How do we mentor our burgeoning youth
in these times of extraordinary stretchings of truth?
Teach them to sort out these rash acts of treason,
to approach them with heart and strain them through reason.
Teach them hating is wrong and exclusion is selfish—
that plastic’s destroying our coral and shellfish.
That medical care should be something for all
and that hoarding of wealth brings a country’s last fall.

Teach them the future is theirs to decide.
Teach them the truth of whom to deride.
Teach them that facts being taught by their teachers
may rival what they’re being taught by some preachers
and those who would rule to win their own gain,
lining their pockets again and again
with tax cuts that only extend to the rich
while the trickle down theory develops a hitch.

Teach them to sort out rhetoric from fact.
Teach them to care and to vote and to act
to stretch out the privilege to blanket us all.
We are not alone on this spinning great ball.
Our former meddling and incredible gall
is why we’re considering building a wall
to keep out the hungry and frightened downtrodden
who come to us weary, exhausted and sodden.

They ask for asylum and our protection
from dictators who have prompted defection
much as many Americans are fleeing south
to avoid the stupidity and the vile mouth
of the dictator who is now ruining our land
with illogical thinking and truth that is canned.
Who will mentor whom in this crazy new world
once the last hateful invectives are hurled?

Our world has been sold out for profit and gain—
overseen by leaders opportunistic and vain.
Perhaps it’s our youth who will now mentor us
to sort out the truth from this internet fuss.
As in the old legend, They’ll teach the uncouth
to forsake propaganda for naked truth.
It’s hoped that our youth wake us up from our doze
to point out the truth of our Emperor’s new clothes!!

 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/rdp-sunday-mentor/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/04/fowc-with-fandango-extraordinary/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/burgeon/

Mature Love

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DSCN1300

 

Mature Love

I once basked in your bonfire, and though no one quite remembers
when we last caught fire, I’m warming fingers at your embers.
Slow steady fires that survive, snoozing ‘neath the ashes
have the same mysterious lure as winks obscured by lashes.
Passion need not flame to warm the cockles of one’s heart.
What was a wild onslaught at its very start
may settle down to a warm glow or a steady smolder.
Loving hand placed over hand —my head upon your shoulder.

 

 

DSCN1301

 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/03/rdp-saturday-bask/
FOWC with Fandango — Snooze
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/03/bonfire/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/daily-addictions-2018-week-43/onslaught

Political Gaming

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Political Gaming

Even a gamester must confess
that life is no mere game of chess.
Friday’s vote, Friday’s disaster
that brings on man’s end all the faster.

 

The Ragtag Daily Prompt was Friday.

Fandango’s Prompt was Chess.

 

 

A Fine Vintage

9 Replies

IMG_0026

 

A Fine Vintage

Roving has been in my blood since I was just a  kid.
In hide and seek, I ran away while other kids just hid.
I’d stash myself six blocks away where they could never see me.
I couldn’t wait for age and circumstance to come and free me.

Other kids had tantrums, but I just had my dreams
that took my sheltered sedate life and split it at the seams.
It never once occurred to me that it would be naive
to think that after high school, I’d pack my bags and leave.

And after college in some place exotic in my mind,
I’d be off to travel with others of my kind.
I’d have a travel bonanza to Africa and France.
I’d even go to China if I had the chance.

Was it precognition or simply intuition
that all of my  travel dreams have come  to sweet fruition?
Everything I sought out there, each thing I hoped to find
I found in all those years that now I find I’ve left behind.

Now that my world is smaller and I’m more content,
nonetheless I still have memories that I can vent.
They’ve percolated in my mind as I cure and age
until they’ve aged sufficiently to pour out on the page.

 

The prompts for today are tantrum, roving and bonanza. Here are the links:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/01/fowc-with-fandango-tantrum/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/01/roving/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/daily-addictions-2018-week-43/bonanza

A Halloween Primer

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A Halloween Primer

Bloodcurdling screams of banshees and the moans of other specters
are signals to skirt graveyards and other creepy sectors.
Do not go close to water. La Llorona* lingers there.
Hobgoblins roam on Halloween. Please take extra care
that you aren’t impeded by your costume’s girth and weight
so just in case, you can maintain the proper speed and gait
to insure escaping witches, vampires, ghosts and ghouls
who inhabit Halloween and make up all the rules.
Heed well my past instructions of where you should not go.
Get home before the witching hour. These warnings you should know
lest you become another statistic of the night
set aside for horrors, for hauntings and for fright.
Halloween is filled with fun: the costumes, pumpkins, candy,
and if you heed my warnings, everything should turn out dandy.
Just stay away from witches of the authentic sort—
the kind with real black three-inch nails and a genuine wart.
Make sure the vampire’s fangs aren’t real, that ghost is in a sheet.
Assure the authenticity of every friend you meet.
It does not do to make new friends. Be guided by your fear
and do not talk to strangers on this one night of the year.

*In Latin American folklore, La Llorona (pronounced [la ʝo.ˈɾo.na], “The Weeping Woman”) is a ghost of a woman who lost her children and now cries while looking for them in the river, often causing misfortune to those who are near, or who hear her.

