Tag Archives: RDP

Tough Love

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Tough Love

By her violent hurricanes and the ice caps’ thaw,
by the massive flooding and the hungry maw
of fires burning cruelly, devouring trees and houses,
she tries to rid the human race of habits it espouses.
Mother Nature’s angry and she’s tried to let us know,
but still we do not listen, for we are rather slow.
We’ve been such naughty children, not picking up our toys.
Perhaps we’ll get the message from new tactics she deploys.

From Wuhan to Limerick, we’re forced to stay inside,
reading the statistics of how many more have died.
She takes away our playthings: airplanes and sailing ships,
closes all our restaurants, taking away our tips.
She shuts down all the factories, cleaning up the air
so we could breathe again outside, if only we could dare.
Hunkered down inside our homes, we try to find diversions.
No NBA games, but fewer temperature inversions.

We do not flood the roadways, tossing out our trash.
We avoid bars and restaurants, hoarding all our cash.
Give up all the driving—the freeway’s frantic rush,
avoiding the container stores and the mall’s mad crush.
With Amazon delivering only vital things,
we resurrect the pleasures that tradition brings.
Monopoly, Parcheesi, Pick-up-sticks and Rook.
Brother builds a model plane. Sis picks up a book.

Mom recycles plastic and refuses to buy more.
All excessive packaging piles up in every store
until they learn that they can go back to what once was
and rid the world of garbage, doing it because
we do not own the world you see. Instead, the world owns us.
We are just the part of it creating all the fuss.
Maybe if we clean our rooms, our mom will let us play
outside again with others, one unpolluted day.

Red Dot Syndrome

Click on photos to enlarge.

Prompt words today are clean, child, limerick, ship and owner. (photo of cyclone by NASA on unsplash. Used with permission)

More Advice Regarding the Coronavirus

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More Advice Regarding the Coronavirus

With the coronavirus, it’s been given to debate
whether it’s advisable for people to conflate.
Though Pence may okay shaking hands, doctors disagree.
I’d listen to the experts if it were up to me!

Cheek-kisses were delightful in eras non-pandemic,
but lately people fear that they might start an epidemic.
So we’d better kick the habit and make do with a tweet—
just clicking our affection to everyone we meet.

Let safety be our anchor as we all isolate—
our crowded barrooms giving way to the cyber date.
Bitcoins replacing money, for it doesn’t carry germs.
Wearing masks and hazmat suits as we come to terms

with what our esteemed president once tried to pass off
as no major problem—a mere temperature and cough.
Tweeting like a dervish, he still gets such a kick
spreading disinformation as more and more get sick.

But I have a solution for one thing that we could do
to try to stem the factors spreading this dreadful flu—
a mandatory gag and a mandatory mask
for POTUS and Vice-POTUS is what we all should ask.

Prompts for today are delightful, conflate, kick, anchor and money.

Lazy Feet

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Lazy Feet

Crossing the room or traversing the plain,
one foot goes in front of the other again.
It is the business of shoe after shoe
to follow each other through sand, dirt or goo.

They have easy going through fields filled with clover,
but when they meet something they have to climb over,
their task is much harder. No reflecting or browsing,
for climbing up hills is ten times more rousing.

They  pump up the blood, these mountains and ramps.
They irritate arches and instigate cramps.
They cause blisters, pulled muscles, and wear a girl out.
That’s why I don’t often saunter about.

You won’t often find me walking out there
with the wind to my back and stirring my hair.
For although there’s less scenery, I do not care.
I prefer bed or hammock or chair.

Prompt words today are something, browse, revenge, traverse and business.

The Prize

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Version 2

The Prize

Our weekends at the cabin were vacations we adored,
for our grandpa and our grandma made sure that we weren’t bored.
Every single Saturday, they sent us on a quest.
I always set out on my own for I feared that the rest
would take credit for the fact that I’d found the strangest thing
that our grandparents had set the task for each of us to bring.

Those times out on my own were a relief from the noise
from all the squealing little girls and all the shouting boys,
for the numbers of my cousins— all those brothers and those sisters—
pounded on my eardrums ’til I feared that they’d make blisters.
I hated all the folderol, for I preferred the calm.
The quiet sounds of nature acted as a balm.

The whispering of treetops and the music of the loons
were a contrast to the cowboy movies and the Looney tunes
streaming from the playroom where the television
was another thing that prompted my decision
that I could best seek treasure on a solitary search,
and, indeed, I found it in the shadows of a birch—

an eye that looked out at me from the darkness and the gloom
like the only thing alive within a haunted room.
I freed it with my pocketknife—too large for my pocket.
Too large for grandpa’s “thing” box, let alone for grandma’s locket.
What is it? I’m not going to tell where I found the eyes
one of which won me that week’s treasure prize!

