Tag Archives: #RDP

Remembering Grandma at Christmas

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Remembering Grandma at Christmas

The years have chosen to abrade
the paper angel Grandma made
that year when Christmas cheer was thin,
because for weeks we were snowed in.
Even Santa ceased his action
for his reindeer had no traction.

Weeks of snow and sleet and fog
even kept the catalogue
from providing a Christmas doll
when Santa couldn’t come at all.
And so the holidays that year
did not reflect our usual cheer.

No tree, no lights, no heavenly choir,
our only heat a roaring fire.
We kids complained to Mom and Dad
and by Christmas Eve, they’d had
as much of kids as they could stand
and that’s when Grandma took a hand.

Her silver scissors nipped and flew
creating something that was new—
a Christmas angel feathery light
that floated that December night
above our heads in fire glow,
hung by a string, rotating slow

around the room with wafting wings
descending from above on strings.
And from the dark a heavenly song
prompted us to sing along.
My Grandma led, with timorous voice
that song that always was her choice:

“Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, and all is bright.
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child.
Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.”

One by one, we entered in,
our voices first halting and thin,
but when my Grandma chimed a bell,
our family choir began to swell
up to the ceiling, throughout the room,
dispelling darkness, cold and gloom.

Mom made cocoa on the coals
while Dad made popcorn, filling bowls
we strung on thread to deck our halls
from curtain rods to lamps to walls,
along with paper snowflakes that
twirled on their strings to tease the cat.

In the firelight’s magic glow,
they made things magical and so
every normal Christmas since,
we love our turkey and pies of mince,
Christmas presents to poke and squeeze,
bubble lights and towering trees,

but what’s most special is when Pop
puts Grandma’s angel on the top
of the tree covered in flakes
and popcorn strings the family makes.
And when we sing her special song,
if angels sing, she’ll sing along.

Prompt words today are angel, lover, abrade, traction.

Drone Study

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Drone Study

When it comes to a crunch, you’ll find he’s not there,
for he’s sleekit and stealthy and silent as air.
Indignation won’t faze him. If you say he’s to blame,
he’ll suggest you mature and get back in the game.

He won’t give you a hand when you’re down on your luck.
He’ll just say you lack courage, endurance and pluck.
If you peel back his surface, there’s not a next layer.
All out for himself, he’s not a team player.

When it comes to friendship, he hasn’t a clue.
He’ll ask for a favor, but will he help you?
It’s not likely for when it is time to repay you,
you’ll usually find he was just out to play you.

So get rid of this fellow—this slick opportunist.
It’s best if done quickly, in fact at the soonest.
How to get shed of this ultimate jerk?
Just produce a shovel and ask him to work.

Prompt words today are sleekit, silence, crunch, indignant and mature. Image by Sammy Williams on Unsplash.

First Date Optimism

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This week, the prompt words were doozies. It might help a bit to explain that the incredibly obscure word “demesne” (which is a piece of land one has sole title to) is pronounced to rhyme with “pain.” I’ll leave it up to you to determine the meaning of “whiffle” and “obfuscate” from the context in which they are used. Not my fault, folks. It was in the prompts!!!!!

First Date Optimism

You exaggerate the matter if you say I’m your demesne.
That untruthful statement is purely most insane.
What started out a whiffle, you’ve made into a gale
by weaving our first date into a fairytale.

But I must take exception to your bending of the truth.
You are not my Boaz and I am not your Ruth.
If you think I’ll marry you after our first date,
As I said in the beginning, I fear you obfuscate!!!

 

Prompt words for the day are obfuscate, except, whiffle, demesne . Image by Priscilla du Preez on Unsplash.

Winter Doldrums

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Winter Doldrums

Crimson is reserved for autumn, December is spartan and white.
Frosty and slippery and frigid. Paled by the icy air’s bite.
Folks could be certified crazy for taking a walk on a day
when thermometers hit below freezing. You can freeze off your butt in that way.

Give me a balmy June morning or a sweltering hot afternoon
with a sunshade to keep me from baking  and sinking away in a swoon.
It’s certainly better than winter with snowshoes and mufflers and chains.
If I’m going to have weather, I’d rather contend with spring rains.

Snow has the gross disadvantage of freezing off parts of your nose.
It means going out almost fully obscured with every part wrapped up in clothes.
I can put up with sneezing in springtime and all of the parching of summer.
Leaves falling in autumn don’t irk me, but winter is always a bummer!!!!

 

 

Prompts today are crimson, certify, frosty, spartan and reserve.

Christmas Mayhem

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Christmas Mayhem

No holly’s hung, no lights are lit.
The whole kingdom’s in a fit.
The castle’s dark without a tree.
No decorations there to see.
Warn the palace. Call a jury.
We’re indicting them of worry.
What’s the source of their reserve?
What has quenched their Christmas verve?

