Tag Archives: #RDP

Tyrant: NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 19: The Rant

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Tyrant

Your arguments are specious, without a gram of proof,
but when we try to point this out, you only seem aloof.
Though you fancy that you’ve sex appeal and charm and woo and sizzle,
your expected rain of compliments turns out to be a drizzle.

That odor you find fragrant with which you mask your stench
would not be necessary if you were just a mensch*,
but the bald reality that you need to face
is that most of your actions are selfish, rude and base.

All your resolutions sworn to in the past
were but fabrications never meant to last.
In short, you are a narcissist thinking of you alone
with a thousand selfish vanities for which you won’t atone.

That’s why, my dear, you sit there in your ivory tower
wondering why your riches, your accomplishments and power
somehow do not satisfy when done for yourself only,
for all your grand accomplishments just leave you feeling lonely.

*mensch: a person of integrity and honor

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to write a humorous rant. In this poem, you may excoriate to your heart’s content all the things that get on your nerves.
Prompts today are sizzle, fragrant, past, specious and reality.images from Unsplash, used with permission

The Graffiti Artist

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Graffiti Artist

Such errands as having to go to the store
to get milk for one’s mother can be a big bore.
Then I spot a blank wall that alters my view
of what I’ve been sent to the corner to do.

My mind shifts a cog and memory grows faint
as I forget the milk and instead buy spray paint.
I’ve abandoned my purpose and lost my perspective
to scrawl on the wall these words of invective.

It’s not that my sentiments are hocus-pocus.
It’s simply that I have shifted my focus.
I don’t prevaricate, for though they’re ruthless,
let it not be said that my statements are truthless.

What some see as defacement, others see as art,
but this is never my goal from the start.
When I have a thought, I just want to share it.
Some put it on T-shirts and then choose to wear it,

but I want it bigger. I have to shout.
My feelings require a wall to get out!
So please look at the message and if you must blame
someone for graffiti, just look at the name

of the politician that I am exposing
for graft and corruption or lying or posing.
He’s the real villain. I’m only the one
who’s revolting with spray paint instead of a gun!!!

Prompt words for today are prevaricate, focus, abandoned, scrawl and perspective. All photos of graffiti thanks to Unsplash. Used with permission.

Bobcat

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Bobcat

You stroll across the road in front of us
as though you do not notice us.
Astonished, we capitulate our right of way
and sit in the car, digesting our wonder
at your incursion into this tame neighborhood
spread like a blanket
over the wildness of the desert.

It is no wonder
that life in this place
seems to be laden
with occasional visits
of rattlesnakes and bobcats
such as yourself,
but it is by chance that,
like a brief vacation from our own banality,
we bear witness to your incursion.

Even given your languid stroll,
I cannot move quickly enough to record it,
but providence provides,
and minutes after we pull into the garage and come inside,
an email arrives from the neighbor
that records your incursion
into his backyard.

He stalked you with his camera,
and we with our eyes
as you strolled serenely
in between your own stalkings.

Oh, bobcat,
beautiful element
of that wild nature that surrounds
and enriches us
and which, in spite of
evidence to the contrary,
we are a part of—

If I were religious,
these words
of your sighting
would be my prayer.

Prompts today are chance, capitulate, digest, lade and astonished. Photo by Paul Brown. Thanks, Paul, for capturing what I could only try to capture in words. Photo taken on Friday afternoon, April 16, 2021. Location: Trilogy at Vistancia, Peoria, Arizona.

Poetic Research

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Poetic Research

My dictionary slips off its perch,
so I leave it lie and ask Google to search
for the meaning of “farctate,” a word that sounds farty
when what I had wished for was words far more arty.
But I find even after it’s screened,
I forget to remember what I have gleaned.
Then, when I check “precept” to see if its meaning
is what I think, I find it demeaning
that I have to check and do not just know,
but in the end, I am right on, and so,
I get to the task and I screw up my lips
and type out this poem without any slips.
Still and all, don’t we wish they made prompt words more easy,
so we could pursue them without feeling queasy?

Prompt words today are register, lips, farctate, precept and search. Definition of “farctate” copied from the Merriam Webster Dictionary.

Pludged Doze

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Pludged Doze

When she’d clipped and arranged and with water anointed
the roses I’d brought her, she  looked disappointed.
“These roses aren’t flagrant,” my lady-love said,
but she suffered a horrible cold in her head, 
and recently testy, lately each word
she uttered was also slightly absurd.

She was given to certain extreme mis-pronouncements
Like “Dode wad adudder” and other announcements
when I offered a hot and whisky-laced toddy
to coat her sore throat and to comfort her body.
The simplest of pleasures may be greeted with dread
by a bellicose lady with a cold in her head.

And her talent with words, be it poetry or prose,
doesn’t work orally with a plugged nose!

Prompts for the day are comfort, flagrant, talent, bellicose and simple.

Praying Mantis

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(Click on photos to enlarge and see details.)


Praying Mantis

Now that the sun has vanished and the desert air turned cold,
some of the insects vanish, but others have turned bold.
Small winged gnats bask under the lamplight’s surrogate sun.
Motionless, they seem to sleep, their daylight flitters done.
They colonize the body of the terrace table lamp,
sunning in the bulb’s bright glow, absorbing every amp. 
A single different visitor ascends my sister’s back,
as though he seeks the warmth and light the night air seems to lack.