 

Prompt words today are calm, cabin, quest, hate.
I’m also including my photo for the What is it? prompt.

Duck and Cover

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Duck and Cover

To err is human, so when I don’t collect my sneeze,
try to overlook it and forgive my error, please.
Don’t judge my intentions by what I overlook.
I simply cannot make myself go purely by the book.

I sneezed and did not cover. Now “Tag!” you may be it.
It was a simple oversight. Try not to have a fit.
If you think I passed on a bug, do not hesitate.
I’ve heard that it is necessary that you isolate.

As for me, I do not follow dictates from above.
I do not “do” seclusion. I wear no mask or glove.
The world’s my oyster and although I may not be well,
I feel claustrophobic confined within my shell.

If you fear germs, then keep your distance. Turn your head  if worried.
New intimate relationships perhaps should not be curried.
Do I follow my advice? That will be the day.
So best not do as I do, but just do as I say.

Prompt words for today are isolate, tag, human and judge. Photo by Ani Kolleshi on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Camouflage

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Please click on the title above so WP will reformat the poem into its intended shape. For some reason The Reader always left margin justifies and this poem needs to be centered.  

Camouflage

A man is bending his wife—
melding their shadows with the green forest.
They do not listen
to the nearby cannon’s roar––
will not imagine
that their life together,
so new,
might
not
stretch
into
the
future.

When he looks at his pocket watch,
someday children
ringing a well-stocked table
vanish in
her imagination.

He lifts his musket to his shoulder,
trying to believe
in a future
and in it,
this memory:
two shadows
joined as one,
invisible against
the forest wall.

Prompt words today are green, bend, shadow, cannon and memories.

Daily Alarm

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Daily Alarm

The knock outside my window is loud and most insistent—
High up in the palm tree, repeated and persistent.
It’s my daily woodpecker, knocking me awake,
way up on my mountain, far above the lake.

He comes before the sunshine kisses the same tree,
trying to be helpful by stirring lazy me.
This Braille invitation, his daily expression
told with bouncing beak tapping out a impression

in the palm tree’s trunk so high above the crew
far below the palm fronds who greet the day anew
by scraping algae from the pool or making up the bed
as another down below sorts words out in her head.

 

(Enlarge photos by clicking on them.)

Prompt words today are sunshine, bounce, helpful, crew and expression.

Cat Meditation

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(Click on first photo and then on arrows to enlarge photos.)

Cat Meditation

Entwined in my jacket, spread out on my quilt,
my cats take up the space they frequent with so little guilt.
I wonder what they visualize in their cache of dreams?
Is their sleep as peaceful as it always seems?

The dogs may twitch and bark and reach out paws in times of rest,
but cat sleep is so tranquil. They “do” their sleep the best.
They need no permission to tuck their chores away
and wander inward to their dreams, be it night or day.

Oh that I could rest away from all the world’s mad clatter. 
The dreams they dream upon your lap are helpful in the latter—
their purr the loveliest mantra to help your mind unfurl
as you become their mattress, pinned beneath their curl.

Words for the day are purr, visualize, helpful, cache and jacket.

Family Feud

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Family Feud

A skin of wine, flagon of malt
were meant to alter the gestalt
of a relationship gone wrong
and left to fester for too long.

It was meant to be a gift
left at a door to seal a rift—
a treasure left there in the dust
to heal a wound and restore trust.

But battles don’t so easily end.
A sincere gift may just offend.
Too much whiskey, too much wine
do not prompt reason when they combine.

They render one less than astute.
No offering of peace will suit
one determined to find fault
and so the feuding did not halt.

 

Prompt words today are trust, combine, gift, battle and suit.
image by Peter Forster on Unsplash, used with permission

Practice Makes Perfect

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Practice Makes Perfect

His patience in predicament has become legendary—
a necessary attribute in one so prone to marry.
He tolerated petulance in the child bride
married out of loneliness after his first wife died.
He tried to build her confidence, but finally set her free,
realizing what she needed most was liberty.
His third wife used another means to put him to the test,
running up his credit cards while feathering his nest.
His fourth wife played around, and the kin of number five
turned his peaceful home into a frantic humming hive.
Only in his dotage did he finally meet his prize—
not as stunning in her beauty, but lovely in his eyes.
No grand faults to overlook. No predicaments to fix.
No petulance to deal with. No relatives to nix.
Marriage done at any age can be pleasure or blight,
but  when he married in his eighties, he finally got it right!!

 

Prompts for today are tolerate, predicament, nest, legendary and confidence. Photos by JD Mason on Unsplash, used with permission.