Tag Archives: #RDP

Festive Is

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Festive Is

. . . ribbons and candles and holly.
Christmas trees, parties both raucous and jolly.
Confetti in hair and the nerve to kiss boys
beneath the mistletoe, and other joys.

Presents and eggnog and wedding cake, too.
Fireworks. Flags waving red, white and blue.
Easter egg optimism in the hunting,
papel picado and streamers and bunting.

Festive is hearts charged up with the living.
Anticipation and loving and giving.
Remembrance of exploits and births and unitings,
Easter ham slicings and turkey leg bitings.

May baskets on doorsteps. Socks hung in a row.
Eggnog and streamers wherever you go.
Who knows where festivity had its first starts—
Easter egg rolling or Valentine hearts?

Square dances, cloggings and Virginia reelings
end up on the feet but start with warm feelings
that set toes to tapping and make folks so restive
that they have no choice but to end up as festive!

Before presents and food and new decorations
increase credit card debt to new elevations,
perhaps we’ll remember to go back to the start
and return the horse to in front of the cart.

Our kids need to learn that joy can’t be bought,
and it’s up to us that the lesson be taught.
Before it’s too late, we must somehow impart
that there’s no charge for love and no price tag on heart.

Word prompts today are festive, nerve, optimism and charge.

Nightly Visit

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Nightly Visit

Like those of a recluse aunt, both cloistered and suspicious,
her midnight visits to our house have hardly been auspicious.
Under the mask of darkness, she ends her nightly wait.
Inching along the garden wall to circumvent the gate,
far above the threat of jaws and the dog’s wild bark,
she comes for nightly dining in the protective dark.

The cats’ leftover kibble is her nightly fare.
She comes in brief installments, until the bowl is bare.
I hear her loud enjoyment, the bowl’s scrape and the crunching,
intent on my midnight screen, I can’t resist her munching.
I steal across the tile floor, shoeless in my glide.
How can she know I’m coming, sealed as I am, inside?

Furtive, I reach the door and hear her final mastication.
But all I capture when I look is her evacuation.
She cannot hear or see me, a glass door in between,
the whole room dark behind me, yet she remains unseen.
Just one time in the dozens I think that I may
have born witness to her shadow before she slipped away.

In the lamplight’s subtle glow, I thought I saw a tail
and a mounded body obscured my nighttime’s veil.
I snapped an unlit photo and it is it alone
that bears witness to the possum outlined against the stone.
She glides so silently away to some handy location,
waiting for my departure to resume her mastication.

I know that she’s no midnight dream, no figment of delusion.
She’s that shy part of our family who prefers her seclusion.
Within my nightly flood of words she’s a welcome diversion.
I welcome that slight mystery brought on by her incursion.
I don’t hold it against her, this  hide-and-seek revival,
as I pour a bit more kibble out to insure her survival.

Is it only my imagination, or can you, too, make out the mound of her body and a long, slender curled tail in the shadows of this photo—just behind the dish?

dPrompt words today are mask, auspicious, laud and family.

Reuniting with an Old Friend at the School Reunion

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Reuniting with an Old Friend at the School Reunion

You astound me with your gibberish. Where did you learn this stuff?
After just a minute or two, I feel I’ve had enough.

I pride myself on faithfulness, but nonetheless I fear
somehow over all the years you’ve turned a little queer.

I never pegged you for a fool way back in our youth,
yet I think you got shorter on wits as you got long of tooth.

Though friends of long duration are my favorite kind,
somehow I feel that you’re one friend I need to leave behind.

Word prompts today are peg, gibberish, astound and faithful. Image by Janko Ferlic on Unsplash.

 

Why We Write

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And looks like I’ve changed my mind about not writing about this.

We write to share that part of us that might not otherwise be shared. The page is like a Fibber Magee and Molly closet where we store all those leftover parts of ourselves. Open the page and everything comes spilling out: organized, disorganized, jovial, sad, rational or irrational. Everything gets crammed into the page. We may not be lionized for it. Our words may be stolen and presented as someone else’s, but the important thing is to write them. Words are like a pressure valve, freeing pent-up emotions. They furnish a release that is somehow part of the solution to the problems they describe. 

A page written by Cervantes.

Prompt words today are write, lionize, share and jovial.

Alfresco Dining Plans

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Alfresco Dining Plans

Kitties make the most of serendipity
as they wait for squirrels in the shadow of a tree.
If they’re very silent, the squirrels do not see
and they ooze down to the grass oh so fluidly.

Squirrels have a preference for nuts that may be found
matured on the tree but fallen to the ground—
nourishment the tree has propined for their use,
not accounting for the kittens’ cruel abuse.

So nature feeds on nature every single day,
but it’s a happy ending. The squirrel got away.
The kittens, on the other hand, had no cause to pout.
They merely had to make do with the kibble I dished out!


 

Prompt words for today are kitties, preference, serendipity and propine.

Patent Pending

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Image by Jake Pierrelee on Unsplash.

A Modest Proposal

I am applying, here on bent knee,
for you to grant a franchise to me
to be your beloved—your regular guy.
Given that I am awkward and shy,
but I am also one jubilant fellow,
determined in will though my legs are like Jell-o,
who aims to get over his natural bent,
in order to voice, to proclaim and to vent
that my heart will be steadfast and loving and true
If you will grant me a patent on you!