I was premature in my posting of spooky Halloween photos. Go HERE to see scary photos.

The prompt words today are costume, weight, bloodcurdling and signal. Here are links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/rdp-wednesday-costume/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/31/fowc-with-fandango-weight/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/bloodcurdling/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/daily-addictions-2018-week-43/signal

Human Conditions

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Human Conditions

What some see as a plank, others see as a sliver.
What starts out as a rivulet can swell into a river.
But there is a dead center closer to what’s real—
a place optimists overlook and pessimists overfeel.

Some may have solutions that others find absurd
and as a result, simply let go unheard.
But as we spend time bickering o’er who is right or wrong,
more sinister plans of nature flow rapidly along.

There’s a reason we are labeled as the human “race.”
Most problems exist because we cannot slow our pace.
We speed too quickly forward, not considering the end
of all the natural balances that we choose to bend.

The food we grow is excess and we throw away
forty percent of it, every week and day
while people starve around us. We can’t find a solution
to world hunger, extinct species, global warming or pollution.

Each plastic bag we use is the beginning of a motion
that takes it down that rivulet to river to the ocean
where it will join the others—the flip flops and the dishes
that are killing off our coral and our mollusks and our fishes.

We choke our air and wonder why we cannot breath.
Our youths lack a direction. They question and they seethe.
What choices have we left them as we export all their jobs
and give them all devices that turn them into blobs?

If there were a grand plan for ridding Mother Earth
of every single species that had a use or worth,
I think it would be planned by man and not by evolution.
Increasingly we seem to be mounting a revolution

It’s as though we’re pre-conditioned, as though we have a need
first of all, to bring an end to every other breed,
and then to do ourselves in to restore the motion
of evolution once again. To see what is her notion

of what might work the next time in building a global order
that knows its place in things without straying ‘cross the border.
Perhaps billions of years from now, nature will proudly flout
another scheme for nature that this time will work out!

The prompt words today are dead, center, rivulet and globe. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/rdp-tuesday-dead/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/30/fowc-with-fandango-center/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/agnostic/(actually, rivulet)
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/daily-addictions-2018-week-43/globe

Short Vacation

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Short Vacation

Just for today, repress advice
that the world is not so nice.
For just one day, forget the slime.
Pretend the world’s once more sublime.
Let’s hop aboard our little dingy,
grab that picnic hamper thingy
and simply sail our fears away.
Escape the news, just for today.

 

Prompts today are sublime, dingy, repress and advice. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/29/rdp-monday-sublime/
http://FOWC with Fandango — Dingy
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/29/repress/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/daily-addictions-2018-week-43/advice

Microcosm

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

Microcosm

Solace from this angst-filled world can best be found at home.
It wraps around me snuggly under my protective dome.
Prioritizing calm and peace, I have a little chat
with a dog or bird or two, or maybe with a cat.

I lie snug in my hammock and survey the too-long grass
of my private little meadow where no evil comes to pass
short of combat between possums and dogs too poorly trained
to entertain these welcome guests in manners more restrained.

Their battles are, alas, short lived. The dogs always the winners.
As in the world, the bounty here goes to the biggest sinners.
The possum’s only infraction? It’s not a dog or cat
and its physical resemblance is too close to a rat.

And so the world injects itself into my little nest,
insisting the familiar is what we accept best.
These battles happen when I’m gone or when I’m fast asleep,
too lost to this too-conscious world, lost in a world more deep.

As things are on the outside, I fear they’re also here.
My world is not a perfect world, but simply a small mirror
to what is happening all around. It is without a doubt
those who have most everything keeping others out!

DSC07100

Dear John

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Dear John

I am impervious to your wiles.
Your mephistophelian guiles
that work so well on other wenches
will no more draw me to their trenches.

For though you are adorable,
the games you play are horrible.
The traps you lay? Deplorable.
Thus, I’m no longer scorable.

My thirst for love has been well-quenched.
Seeking a sip, I came out drenched!
Go find another piece of meat
to make your perfect day complete.

Mistakes once made, I don’t repeat.
I’ve found your name and hit “delete.”

 

Prompts for the day are drench, adorable, mephistophelian and complete. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/rdp-saturday-drench/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/27/fowc-with-fandango-adorable/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/mephistophelian/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/daily-addictions-2018-week-42/complete

Toxicity Report

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Toxicity Report

Toxic little rumors and poisonous little lies
circumvent veracity and cloak it in disguise,
poisoning perception, holding truth at bay,
obscuring what is truth in favor of hearsay.

 

“Toxic” was one of the last WordPress prompts and although it was less than a year ago that I ran this response, I think it warrants repetition. I fear we’ve all been driven to toxicity by the preponderance of lies told by our leaders as well as on the internet. Even those of us who do not know we lie have fallen victim to this toxicity by reblogging and repeating on Facebook and Twitter facts we have not verified.  I’ve been guilty of this as well.  I’m trying to be more careful.

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/26/fowc-with-fandango-toxic/