Tag Archives: spur

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.

Words and the Man

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Words and the Man

The words lie pinned upon the sheet, mistress to his demands,
only brought into the light by his complicit hands.
They may want to wage battle or to stray off and meander,
but they have given power away to a new commander.

The glut of letters marches straight across the written page,
tip-toeing or stomping off in a pent-up rage.
They are but the eggs of thought contained within the shell,
but he knows how to scramble them. He’s learned the method well.

Words may portend the future or they may reflect the past.
He may hide them deep in steerage or fly them from the mast.
And whether it’s a novel, a poem or a song,
With words he weaves a cable to tow us all along.

 

Prompt words are mistress, glut, egg, portend and cable.

New Baby Blues

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New Baby Blues

I rue the day my mom acquired my new baby brother.
I wish that she’d return him and come back with another.
When I first saw him, he was cute and I was rather proud,
but that’s before I knew the fact that he would be so loud.

When he cries, he makes a sort of ear-splitting sharp bleating
all the time Mom’s in the kitchen seeing to the heating
of the bottle used to apportion out his dinner.
You’d think for all the fuss he makes that he was growing thinner,

Yet I swear that day-by-day, to my great disgust
that he’s growing bigger—fatter and more robust!
And when he isn’t sleeping or drinking or deranged,
he is damp or poopie and insisting to be changed.

I think this baby’s broken and I think we need a new one.
I asked if I could go along when they go to view one,
but Mommy says there’s no return because this one is used,
while Daddy uttered not a word—just stood looking amused.

It really isn’t funny, though. In fact, I’m most annoyed
that they have less time for me now that they’re employed
taking care of baby—making sure he’s fed and well
while all this time I’ve been here too, living in baby Hell!

He’s diapered, held and cuddled, sung to and adored
while his older sister sits here feeling bored.
They say that I’ll feel different once he’s more grown up,
but if it were up to me, I’d trade him for a pup!

 

Prompt words today are proud, heating, apportion, damp and rue.

Tinder is the Night

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Tinder is the Night

It was a measly little dalliance—a tumble in the hay—
but it turned insidious somewhere along the way.
You read about it somewhere almost every day,
so when you meet up with strangers,
be careful where you lay.

Prompt words today are tumble, insidious, dalliance, measly and read. Image by Matthieu Huang on Unsplash.