Word prompts today are shy, franchise, jubilant and beloved.

Dog Smarts

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Dog Smarts

My dog is a rapscallion, ingenious and quick.
I rarely have an ice cream where he doesn’t steal a lick.
Every time I think that It’s not happening this time,
he gets the better of me with his little mime.

First he feigns indifference so I’m caught off my guard,
and then in a mere second, he’s running through the yard,
my cone extending from his jaws as though he is a bird.
So rapid that to try to run and catch him is absurd.

But in my desperation, I do so anyway.
I aimed to teach a lesson that crime doesn’t pay,
so I bought another cone–my second one today,
and took him on a walk with me, licking all the way.

I wouldn’t look the other way. I wouldn’t get distracted.
The seizure of my ice cream cone would not be reenacted!
It was my dog who got distracted  by a small dog with a bone.
By the time that I caught up with him, the other dog lay prone

with my dog above him, thinking that he alone
should have it, so you guessed it, I offered him my cone!
And so my efforts foiled again, I resorted to barter,
demonstrating once again, my canine friend is smarter.

Prompt words today are rapscallion, ingenious, desperation and rapid.

As Her Majesty Ordains

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As Her Majesty Ordains

An extraordinary show pooch, she was top dog in her class.
Her coat was long and silky and glittered like fine glass.
Her canine teeth were pearly, her tail a lovely plume.
Every eye turned toward her when she walked into a room.

Her master, pumped-up in his pride, gloried in her fame.
Every judge in every show knew her fabled name.
At shows he closely guarded her from every dog she met.
Never took her walking, lest her feet get wet.

Not once had she chased a ball, a rabbit or a stick.
She couldn’t jump in leaves for her coat was just too thick.
Her master feared she’d sully it and he would be the one
who’d pay with time spent grooming her if she had some fun.

But the neighbor was her savior when her master was away,
for he would come into her yard and they would run and play.
Fetching sticks and playing tug-rope and racing through the yard,
she could simply be a doggie and let down her royal guard.

But one day her master came home in the middle of the morning
and caught them in their playtime with nary a pre-warning.
He promptly whistled for his dog to bring it to an end,
casting a baleful look at his pet’s clandestine friend.

But her highness did not deign to come, in spite of all her training.
No matter what her master did, she ended up remaining
close to her only playmate–hoping the yells would end,
but instead her master fumed and shouted at her only friend.

“You hogamadog? I going to steal your cat one day!”
(Did I reveal he was Italian? You know they talk that way.)
And did I say the neighbor had a cat? He did, you know, of course.
(Sometimes when I talk, the cart goes on before the horse.)

But the whole thing ended happily. The neighbor pled his case
and before the day was over, the dog’s master joined the chase.
The neighbor helped with grooming after they all jumped in leaves,
thereby doing in one of the master’s former peeves.

Did I introduce the owner? His first name was Giuseppe.
Oscar was the neighbor, both duplicitous and peppy.
Duchess was the given name of the illustrious bitch
who improved her retrieval once her master learned to pitch.

 

Prompt words for the day are pearl, fumes, hogamadog and glitter.

Locationally Challenged

18 Replies

Locationally Challenged

I’ve misplaced my glasses. Yesterday it was my keys.
If they weren’t attached, I’m fairly sure I’d lose my knees.
Some say I’m absent-minded, others say I am forgetful,
but whatever you may call me, you can bet I’m often fretful.

Whenever I walk through my house, I am forever gleaning
things I’ve lost throughout the week since Yolanda’s last cleaning.
But though I look for hours, my passport just stays lost.
I obsess about it all week long. My dreams are tempest-tossed.

Monday morning, when she arrives, it takes her just a minute
to approach me with her hand held out with my passport in it!
Ironic that though I’m the only one here who can use it,
that I also seem to be the only one who can’t peruse it!

First I lost my laptop and then I lost its mouse.
I looked under the sofa. I combed the whole darn house.
I sought it in the hammock, in the front seat of my car.
It wasn’t on the bathtub ledge, the table or the bar.

Finally, I found it in the last place where you’d look—
on the shelf above the kibble in the doggie nook!
Too many things to think about. Too many things to do.
I simply have to find a way where I can shed a few.

I’ll sacrifice my waistline and a smooth complexion. 
I’ll put up with my creaky bones and energy’s defection.
Just to keep my memory is all that I am asking,
like back when I was young and I excelled at multi-tasking.

 Prompt words for today are misplaced, bet, legendary and glean.

The Kiss-Off

19 Replies

The Kiss-Off

This incessant waiting clearly is the pits.
Frankly, I am tempted to say I call it quits.
I’ve been standing here for minutes when I’d much rather be seated,
and in spite of the tree’s canopy, I’m feeling rather heated.

The onus is on you, my friend, to tell me why we’re meeting.
You’ve used up your excuses and used up your entreating.
Friends do not do the things you do. They keep your confidences.
They do not carry tales. They come to their friends’ defenses.

You beg to meet just once again and then you show up late?
I rue the day I bonded with such a reprobate.
You have not won me over, in fact, without a doubt,
I fear our friendship’s over. Your test period’s run out! 

 

words for today are canopy, onus, incessant and waiting.