Tag Archives: RDP

Made Over

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Made Over

Back when we were fragile and our love was first on trial,
I was seeking to enchant you with trickery and guile.
I feared that final reckoning when one day you’d wake up
before I had the chance to do my hair and my makeup.

My mental alarm clock never seemed to fail.
I’d haul me to the bathroom, looking snarled and pale—
smooth my hair and draw the me you knew upon my face,
until the real me was obscured—vanished without a trace.

How many years did I go on with that sad charade,
trying to restore in me what nature chose to fade?

Now that all I am is finally written on my face
with lines and wrinkles scored so deep that you can easily trace
all of my imperfections, what a wonder that you see
what you describe as beauty in this face that’s only me!

 

Prompt words today are trial, reckoning, enchant and fragile. Links below.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/03/rdp-sunday-trial/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/03/fowc-with-fandango-reckoning/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/03/your-daily-word-prompt-enchant-march-3-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/03/fragile/

Wisdom

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Wisdom

If the earlier march of our lives is for learning, it is seldom the case that we continue to the end in the cadence of our earlier lives. As we mature, if those around us as well as ourselves are lucky, we continue to learn— but in a different way that is more like a long walk, observing the world around us.. Then comes a time when we float on the iridescence of the world we’ve created by our earlier learnings and decisions. 

 

Prompt words today are iridescence, march, learning and case. Here are their links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/02/rdp-saturday-irridescence/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/02/fowc-with-fandango-case/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/02/your-daily-word-prompt-magic-march-2-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/02/learning/

Transmogrification

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Transmogrification

Time marches on. It has no instinct to appease.
It will not stop for anything. It has no need to please.
Young  girls who start out radiant eventually dim.
Dreams  that were fantastical turn nightmarish and grim.
Aging is a truth of life that can’t be circumvented.
It  seems we do not own our lives. They simply have been rented.
One day the lease will lapse on them and we’ll have to go
back into the vapors to join the ebb and flow.
That’s how nature plans it. We cannot break the chain.
Our only hope is being recycled again.

 

Prompt words today are march, radiant, fantastical and appease. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/01/rdp-friday-march/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/01/fowc-with-fandango-radiant/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/01/your-daily-word-prompt-fantastical-march-1-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/01/appease/

Oldest Friend

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Clicking her camera and spinning her yarns.


Oldest Friend

She is my very oldest friend—I met her as a child.
Then she was the feisty one while I was shy and mild.
Diametric opposites, still we are never parted—
one of us the loner, the other open-hearted.

She makes friends everywhere we go. I’d rather be alone.
For all my hermit tendencies, she stirs me to atone.
She thinks up the parties and though loath to go along,
I give up my solitude to join the social throng.

We have coexisted throughout a lengthy life.
I thrive when I am single. She wants to be a wife.
When we are together, one must devour the other.
One at a time we make the choice: single girl or mother?

One succeeds the other  in  a continual chain.
As soon as one’s exhausted, the other shows again.
Our relationship is infinite. Neither can break away.
While she drinks all the shooters, I am the one to pay.

When I am the diligent student, she shares in all my glory.
I get to write the manuscripts. She gets to live their story.
One-by-one we take our turns determining our fate—
one of us always timely. The other always late.

Perhaps our friends are tired of not knowing which will show—
the one who’s energetic or the one of us who’s slow,
but our very oldest friends will simply wait to see,
knowing that whoever shows, either will be me.

 

Prompt words today are diametric, chain, infinite and devour
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/rdp-thursday-diametric/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/28/fowc-with-fandango-chain/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/your-daily-word-prompt-infinite-february-28-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/devour/

What’s Wrong with Your Mom?

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What’s Wrong with Your Mom?

My husband’s language is so curt that lately I’ve been wondering
if these moody epithets that he has been thundering
have anything at all to do with my consistent blundering.

Ashtrays in the ice box and ice cubes in a puddle
on the shelf where glasses go? I fear I’m in a muddle.
I see him with the children, over there in a big huddle.

Now and then, they look at me. I think they are suspicious.
It’s me they are discussing, and their looks are not auspicious.
But still they feel that questioning me would not be judicious.

Why don’t they remember that  I’ve been this way before
exactly three times in the past, and this is number four?
By now I am surprised it hasn’t become family lore

that mother always gets this way during a certain time
when thinking gets confusing and moods turn on a dime,
but in the end it’s worth it as the outcome is sublime!

It seems I cannot  count on them to interpret the clues,
so I think that it is time that I give them all the news
that will solve the puzzle and resolve Daddy’s blues.

They see me coming towards them and it looks like they might scatter,
but they realign their faces as though nothing is the matter
until they hear these words that I contribute to their chatter:

“The secret that I’ve kept from you is worrying as a blister.
This surprise that I’m carrying might be our first young mister,
although I know you would not mind if it were a fourth sister!”

 

Prompt words today are language, puddle, auspicious and wondering. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/27/rdp-wednesday-language/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/27/fowc-with-fandango-puddle/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/27/your-daily-word-prompt-auspicious-february-27-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/27/wondering/

Vagaries

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Vagaries

My mind is turning derelict. It often wanders on.
While I am still in need of it, I discover that it’s gone.
My thought processes aren’t uniform. They come and go at random.
Will and concentration no longer come in tandem.
It never ceases fascinating me that what was once
a certified ace student has turned into a dunce.
I know it is the fault of age and yet I often ponder
about this vagary of mind that sends it over yonder
when I have need of it at home. I find it most distressing
when common words are wanted, that my mind now leaves me guessing.


