Tag Archives: #RDP

Vivid Mexico

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Vivid Mexico

Those individuals who choose to spend the remaining years of their life south of the border have some strengths in common. Some come because it is a cheaper place to live, but those who remain generally stay because of a love of the richness of the life here. It is an existence not free of snafus—a life not for the lackadaisical or the personality set in its ways. There are fewer safeguards and rules–fewer antimacassars to protect chair backs from oily heads. Fewer lifeguards to warn someone they are too far out in the water.

If one falls into a hole where the manhole cover has been left off and sues for damages, the judge is more likely to enquire if they were blind and then to dismiss the claim. You couldn’t see the cover was gone and walk in a different place? It is a place of accountability for one’s own actions, creating less of a propensity to blame problems on someone else. Mexico is not perfect, but it is perfectly beautiful and varied and life-filled. If one wants to cram a lot of life into their last twenty to forty years, it is one of the places  where it is possible to do so.

Prompt words today are antimacassar, lackadaisical, snafu, water. In addition, Pensivity’s “Three Things Challenge” prompt words are individual, strong and border.

Fresh Resolution

Fresh Resolution

I’m not in possession. I’m off of the bottle.
My recovery is going full throttle.
I’ll be home every night in time for my supper.
Not a reefer in sight, nor a downer or upper.

What lies beneath my new resolution,
my seeking forgiveness and absolution,
is simply a need to set myself right.
I’m tired of the subterfuge every night.

I’m tired of hearing pleas to desist.
Tired of struggling just to exist.
So I’ll be your lover if you’ll be my baby.
For the rest of my life I’ll go straight again—maybe.

Prompt words today are bottle, upper, twist, beneath and possession. Image by Michael Longmire on Unsplash, used with permission.

Agates

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Agates

Often, when our hired hand took a break from work,
he’d comb the land for agates, then return with a smirk,
pockets full of shiny stones he’d removed from the clay,
bragging to my father that this was his lucky day.

Down along the river, on sunny days they shone,
mixed in with the detritus of  rocks and sand and bone.
You’d have thought that they were diamonds he’d removed from the earth,
but he didn’t judge their beauty simply by their worth.

He had learned to capture happiness anywhere he found it,
sorting out the beauty from what he found around it.
A simple man, for him it was not something he could buy.
He found beauty in a blade of grass or clouds up in the sky.

Lucky man, therefore he found beauty everywhere—
In his wife’s shy smile and his children’s flaxen hair,
wheat fields spread like blankets before the combine’s blade,
he gloried in all the riches that the earth had made.

 

Prompt words today are agate, smirk, remove, often and land. Image from USGS on Unsplash, used with permission.

 

Mergers and Acquisitions

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Mergers and Acquisitions

Their marriage was nefarious for its machinations,
for it was less love story than it was amalgamations:
wedding of fluid assets, portfolio combining,
mid-cap stocks and pipelines, oil shares and mining.

Their merger started out with a proposal to borrow—
an essay for a loan that somehow upon the morrow
turned into a merger that wed family and family
to create a union that was more of an anomaly

than it was a love story—a joining of two powers 
that should have woven dollar signs into the wedding bowers.
Thus is a son or daughter turned into corporate pawn
as simply as a corporate schemata is redrawn.

 

Prompt words today are fluid, nefarious, borrow, amalgamate and essay.

Die Laughing

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Die Laughing

Much of his popularity 
stemmed from his jocularity.
Those who described him as laconic
were certainly being ironic,
for he was fond of show and tell—
where he was rumored to excel
and used his talents more than once
to amuse a captive audience.
His violent end was unexpected.
His funny bone became infected
and went for too long undetected
until his remains were dissected.
But all agreed he’d be amused
to know a bone so overused
would be the one that would so lend
itself to bring about his end.

 

Prompt words today are jocularity, laconic, amused, violent and show. Image by Denis Agati on Unsplash, used with permission.

Spring Brakes

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Spring Brakes

Her freshman year at college, my sis brought home a guest
that dad said was a nincompoop–rude and badly dressed.
His pants were tight, his buttons opened half way down his chest,
but my sister made excuses for the crudeness he expressed
by saying he was sensitive and recently depressed.

He strode into the kitchen and jerked open the door
of the refrigerator and began to pour
milk right from the carton, down his chin onto the floor.
What’s more, when he was finished, he asked if there was more!
Well, I could sense Dad’s anger before I heard his roar.

“He can’t help his behavior, he’s parched!” my sister cried,
pleading with our father as he threw the jerk outside.
Where, by his own volition, the kid sauntered to his ride,
put the keys in the ignition and, gathering his pride,
put the pedal to the metal, but then the engine died!

