Tag Archives: FOWC

America’s Burning

20 Replies

IMG_0970 (1)

America’s Burning

Count the faces. Take a tally
of the peaceful protest rally.
Their routine is most well-planned,
masks in place, placards in hand.

Enter police. Down on belly!!!
Enter newscasters for telly.
Teargas in the people’s park.
Truckloads arrive after dark.

Rioting and smashing glass.
Other dark deeds come to pass.
Using protest for excuse
to bring discord and spread abuse.

Violence becomes routine.
Authority a cruel machine.
A whole nation comes to grieve
the loss of what most folks believe.

An orange bigot, Bible raised,
pontificates, posturing, crazed.
A landmark of our country’s pride,
struck by a flash as freedom died.

Has our nation come to this?
This puffed-up, prideful bag of piss?
Shame on a country who listens to
a fool who’s rotten through and through.

Let sane men take the lead  and bring
some sanity to everything.
Equality and fairness reign
under a government more sane.

People stand up. Demand the best.
Do not give up. We cannot rest.
Seize back the country we have sold
to men who only care for gold.

Give succor to the halt and lame.
Do not play the money game
subsidizing rich man’s greed
instead of helping those in need.

Color is just an outer skin
and not a mark of shame or sin.
Use these sad times to make a start
to start to recognize the heart

that unites men from every nation,
every interest, every station.
Save our earth and save mankind.
Restore justice, and make her blind!!

Prompt words today are belly, landmark, grieve, rally and routine. I swore I’d write about something other than the rallies and violence that are tearing at the flesh of the whole world, but impossible to follow these prompt words anywhere except back to the current matters at hand.

Adulation and Lamentation

21 Replies

Adulation and Lamentation

Held captive by your luscious smile, I state the total truth
when I say you are perfection, both in lip and tooth!
Your hair’s no less than gossamer. Your figure scores a ten.
No greater beauty’s lauded by any poet’s pen.
 
Thanks to both your parents for creating such perfection.
Hereafter we must ostracize beauty of less confection.
It’s clear they scored a victory when they created you,
so why stop at one instead of making us a few?

 

Prompt words for the day are luscious, thanks, victory, ostracize and captive.

Divergence

2 Replies

Screen Shot 2020-06-06 at 10.23.16 AM

Divergence

It’s the untold exposition 
of most love stories–
that split in the path ahead
that was hinted at, perhaps,
from the beginning.

Overlooked but inevitable,
it makes this story
as regular as most of the others.
It is the flourishes
that make the romance
that nudges us
to try again.

 

Today’s word prompts are: the path ahead, split, (starting to sound like a Robert Frost poem in the making, here,) untold, exposition and regular.

O Come All Ye Faithful

7 Replies

 

O Come All Ye Faithful

One who worships fashion puts all her faith in clothes.
Each item of adornment is something that she chose.
She displays it from her earlobes to her well-shod toes,
expressing her devotion everywhere she goes.

Who dares impugn her simple faith? Is it more inane
than a ranting prophet, increasingly insane,
expostulating, raving, posturing and vain—
using his religion primarily for gain?

The artist paints his testament and proudly signs his name
to truth he has depicted on canvas, in a frame.
The truth he finds is holy, he means not to defame
the belief of any other, and he hopes we do the same.
 
Those who protest the loudest their faith’s the only one,
in worshiping the moon may overlook the sun.
Faith cannot be enforced with a rule book or a gun.
A true faith takes in all the  world and seeks to make us one.

Prompts for today are protest, frame, impugn, worship and clothes.

Guru

12 Replies

hal-gatewood-Nzb4LBsctyQ-unsplash

Guru

So many worship at your shrine you should consider syndication.
You could make a pretty penny if this queue’s an indication 
of how many have decided that you are a modern prophet.
I believe you’ve found a sure way to turn prophet into profit.

Is it central to their growth that your followers contribute
all their worldly goods for their guru to distribute? 
We’ve listened to your bark, so now we’re ready for your bite—
that you need a bigger mansion to bolster your insight.

If only you had taught your hordes to look through their own eyes,
they might see their Messiah as a shyster in disguise.

 

Prompt words today are: bark, central, worship,  decide and indication. Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Picky

9 Replies

Picky

“Prompt” does not associate with “tardy” or with “lazy.”
Those that are more “languorous” think “quick” people are crazy.
Life is made of opposites. The “sad” think they are right
and “cheerfulness” a symptom of someone not too bright.

“Smart” does not associate with “dull” or “dense” or “jocks.”
“Artistic”merely hangs around with other folks in smocks.
“Stolid” does not socialize with “lissome” or with “breezy.”
“Health freaks” eschew contact with folks “drippy” or “sneezy.”

It seems to be a symptom of our modern day and age
that “with-it” folks just hang around with others “all the rage.”
“Breezy” jogs with breezy. The “stagnant” prefer bars
where other stagnant people hang, or buzz Main Street in cars.

