Tag Archives: One Daily Prompt

Divided We Fall

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Divided We Fall

As we bicker on the web, as we snipe and snooze,
soothing our hurt feelings with doobies or with booze,
our rulers are sequestered, each pondering on his throne,
deciding what new property to seize and make their own.

A chunk from social security, another bit from schools.
So long as we’re not educated, we’ll remain their fools.
Cut taxes for their cronies and let them drill for oil
in our nature preserves until we start to boil.

Record heat in one spot and fires in another.
Record snow and hurricanes. We drown or freeze or smother.
They are not going to notice these travesties and glitches,
for they’re busy in their counting rooms, counting out their riches.

What percentage earned today? What yachts to buy tomorrow?
The fortune that they earn today is mankind’s future sorrow.
If we stay divided, we play into their plans.
We keep each other busy as they work on their tans!

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The prompt words today were snooze, property, sequester and percentage.
Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/rdp-friday-snooze/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/16/fowc-with-fandango-property/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/sequester/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/your-daily-word-prompt-percentage-November-16-2018/

Unsung

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Unsung 

Life lived as a soliloquy with no sort of belonging
is a bell without a clapper—only motion with no gonging.
Life’s richer orchestrated from many different parts—
a plethora of loved ones. A symphony of hearts.

Love brings complications—a certain pain and mess,
and a life deterged of conflict sounds tempting, I confess,
but still a solitary life cannot be the best.
It lacks a certain melody, a certain flair and zest.

Every unsung melody is searching for a stage,
and a voice without an ear is like words without a page.
Only half of life can be lived behind a wall.
The sound of one hand clapping is no sound  at all.

 

The prompt words today are orchestrate, belong, soliloquy and deterge. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/15/rdp-thursday-orchestrate/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/15/fowc-with-fandango-belong/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/15/soliloquy/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/11/15/your-daily-word-prompt-deterge-November-15-2018/

Birthday Wishes

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Birthday Wishes

If there were a chemical to freeze your age forever,
where you would stay the way you are, as mobile, fit and clever.

Birthday after birthday with no end in front of you.
Always a new chance to take, always something new.

If you were not already feeble, halt and ill,
would you drink the potion? Would you take the pill?

No altering minds afterwards. No climbing from the pit.
Once you made the decision, there would be no changing it.

Would you want to live forever to survive ’til mankind’s end?
Do you really want to see what is waiting ’round the bend?

I think given the choice that I would choose what nature dishes.
I’ve  given up on following along with mankind’s wishes.

 

 

The word prompts today are birthday, chemical, freeze and quit. Here are their links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/rdp-wednesday-birthday/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/14/fowc-with-fandango-chemical/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/freeze/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/your-daily-word-prompt-quit-November-14-2018/quit

Family Reunion, Off the Grid

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Click on first photo to enlarge all.  

 

 

My sisters and dad and I.
Patti and I under the rose trellis.
This is my dad and I in front of a cabin in The Black Hills.

 

Family Reunion, Off the Grid

We find the key to the lake cabin
there where it always was above the eaves trough,
enter that family space deserted for so many years
and claim our old rooms.
Bring in firewood piled on the porch thirty years ago
and draw together at the trestle table
over dinners gathered
from the ice chests in the trunks of cars.

Dependent for so many years
on cell phones, e-mail and Facebook,
we grow listless over the loss of cell tower and wifi,
fall back on family videos from the far past,
and having exhausted that sparse shelf,
resort to family albums, dusty with accumulated years.

Over those cryptic signals from the past,
we begin to remember more,
and recall scraps of ourselves
that give a meaning to the name of scrapbook.
With no single screens possible,
we draw together over simple common images.

Dad in the neighbor lady’s hat,
sis in diapers and my mother’s heels,
my tea towel sarong and doily hat,
Mother, young enough to be our granddaughter,
in a stylish hat tipped down over one eye,

Middle sister standing triumphant at the top
of the slide she later fell from the top of—
a past truth I might have never known
if not sealed up, like this,
away from the wider world
and those parts of ourselves
that keep flying off to it.

I take her hand, grateful for her survival.
Just the two of us, now,
everyone else sealed up in this peeling album.
We put them to sleep again as we close its cover.
In the morning, restore the key,
nestle the “For Sale” sign more securely
into its mooring place and divide to our separate worlds,
the box of videos under my arm,
the family scrapbooks under hers.

The prompt words are past, video, listless and dependent.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/ragtag-tuesday-past/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/11/13/fowc-with-fandango-video/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/listless/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/your-daily-word-prompt-dependant-November-13-2018/