Tag Archives: RDP

Celestial Harvest

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Celestial Harvest

Whenever I see stars, I get these rambling sort of feelings.
My soul soars out to meet them, abandoning its peelings—
my body left behind as though left back in a cave
with stars studding the ceiling—the rest of me not brave
enough to chance the journey away from what I know,
but I release my spirit, hoping it will sow
flowers of remembrance whenever it deems
the time right to come back to plant them in my dreams.

 

HERE is another piece I wrote about star-gazing four years ago. I found it while looking back through past blogs to try to find a photo to illustrate this poem.

Prompt words today are stars, ramble, feeling, antre (cave) and sport. Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Bad Fortune

Bad Fortune

A superfluous excrescence  to our sinking ship of state,
of all our past mistakes, I’m sorry to relate
that this uquiet jester is our biggest flub to date–
a fact that many voters cottoned onto way too late.
But if you seek a formula for change, there’s no debate.
Vote this fool out of office before he seals our fate!

Prompt words today are quiet, formula, jester, excrescence and past.

 

The Lowest of the Highest by Default

The Lowest of the Highest by Default

He was a homeless jester, a contentious feisty gent.
He shed a sense of triumph everywhere he went.
No amount of scorn and no superior air
ever contradicted his shabby debonair.
In a stovepipe hat, overalls and a tux jacket,
he played his mobile xylophone, making such a racket
that folks rushed out to pay him just so he would quit.
He felt no sense of shame in this, for he took pride in it.

He had the perfect racket. He felt he counted coup—
raking in the dough for what he didn’t do.
He had a fridge crate penthouse on a tower labeled Trump.
(Also a little pied á terre across town at the dump.)
Highest of the highest and lowest of the low—
his main address  the finest though he had so little dough.
The key up to the rooftop he had scored out of a pocket
right after the janitor had gone up there to lock it.

He snitched a maintenance uniform and in the helter-skelter
of a tenant’s moving day, filched his plywood shelter.
It made a perfect domicile obscured in a back corner.
As a joke, on its front cornice, he wrote, “Residence of Horner.”*
But he dragged it to the rooftop’s front when the day was done
and had a view of city lights that was second to none.
You may think that he’s a shyster and the building’s lowest resident,
but only since the former lowest tenant became president!

 

*Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Xmas pie.
He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, “What a good boy am I!”

Words for the day are homeless, contentious, jester, amount and triumph. Image by Donald Teel on Unsplash, used with permission.

Visiting Grandma

 

Visiting Grandma

If you must go on an escapade, be sure to take umbrellas.
Do not talk to strangers and do not flirt with fellas.
Why put on all that makeup? Your natural look is best.
Why would you wear a bustier when you could wear a vest?

Pick locales you know are safe. Just go to ones near churches.
Beware of stuff that falls from planes and pigeons on tall perches.
You may think your gallivanting is the stuff of dreams,
but the world of adventure is not all that it seems.

Why not choose daylight hours to see what you can see
and once the sun sets, stay at home, here with gramps and me?
I’ll make a pan of fudge and then we can play Parcheesi.
This town’s not nice at night. It’s very dark and way too breezy.

But if you simply must go out, mind the bottom stair.
Is that funny little outfit the one you’re going to wear?
Put toilet paper on the seat when you use the loo!
A key? Oh, you won’t need one.  We’ll be waiting up for you.

Prompt words today are umbrella, escapade, dream, locale and natural.

Attitude

Attitude

Memory can be a juggernaut, retelling us too often
of hard past events that time should be allowed to soften.
What good is it to resurrect mistakes and acts of folly?
Better to forget times gone and make the present jolly.

Our only security lies soundly in the present.
Why waste our thoughts on bygone days instead of days more pleasant?
Trade former tears for whoops of joy and for the umpteenth time,
remind yourself you have the choice to make your world sublime.

Words for the day are whoops, juggernautumpteen and security

 

merciless, indestructible and unstoppable.

Kleptoparasitic Tendencies

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Kleptoparasitic Tendencies

At first sight of the sperm whales, the fishermen all cringe,
for these felons of the ocean loiter on the fringe,
and when they hear the motors hauling in  the lines,
each poacher dives to steal the fish, hook after hook, and dines.
The perils of the ocean include gale-force wind and rain,
but this larceny of sperm whales is the larger pain.

