Tag Archives: interpersonal relationships

Tightrope: Talking to Myself in the Mirror for RDP June 21, 2025

Tightrope: Talking to Myself in the Mirror

Life is a delicate balance–just toe in front of toe.
Make too grand a gesture and down you’ll surely go.
Tormented thoughts may enter but they’re sure to also pass,
so do not let them spill you onto your impetuous ass.

Try to think before you speak angry words and cruel.
Too often, though they’re warranted, they’ll make you out a fool.
Try to strike a balance between what’s kind and true.
Your mouth is way too tiny to accommodate your shoe.

Diplomacy’s not lying, it’s just choosing the right word.
To spill out everything you think will brand you as absurd.
Of course we’re only human and of course there will be slips
from time to time from angry, hurt or tactless lips.

But, no matter how chaotic the thoughts are in your head,
it’s best that you don’t follow them everywhere you’re led.
It’s one thing to say words that are weak, untrue and truthless,
and another just as bad to tell the truth in manner ruthless.

We can all be poets in choosing the right way
and time to say the things that we feel we have to say.
As much as it’s important to say what’s on our mind,
The world works so much better when we’re also being kind.

The RDP prompt is “tightrope.”

Crossroads, for NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 27

Please click on this post to center the poem.

Crossroads

You and I are at that place where roads cross—
a new place made by the need for things
going in

d
i
f
f
e
r
e
n
t
d i r e c t i o n s

to meet.

How lonely if all roads
veered off on their own,
solitary,
never coming to a junction.

It might have been thus, but for
a thousand small decisions
that led to this particular meeting,
here on this corner
of
your
road
and
my
road

Here in this location not uniquely either of us,
where we meet and mingle
and become one
for as long
as we both decide to stand
talking like neighbors,
each of us having veered halfway
away from private territory
to come to the spot
here in the middle
where we become two parts
of a center.

V
e
c
i
n
a
neighbor,
l
o
v
e
r
husband, wife
s
i
b
l
i
n
g
grandparent
f
r
i
e
n
d
daughter,son
a
c
q
u
a
i
n
t
a
n
c
e
interloper
b
y
p
a
s
s
e
r
s
or strangers when we
m
e
e
t

So
many possibilities
in
the
crossed roads
of
our
lives.

Journeys

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/