Tag Archives: RDP

Sold Out!!!

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Sold Out!!!

Mirth has died and joy has vanished. Gone without a trace.
No laughter heard around us. A smile on no face.
So many fishy happenings. So many baited hooks
as all the crooked happenings once reserved for books
invade our lovely simple lives, making them complex.
First rated by our English, then rated by our sex,
we kowtow to the bullies and hide away our shame,
saying all the others are the ones to blame.

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This man sat in front of me in the iPhone class I took yesterday. He’s riding a Harley and that’s a pistol tucked into his belt and some sort of rifle in his hand.The presidential crest on his bike and chest. Words fail me.

Prompt words today are English, bait, lovely and mirth.

Memory Games

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Memory Games

Though memories are sketchy, those that remain are vivid—
mere scraps of joy or humor or times when she was livid.
No way to tell what snips of time her memory will nourish—
current relations lost to time while past ones live and flourish.

The mind does nasty tricks when it decides to misbehave.
It may leave us abandoned within its darkening cave,
or perhaps it casts a cinema only one can see,
drawing them into a world of dreams where they are free.

No one who walks through memory’s door can return to tell
whether it is heaven or a living hell.
Another trick of life that draws us fast within it,
forcing us to play the game without a way to win it.

Prompt words for today are jive, sketchy, relations and vivid.

Torch of Liberty

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Torch of Liberty

If we could kidnap inequality and lock it safe away,
then resurrect our scruples and let them have their say,
we could acquit our consciences and set our nation right.
Then reilluminate her torch to guide us through the night.

 

Prompt words today are acquit, scruples, kidnap, inequality Photo by Juan Mayobre on Unsplash Used with Permission.

“Different”

When my husband and I did arts and crafts shows, at least once during every show, someone would wander into our booth, have a good look around, and as they left, shrug their shoulders and say, “Well it’s different!” (Usually pronounced “differnt.”) It actually was an in joke between those displaying their art—always interpreted as the speaker not understanding and not really liking the arts and crafts. Growing up in a small town, it was not the first time I’d heard the word in its derogatory sense. Thus, this poem: 

“Different”



When I finally made my way into the world so wide

I found myself exotic. Somehow transmogrified.
I liked being the foreigner, eminent in my oddity.
I found that being different was a definite commodity.
It was my prerogative to be just who I was
without creating currents in the small town buzz
of that place I had grown up in. My acts were less explosive.
My strange words now acceptable, not garnered as corrosive.
They thought my strange behavior typical of my nation—
those oddities of word choice and excesses of oration.
So in being totally different, somehow I felt more the same.

In finally being somewhere where different was not a sin,
the more different I was, the more that I fit in!!!

 

Prompt words today are explosive, prerogative, foreigner, eminent and wide.

Night Counselor

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Night Counselor

There is some little magic thing that whispers in the night,
smoothing out our former fears and setting them aright,
forever taking on the problems of the day,
righting them and sending them blithely on their way.
Settling our nerves with some alchemy of sleep
that somehow deals with worries, however wide and deep.
Though travails may be frequent, overwhelming in their numbers,
at least we have partial relief, nightly, in our slumbers.

 

Prompt words today are magic, forever, frequency, nerve and wide.

Fresh Produce

 

 

Fresh Produce

I lived in an era before eggplant or Swiss chard,
with fruit that mainly grew up from our own back yard.
Cherries and strawberries. Watermelon. Plums.
No passionfruit or mangoes passed across our gums.
One day avocados would become a revelation.
Papayas and fresh guavas discovered on vacation.
But artichokes back then were thought the product of the devil.
We kept our veggies smooth and round and strictly on one level.
Exchange with foreign countries back then was truly rare.
So many foods from far off climes we’d had no chance to dare.
These days all our grocery stores are filled with all this stuff,
but long ago potatoes, beans and carrots were enough!!

 

Prompt words today are eggplant, exchange, devil and revelation.

Eleventh Hour

Eleventh Hour

It’s true the groom was old and gray,
a cane or walker his mainstay,
and the one he called his child bride
was just as tall as she was wide.

Her bathing schedule so erratic,
she was rather aromatic,
but since he’d lost his sense of smell,
they were suited very well.

If they had cause to take a journey,
he’d simply push her in a gurney
in lieu of walker. It worked well.
Her needs and his were seen to gel.

Centuries later, folks will recall
the evening of their wedding ball.
The dance they chose was rock and roll—
as practical as it was droll.

He rocked, she rolled, then one dance done,
he wheeled her off to have some fun.
For the groom, so aged and furry
was nonetheless in a great hurry

to address their wedding bed.
Fearing that he’d soon be dead,
he rolled his roly poly mate
out of the ballroom, through the gate,

down the hall and  to their room,
an act, I fear, that sealed his doom,
for once his ardor was diminished,
alas, the groom’s long life was finished.

But in the end? A bit of magic,
for the ending was not tragic.
Nine months later his game was won
when posthumously, he had a son!!!

Prompt words are aromatic, century, journey, mainstay and wide

Damning Science

Damning Science

Wisdom newly learned or tribal,
from Koran or Scroll or Bible
demarcates a line between
what shouldn’t or what should be seen
or said or listened to or done.
No matter how seemingly fun,
some things cannot be integrated.
No masterpiece is tolerated
if banned by the censor’s tool.
Thus do bigots thrive and rule
spouting truths long since belied—
asserting them as bonafide.


These half-truths to reason’s sorrow
may dictate how we live tomorrow—
our whole world screwed up by some fools
who bend the laws to their own rules,
spouting words skewed to their favor,
creating slogans dullards savor.
There is one rule for what the zealots shout.
After you have heard them out,
use your good sense to judge the acts
of those determining the facts.
Use your powers of reason to test
those who rule at our behest.

Prompt words today are masterpiece, tribal, integrated and demarcate

Beets

Photo by Nick Collins on Unsplash. Used with permission

Beets

They say there’s a conspiracy in our retired community
to try to form a sort of dietary unity.
Go easy on potatoes and cut down on your beef.
They say such limitations bring intestinal relief.
Cut down on your sodium. Eat fish instead of meats.
Eschew bread and pastry, but double up on beets.
You’ll assuage all your ailments, cut down on your weight,
and a much longer lifetime will likely be your fate.
More years without chocolate. More years without bread.
More years of deprivation. And then you’ll still be dead!!

 

Prompts for the day are retire, conspiracy, community, assuage and beet.

Change of Tune

Change of Tune

A new aesthetic each few years from dead head to new waving.
It seemed a change of music was to be his signature craving.
Disco led to hip hop, new age to heavy metal.
When moving to new rhythms, he felt in finest fettle.
Some found his music vile and others found it strange,
but at least within a year or two, it was bound to change.
The prestige of being “with it” was probably the reason
he changed his favorite style of music every other season.

 

Prompts today are aesthetics, strange, vile, prestige and wave.