Tag Archives: RDP

Advice to Myself at 73

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It’s never too late to experience growing pains. If it is our onus in life to grow and to change, with no cutoff point after which we are absolved of this duty, then why are we dumbfounded when those pains of adolescence occur again and again at each stage of life? We perhaps grow more serious over the years, but need we become less sensitized? Does the snub, the willful wounding, the being overlooked, the derision become less important? If so, why? Perhaps it is a mark of self-worth, and that is good, but if it is merely the building of a cocoon around ourselves, except in the direst of circumstances, it becomes more of a punishment than a defense.

We are born into this world to experience and therefore, are given defenses to deal with the negative, but when those defenses grow to isolate us, then they become more than protective blankets. They become walls which become our prisons. We were meant to experience and to be vulnerable to changes. And lest we atrophy, from the cradle to the crematorium, we need to fight to keep ourselves open to those experiences that invite change.

 

Prompt words for today are: serious, dumbfounded, cremate, onus and growing pains.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

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flying-heart

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

If you want my love, dear, you’ve got to give me space.
Love’s so much more likely when not always face-to-face.
Even the paranormal works better when the fright
occurs when not expected instead of every night.

That familiarity breeds contempt is not, dear, mere codswallop!
Love is more exciting when taken as a dollop.
How many great love stories were romantic interlude—
those long-remembered periods when we were briefly wooed?

Love can be a lifelong trip or one terrific bash
where two bodies crash together and then burn away to ash.
The bodies that are left to us may then be wooed and married,
the memory of past flaming passions sealed away and buried.

But in a vault within us, those past interludes are kept,
and now and then the present they are bound to intercept.
They do not rival constancy—that lasting love or marriage
that is the coach that carries us. They’re just the undercarriage.

But that daily diet that regularly nourishes
cannot but be improved upon with a few spicy flourishes.
Like an appetite that grows the stronger with the fasting,
love delayed may well make even married love more lasting.

 

Just for the fun of it this time, I decided to look up one prompt word at a time and write a couplet that contained it before looking up the next word, then do the same each time. So much fun. I always say I rarely know where a poem is going until I finish it, but this time is the proof of it! I didn’t know from couplet to couplet where it was going.

Sam found THIS POEM that bears a remarkable resemblance to the poem above. I guess when I start repeating myself, it is time to stop. I had no memory of writing this poem. Guess it is time to start worrying as well.

Words of the day are space, paranormal, codswallop, interlude and crash.

Cowboy Kiss-Off

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Cowboy Kiss-Off

As the years go by, my dear, it is more obvious that
you’re about as useful as this bobble on my hat.
Your eye has turned to roving and you’re out most every night.
Anger’s the main emotion that you’re able to incite.

You’ve forfeited my trust. You are taking me for granted.
You find me just as tasty as a wine that’s been decanted
for so long that it has molded and started to go sour.
Once put upon a pedestal, I’ve  fallen from my tower.

Once you thought domesticity was like a field of clover,
whereas it’s obvious now that you would rather be a rover.
So best that you be off. The sooner gone would be just fine.
Your stuff is in this bag. As you recall, the ranch is mine!!

 

Other prompts for the day are bobble and trust.

 

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

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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

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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

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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

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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, juggernaut,  umpteen 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

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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.