The prompt words today were fault, uniform, fascinate and derelict.Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/rdp-tuesday-fault/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/26/fowc-with-fandango-uniform/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/your-daily-word-prompt-Fascinate-february-26-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/derelict/

The Heel

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The Heel

Rumors are abroad that you don’t know how to act.
You like to dig the needle in and haven’t any tact.
If you don’t reverse your ways and learn to get along—
if you stubbornly refuse to right your recent wrong—
I won’t be held responsible for trying once again
to cover up your misdeeds and atone for your sin.
For once you’ll have to face up to your social gaffes—
your misogynistic humor and  inappropriate laughs.
When you’re lying bruised and bloody, helpless on the floor,
you’ll finally discover what high heels are really for!!!

 

Prompt words today wre needle, reverse, abroad and act. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/rdp-monday-needle/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/25/fowc-with-fandango-reverse/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/your-daily-word-prompt-abroad-february-25-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/act/

Odd Couple

10 Replies

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Odd Couple

She had a nature most erratic
whereas his was mainly static.
She was a girl who liked to rock.
All day he sat and watched the clock.
Few pleasures did he ever find
in his life work’s daily grind.

When they first met, I must confess,
he questioned how she chose to dress.
High heels with socks were not the way
that ladies dressed back in his day.
She was eighteen and he was forty.
She dressed funky. He dressed sporty.

He liked golf. She loved the clubs.
She chewed her fingernails to stubs
worrying about the planet’s fate.
She slept around. He didn’t date
and worried not about emissions
nor those Save the Earth commissions.

What soul who knew them both would guess
they’d ever meet, or even less
imagine that they’d get along—
he with his pipe, her with her bong?
Let’s put them in each other’s way.
See how they’d act. See what they’d say.

She meanders through the park
in the evening, before dark.
He’s walking home from the ninth hole.
She rounds the corner, he crests the knoll.
They meet soon on the walkway path.
They have to pass. You do the math!

She eyes his clubs. He eyes her socks.
Her expression questions, but his mocks.
He doesn’t nod, she doesn’t greet.
If you were wishing they might meet,
you’ll have to write your own romance.
These two as lovers? There’s no chance!!!

 

Prompt words today were rock and guess. Here are links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/24/rdp-sunday-rock/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/24/guess/

Dream World

3 Replies

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Dream World

My little nephews were quite the rapscallions,
with tinfoil armor and mop handle stallions
they conquered their foes and made off in their galleons
to sail the wild oceans, and then this wild pair
got into their airplanes to sail through the air.
You barely could tell that the swing set was there.

From morning to night, they were batting or pitching,
expounding on hockey and football and itching
to escape the tame lives that they would be ditching
as soon as they grew up. Then they would be soaring
in airplanes and gliders and missiles less boring.
Their engines fired up, the crowds would be roaring

for the heroes they’d be, taking off into space,
vanishing upwards with barely a trace—
off to adventure, intent on the chase.
They would catch up with life and grab onto its tail.
They’d travel each highway and ride every rail,
pass “go” every round and get out of jail!

Life in short would be anything but dull and tame.
It would be a wild spree—an adventurous game
wherein they’d be heroes, ensconced in their fame.
At least this was their theory when they were young,
when adventure was made up in mind and on tongue
and all of their upcoming conquests were sung!

But childhood dreams often go far astray.
They tend to evaporate as day-to-day
we slowly grow up and enter the fray.
Now one’s an accountant, the other a doc,
and there’s little adventure and even less talk
of being an astronaut, pilot or jock.

Yet who knows in the nighttime what sorties are planned?
With their heads on their pillows, do their wishes expand
to soar off to adventures more wild and grand?
Perhaps in their dreams they go back to their youth
and to pastimes less sane—more reckless and uncouth.
Perhaps in their slumbers, their dreams become truth.

The prompt words today were air, theory, rapscallion and itching. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/23/rdp-saturday-air/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/23/fowc-with-fandango-theory/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/23/your-daily-word-prompt-rapscallion-february-23-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/23/itching/

Stuffed

24 Replies

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Stuffed

I lose my glasses, cuss and mutter,
but my worst quality is clutter!
I have a drawer just filled with socks
I never wear.  And pans and woks,
old dishes, fondue pots  and skewers,
a fourteen-year-old bottle of Dewars
not one friend drinks, much less myself,
sitting there upon my shelf.
Everything I buy just clings.
I  can’t seem to part with things!
In boxes on my garage shelves
are all my former castoff selves.

The slides from art shows long ago?
I dreaded sorting them and so
they remain in plastic crates,
labeled with their types and dates.
Old letters, class notes, tax returns?
I’ve heard that paper easily burns
as well as shreds, yet still I wait.
Years pass as I equivocate.
They might be needed someday so,
get rid of them? I must say no!
With finite space in drawer and bin,
I buy new things and stuff them in.

I should destroy, but can’t commit,
those mismatched pan lids that don’t fit,
My studio is filled with things.
My jewelry drawers with bracelets, rings.
My closets stuffed with different sizes,
shelves stacked with future gifts and prizes.
Snow boots although it never snows
anywhere this woman goes.
A safari hat with veil
hangs upon a closet nail
along with wet suit, snorkel, fins,
and other useless hoarding sins.

My kitchen is a spice museum.
So many spices, I can’t see um.
Fenugreek and capsicum
that I was given by my mum
so long ago they have no taste,
green olives and tomato paste
well past the date they should be used.
Yes, my house should be perused
and sorted out, I must admit,
instead, I sit and write of it!
I know some folks clear out their closets,
but me? I only make deposits!

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Prompt words today were security, finite, someday and commit. I admit, I took a poem from four years ago and added lines to include some of the new prompt words.  Still can’t throw anything away but at least I’m repurposing!

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/rdp-friday-security/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/02/22/fowc-with-fandango-finite/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/your-daily-word-prompt-Someday-february-22-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/22/commit/