To inject a bit of humor would probably be rude,
but I simply can’t resist expounding on the dude.
My parents called his parents who came a bit unglued
and gave the kid a lecture on respect and rectitude,
imposing a Spring Break spell of solitude.

And that is why my sister spent her term vacation
in a state of martyrdom and excess perturbation.
I chalked it up to part of her farther education
and gloried just a little bit in her situation,
trying to abstain from another smug oration.

And that’s part of the story of when sister was a fool
and chose a dud as boyfriend, but to dwell on it is cruel.
That year she learned more lessons that weren’t taught in school.
When it came to spring vacation, it became her rule
that mixing  dads and boyfriends really wasn’t cool.

 

Photo by Mark Decile on Unsplash, used with permission. Prompts today are parched, nincompoop, inject, bide and guest.

I’ve Been and I Am

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I’ve Been and I Am

In earlier days, I’ve been cursed and rehearsed.
Been nursed for my fevers, relieved of my thirst.
Dialed and aisled, exiled  and trialed.
Filed and riled and even profiled.

I grew tired, retired, and my interest was fired
to try moving off to a place I’d admired.
Fate guided my steps, waved her magical wand
and found me a house by a beautiful pond,

Surrounded by greenery both flower and frond,
 I’ve probably formed my ultimate bond.
What we were we still are, for that is our core,
but if we have courage, we can be still more.

Life isn’t over when we’re retired.
We may be at rest but we needn’t be mired.
The flame of our life has not yet expired.
No circuit’s so old that it can’t be rewired!

Prompt words are tired, wand, thirst, negate and profile.

Bonus View

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Bonus View

The sun was at its zenith and although I ventured bare
out to my jacuzzi, I had no intent to share
a peep show with my neighbors, for tall bushes masked the view
from their high terrace to my bedroom, and my hot tub, too.

I’d forgotten that leaf cutter ants had lately been to dine
upon the hedge between us, depleting leaf and vine.
So when birds perch upon it, they’re exposed from tail to plume.
I can see them from the terrace and see them from my room

as they feed upon the flowers against a bright blue sky,
exposed there as they lately are to every human eye.
In addition, I’d been duly warned by  neighbors recently
that since the ants had visited, they can’t help viewing me

as I go about life’s duties on my terrace, in my yard,
and if my drapes are open, they had found that it was hard
to deflect their eyes from bedroom views. I’d been duly alerted
that if our mutual embarrassment was to be averted

that I should be more careful until our hedge filled out
lest I inadvertently forget and walk about
in fewer clothes than usual or pursued private actions
not intended to be shared for neighborly reactions.

So when I left the hot tub seeking to slake my thirst
and headed for the kitchen, I, too, witnessed the worst.
Through bare branches, void of leaf, male neighbors stood askance
viewing me against their will as I took the chance

naked as a jaybird, to scurry to the house
devoid of any raiment—swimsuit, pants or blouse.
Now this might have been exciting when there was less to see
in my earlier years, preceding seventy-three,

but I fear the scene they viewed was more a shock than titillating.
Certainly not the scene that they had been anticipating
as they strolled out with their guests for a visual interlude.
I’m sure they’d no intent to view their neighbor in the nude!

Prompt words today are plume, zenith, thirst, duly and share.

Humble Up to a Point

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Humble Up to a Point

I’m not noted for my moxie. Not famous for my wit.
When I tell a joke, I rarely get away with it.
My asides are not whimsical. They’re lacking in their zest.
The laughter they occasion is optional, at best.
When they hold a contest in delivering a line,
I promise you the loving cup never will be mine.
And though it would be wonderful to be life of the party,
I’ll have to make do with being brilliantly arty!

 

Prompt words are contest, whimsical, optional, moxie and wonderful. (Amazing that three of the five prompts, all taken from different sites, actually rhyme with each other! ) What are the chances?

Reunion

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Reunion

We perambulate the meadow, our eyes drinking their fill,
our memories straying farther up over yonder hill.
The tirades of an angry world do not survive the climb,
leaving us to peacefulness simple and sublime.
The higher up thoughts wander, memory grows hypoxic,
screening out the terrors of a world that has grown toxic.

Wild poppies sway and bend to currents fresher than below
as what we both remember overtakes what lies below.
We draw fresh energy and joy from everything we pass.
The cicadas churr rain’s promises from the obscuring grass.
Small creatures race for burrows, unaccustomed as they are
to the human menace that approaches from afar.

But our thoughts pass without harming, for memories pose no threat,
and we shed years and worries the higher that we get.
Remember all those years ago, those passions that we shared
with each new faltering kiss and each new secret that we bared?
Though the present is what nourishes, youth vanished way too fast.
What harm can be in going back for a light repast?

Prompts today are memory, passed, thought,  hypoxic, tirade, perambulate, fill.