Tag Archives: #RDP

Overextended

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Overextended

I’m swamped with obligations, let alone what I like doing.
If it were Halloween, I would have no time for booing.
Gargoyles in the garden would have no satisfaction.
They could haunt me all they want, but they’d get no reaction.
I don’t have time for feeling, for music or for fun
until all of the tasks I face are finally through and done.
I can’t finagle time to merely mess around,
for I fear it is my habitude to be completely bound
by my check-lists and my calendar, and no, I don’t know why.
It’s simply in my nature to do and do or die!

 

A “friend” once told me with great irritatIon, “If you’re going to do all these things, Judy, just do them, but don’t for God’s sake talk about it!” I fear I’ve broken her injunction, finally, after all these years. This poem is tongue-in-cheek. All things I enjoy doing…but I do know how to make a mess.

Prompt words today are swamp, finagle, gargoyle, habitude, feel and music.

One No Trump

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One No Trump

It seems that any smartie would
have questions of the hardihood
of one who can’t control his urges,
but opens mouth and simply purges!
It’s anything but recondite
that he is less than erudite.

He stammers and he mispronounces
as he proudly mis-announces
facts and figures he’s invented,
letting out hot air that’s pented
up inside his roiling brain.
The scuttlebutt? This man’s insane!

For the present, we’re stuck with him,
but (we hope) his future’s grim.
In the future, perhaps a cell—
a domain that would suit him well.
No more oval office for
this vain and posturing dimwit bore!

If they ever choose to make
a movie of this shyster flake,
casting’s bound to be a bummer—
choosing between “Dumb” and “Dumber.”
Which will most aptly replicate
our soon-to-be ex “Fool of State?”

Prompt words for today are hardihood, scuttlebutt, urges, recondite,  the present and movie.

Everything in Everyone

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Everything in Everyone

Wild haunted rhythms sail the night as we lie supine,
thinking thoughts unbidden that are far from the divine.
All Hallows is that time of year that causes us to ponder
all those fearful yearnings that we conceal and launder
as we get through the daylight world, hiding our duress
of all those hidden thoughts and dreams we labor to suppress.
Everything in all of us, to honor or accuse.
And it’s up to each of us what we will pick to use.

Prompt words for today are: divine, ponder, duress, sails, haunted,  wild rhythm.

 

 

A Halloween Bedtime Story

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A Halloween Bedtime Story

There’s a world that is intangible except at Halloween.
It teems with banshees and with ghosts at other times unseen.
Strange monsters with long fingers and pumpkins for a head
lurk inside your closet, hang out under your bed.

When they finally emerge, it does no good to shout.
They’ll grab you in their mighty grasp and turn you inside out.
Put your arms outside the covers or one foot on the floor,
and you’ll provide a tasty lunch the monsters will adore.

For once they have a single limb securely in their clench,
they’ll have you all in seconds. Your destruction is a cinch!
Though Halloween is much beloved by all you candy lovers,
Once at home and snug in bed, best stay beneath the covers!

Prompt words today are  pumpkin, mighty, intangible, banshee, cinch, inside out.

Memory

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Memory

Life is like a labyrinth. Things may be just fine,
yet we don’t know what awaits us farther down the line.

We can’t discern our futures, so we must enjoy today
so at least we’ll have a past to remember, come what may.

Changes of perspective are bound to come with time.
We may not have the passions that we had in our prime.

We are changeable creatures. So nature has intended.
If we hold onto earlier goals, our lives may get upended.

In times of adversity, we still possess rare treasures.
Our recollections are where we can hoard our former pleasures.

 

Prompt words for today are down the line, adversity, labyrinth, discern, change of perspective and creature.

Cats Trump Dogs: Oct 14, 2020

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Cats Trump Dogs

My dogs are perspicacious with insights most profound.
They’re aware of every flutter, on top of every sound.
Their vigilance professional, with duty it is fraught.
Nary a squirrel has crossed the yard without being caught!

No passerby is overlooked, no lizard, snake or newt.
Their senses are omniscient, their judgments most astute.
They keep my backyard creature-free, pristine for lawn and blossom.
They will not suffer gopher or mole or vole or possum.

