Tag Archives: RDP

The Brush Off

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The Brush Off

A less than amicable parting, he leaves her paints and easel
but takes her masterpieces, the slimy little weasel.
As he struggles with them while slipping out the door,
she shouts her rejoinder, “I always can make more,
whereas it is less likely that you, my dear, will ever
find another bread-winner so talented and clever!”

When he runs out of money and slinks back to disarm her,
all his “mea culpas” will do nothing but rearm her.
She will hear him coming in his rattletrap old van
that he always claimed was a  sort of talisman
of those happy hippy days when he was such a charmer
that she was convinced he was her knight in shining armor.

But he has shattered her illusions ‘til there’s nothing left but rubble.
His bellbottoms are tattered and his goatee turned to stubble.
His dreadlocks fall from balding pate, his “Hey Man” is not cool.
He came into her life a god, but left it as a fool.
She’s given him the brush-off. No more is she his wife.
If he comes back he’ll only meet with her palette knife.

Prompt words today are amicable, weasel, talisman and Mea culpa.
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/28/your-daily-word-prompt-talisman-march-28-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/28/mea-culpa/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/28/rdp-thursday-weasel/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/28/fowc-with-fandango-amicable/

Advice to a Brand New Stepmom

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Advice to a Brand New Stepmom

Release your indignation. Try to quell your grief.
The air is redolent with clues of the impish thief.
Don’t you smell the bubble gum? Can’t you catch a sniff
of the perfumed hair gel that makes his hair so stiff?
Those two dozen cookies that you’d put in a stack
to package for the bake sale, I’d bet are in a sack
high up in the tree house in your own back yard.
The next time you bake cookies, you’d better post a guard!

 

The prompt words today are thief, release, redolent and impish. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/27/rdp-wednesday-thief/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/27/fowc-with-fandango-release/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/27/your-daily-word-prompt-redolent-march-27-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/27/impish/

Trolls

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Trolls

Dumb as a fencepost, mind in a haze,
knee-jerk reaction to any new craze
of misinformation that stirs up a fuss.
Write a vile comment. Slander and cuss.
Research at your leisure. Probably never.
Facts are not relevant when you’re so clever.
Foment and stirring are your new employment.
Nothing so sacred as your vile enjoyment!

 

The prompt words today are haze, post, leisure and enjoyment. Here are the links. Strangely enough, a troll from the dVerse Poets prompt seemed to invade this post as well, so although this isn’t the quadrille it called for, I’m including a link to it, too:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/26/rdp-tuesday-haze/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/26/fowc-with-fandango-post/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/26/your-daily-word-prompt-leisure-march-26-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/26/enjoyment/
https://dversepoets.com/

Corpse of Another Day

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The  corpse of another day lay spread across the horizon. A jet stream cut through gossamer clouds stained with its blood.  If only those old men who made the decisions were teachable, she would bring them out here and show them this. Then any fool could see what they were putting more at risk every day.  This beautiful, rare world. These unique sunsets. She bent to retrieve yet another piece of plastic—this time a brightly colored molded toy. They were playing with the world, and it was a tough game, she thought, as she tossed it into her collection bag. 

The prompt words today are jet, corpse, gossamer and teachable. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/rdp-monday-jet/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/25/fowc-with-fandango-corpse/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/your-daily-word-prompt-gossamer-march-25-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/teachable/

TrackRbravo Lament

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TrackRbravo Lament

There was a little gadget I bought two years ago
but when it came to using it, I was a little slow.
Since instructions were too difficult, I maintained the status quo
and continued, when I lost my keys, to seek them high and low,

looking in the old way by fumbling through my purse,
perusing tabletops and hooks and wastebaskets and worse.
Every time I lost my keys, I’d fuss and swear and wheeze,
searching drawers and closets on my tiptoes or my knees.

But recently I found the box where I’d stowed the appliance
and decided that I’d make another try at an alliance.
I tested its small battery and found plenty of juice
to assure its assistance in my tracker’s use.

After struggling to get the battery inside
the little TrackRbravo disk where it would reside,
I fetched the brief instructions which accomplished not a thing.
I could not pair it to my phone, and it refused to ring.

I made a trip to YouTube which helped a small bit more.
When I pushed the button, I heard a small faint roar.
And after just an hour, I’d linked it to my phone.
No more would my keychain roam this earth alone.

At first I searched and searched and searched, and I searched in vain
for the spot upon my phone where I could complain
when I could not find the place where my keys had hidden
so I could find them in the spot to which I had been bidden.

When I finally found the spot—a paltry little dot,
where I had never thought to look, although I looked a lot—
I pushed the button and I heard for the initial time
my keychain’s piping little voice––it’s initiation chime.

As hard as this procedure was, I knew it could be worse,
and I felt a sense of power tossing keys into my purse
full of reassurance that I’d not be late
due to searching for my keys before my luncheon date.

But hours before I had to go, I heard a little buzz
making more disturbance than a mosquito does.
I tracked it to my table, then tracked it to my bag.
insistently, it whined at me––an annoying little nag.

I went back to my phone and found the place to quell its stammer,
then settled down to work again, relieved of all its clamor.
But then, alas, five minutes more, and it went off again.
It seems that it can’t wait for my request to start its din.

And so now, five hours later, I’ve been out and came back home.
I’m sitting at computer, composing this dumb poem.
I feasted with three favorite friends and I enjoyed it so,
but, alas, my TrackRbravo didn’t get to go.

I removed it from my car keys and stashed it far away
thinking that a quiet place its panic would allay.
But hear that little buzzing sound coming from my closet?
No matter what I try to do, I cannot seem to pause it.

And though I know what’s causing it, I cannot make it freeze.
It just goes off at random, whenever it may please.
Perhaps it’s looking for my keys and does not have a clue
and instead of just one problem, I find that I have two!

