Tag Archives: spur

New Messiah

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New Messiah

From whom among the worldly scrum
will Earth’s brighter future come?
Who’ll point a twitching finger to
a skyline of a sickly hue
and before our future’s gone,
transform it from its dull and wan
pallor to a richer hue?
What newer race will then renew
as their fathers failed to do?
Who forms these saviors of the world?
In what infant brain lies curled
the savior of the human race?
Or will we vanish without a trace?

 

 

Prompt words today are twitch, skyline, scrum, wan and finger.

Talking Turkey

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Talking Turkey

(A Thanksgiving Invitation Guaranteed to Encourage Friends to Insist
on Having Thanksgiving at Their House This Year!)

Feeling grungy, out-of-tempo, out-of-sorts and kinda mean.
Need a new Thanksgiving turkey, ‘cuz last year’s is turning green.
Can’t avouch for what would happen if I tried to serve it now,
but perhaps I’ll scrape the mold off and try to serve it anyhow?

Come to think, it’s penicillin, so how  dangerous can it be?
It might just be beneficial, so let’s try it and we can see.
I’ll whip up some new potatoes, open cans of cranberries.
Don’t forget to bring the pies. I await your RSVP’s!!!!

Prompts today are grunge, tempo, turkey, avouch and green.

Bedbound

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Bedbound

I have pain in my back and water on my knee
and not one single friend has expressed sympathy!
I’ve called every doctor in town to explain
my aches and my ills, but it’s all been in vain.

Not one can discover what it is that ails me.
Each remedy that I’ve sought out simply fails me.
The sun hurts my eyes and the rain brings depression.
It hurts when I walk but bed rest brings compression

that freezes my spine so I’m forced to just lie here,
seeking assistance from all who walk by here.
And although I’ve no appetite, still I must eat,
so there’s one request that I have to repeat.

If you’re going to town, could you help me out, please,
and bring me a pizza? Sausage. Extra cheese.
Because I’m so thin, the doctor prescribes beer.
and since there’s a Quik Stop that’s really quite near,

could you pick up a six-pack, some ice cream and chips?
For I simply must add some flesh to my hips.
My bones are protruding so far that they hurt
from the weight of the sheets and the thinnest night shirt.

I’m under the weather, headachy and  thin.
I cannot convey the bad shape that I’m in.
My offspring don’t care and my spouse says I’m making it
hard to stay with me because I’m just faking it.

I have to complain because I must confess it
is impossible when one is ill to repress it.
Although all my friends say I’ve bats in my attic,
these ills you can’t see are not psychosomatic!

Prompts today are under the weather, offspring, flush, repress and stay.

Trick or Treat

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Trick or Treat

On Halloween, every child has faith
that if they show up as a zombie or wraith
and say “Trick or Treat!” and hold out their hand,
that simply by making  this threatening demand,
the folks will produce a sugary treat.
Then quick as a whip, they’ll make their retreat.
Impelled by the promise of one reward more,
they’re off to pound on another closed door.

Without maps, without compass, they’ll all zero in
on former houses where they have been
that give the best treats, like whole Hershey bars,
their parents all sitting, resigned, in their cars,
monopolized drivers one night of the year—
giving independence, yet hovering near,
and perhaps making sure that the threat clearly stated,
if the treat’s not a good one, though surely debated,

never comes true. No car windows soaped,
no trees that are left gaily toilet-roll-roped.
Over decades, this holiday’s earned such renown,
that  it’s the same in town after town.
Small ghosts and small ghouls and witches and fairies
go house-to-house restating their queries
and as though it is magic, no one can resist
a candy-filled pumpkin hung from a small wrist.

Prompt words today are: compass, monopolize, wraith, impel and hand.

Dear John

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Dear John

My kenspeckle lover, well-known for deceit,
you cannot resist every siren you meet.
If you’re depressed, they brighten your day.
Do you think that I’m so naive and fey
that I do not notice the scent you bring home
when you return from wherever you roam?
If I kept a notebook of all of the times
you were unfaithful and caught them in rhymes,
they would be encyclopedic in length,
devoid of affection and brute in their strength.

I’d be better off, they would prove, if alone,
for “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone,”
considering all of your dalliance and sin,
if applied to you, would be spread out so thin
that the bone left for me would be naught but a sliver,
my portion of flesh just a scrap of your liver,
the rest of you spread out so far and so wide,
apportioned to lovers you thought you could hide.

I’ve packed up your bags, keeping one of them free
to return the part of you you left with me.
Take it along with you as you depart.
 I’ve already filled that part of my heart
that you have left empty these many long years
with one who’s supplied what you left in arrears.

 

 

Prompts today are: kenspeckle, better, notebook, deceit and depressed.

Kenspeckle: adjective,SCOTTISH, easily recognizable; conspicuous.
“he loved walking in the village, where he was a kenspeckle figure”

Logorrhea

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Logorrhea *

You’re wearing out our neurons with your tedious lengthly screed.
You’ve made us weep with boredom and you’ve made our eardrums bleed.
Please cease your tedious lectures about people we don’t know.
We’re tired of your illnesses and other tales of woe.
The remnants of our patience grow dangerously thin.
We’ve seen your family pictures and know everywhere you’ve been.
Have you heard of asking questions and surrendering the floor?
Have you ever thought of stopping while your listeners want more?
Do you realize that others have stories to relate?
This is a truth, my boring friend, not open to debate.
We’d like to share a secret that isn’t very tough, it
is to take your next comment and this is where to stuff it!!

