Tag Archives: #RDP

“To Do” List for a New Roommate (NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 9 and Daily Prompts)

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“To Do” List for a New Roommate

*If you value this abode,
please plan to shoulder half the load
to keep it lovely, clean and neat.
This rule, I will not repeat.

*Underwear should not be seen
on chair or floor or in-between.
(To insure I’m a happy camper,
dirty clothes go in the hamper.)

*If, on occasion, you feel you might
have a lover spend the night,
lest my ire you might incite,
please have him leave by morning light.

*No mongrels, kittens, fish or birds
or other denizens of herds
may cross my doorway, now or ever.
In short, are pets allowed? No. Never!!!

*If personal details you recite,
please insure they are not trite,
for next to messiness and snoring,
I most dread roommates who are boring.

* Don’t steal my cookies or my chips.
My food should never pass your lips.
Don’t steal my leftover knishes,
and when you cook, do your own dishes.

*If these requests you can’t abide,
just pack your bags and move outside!
Follow my rules, or it’s your loss,
for in this house, I am the boss!

 

Prompt words today are shoulder, underwear, mongrel, trite and love.  Image by Sincerely Media on Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Also, for NaPoWriMo, Day 9, Make a To-Do List

Paper Star

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Paper Star

Born to a family with great clout,
endued with fame, there was no doubt
she, too, would take the world by storm.
Yet, she went against the norm.

Coached in wit and charm and fame,
she didn’t want to play the game.
Sure of herself, without a doubt,
she felt no need to preen or flout.

She renounced usage of the name
and chose a lifestyle much more tame.
Given a choice, selected knowledge,
studied hard and went to college.

Took lifelong sabbatical
from being brash or radical.
Did not grace the silver screen.
Lived out her life private, unseen.

Avoided fame and tabloid papers,
forwent scandal, Oscars, capers.
Became a mother and a wife.
Gave up fame, but had a life.

Word prompts today are radical, coach, usage, endue and doubt. Image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Line of Reasoning

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Line of Reasoning

His baleful eye and mawkish grin
reveal the sort of state he’s in.
Anybody can see he wields
an attitude that never yields
to any view different from his.
He’s up on everybody’s biz.
On world matters bacterial
and all things managerial
he knows more than the experts do
and gladly shares his point of view
with doctor, scientist or crew.
He’ll educate them all anew
by sharing truths that only he
in his superiority
has figured out. He is so clever
that even though, in truth, he never
went to university,
still, surely, all the world can see
it’s simply common sense that how
he sees things is a sacred cow.
In fact, you need not go to school.
Just listen to this puffed-up fool
to hear how science has it wrong.
He’s known the true facts all along.
How much more proof is there to get?
He heard it on the Internet!

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people’s inability to recognize their lack of ability.

Prompt words today are bacterial, crew, mawkish, wield and anybody. Image by brandi ibraho on Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Safety in Numbers

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Safety in Numbers

It might beseem the patriarch to forego actions radical,
forsaking them for pastimes more blandly mathematical.
Discourse over Pi and coffee a safer course, by far,
than plotting revolution at a local bar.
That there’s safety in numbers is a much-repeated platitude
much favored over taking risks with a subversive attitude.

Prompt words today are radical, patriarch, beseem and coffee. Image by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash, used with permission.
And for NaPoWriMo, Day 5

Sixteen

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Sixteen

Do you remember when you were unkissed—
dreaming and wondering what you had missed?

Your evenings too tranquil, but you were too scared
to do much about it. You just never dared

to flirt with a guy or call boys on the phone—
too shy to make any advance on your own.

You disparaged those girls who had gone on before you.
You claimed that their exploits did nothing but bore you,

but you knew, really, that they’d won the race
that established you firmly right there in last place.

Not one errant lover had attempted to con you.
No single advance had been foisted upon you.

Alone in this horrid lamentable state,
sweet sixteen and un-kissed was a terrible fate!

Then that night in the summer out under the stars,
when you stood by the roadway between your two cars

and talked for an hour with soft music streaming
from both of your cars, you thought you were dreaming

when finally it happened, and you two were kissing
you finally knew what it was you’d been missing!

 

Word prompts today are tranquil, disparage, kiss, foist and race.