She does not feel his presence. So far, he’s brought no harm.
He spreads out on the blanket of her light-warmed arm.
More stick-with-arms than insect, he seems inclined to stay.
Secure in his establishment, it seems as though he may
settle there for good, but then he chooses to decamp
by making an impromptu leap onto the terrace lamp.
Motionless, as though caught up in silent meditation,
nothing seems to interrupt his profound cogitation.

But then he leaps up higher, closer to the light,
the globe’s gleam growing warmer at this greater height.
The smaller denizens of light seem calm and unperturbed.
They continue slumbers largely undisturbed,
but suddenly I notice their numbers have diminished,
the mantis washing off his arms as though he has just finished.
He draws one and then another arm through his lethal jaws,
as though they’re violin bows moving without pause.

His music has no volume. The sawing of his bows
creates no funeral music.  No sins do they expose.
For awhile he stands unmoving, the heat and light ideal
for aiding his digestion of his midnight meal.
The moon cuts through the darkness, dividing it in layers
as the unmoving mantis seems to say his prayers.
Then, when he leaps into the dark, I turn out the light
and trundle off to bed as well, bidding you good night.

 

Prompts today are insect, impromptu, establishment, trundle and cold.

Woodwind

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Woodwind

Breath, down through my lifetime, if I dare to cogitate,
creates a varied story that I’m driven to relate.
Along with embouchure, it was a subject of debate
that, added to execution, served to determine fate
by moving me from first chair to second, then to third
in placement in the school band. I easily conceded
to yield my place as first chair, and so was superseded
by player after player who played the saxophone
more skillfully than I did. I had not a bone
to pick with them. I knew I had neither skill nor lungs
to insure my placement in the upper rungs
of our school band’s placement. I really didn’t care
if I manned third or second or the first-ranked chair.

Tobacco, then pneumonia later played a hand
in lessening my lung power long after the school band
had retreated into history and a guitar took the place
of an instrument requiring both my breath and face
to execute its glories. And so my prowess lingers
longer now that it requires simply arms and fingers.
Meanwhile, my breath is used up by necessary things.
It talks and sighs and whistles and laughs and coughs and sings.
Even with more talent, it’s clear I’ve not enough of it
to put my mouth upon a reed and puff and puff and puff on it.
I’m glad I had no talent, for it would mean my death
if I had any other thing using up my breath!!!

Prompt words today are pneumonia, tobacco, embouchure, cogitate and empty.

On Strike (At Odds With The Prompts)

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On Strike

(Prompt words today are glass, never, hectic, tyro (novice) and rebirth. For the NaPoWriMo Prompt “Past and Future.” we are challenged  to write a poem using at least one word/concept/idea from each of two specialty dictionaries: Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary and the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction.)

I am not in the mood to write about glass.
My mood of the moment? Belligerent sass!
The prompt words are silly and way too eclectic.
They leave me feeling frustrated and hectic,
as though I’m a tyro at trying to rhyme—
in need of a rebirth in iambic time.
I’ll never complete the task as assigned,
but I’m sure that my readers will not even mind.
Aren’t you tired of my inane ill-rhymed verse?
If I added the classical, it would be worse.
Then sci-fi allusions? Just bring on the hearse!
Sometimes these prompts can end up as a curse.

 

Image by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash. Used with permission

“Dear Self” for NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 11, Plus Daily Prompts,

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poem a


Dear Self: The Query

I’ve written all the words. That is the easy part.
But why can I not  finish the projects that I start?
Four books that I have finished languish on the shelf.
I cannot follow through with them. I cannot help myself!
A letter to an agent, a query or request,
someone to pursue the task, perhaps, at my behest?
It just seems impossible to do what I must do.
I haven’t the ability to simply follow through.
I need a deus ex machina to simplify my task.
A simple intervention. Is it too much to ask?

 

Dear Self: The Reply

Jettison your worry. Throw away your fear.
Regain your former confidence. Shift to a higher gear.
Every rigorous journey requires a last step.
Why would you avoid it when you’ve done all the prep?
I think that fear of failure is your fatal flaw.
Those who seek lionization must face the lion’s maw.
Time’s persistent pendulum repeats its past percussions.
Those who overlook them will suffer repercussions.
“Done begins with do,” is the most memorable of morals.
You succeed by finishing, not resting on your laurels.

 

Ironically, “Done Begins with Do” was my class motto when I graduated from high school.

Prompts today are: confidence, jettison, memorable, percuss and repeat.
And also, the prompt  for NaPoWriMo today was to write a letter and a reply. for the

 

Dilletante

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Dilletante

Even though his art skills were little more than nascent,
he displayed an attitude disgustingly complacent.
He bragged about this vision and lauded his own craft—
Puffed up about his concepts that were little more than daft.
His style was so protean that it was nonexistent.
He was deaf to any critique and consistently resistant
to suggestions from instructors, resisting education
that might have been of aid in his artistic operation.
Thus, he developed  habits that led, as you can see,
to work that is just noted for its mediocrity.

 

Prompt words for today are operation, complacent, habit, protean and craft.