Tag Archives: poem

Vagaries

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Vagaries

My mind is turning derelict. It often wanders on.
While I am still in need of it, I discover that it’s gone.
My thought processes aren’t uniform. They come and go at random.
Will and concentration no longer come in tandem.
It never ceases fascinating me that what was once
a certified ace student has turned into a dunce.
I know it is the fault of age and yet I often ponder
about this vagary of mind that sends it over yonder
when I have need of it at home. I find it most distressing
when common words are wanted, that my mind now leaves me guessing.


The prompt words today were fault, uniform, fascinate and derelict.Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/rdp-tuesday-fault/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/26/fowc-with-fandango-uniform/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/your-daily-word-prompt-Fascinate-february-26-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/derelict/

Odd Couple

10 Replies

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Odd Couple

She had a nature most erratic
whereas his was mainly static.
She was a girl who liked to rock.
All day he sat and watched the clock.
Few pleasures did he ever find
in his life work’s daily grind.

When they first met, I must confess,
he questioned how she chose to dress.
High heels with socks were not the way
that ladies dressed back in his day.
She was eighteen and he was forty.
She dressed funky. He dressed sporty.

He liked golf. She loved the clubs.
She chewed her fingernails to stubs
worrying about the planet’s fate.
She slept around. He didn’t date
and worried not about emissions
nor those Save the Earth commissions.

What soul who knew them both would guess
they’d ever meet, or even less
imagine that they’d get along—
he with his pipe, her with her bong?
Let’s put them in each other’s way.
See how they’d act. See what they’d say.

She meanders through the park
in the evening, before dark.
He’s walking home from the ninth hole.
She rounds the corner, he crests the knoll.
They meet soon on the walkway path.
They have to pass. You do the math!

She eyes his clubs. He eyes her socks.
Her expression questions, but his mocks.
He doesn’t nod, she doesn’t greet.
If you were wishing they might meet,
you’ll have to write your own romance.
These two as lovers? There’s no chance!!!

 

Prompt words today were rock and guess. Here are links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/24/rdp-sunday-rock/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/24/guess/

America the Beautiful

12 Replies

 

America the Beautiful

I won’t whitewash my puzzlement. Can’t understand
why the people we’ve chosen to govern our land
Would consider it sane, for even a minute
to ever put toxic chemicals in it!

 

The prompt words today are  whitewash, puzzlement and toxic.

https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/06/fowc-with-fandango-whitewash/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/your-daily-word-prompt-puzzlement-february-6-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/toxic/

Cowboys

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Cowboys

When considering cowboys, there’s much to admire.
They’re tough and they’re skilled and available for hire.

Their style’s not eclectic. They all look the same.
They’re wild and they’re wooly. Not easy to tame.

They’re never clandestine. They’re out in the open.
Just  shootin’ and spittin’ and ridin’ and ropin’.

Made out of leather and chew and barbed wire,
nobody knows when cowboys expire.

For though they aren’t known for their tact or their heart,
there’s much to admire in how they depart.

No need for a service or funeral pyre,
no casket, no preacher, no flowers, no choir.

They merely climb up and sit straight in the saddle,
ride toward the horizon and simply skedaddle.

 

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https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/rdp-monday-skedaddle/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/04/fowc-with-fandango-eclectic/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/your-daily-word-prompt-clandestine-february-4-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/admire/

Seeing Red at 2 A.M.!!!!!!

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The only two prompts already published when I was awakened AT TWO IN THE MORNING!!!!! by some asshole driving back and forth and back and forth five feet from my open bedroom window on a motorcycle with no muffler and obviously some sort of amplifier on his tailpipe that made it sound like a series of cherry bombs going off at 1/10th of a second intervals!!!!!! were “hindsight” and “tricky.” Feels like I’ll never get to sleep again, so might as well write.  Here goes:

Futile Reflection

It is a tricky irony that memory is slow
in letting loose of the mistakes that we’d love to let go
when wisdom gained by hindsight’s too far after the fact
to alter the reality of a foolish act.