Knights hang out with their orders while polishing their lances,
giving men less “chivalrous” condescending glances.
Thus do the cliquish congregate, each thinking it’s the rightest,
not seeing that the hoi polloi are actually the brightest,

accepting the diversity that mixing-up can bring,
seeing what life offers and trying everything.
Life is not a single dish hoarded at the table,
but a mixed buffet where one should taste all they are able.

Prompt words today are breezy, lance, quick, symptom and associate.

Daily Diatribe

42 Replies

An acquaintance recently commented on Facebook that I should “Give it a rest, Judy!” My answer is that I’m not rioting or burning buildings or occupying state capitol buildings with guns or expressing my feelings by licking meat in grocery stores or coughing in people’s faces. What I am doing is saying what I believe daily, hoping that somewhere, somehow, I’ll sway at least one person to reason. Probably won’t happen. Our country is so firmly divided now that even something catastrophic just seems to pull us more widely apart. It is perhaps the era of our decline that all great cultures in the past have fallen to, but there are ways to fight other than stubbornly and violently standing up purely for one’s own needs and this is my way. So here it is—my:

Daily Diatribe

I’m on permanent curfew, and I don’t give a darn.
I’ll sort out all my closets and finally sort my yarn
by strand size and by color. I’ve been wanting to for years.
I’ll attend to all those “To Do” lists I owe on in arrears.

I’m respecting all the rules—wearing face masks, washing hands.
I’m not rioting or protesting or taking racist stands.
I’m staying home and hoping justice will have its day.
I’m not quoting out of context but I am having my say!

For those who say it’s patriotic doing what you want to—
coughing in people’s faces in an effort just to flaunt you,
I want to say, “How infantile.” If you were mine, I’d spank you.
But for those living with reason, I want to express a “Thank you.”

Those led by a fool with be drawn to foolish action.
If you glorify a sociopath, you’ll be joined in that faction
by white supremacists and bigots. Kindly look around you.
How can the folks who share your views not shock you and astound you?

It’s said you may be judged by the company you keep,
and the seeds that you now sow will be the harvest that you reap.

Prompt words for today are curfew, yarn, respect, justice and context.

Love’s Meander

3 Replies

james-wainscoat-XYSsGF10rvs-unsplash

Love’s Meander

In those first months of its success,
when first love starts to evanesce,
we flounder in its first excesses,
never guessing what the stresses
are that love will soon let loose–
when the gander feels the noose
and in his imagination
conjures up a short vacation
wherein he is free to wander
here and there and over yonder
to see what other lovebirds might
desire to feel his loving bite.
Needless to say, his sudden bolt
may give his present love a jolt,
and when he chooses to meander,
what cooks the goose may burn the gander!

Word prompts today are bolt, lovebirds, goose, evanesce and imagination. Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash. Used with permission.

No Hints Given

17 Replies

 

First the five-foot high undergrowth had to be dealt with.
The state of the lot in July, 2021.

Click on photos to enlarge.

No Hints Given

Outdoors is bright and sunny. The rain has ceased its patter.
The pecking birds are pecking and the chattering birds chatter.
Butterflies stage a homecoming around the tabachine
announcing the retirement of the big machine
that worked the big lot next to me with giant rolling claws,
For eight long hours, it it scooped and scraped without a single pause.
It trounced the giant boulders and put them in their place,
crushed the weeds and tree limbs, leaving not a trace
of all the weeds and rubble, the stones and the debris,
burying it within the earth so we cannot see
all the ugliness of nineteen years’ accumulation.
of our neighborhood’s detritus, so here’s a small ovation.
What new event will crown this lot? What may be coming next?
I guess you’ll have to read about it in upcoming text.

 

I finally got my lot next door cleared of all the debris neighbors have been piling on it for 19 years. Wish I’d gotten a better photo of the “before,” but here are a a few Johnny-come-lately shots.

Prompt words today are outdoors, homecoming, sunny, trounce and text.

McDonald Duck and Friends

11 Replies

 

McDonald Duck and Friends

I know a certain Donald— a king of pass the buck
who to leadership is much less suited than that duck
with whom he shares a name but whose smarts and application
far exceed the POTUS who prefers a golf vacation
to tending to affairs of state except to prompt aggression,
medical misinformation, racism, secession
in order to create a place where he would be the King
relieving congress and the courts from every single thing.

He’d sit up in his tower once the senate had resigned,
ruling at his leisure far above the daily grind,
digressing into fun and games—a golf game, maybe two,
stopping in for French fries and big Macs with extra goo.
He’d sit upon his golden thrown waiting for his bribes
to be delivered daily from his well-heeled tribes.
Courts would not be needed, for guns would rule the day,
trading in extortion in lieu of legal pay.

Let the country go to hell so long as billionaires
go on stockpiling more cash to soothe away their cares.

 

Word prompts today are leadership, resign, duck, digress and application. photo by Amir Abbas Abdolali on  Unsplash. Used with permission.