 

The prompt words today are closet, paltry, fetching and feast. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/24/rdp-sunday-closet/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/24/fowc-with-fandango-paltry/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/24/your-daily-word-prompt-fetching-march-24-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/24/feast/

Tracings

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Weird art
Pieces ready to be joined
2009-2022
1993

Click on photos to enlarge and see commentaries made about some during earlier postings.

Children are the parts of themselves that parents leave  behind when they die—actual physical tracings that will last for as long as their line reproduces. Yet, they have no control over what the children add to their genes to pass on down through time. Each generation melds together with the genes of other families to create a new assemblage composed of bits and pieces of the physical and mental characteristics gleaned from each side of the family to form a new identity.

Childless, I have only what I create to carry me forward into the far future—my poems, stories and books as well as the found object collages that I have created over the past eighteen years. In them I leave the tracery of my life—the long trailings of where I have been, whom I have known, what I have thought. But unlike children, they are glued down, painted, securely fastened to stay as I have intended them to be.

Vestiges of my entire  life story  are stored in them:  moments happy, sad, delirious, tedious, exciting, passionate, depressed, thoughtful, nostalgic. They are souvenirs of travel, heartbreak, reading, lost loves, found adventures.  I have no idea where they will eventually end up. In a trash heap?  On a table or shelf or in a box stored on a shelf? Or will they travel as I once did? Will the box that records Andy’s death end up back in Africa? Will that record of my early childhood school days wind up back in my prairie town?  Will some quantum miracle bring all of the items back to their origins by a force stronger than the one that bonded them together? Will the pieces fly apart, each going in its own direction?

Perhaps this is what happens to all of us at our death—subatomic particles flying back to some prehistoric origin, ready to start their journeys outward once again. Our whole lives are assemblages. Each of us assembles a life as much by our choice of what we draw into it as by what we are given by nature and by birth. Every life is, in a larger sense, a work of art; and how it is recorded—by human genes or by pinning it down on a board or in an assemblage or sculpture or representationally in a book or on canvas—is our choice.

Prompt words today are tracery, delirious, assemblage and identity.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/23/rdp-saturday-tracery/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/23/fowc-with-fandango-delirious/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/23/your-daily-word-prompt-assemblage-march-23-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/23/identity/

Mixed Signals

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Mixed Signals

Incoherent messages from your come-hither eyes
often contradict your usual disguise.
When your eyes invite me yet your mouth is so severe,
I hesitate to steal a kiss, let-alone come near.
So even though my radar tells me you’re inviting,
I abandon future plans for fear you will be biting!

The prompt words today are abandon, radar, hither and incoherent. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/20/rdp-wednesday-abandon/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/20/fowc-with-fandango-radar/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/20/your-daily-word-prompt-hither-march-20-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/20/incoherent/

Extreme Retirement

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Extreme Retirement

My daydreams lack a focus. They float by like a cloud.
It is as though much logic is simply not allowed.
Should plans besmirch my reverie, I’m sure to blot them out,
for my thoughts are vagabonds—aimless, without a doubt.
A mortarboard and tassel lurk far within my past,
and I fear the plans they made simply didn’t last
I lie here in my lounge chair, getting too much sun.
I should  raise the umbrella, for sunburn is no fun,
but I cannot stir myself. I’m simply far too lazy.
Retirement would be easier if all the skies were hazy!

 

Prompt words today are tassel, blot, focus and besmirch. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/19/rdp-tuesday-tassel/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/19/fowc-with-fandango-blot/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/19/focus/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/19/your-daily-word-prompt-besmirch-march-19-2019/

Long Story

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Long Story

Your makeshift fidelity is now a laughable matter.
I have grown bold in my approaching old age
as my own life story now seems more fable than reality.

Every good tale needs its falling action—
its climaxes mainly based on comparison,
and, ironically, you were also its denouement.

But, we are the authors of our own drama,
and, much as I would have chosen otherwise,
you were just the coda of the second act.

 

Prompt words today are bold, makeshift, fidelity and laugh. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/rdp-monday-bold/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/18/fowc-with-fandango-makeshift/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/your-daily-word-prompt-fidelity-march-18-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/laugh/

Dumbing Down

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photo from Rolling Stone

Dumbing Down

I bailed on calculus but I excelled at long division.
Illustrious in wood shop, I flunked nuclear fission.
Knights in suits of armor were never quite my thing.
I never learned to play an instrument. I do not sing.

My illustrious school career came by fits and starts.
Loved auto mechanics. Couldn’t hack the arts.
I admit I’m not well-rounded. I studied what I liked,
and after school was over, I skateboarded and biked.

I never was a bookworm. I had no use for culture.
I had no fear of teachers who hovered like a vulture.
A comic book inside a textbook made for pleasant reading.
I only paid attention to what I would be needing.

The same is true now that I’m grown. I skip over the news.
I have no need of knowing  about Arabs, Serbs or Jews.
I fixate on my own needs. I can’t bother with the rest.
I read enough to pay my bills and pass my driver’s test.

What more is necessary? I have TV and my phone.
When I am ensconced in them, the world leaves me alone.
I’m tired of ecology and its boring explaining,
so voted for a president who is more entertaining.

Now that news is comedy, it holds my interest well.
Who believes those scientists who ring the warning bell?
When the air’s too bad to breathe, I’ll simply stay inside
watching news on Stuppid  that is more bona fide.

(Click on the Stuppid URL for a list and description of “fake news” news sources and some of the biggest disinformation posts.  Chilling. )

Prompt words today were bail, division, illustrious and armor.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/rdp-sunday-bail/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/17/fowc-with-fandango-division/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/16/illustrious/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/your-daily-word-prompt-armor-march-17-2019/