 

 

   * Logorrhea: a pathological inability to stop talking. (Diarrhea of the mouth.)
   * Screed: a long speech or piece of writing, typically one regarded as tedious.

The prompts today are neuron, remnant, screed and wear.

 

The Docent of the Midnight Gallery

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A little humor to dispel the effect of the paintings presented above: Mealancholy: The remembrance of the day’s repast.(Those meals taken before your diet began.) 

That silly definition was prompted by the fact that I noticed I’d misspelled the first prompt below while establishing the link. Here is the real word plus its companions:

The actual prompt words today are melancholy, Kafkaesque, gallery, cosset and black.

The Docent of the Midnight Gallery

Stark and grim and melancholy—harsh and Kafkaesque,
she ruled the midnight gallery from behind her desk.
Far from being cosseted, viewers were oft upbraided.
She moaned and screeched at visitors as though infuriated.
Skeletal and  shrouded, her visage veiled in black,
she insured no visitor ever ventured back!

May-December Marriage

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May-December Marriage

Your insistence that I swallow three times between each bite
is just one small example of directives that incite.
All your protective rules that others find adorable,
on the receiving side of them quickly turns deplorable.

Whatever you may label them by your own nomenclature,
your “loving” rules are symptoms of extreme controlling nature.
So I’m galvanized to action. Since I’m tired of your caring,
I’m making a decision that’s both personal and daring.

I’m going out without you for a little drive alone
and I’m not taking my pager and I’m not taking my phone.
I might drive without a seatbelt and who knows what else I’ll do.
If I see some flowers by the road, I’ll stop and pick a few

without worrying about the fact a passerby might see
and park his car behind me and decide to kidnap me.
I will talk to every stranger and eat in greasy spoons,
drive out to the ocean and walk barefoot in the dunes

forgetting the sharp objects that might lurk beneath the sand,
neglecting to wear sunscreen and if I get deeply tanned,
I won’t worry about wrinkles or cancer or a burn.
All your careful rules for once I’m going to spurn.

I’m going to eat sugar and perhaps get round and fat,
enjoying all the broken rules involved in doing that!
If you treat me like a kid, then guess I’ll be a teen
and when you tell me what to do, I’ll stage a little scene.

I’ll get home when I want to and go out with whom I wish.
I’ll dine alone on Szechwan food and order every dish.
When you ask when I’ll get home, I’ll shrug and say “Whenever!”
And if you do not change your ways, the answer will be “Never!”

 

Prompts for the day are swallow, between, symptomatic, galvanize and adorable.

Hallofourthofvalenmas: How It Came to Be.

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Okay! Prompt words for the day are knockers, combination, festival, beseech and sentence. What in the world would you do with a combination of words like that? Think of that before you  judge me for this:

Hallo-fourthof-valen-mas

This festival’s the weirdest of any that I’ve seen—
a crazy combination of Christmas and Halloween.
The hire-a-Santa in the mall wears bear paws on his feet
and when the kids climb on his lap, they mutter, “Trick or Treat!”
Below the Christmas wreaths above, door knockers are kept busy
as grandmas baking Yule logs are kept in a fine tizzy 
by swarms of little carolers who can barely reach
the door knockers, who gather with arms up to beseech
the homeowners for candy after every song,
then stuff it in the Christmas stockings that they brought along.

Scores of scavengers dressed  up like shepherds or like kings
as well as Virgin Marys or angels sporting wings
abandon Christmas pageants to Trick-or-Treat instead.
You might ask me by what edict the world was made to wed
Halloween and Christmas? What legislative body
chose two celebrations equally over-gaudy
and mixed them both together to try to regulate
the number of occasions  on which we celebrate?

I think it was the W-H-O that thought up this solution
to try to deal with Covid and to try to curb pollution,
then issued this weird sentence and made us all comply
to celebrate all holidays on the fourth of July!
And so in combination with the skeletons and holly,
as witches and small ghosts are enjoined to act more  jolly,
fireworks are exploding in the sky far up above,
and as they trick-and-treat they also express love
by handing out their valentines—kill two birds with one stone
by trading hearts for Hershey bars with a ghostly moan.
And that’s how Hallo-fourthof-valen-mas has come to be
the only time when we’re allowed a group festivity.
And since part of it’s Halloween, without being asked
every guest, no matter what their politics, comes fully masked!!!

Prompt words for the day are knockers, combination, festival, beseech and sentence.

Bigot

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Bigot

His doctrines are all rusty and anything but rational.
He does not know the meaning of thinking international.
If he’d rescind provincial ways to make his mind more spacious,
it might create a better man, both kinder and more gracious.

 

Prompts for the day are rusty relic, doctrine, gracious, rescind and international. Photo by muhmed-el-bank on Unsplash.