First Caress
Like that exquisite tension between first caress
and the dropping of shoe and removal of dress.
Like that mellow first stirring of love and desire
that creates a friction that flares into fire.
Appetites that merit no dish or no spoon
enjoyed under covers and the light of the moon.
Each generation discovers anew
That first caress and the drop of a shoe.
Prompt words today are exquisite, tension, merit, desire, generation, mellow.
Pretentious Prattle
Her highfalutin language is torture to absorb.
She calls asbestos “earthflax,” a snow globe a “blizzard orb.”
Her words are too elaborate and to be blunt, untenable.
We find her conversation to be way less than amenable.
In any conversation, she is early to be heard,
but it is the consensus that her comments are absurd.
We wait for her to finish, then calmly leave the table,
reconvening in the garden, without her, if we’re able.
Prompt words are finish, untenable, early, elaborate, earthflax and snow globe. Image by Mona Masoumi on Unsplash.
Truculent Twos and the Fourth of July
A starburst of fireworks up in the sky
caught the truculent child’s wandering eye.
Took his mind off his troubles and saved the vacation
which had formerly suffered from his tribulation.
His folks’ cogent reasonings wondering why
could not hold a candle to things in the sky
that vanquished his agony, lifting him higher
toward massive explosions of glorious fire.
Prompts today are starburst, cogent, truculent, intrusive, trouble and vacation.
Religion and Politics
The ductile masses are easily led
either in affection or body or head,
to memorize lies emphatically told
and transformed from listless to dangerously bold.
Facts sprinkled with hatred may cause them to totter,
and thus are men led to riot and slaughter.
The rules of religion devoid of its heart
are often what rip the world’s humans apart.
Rigidity slams the door to detente,
replacing our “should” with what tyrants “want.”
What they call truth is merely illusion,
leading the masses to senseless delusion.
Look to the truth of the holy writ
and try to see who profits from it.
Is it the person making the rules
profiting by their control of fools?
Prompt words are memorize, listless, sprinkle,ductile, slam and emphatically.
Irresistible
Dishabille in a manner that other girls seek,
she was blonde and piquant and golden and Greek.
The men swarmed around her every night
named her “Pepperoncini” and all craved a bite.
No one could predict what she’d wear, say or do,
for each day she invented her image anew.
Her restoration might be crazy dresses
a new career or wild colored tresses.
But in spite of the changes—the weird fuss and fiddle,
she remained the fun girl who was caught in the middle.
No change could obscure her irresistible soul
at sixty years young, still every man’s goal.
Prompt words today are dishabille, predict, pepperoncini, restoration and middle.
Broken Resolutions
I admire your resolution as you once more launch a new one.
Eying the lovely ladies, saying you’re not going to woo one,
but I fear your resolution is due to soon elapse
as you inevitably launch into your annual relapse.
The Miss America pageant should commence with a dire warning
lest an evening’s entertainment turn obsessional by morning.
Men such as yourself who are merely Cupid’s dupe
might find themselves trapped helpless like a fly drowned in the soup.
As you dream of Miss Missouri or fixate on Illinois,
you might find yourself transforming into just a boy
and imagine it’s your privilege, perhaps, to have a date
with the prettiest maiden in the next adjoining state.
But, alas, it’s only dreaming—the result of your illusions
that you can live out your most impossible delusions.
All those lovely ladies that you most desire to woo you
are the ones most likely to reject and eschew you
Prompt words today are admire, warning, elapse, launch, soup, privilege .
Rebuttal
My waterfall of words is more than just conjecture,
so do not list my weaknesses in yet another lecture.
Misery begets misery. The truth of this is told.
So when you berate me, intimidate and scold,
the intermittent piercings of sharp words I spew out
are but a reaction to the cruelties you tout.
Prompts for today are pierce, intermittent, weakness conjecture, miserable, waterfall. Image by Kusuma on Unsplash.
(Click on photos to see larger views.)
Things That Go Bump In The Night
On Samhain tiny goblins compete with tinier witches,
holding out their candy bags with pleading looks and twitches.
Trading in their own names like Sandy, John and Luke,
they go by their pseudonyms of Zombie, Ghoul and Spook.
They only have ’til midnight to cease their operation
of collecting candy, to their great consternation,
for it is at the midnight hour that real ghouls congregate
with witches, ghosts and zombies at the graveyard gate.
Old miners follow flume trails down looking for the gold
that seemed to evade them in the days of old.
Dead school marms lift their rulers looking for a kid to swat,
And zombies execute last haunts before their final rot.
Ghoulies swoop down from the trees and witches brew their brews,
vowing to force feed their glop to any kid they choose.
So best be in your beds before the midnight toll
lest you be absconded with by zombie or by troll!!!!!
Prompts for today are spook, twitch, *Samhain, *flume, operation, pseudonym,
*Flumes were wooden troughs elevated on trestles that ran down a mountainside to bring gold down from futher up the mountain. They were also used in the transportation of logs in the logging industry. We used to hike up the flume trail at summer camp in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
*Our Halloween evolved as a combination of All Souls Day and Samhain, an early Gaelic and Celtic harvest festival which contained many of the elements that evolved into the custom of dressing up in costumes and trick-or-treating.
Rich Folk, Poor Folk
Just because you are loquacious
doesn’t mean that you’re sagacious.
Those who form lucrative pacts
to try to contradict the facts
may wage a campaign national
to promote thoughts irrational,
creating facts out of pure fiction
by making use of fancy diction.
In higher circles, they make jokes
about the gullible simple folks
who hand over all their earnings
forgetting all their earlier learnings
and write their own obituary,
trading futures for cash-and-carry.
Better odds that comets destroy Earth
than that we reclaim their worth,
yet those who bilk and deserve blame,
wrestle not with guilt and shame.
They buy their Guccis and parade
in decorations for which we’ve paid.
Prompt words today are obituary, decorate, comet, sagacious, wrestle, circle and irrational. Image by Melissa Walker on Unsplash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 