Tag Archives: freedom versus control

Open Hand for SOCS, Sept 12, 2025

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Open Hand

Wings held lightly without crushing
survive to join the world’s wild rushing,
while love held by a tight-clenched fist
quells half our reason to exist.

Some laud passions most rapacious—
grasping, volatile, tenacious;
but this is not the love I feel.
I do not seek to swoon or reel.

The tenacity of a skin tight glove
might stay my soaring to heights above.
I need your love like an open hand.
Not for me the wedding band.

The bond I seek from you, my dear,
is not the gauntlet that I fear
but rather, fingers whose sensations
are left free to life’s elations.

Butterflies kept in a jar
lose that beauty seen from afar.
That grace of movement caught on air
is what makes their beauty rare.

I love it when your arms enfold,
but if you love me, loose your hold.
The measure of my tenacity
is that I’ll come back to thee.

jdbphoto

The SOCS prompt is “Hand.”

The SOCS prompt is “Hand.”

The Escape

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The Escape

Her horse is cinched and saddled up,
ready to be ridden,
and yet she cannot make herself
do as she is bidden.

Over the heath and meadow,
they would have her go,
but even though she’s seized the reins,
her starting has gone slow.

She does not wish to marry.
She does not love her chosen.
Her heart that should be warm with love
in defiance has been frozen.

Her ride will not be ended where her father has decreed.
She will not sacrifice her life to his selfish greed.
So that heath and meadow, where he would have her go,
she will forsake, to follow where the winds of fate might blow.

 

Another early morning prompt from guess who:

01.57 AM These  lines just now came to me . “Her horse is cinched and saddled up. She settles in…” Is that a prompt for you, or for me?
01:58 AM you
01:59 AM Maybe. But please write the rest as well.

 

Prompt by ForgottenMan, Image by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

Luxuriating in Being Left

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Luxuriating in Being Left

In retrospect the loss of you has turned into a gain.
I’m rejoicing in the comfort of not having to explain.
I can do just what I want to, every day and every hour.
I am a snool to no one. I do not cringe or cower.
I sleep in in the morning with no breakfast to prepare.
I can dress the way I want to, choose the length of my own hair.
When I go to bed at night, I spread out in the middle.
I’m cool as any cucumber, not bacon on a griddle.
I wish your new love well with you, but I’m fine as I am,
for it’s the truth that when you left, I didn’t give a damn!

 

Prompt words today are nacre, comfort, rejoice and explain. Snool is an additional word I may or may not use.  The definition of snool is: a cringing person, to cringe or cower, or the opposite: to reduce to submission, cow or bully. There is one extra word today because I also used yesterday’s word from on prompt site because it was published too late to be used yesterday.

State of the Nation

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State of the Nation

Faith is growing cynical. Grace is wearing out.
Happiness is in the doldrums. Patience wears a pout.
Our country that connoted  fairness and liberty
now holds us in its fist. We are anything but free.
Its silver saber tarnished, we’re falling to its blade.
So much for all those plans our founding fathers made.

 

Prompt words for the day are cynical, grace, connote and silver. First image from Unsplash used with permission.

Flip Flop

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th
flip flop

the sound  of ease
and summer

not much to slip into
or out of

sand between toes
and other cracks

released in sleep
to gritty sheets

grinding our sleep
and clogging up washing machines

long gone the days of high button shoes
and the shoe horns that went with them.

Waist cinchers
give way to bikinis

and bikinis
to nude beaches

half of the world
flip flopping

rubber soles
and swinging breasts.

flip flops
taking the place

of gasps
as stays are tightened

the other half
burqas and Jimmy Choo

these differences
in freedom found

and freedom
found too slowly

find release in
collapsing towers

conceal, reveal.
flip flop.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/flip-flop/