What has caused the royal court’s
spirit to be out of sorts?
Is it the Prince or Queen or King
that’s robbed them of their royal zing?
One parlor maid revealed the cause
of their neglect of Santa Claus.
Their tree’s not up or decorated
because they’re all addlepated.

Reticent of jingle-jangle,
for their lights are in a tangle.
The queen’s all thumbs, the king has gout
and cannot sort his tree lights out.
The Prince is spoiled so won’t help.
They should dethrone that royal whelp.
But it’s the truth, there is no doubt
that someone has to sort them out.

Send in a tailor, schooled in string,
to come untangle everything.
Get a lumberjack to see
if he can cut them down a tree.
Hang on candy canes and balls.
Toss on their tinsel, deck their halls,
for royalty undecorated
will for sure be under-rated.

Prompts today are worry, palace, jingle, reticent and reserve. All photos courtesy of Unsplash.

Forest Myth

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Forest Myth

Will-o-the-Wisp and Turtledove for a lady vied.
Will-o-the-Wisp declared a troth the turtledove decried.

“He will be here, then he’ll be there. He’ll never constant be.
I am the only one who’ll be eternally with thee.”

And thus he was the one to win the love of that fair lass.
He wed her in cathedral grand and at their wedding mass,

“I will not change” to his new bride, the turtledove had sighed.
For thirty years he kept this vow, but when at last he died,

he left her mourning down below as he soared up above.
Thus death makes sinners of us all who vow eternal love.

 

Prompt words today are turtledove, plunge, sleep, change and not,

Advice to Reticent Romeos

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Advice to Reticent Romeos

If you are greeted with, perchance,
 a flirtatious lady’s glance
in a cabaret in France,
Hedge your bet, bolster your chance,
square your shoulders, hitch your pants
and ask her if she’d like to dance!

If in a tropical lanai
a  cute wahine meets your eye,
do not simply pass her by.
Adjust your smile, straighten your tie,
and claim your portion of the pie.
Use up your life before you die!

Around the globe, it’s my conclusion
that this advice is no delusion.
Confidence with no confusion
that it  may be a mere illusion,
bolsters chances of a fusion!

 

Prompt words today are conclusion,   bolster,  lanai, hedge and cabaret.
Image by Jiang Xule on Unsplash.

Neighborhood Shopping Spree

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Neighborhood Shopping Spree

I can’t abide the wantonness of my neighbor’s wife
and how it encroaches upon my family life.
And though her husband seems content to overlook her ways,
believing her disinterest just a menopausal phase,
when she goes out for groceries, I watch her shut the door
and know that she’ll be shopping for a single item more
than bread or milk or celery, for as she leaves her house,
I hear my back door closing and know it is my spouse
off upon some shopping spree—some sudden hungry whim
that guarantees her shopping list is bound to include him!

 

Prompts today are encroach, wanton, content, abide and grocery.
Image by Jessie McCall on Unsplash.

Poetic License in a Temperate Climate

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Poetic License in a Temperate Climate

December’s moved south of the border where it isn’t so icy and cold,
but still of all of the months of the year, it’s the one where the weather’s most bold.

It’s that time of the year where I profit from staying in bed until nine,
my bed being where I feel warmest—snuggled in blankets, supine.

At seven and eight it is silent, each dog still curled in his bed,
as I burrow into my poem of the day, rousting it out of my head.

It finds a new home on my hard drive, thus quelling my need to relate
as all of my creative juices suddenly seem to abate.

As my poetry swells to fruition, I finally stir from my nest
to dress in my toe socks and leggings, my sweater and wooly warm vest.

A poem survives any weather, surrounded by peers on the screen,
but even in temperate countries, December remains the most mean.

By April, I’ll feel warm and toasty and I’ll need a different reason
for staying in bed until nine when it is such a perfectly temperate season.

 

Yes, it’s true. I even wear them in bed!  Prompt words today are December, profit, silent,
quell and home.

Family Feud

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Family Feud

The quarrels in my family are numerous at best.
If I say they are ubiquitous, believe me, I don’t jest.
Daddy’s always angry. Mama’s always in a tiff.
If discord had an odor, you’d always get a whiff
as you wandered past our windows or entered our front door,
and if you thought to mention them, we’d only produce more.

Bring up race relations and there’ll be no interstice
between Daddy’s rants and ravings that display his prejudice
and Mama’s stepping in with her opposing point of view.
Then before you know it, they’ll unite to lambast you!
We seldom have a visitor and have no friends at all.
No salesmen knock upon our door and no neighbors call.

If I threw a slumber party and had friends to spend the night,
the angst here’s so infectious that we’d have a pillow fight.
No cousins ever join us at Thanksgiving to give thanks
because our extended family has fired us from its ranks.
We are the loneliest clan in town, and that for sure’s no fiction.
But— if we have nothing else, at least we have conviction!

 

Before you ask, this is fiction! Prompt words today are ubiquitous, tiff, prejudice, interstice and mention. Image by Afif Kusuma on Unsplash.