Tag Archives: ##MVP-VIvid

New Words Coined or Words Remembered?

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New Words Coined or Words Remembered?

To *neotorize a new word when you can’t find a rhyme
is not really playing fair, in fact it is a crime.
Surely any writer who is worth her salt
is expected to have words enough stored in her mental vault

so no errant *wyvern can abscond with them,
and fly them off to some tall tree, where, perched upon a limb,
he’ll breath fire, thus reducing all the words to ash,
dispensing all their fragments with a tremendous lash

of tail as he flies off again in a hunt bicoastal,
for words shared by any means: books, magazines or postal.
No honeyed tongue can save them once charred and ground to dust,
but still all words that they contained should be recalled and must

once more be written down so those words purloined and embered
by the next generation can be read and thus remembered.
No need to coin new words to express those thoughts once thought.
Better to recall the ones poets of old have wrought.

Hard enough to put them in the rows they once assumed.
Half the work is over once the old words are exhumed.
Why go to twice the work when half the work will do?
And best that once restored, you hide them from the wyvern’s view!!!!

 

*to neotorize is to coin new words, terms or expressions.
*a wyvern is a legendary creature with a dragon’s head and wings, a reptilian body.

Prompt words today are ash, abscond, expect, *neotorize, honey, *wyvern and  coastal

Shelled Sanctity

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Shelled Sanctity

This retreat for turtles in the mountains of Nepal
has the godliest turtles on our Earthly spinning ball.

See the holiest of holies in their tiny saffron robes,
doing daily meditations by pushing tiny globes

first eastward and then westward with a pointed beak,
defining piety by actions instead of how they speak.

See lurking in the shadows, a million tiny ants,
bending low to watch their passing, those tiny sycophants—

who profess to kiss the ground that the turtles walk upon,
but instead just make use of the paths they’ve made when they are gone.

Busy small collectors, they build layer upon layer
of food to nourish bodies, but murmur not a prayer

in thanks for what they’re given, for they know right well
proper thanks is being given by the Brothers of the Shell.

 

Prompts today are lurking, define, saffron, satirical, godliest, turtles and sycophant.

Undertow

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Undertow

Dreams conflate reality, making it surreal—
blend present, past and future until they all congeal.
Therein we twist reality into a tangled fray
that’s lived at night but vanishes in the light of day.

We blunder through their memory, half knowing what is real,
trying to sort out whether we know or sense or feel.
If we could just replay them like a picture show,
we might bring to the surface their mysterious undertow.

 

Prompts today are: only, twist, blunder, vanish and conflate.

Grandpa’s Solo Visits

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Grandpa’s Solo Visits

It’s mysterious how the volume of our cereal goes down
whenever Grandpa chooses to visit in our town.
Without Grandma’s influence, his willpower is zilch
and so he takes this opportunity to filch
our Coco Puffs and Captain Crunch and other cereal,
for he likes a little crackling in his morning meal
along with all the sugar, ‘cuz he swears it puts some zip
in his faltering “get-along” and soothes his aching hip.
None of us tell Grandma, because once he has his fill,
when we all go out for ice cream, Grandpa picks up the bill!!!!

Prompts today are: volume, cereal, mysterious, filch, influence and crackling. Before you ask, this is pure fiction. Sadly, I never had a grandpa. They both died before I was born. If I’d had one, though, I wish he’d been like this grandpa.

Mr. Universe in the Old Age Home

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Mr. Universe in the Old Age Home

His life was lovely and bucolic
prior to his anabolic
stage wherein he played the game
of dosing up to gain a name

and a media barrage
descended on the small garage
where he went to lift more weight
than once he could anticipate.

His life became a mad mirage
of barbells, steroids —a barrage
of contests wherein he competed,
going largely undefeated—

a staircase leading to that time
when he, unchallenged and sublime,
ruled without apology,
a miracle of morphology.

Everybody knew his name.
A survivor, fit, top of his game,
in time his will began to flag
and everything began to sag.

His muscles gone to atrophy,
he is not what he used to be.
His bod of steel reduced to puddle,
he is more comfy now to cuddle,

and so he finds at an old age
that happily, he’s still the rage,
for the old ladies that he hustles
still want to feel his former muscles.

 

Prompts today are game, apology, survivor, bucolic, staircase and mirage.