Tag Archives: #RDP

Credo

Credo

It’s the opposite of sinecure, this writing of a blog,
but it’s my distinctive effort and my chosen cog
infrangible and constant in the spinning wheel of life,
it is my way to join the world with minimum pain and strife.

There may be repercussions, for you may not agree.
You may not shelter thoughts that coincide with me.
For sure, great fame and fortune are not slated to be mine,
but spending hours a day at this seems to suit me fine!!!!


That’s Ollie and Roo, a few years ago. They thought I didn’t know they were hanging out back there until I pulled the computer screen down to see why it was shaking back and forth as they wrestled.

This time I did something different and wrote a line in sequence for each prompt word before seeing any of the other prompt words. It is a fun game. I challenge you to do the same and link to this blog. The best way to do this is to favorite the six websites below. They all give daily words and you can click on the site, establish the link, write the line and go on to the next. It’s easier than you think once you establish the favorites. Or, just use the words below but look at one at a time and write your line before looking at the next. With my memory, it is easy. I could write down all six and look at the first and immediately forget the others if I don’t concentrate on them.

Prompts for the day are sinecure, distinctive, infrangible, repercussion, shelter and fame.

Prescient

When he wasn’t ranching or farming or drinking coffee in Mack’s Cafe, this is where my father could normally be found, reading or napping. Here he is dreaming his own dream. Hopefully a happy one.

Prescient

My prescient experiences happened long ago,
shedding vivid spotlights on events I could not know.
Sporadic and unplanned-for, they came to me at night,
employing dreams to bring future happenings to light.

Once, thick in dreams, I woke to the ringing of the phone
and got up to answer its insistent tone.

“Miss Dykstra, this is Ludwig’s. You can come pick up your prints!”
Ready two days early? It didn’t make much sense.

 I said I’d be there shortly, but then went back to bed,
hoping to fall back to sleep, but, alas, instead,
the phone began to ring again, so I got out of bed,
“Miss Dykstra? We are calling to say your dad is dead!”

In shock, I dropped the receiver, and as it hit the floor,
it began to ring again. How could it have rung more?
Puzzled, I woke up in bed. The whole time I’d been sleeping!
So I got up in the real world to stem the phone’s loud beeping.

“Miss Dykstra? This is Ludwigs.”  The voice was calm and steady.
“We just called to say that your color prints are ready!” 
That summer morning, a cold chill rendered me unsteady.
Again, I though it should have been two days ’til they were ready!

I drove uptown to get my prints and when I got back home,
I could hear the ringing of my telephone.
I struggled then with key in lock, but the ringing died
before I even managed to get myself inside.

I couldn’t tell who called me, for I had no means
in those days before cellphones or answering machines.
I went into the bathroom to draw myself a bath.
It would take some soaking to dispel the aftermath

of these weird occurrences. A good half hour or more
had passed before I heard the opening of my kitchen door.
It was my Mom and Sister, both of them in tears.
My dad had had a heart attack, echoing my fears.

In time, it was the end of him, though he lived four more years—
a time in which he had to learn how to shift his gears.
A large man, hale and hearty, and active his whole life,
for those four years he had to depend upon his wife

to open doors and lift things heavier than a phone,
belligerently accepting help for things once done alone. 
“We tried to call you earlier, they said. Where did you go?
I’d had two calls to pick up photos, and so I told them so.”

 

This really did happen, exactly as described. Two sets of phone calls, the words exactly the same in the first set—one a dream, the other reality, although in the second set, I received only the first one in a dream  and when I missed the second phonecall, my sister had to deliver the message herself.

Word prompts today are thick, sporadic, prescient, employ, summer and bellligerent.

Scorpion in the Sacristy

Scorpion in the Sacristy

Minuscule but powerful, it causes us to shake.
The most masculine among us have been known to quake
and to seek protection whenever one is seen,
for it is rumored that their punch is wicked mean.
They inspire colorful language from the subjects of their strikes,
because it’s understatement to simply scream out “Yikes!”
when stricken by a scorpion. The occasion calls for more,
and that is why the village priest was pardoned when he swore
as he removed the host veil and was stung upon the hand,
for though the Holy Father issued a reprimand
for the sin of taking the name of Christ in vain,
since the priest was still in shock and reeling in his pain,
not one of his parishioners, it’s said, has censored him,
for each and every one of them thanked God  it wasn’t them!

Prompt words today are colorful, minuscule, punch, quake, protection and seen.

Spring Picnic

Spring Picnic

That first tidbit of food
swallowed—
that morsel of potato salad
or that sip of lemonade—
activates what April picnics
are fated to attract
as surely as ants—
afternoon rains,
predicted as a slight chance
for this vicinity,
but now diluvial
in their force.

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link. Night  and also making use of these six prompts from different sites: food, vicinity, diluvial, tidbit, activate and afternoon.

(Hover over the photo for a second to read the caption.)