 

https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/03/fowc-with-fandango-hindsight/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/03/your-daily-word-prompt-tricky-february-3-2019/

Stasis

4 Replies

 

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Stasis

At the zenith of her powers, the glamorous Ms. Z
knew well the art of camouflage. No one could really see
the heretic that lived inside the one in the first pew.
Not even her most loyal friends knew she was a Jew.

Times call for extreme measures, whatever might protect
and preserve us from dark powers, who if they detect
any threatening differences might decide to strike.
One yesterday thought “charming,” today just labeled “kike!”

What small differences between us do we all obscure?
What hidden denials must we all endure?
Convention is a schoolmarm with a ruler in her hand
ready to dish out punishment for any action banned.

One drop of blood not Aryan or thought that’s not mainstream,
any errant choice of style, any avant dream
might be grounds for action, for all good people know
the harm that comes from those who might upset the status-quo.

 

 

 

*kike is derived from the Hebrew word for circle, which is the mark many jews made on their immigration papers coming into America instead of an X for their signature.  Like many other racial slurs, it came from immigration officers who used it a s short-hand for a population group entering the country.

 

The prompt words today are camouflage, heretic, glamorous and zenith.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/rdp-thursday-camouflage/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/31/fowc-with-fandango-heretic/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/your-daily-word-prompt-glamorous-january-31-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/zenith/

Voyeur

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jdbphoto          

Voyeur

Steady days and vagrant nights pull this way and that.
By day a busy beaver, midnights a roving cat

haunting every low-life bar, spending bucks and time,
trying to find that side of life apart from the sublime.

Dipping into shadows. Edging around the slime
of the seamier pleasures. Contemplating crime.

Eying dangerous companions but staying self-contained.
All dangerous encounters simply mimed and feigned.

Flirting with the dark side, but reined in by the light,
only skirting stealthily the pleasures of the night.

 


(Photo for illustrative purposes only.  In no way is the poem really about the person pictured!) The prompt words today were vagrant, range, slime and haunting. 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/rdp-thursday-vagrant/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/24/fowc-with-fandango-range/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/your-daily-word-prompt-slime-january-24-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/haunting/

No Head for Business

7 Replies

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No Head for Business

I fear I must be adamant in stating my demands.
In this I am unshakeable. My initial sales price stands.
I do not like this bargaining. I find it all a chore.
I’d rather be off wandering. Business is a bore.
And though I must admit that your demeanor is most affable,
your offer is too little. In fact I find it laughable.
It will do no good to counter offer. I’m set on the price
that would reimburse me for leaving paradise.

I have no bottom offer. This is no power game.
To nickel and to dime it is a practice I find lame.
The palm trees are all swaying, there’s hot water in the pool,
and the more I think about it, I see that I’m a fool
to leave this little Shangri-la. Where would I find its sequel?
It’s clear that for the price I ask I could not find its equal!
Here swinging in my hammock with a cocktail and my pup,
I am so contented that my sales price just went up!!

Prompt words today were chore, affable, adamant and power.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/rdp-friday-chore/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/18/fowc-with-fandango-affable/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/your-daily-word-prompt-adamant-january-18-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/power/

Journeys

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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/

Out of Order

7 Replies

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Out of Order

If you’re an avid planner—an agenda sort of man,
life seems to have a fondness for screwing up your plan.
Ideology is fine so long as you take note
that fate seems to have other schemes than life lived out by rote.

Providence is naughty. It thinks irony is divine.
It likes to move our decimal points, nudge columns out of line.
It screws around with calendars, plays jokes with weather, too.
It messes up your Windsor knot, conceals one favorite shoe.

It messes up collections and puts them out of sequence.
confuses medication in its timing and its frequence.
So if life changes the rules after you think you’ve won,
learn what it seeks to teach you: spontaneity is fun!

 

Prompt words today were collection, avid, ideology and plan.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/ragtag-daily-prompt-tuesday-collection/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/15/fowc-with-fandango-avid/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/your-daily-word-prompt-ideology-january-15-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/plan/