Tag Archives: #MVB-PROMPT

Ode to Cheetos

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Ode to Cheetos

If you’ve given up on lunch
and seek a substitute with punch,
Cheetos are my favorite snacks
that can be found sealed up in sacks.
Always flavorful and munchy,
crisp and satisfyingly crunchy
between lips and teeth and gums,
enjoyable from cheeks to tums.

Though they’re often underrated,
I feel that they have been berated
by makers of crackers and chips
as well as creators of dips,
due to envy and to spite,
for citrus drinks like Squirt and Sprite
complement their spicy bite,
setting all the world to right.

So buy a bag without delay.
Do not wait another day.
You’ll be elated that you did,
and also happy that you hid
the bag so as you start to chew,
you know that it is all for you!
(Hint: Get the bag marked “Torciditos.”
They’re the premiere type of Cheetos!!!)

For more Cheetos excitement, go here: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2022/12/26/a-very-cheetos-christmas/

Prompt words today are citrus, spite, crunchy, crisp, delay, happy and berated.

Not fiction. I am addicted to these little devils and everyone I’ve introduced them to has become hooked as well. I guess I do you no favors in sharing my favorite vice. I may have to go buy some now. Fortunately, (regrettably?) a little shop I must pass on my way to or from home sells them.

If Truth Were Told

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If Truth Were Told

I’d call you oxymoron, but the pun is just too corny,
so I will simply say that you’re as dumb as you are horny.
You’d be Barney Fife’s apprentice if they rated you on brains—
your lantern of enlightenment extinguished by life’s rains.

Your logic is so flimsy that you’re little more than beast.
Left is right, in is out, up’s down and west is east.
When we try to help you, you see reason as assault.
The world is out to get you and nothing is your fault.

Everyone we know says that we should abandon you,
let you reap what you have sown and cook in your own stew,
but we cannot do it. We’re with you to the end,
because for a lifetime, we have called you friend.

Prompt words are lantern, apprentice, flimsy, east, oxymoron and assault.
The goofus in this photo has given permission to use it. None of the other descriptions apply to him, however. (Face by Forgottenman)

Agastopia (For Bob)

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Agastopia*
(For Bob)

At my dear departed husband’s behest,
my ode extols the female breast.
In a dream world of his making,
breasts on beaches would be baking,
naked in the sun, to gold,
then, unashamed, to brown and bold.

No petty thoughts would cloud his mind,
his excitation, an artful kind,
and as he paints or sculpts or molds,
each scoop of plasticine he holds,
will take a shape of his devising,
as he works, his hands revising

all that God and nature wrought,
their perfect beauty therein caught.
While some malinger at their tasks,
a breast is all my true love asks—
to do what nature first has done
and duplicate them, one by one.

 

*Agastopia is the admiration of a particular body part.

 

Prompts today are dream world, petty, malinger, revise, excited and agastopia (the fetishestic admiration of a specific body part.)

Forgottenman reminded me of this post of more of Bob’s sculptures: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2019/07/12/mentor/

 

Smiled At

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Smiled At

The effervescence of your smile
has me soaring mile on mile.
I’m tremulous within your bubble,
It’s elementary. I’m in trouble!

I travel on the lift of you,
billowy in glimmer’s hue.
Transparent from the very start
in what I carry within my heart.

It was as though, once trapped indoors, 
you opened in me all the doors.
And now I float out, high and free,
bearing your smile along with me.

 

Prompts today are effervescence, elementary, tremulous, indoor, glimmer, billowy.

In Life Not as in Art

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In Life, Not as in Art

Those who have a fondness for surreal modern art
might often hitch their horses behind their apple cart.
Which might lead to dropping apples up and down the road.
Which, of course, will lead to losing half your load.
So, if Pablo Picasso is your aesthetic saint,
My advice for beginners? Don’t practice what you paint.

Prompts for today are cart, beginner, fondness, abstract, drop, modern . Image is Picasso’s la fenêtre ouverte.

Stick-in-the-Muds

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Stick-in-the-Muds

Obtuse folks with fondness for traditions of the past
consider a rendition that has a modern cast
as an indication that culture will not last,
confining their appreciation to their yesterdays,
designating mod designs as just another craze.
They sink into their easy chairs to mouth a loud “Ahem!”
not realizing  that their folks thought just the same of them.

Prompts for today are design, culture, fondness, obtuse, sink, rendition and indicative. IIlustration by Tim Kilby on Unsplash

Quilting Bee

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Mask quilt by Deanna Taylor
The good, the bad and the ugly. All part of life’s crazy quilt.
Pieces ready to be joined
Broken thoughts
African motif quilt by Deanna Taylor
Detail from mask quilt
This is a lovely poem written by my friend Isidro and painted on my wall. It is his version of a story I’d earlier written entitled “In Mexico There is Always Music.” We all keep contributing to each others’ stories.