Guard duty’s not a hobby. They see it as a task
that they were truly born for. I need not even ask.
The cats they see as horrors—wily and uncouth.
They cannot bear their presence. They see it as the truth

that cats are unorthodox. Not banished to the ground,
they roam the roof and wall and trees, rambling all around.
They tease the dogs from far above, safe from all their fury.
Sauntering off slowly, for they aren’t in any hurry.

Prompt words for the day are professional, unorthodox, hobby, perspicacious, truth and horror.

Foxes Under Moonlight

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Foxes Under Moonlight

The phantasms rise in tandem as they seep out of their boxes
to caress the bats and tantalize the foxes
by swooping through their caves and pulling at their tails.
Of all the foxes’ problems, they cause the most travails.

On Halloween they haunt the world, including you and me,
but in the interim, they aren’t allowed to wander free.
They’re restricted to the meadows, the byways and those places
where they are not likely to encounter human faces.

Phantasms are not cordial. They harry and they tease.
They seep into the smallest crack and travel on the breeze.
They stir up other spirits and agitate the fleas,
causing havoc everywhere and doing what they please.

So though they might harass your world every Halloween,
and though they might be spine-tingling and horrible and mean,
it is the one night of the year they leave the foxes be,
so the foxes are beholding to the likes of you and me.

If you should dare to wander through the forest and the trees
on this All-Saints evening, get down on your knees
and peer into the burrow of the soundly sleeping foxes
curled up in a ball with their noses near their soxes.

See them sleeping soundly, undisturbed within their dreams—
twitching in contentment under the moon’s full beams?
Your one night of terror is the fox’s only break.
Be grateful for your haunting, if just for the foxes’ sake!

Word prompts today are interim, cordial, phantasm, tandem, outside the box and dusk. Ghosts may take it easier on foxes on Prince Edward Island, as is evidenced by this fox that I observed spending a good half hour or so basking in the sun of the yard of my friends Dianne and Andy. Or perhaps it was the sunlight that drove the phantasms away. Or our presence.

Dem Bones

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Dem Bones

The skeletons are all tucked in, safely in their beds
with naughty vitriolic dreams swirling through their heads.
Their atrocious behavior saved for another day,
they will not raise a ruckus. They’re holding it at bay.
They’re resting up for Halloween which is the night that they
will throw aside their covers and come out to play!

 

Prompt words today are ruckus, vitriol, atrocious, play and skeleton.

The Littlest Zombie

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The Littlest Zombie

Three small travelers, each attired in a different disguise
observe the  lambent candlelight filling the pumpkin’s eyes.
Its outside is a Jack-o-Lantern, while all its insides 
were scooped out for the candle, and then turned into pies.

A lurching small cadaver reaches out a hand,
intent on trick-and-treating, though he can barely stand.
He’s had a whiff of candy, which has made him come alive.
He’s seen the tiny Hershey bars. He hopes they’ll give him five!

Leaving, he now remembers to walk with legs unbent.
He breathes hard through his mask where his sister cut a vent.
He imitates the groans and huffs of the walking dead,
though if he’d had his druthers, he’d have been a dog instead.

But brother said a dog just barks and never moans and groans
and that barking trick-or-treaters are only given bones!
And so he screws his face up and puffs on down the block,
scaring all the littler kids with his zombie walk! 

 

Prompt words for today are whiff, imitate, cadaver, lambent and candy and also for OctPoWriMo.

 

Quiet Zone

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Quiet Zone

I don’t like loud music and fireworks are scary.
Loud noises, in fact, make me nervous and chary.
So though I find music within a dog’s howl,
Loud barking’s a noise that my ears find most foul.
And although I like lullabies, ballads and hums,
I do not like tubas or cymbals or drums.
I like noises with dignity. What I am after
is whispers and titters, not shouts and loud laughter.
So if you’re my friend, this advice must be outed:
words with real wisdom don’t need to be shouted.

Prompt words for today are scary, howl, dignity, firework and chary.