Sculpted

Sculpted

These lines upon my face are ripple marks that represent
all of my life’s ebb and flow, those tides that life has sent.
Calligraphy defining those advantages provided
along with life’s misfortunes that somehow I abided.

Life gives and takes away, sometimes in equal measure—
pain spicing our life as surely as the pleasure—
smile lines as well as creases left by frowns.
Surely, there’s no shortage of life’s ups and downs.

It is the hand of nature sculpting animal and flower,
altering and remolding hour after hour.
From dinosaur to newborn babe—fish and bird and tree,
there is no end to our world’s originality.

Time is the finest sculptor of everything we see.
It is the very master of creativity.
Animal, vegetable, mineral—no two things quite the same.
Constant alteration is evolution’s game.

 

Prompt words today are ripple marks, represent, spice, definition, shortage and advantage.

Bucket Listless

Bucket Listless

Before I have to face the heavenly ordeal—
(perhaps discovering that what I’ve scoffed at is for real.)
Before I kick the bucket, and while I’m still alive,
I’ve been told I have to choose a thing or five
and label them my “bucket list,” a practice I abhor,
(and even if I did, I can only think of four
things that might elate me as I shuffle toward the door.)

If I had the energy, I’d surely take to wing
and fly to foreign spaces to see everything
I didn’t see the first time, when I was in my youth
and as short of brains as  I was short of tooth.
Something about youth draws fortune to our side,
and when you bring up adventure, I think of ones I tried
and shake my head in wonder, surprised that no one died.

I’d like to go to Ireland or on a last safari,
or maybe back to India to replace the sari
I buried my dear cat in because he loved it so,
yet I fear my energy is at an all-time low,
so I will spend my dotage sitting in my chair,
thinking of adventures that I do not dare
pursuing, for I find I dread their wear and tear!!!

Prompts today are: bucket list, elated, heavenly, ordeal, alive and wings.

Stating the Obvious

Stating the Obvious

We’ve hit a cosmic bottleneck and every day I rue it,
for I have the feeling that we will not make it through it.
They’ve indexed the world’s problems, but knowing that they’re there
seems to do very little in solving the nightmare.

We do not yield to pressure to try to cure the ills.
We only seem to kneel before the moneyed class’s wills.
We temper fear with hope that someone else will solve the puzzle
of the fact the whole damn world is staring down a muzzle.

Kids shoot other kids with guns but adults do not care
so long as the NRA sanctions the warfare.
We ban those from our borders who clean up all our messes,
then wonder why we’re drowning here in our own excesses.

Amazon sells refreshments as we all just sit and watch
as climate change keeps shifting the danger up a notch.
Meanwhile, the rich get richer and we ignore the poor
as the ones who need it least acquire more and more.

The polar caps are melting as California burns,
and in between, the drought and floods keep on taking turns.
Hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclones mount and mount,
raising the fatalities higher than we can count.

Nobody knows the answer for how to please us all,
yet we forget we all are one on this great blue ball.
If only we could find a way to even out the score
and give up some of what we’ve got so others can have more.

Sacrifice fossil fuel to give the world a chance.
Tear down the oil derricks. Replace them with plants.
Make sure the rich pay taxes on a par with all the rest.

Admit that we don’t own the Earth. We are just its guest!!!

 

Prompts today are temper, index, cosmic, bottleneck, kneel and refreshments.

Demused

Demused

My muse is on sabbatical. I think she’s feeling surly
from  umpteen years of being awakened way too early
to find a rhyme for “rainbow ” that my readers judge sublime,
only to discover every single time
that I get all the credit for the work she does
each new day in succession. And why? Simply because
she happened to be sanctified and then assigned to me
to insure a steady flow of poetry
without making an agreement regarding who’d be credited
as author of the poems conceived, then written and edited.
So now I seek to rectify my decades-long misdeed
by saying that hereafter, I certify and cede
half the writing credits to my muse of inspiration,
hoping the result will be she’ll come home from vacation,
refreshed, newly-inspired and forgiving of my sin,
full of new ideas and ready to begin.

 

Prompts today are succession, surly, sabbatical, sanctify, arise and rainbowImage by j Jo Justino on Pixabay.

 

Unhoarded Treasures

Uhhoarded Treasures

Those things seen on the surface
form the network of our world—
rain turned into rainbows
with their colors all unfurled.

This greatest spectacle
is spread out for all to see,
for the greatest treasures of the world,
blessedly, are free.

Even the biggest pessimist
among us must admit
that a bit of pleasure
may be derived from it.

Prompts today are surface, unusual, network, pessimistic, fee and rainbow.

Hidden

Hidden

In youth, it was the supernatural that I found charming.
Sinister and spooky I did not find disarming.
Halloween I yearned for, and I was not daunted
by midnight trips to houses reputed to be haunted.

Ouija boards and seances held infinite appeal—
as popular as Tarot cards in what they might reveal.
In supplementing reason, they brought magic to our world—
revealed that place within us where our own magic lay furled.

 

Prompts today are yearn, supplement, supernatural, sinister, infinite and popular.