No Vacancy

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No Vacancy

Hurry your feet and speed up your caboose.
We’ve only minutes left to vamoose.
It’s a nuisance, I know, but our time has run out.
It will do you no good to object or to pout.
The antithesis to one’s arrival is going.
The fact this was coming was well in our knowing.
The details of our living here now are archival.
Just as we saluted upon our arrival,
we now must wave bye-bye and pack up our bags,
fasten their locks and attach our name tags.
You may strive to remain here, but we must be gone.
We’re a nuisance here. We must now move over yon.
That’s the thing with exotic weekend vacations.
There’s always someone with Monday reservations!

Word prompts today are caboose, antithesis, salute, strive and nuisance.

The Wordsmith’s Divulgence

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The Wordsmith’s Divulgence

My story is a flamfoo, ornamented too excessively.
I always overdo it. I’m over-endowed expressively.

Why use one word with two in mind? I fear I’m never spartan.
Instead of wearing loincloths, my poems are dressed in tartan!

Instead of coming one-by-one, my thoughts come in a storm.
So many little busy bees, descending in a swarm.

I do not have the patience to select them one-by one.
When I seek to edify, I simply find it fun

to pile on word after word. The more the merrier.
Bald truth is not my forte. I prefer my grand thoughts hairier!

 

 

Prompt words today are patience, wordsmith, flamfoo, edify and storm. A flamfoo, by the way, is a gaudily overdressed woman or an ornament of her dress.

By All Means

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By All Means

Grandmother Air, Grandfather Tree,
forgive our eccentricity
in doing what we’ve done to thee.

The parricide that we have done
is more than just a smoking gun.
If it’s a war, chaos has won.

By burning, we’ve killed both of you.
Nature’s response should be our clue
that our end, too, is well in view.

No prankster when you make your threat,
you state explicitly, and yet,
still your message we fail to get.

An accurate interpretation
is that man’s manipulation
has resulted in great agitation.

Everything’s off-balanced and
gotten rather out of hand.
So nature has to make a stand.

Her arsenal is most minute.
and though mankind is most astute,
ironically, hard to refute.

Fools will say that we have won,
but still, when all is said and done,
we still hold the smoking gun.

If we don’t change our reckless course,
and solve our problem at its source,
she will respond with greater force.

Be it virus, fire or wind,
if our ways we do not mend,
we’ll be the means to our own end.

Prompt words today are eccentric, air, accurate, prankster and grandfather.

Music of the Spheres

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Music of the Spheres
“What tears us apart can bring us together.”

Music dips a candle and lights it at the wick,
spilling notes like light out, full and round and thick.
It builds a room around us, brick by brick by brick,
shedding shards of ditties sharp enough to nick
our inflated sensibilities, popping those balloons
of our inflated selves to turn us from buffoons
into sentient beings, open to romance,
and filling out our lives with more than circumstance.
Anger, joy, nostalgia, need or fear or wonder
can unite us in experience or tear our world asunder.
All these warring sentiments are meant to coincide
in human hearts where all of them are destined to abide.
Music is the language that gives us each a tether
that unites individuals and ties us all together,

Prompt word today are music, note, crumbs, coincide and brick.

Sneaking Up On the Muse

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Sneaking Up On the Muse

My verses are not perfect. I’m no Dickinson or Byron.
My words are rough and crumpled, in need of a hot iron.
My reasoning is stifled, obscured by feeble brain.
I often have to write a line again and then again.
My successful lines are stealthy. They just creep up on me,
perhaps because my muses hang around insistently.
If I could take a stealthie, perhaps you’d see one hovering
there over my shoulder, inspiring and mothering.
In short, on those occasions when my inspiration’s slight,
and I cannot find a poem, likely my muses might!

Words of the day are stealthie, slight, rumpled, stifle and iron.

(A stealthie is defined as a picture taken by someone, usually a girl, that is clearly a selfie but contains a cute animal or object of interest in order to curb the backlash of it being a selfie, or a picture taken without the subject’s knowledge, especially using a smartphone. Retrieved from “https://en.wiktionary.org/ and the Urban Dictionary. This imaginary stealthie is of my mother, hovering over my left shoulder. She was my first inspiration and conspirator  in rhyme and still, it is her voice I hear every time I write a rhymed poem.)