(Click on photos to enlarge and to read the rest of the story.)

Quilting Bee

I chop my life up into bits, incongruous and varied:
struggles, victories, tragic loves, the day that I got married.
Clashes create beauty as pains mix up with cheers,
making a lovely pattern as each new piece appears.

In stories as in patchwork quilts, all bits are not roses.
Part of the beauty comes from the pain that it exposes.
We put our art together, fragment after patch
and no pattern emerges if all the pieces match.

A convenient truth of works of art as well as that of life:
beauty’s found in perfection, but also found in strife.
Sweet berries come with brambles and each rose has its thorn.
Both great passion and great pain predate the time we’re born.

Perhaps pain is the awful price that we have to pay
to experience the pleasure of when it goes away.
So with the ugly fabric that finds a place to fit
when contrasting beauty is stitched in next to it.

Life is a lovely story, but not all of it is writ.
Why were we created if not to add to it?
In taking all the pieces we’re provided with,
We take part in creation by adding to the myth.

 

 

Prompts today are patterns, chop, clashes, cheer, incongruous, convenient and brambles.

Family Secrets

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Family Secrets

The mayor’s precious daughter has that certain glow,
but why the groom is deadpan, no one will ever know.
That he prefers the maid of honor is the murky truth,
but to show his real emotions he knows would be uncouth.

Hand-picked by her father to assure his re-election,
this young man of fine lineage was an obvious selection.
He should have put his foot down, but their fathers were best friends
and his marriage to another would not meet those families’ ends.

So when future generations question Grandpa’s look
as they rifle through the pages of the family photo book,
they’ll guess the bachelor party had gone on for too long,
affecting the groom’s fitness and his wedding get-along.

Only two will ever know the real truth of the tale.
First, the maid of honor who smoothed her best friend’s veil,
and secondly the groom, who when he kissed the bride
imagined he was kissing the one who stood beside.

 

Prompt words today are glow, deadpan, election, murky, mayor, prefer and precious. Image from Pinterest.

Whirl

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Whirl

The rumor is that I will fall for anything in pants,
but it’s a reputation I only gained by chance.
It really isn’t warranted, for I must feel a spark.
I’m not apt to woo anyone merely for a lark.

I’m just giving feedback, though it’s really no big deal,
of how I earned my reputation on a Ferris wheel.
I went up as a single, but after a spin or two,
another swinging single came into my view.

He was a mere acquaintance. I’d seen him once or twice
on a barstool at the tavern, and I thought him very nice.
I was a mere scrap of a girl, and he was big and burly.
He had a classic profile and his smile was wide and pearly.

My second spin around the wheel, I gave the smile of smiles,
hoping I could interest him with my girlish wiles.
It must have worked for on my very next time going round,
I saw that fellow standing on the boarding mound.

The spinning stopped while they removed my safety bar and he
climbed right in beside me and turned his smile on me.
I don’t know the legality. Is love a bonafide
excuse to board new people in the middle of a ride?

I do not know the answer, but I know for sure it worked,
and when the safety bar went on and that big wheel jerked
me up into the air again, I never rued the stop,
for we were locked in our first kiss before we reached the top.

Although I started solo, we came to earth a pair.
I had found my next true love way up there in the air,
proving it once and for all that romance may be found
even in a swinging cage fifty feet off the ground.

And while the whole experience prompted jubilation,
it had a negative effect on my reputation.
So though I still find rides upon the Ferris wheel are neato,
I arrive there fully masked and I ride incognito!

 

Prompts for the day are incognito, feedback, spark, acquaintance, scrap, Ferris wheel and legality. Image by Juliana Malta on Unsplash

Doorways

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Doorways

Dreams do not circumscribe, but let us wander forth and back,
defying time to travel through memory’s broad crack.

The profile of the present vanishes in rapid transit
without asking us if we are in the shape to chance it.

Our minds’ stately mansions turn to crackerboxes when
that unconscious part of us has a wild yen

to plunge us back into the past to deal with problems there
for which our earlier life gave us scant time to prepare.

Time and again we have the chance to live our lives in dreams,
resolving problems in a manner our subconscious deems

to be healthy solutions to what didn’t work before.
It is as though the elements opened up a door

and let us wander back again through time and distance vast
to give us all a second chance to rectify the past.

Reminding us that our old sorrows were not meant to last,
revising slightly all those roles to which we have been cast.

Time that once sifted slowly rushes through the hourglass,
assuring us of that set truth: that this, too, shall pass.

 

Prompts today are time travel, transit, profile, circumscribe, healthy, crackerbox and element. First photo by jdb, hourglass by Aron Visuals on Unsplash.