 

To see sperm whales targeting fishing boats for an easy meal, go HERE.

Prompt words for the day are fringe, rain, first, felon and fish.

The Archbishop Gets Forgetful

The Archbishop Gets Forgetful

Priests in town know when the archbishop is about,
he’s bound to have a new batch of indulgences to tout.
And though he’s their head honcho so they must all be respectful,
when they see him coming they get super-genuflectful.
“Please dear Lord, don’t make us sell the pardons that he has!”
These days that sort of fund-raising carries no pizazz.
Paying their bills as he suggests has no appeal at all.
They’d really rather make do with St. Vincent de Paul.
Yet no one wants to tell him that selling the way to heaven
was outlawed by the church way back in fifteen sixty-seven!

Prompt words for today are honcho, pizzazz, respectful, tout and bill.

 

If Things Should Return to Normal

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If Things Should Return to Normal

Just in case the world we know ever returns to normal,
I feel we’ll need reminders for behavior less informal.
So, let me reacquaint you with the former art of dressing.
Introducing color-matching, underwear and pressing.
It’s been a number of months now—five, to be precise—
since there was the necessity to put on something nice
and face the maze of traffic to go to an event.
So before you visit places where you once often went,
you may require reminders, lest in trips to spots exalted
you could find your entry may otherwise be halted.
Entrance to most restaurants requires shirt and shoes,
along with all your other clothes. Forget this, and you’ll lose
precious hours driving home to remedy the fact
that you’ve forgotten basics of how you used to act.
Out there in the real world, genteel folks do not dare
to go about half-dressed and it’s good to cut your hair.
Put on a little lipstick and tweeze hairs from your chin.
Do not gobble down your food and do not slurp your gin.
When the world returns to normal and you go out once more,
just in case, please pin this little check-list to your door.
Though reminders may be premature, be glad that you have gotten them,

for by the time they’re needed, I’ll most likely have forgotten them.

Prompt words today are maze, precious, introducing, exalt and dress.

Who Needs an Election?

Who Needs an Election?

Our perfunctory president is not in any hurry
to pack his suitcase.  He’s a rat that’s unequipped to scurry.
Unready to give up his throne., he thinks we are in need
of his gross incompetence, his racism and greed.
How could his teeming vassals unseat their liege-lord now?
How dare his noble lackeys desert their sacred cow?
Are they in their right minds, seeking to end his power?
Must he desert his White House and make do with his tower?

His orange countenance grows pale. His comb-over descends.
He thought that he would rule our world ’til he was in Depends!
If he could only change the rules, how great that it would be
to play his “Trump,” enabling him to found a dynasty.
First Junior, then Ivanka could inherit his domain.
What other tyrant is equipped to take over his reign?
This liberty these fools taut can’t hold a candle to him.
His light is needed now the torch of liberty’s gone dim.

No need for an election. The world’s too dire for that.
He’ll gladly serve another term growing sleek and fat.
He’ll sack Social Security and supplement the riches
of all the moneyed classes. Never mind the foreign bitches
who have swarmed into the congress. Send those tawny women home—
the sacred halls of governance better suit a gnome
who carries golf clubs as his scepters and overlooks derision
to fuck the whole damn world according to his crazy vision.

“Heil Trump,”  his swastika’d supporters chant. “And damn the Jews!”
“Crucify the liberals,” is shouted from the pews
of those for whom religion is being blindly led,
forsaking what is written in favor of what’s said.
As lambs led to the slaughter, let us bleat and blindly scamper
after all the rich men that we were born to pamper.
We do not need good health care, let alone good food or shelter.
Long Live Trump! Who cares if the whole world goes “Helter Skelter?”

 

Prompt words are unready, perfunctory, racismscurry and suitcase. Image  from Unsplash, used with permission.

 

Sand Castles Under the Sand

 

For being a good sport (I hope) HERE is your very own personal post for the RDP prompt today!

For Ragtag Daily Prompt: Sandcastles