Tag Archives: spur

Vivid Mexico

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Vivid Mexico

Those individuals who choose to spend the remaining years of their life south of the border have some strengths in common. Some come because it is a cheaper place to live, but those who remain generally stay because of a love of the richness of the life here. It is an existence not free of snafus—a life not for the lackadaisical or the personality set in its ways. There are fewer safeguards and rules–fewer antimacassars to protect chair backs from oily heads. Fewer lifeguards to warn someone they are too far out in the water.

If one falls into a hole where the manhole cover has been left off and sues for damages, the judge is more likely to enquire if they were blind and then to dismiss the claim. You couldn’t see the cover was gone and walk in a different place? It is a place of accountability for one’s own actions, creating less of a propensity to blame problems on someone else. Mexico is not perfect, but it is perfectly beautiful and varied and life-filled. If one wants to cram a lot of life into their last twenty to forty years, it is one of the places  where it is possible to do so.

Prompt words today are antimacassar, lackadaisical, snafu, water. In addition, Pensivity’s “Three Things Challenge” prompt words are individual, strong and border.

Agates

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Agates

Often, when our hired hand took a break from work,
he’d comb the land for agates, then return with a smirk,
pockets full of shiny stones he’d removed from the clay,
bragging to my father that this was his lucky day.

Down along the river, on sunny days they shone,
mixed in with the detritus of  rocks and sand and bone.
You’d have thought that they were diamonds he’d removed from the earth,
but he didn’t judge their beauty simply by their worth.

He had learned to capture happiness anywhere he found it,
sorting out the beauty from what he found around it.
A simple man, for him it was not something he could buy.
He found beauty in a blade of grass or clouds up in the sky.

Lucky man, therefore he found beauty everywhere—
In his wife’s shy smile and his children’s flaxen hair,
wheat fields spread like blankets before the combine’s blade,
he gloried in all the riches that the earth had made.

 

Prompt words today are agate, smirk, remove, often and land. Image from USGS on Unsplash, used with permission.

 

Mergers and Acquisitions

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Mergers and Acquisitions

Their marriage was nefarious for its machinations,
for it was less love story than it was amalgamations:
wedding of fluid assets, portfolio combining,
mid-cap stocks and pipelines, oil shares and mining.

Their merger started out with a proposal to borrow—
an essay for a loan that somehow upon the morrow
turned into a merger that wed family and family
to create a union that was more of an anomaly

than it was a love story—a joining of two powers 
that should have woven dollar signs into the wedding bowers.
Thus is a son or daughter turned into corporate pawn
as simply as a corporate schemata is redrawn.

 

Prompt words today are fluid, nefarious, borrow, amalgamate and essay.

Fruitless Efforts

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Fruitless Efforts

I know what they say because I’ve heard the buzz.
My profile, alas, is not what it was.
But the fact that some parts of me have required
more helpful support as they have retired

does not negate the simple true fact
that all my former charms are intact.
They shifted location against my behest. 
My breasts have moved south, my hips east and west,

and my upper arms have chosen to rest
in regions below where they’ve deemed that it’s best
to hang in their hammocks without so much tension
as when they were forced to remain at attention.

Some women thirst for their trim bods of yore,
but frankly, I find their efforts a bore.
Whether they seek them by suction or scalpel,
by fairy wand, prayer or by decree Papal,

it doesn’t seem worth it for when they get fit,
what are they going to accomplish by it?
For though they are going to look mighty fine,
what lovers are left by the age 89?

 

Prompt words are tired, wand, thirst, negate and profile.

 

I’ve Been and I Am

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I’ve Been and I Am

In earlier days, I’ve been cursed and rehearsed.
Been nursed for my fevers, relieved of my thirst.
Dialed and aisled, exiled  and trialed.
Filed and riled and even profiled.

I grew tired, retired, and my interest was fired
to try moving off to a place I’d admired.
Fate guided my steps, waved her magical wand
and found me a house by a beautiful pond,

Surrounded by greenery both flower and frond,
 I’ve probably formed my ultimate bond.
What we were we still are, for that is our core,
but if we have courage, we can be still more.

Life isn’t over when we’re retired.
We may be at rest but we needn’t be mired.
The flame of our life has not yet expired.
No circuit’s so old that it can’t be rewired!

Prompt words are tired, wand, thirst, negate and profile.

Bonus View

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Bonus View

The sun was at its zenith and although I ventured bare
out to my jacuzzi, I had no intent to share
a peep show with my neighbors, for tall bushes masked the view
from their high terrace to my bedroom, and my hot tub, too.

I’d forgotten that leaf cutter ants had lately been to dine
upon the hedge between us, depleting leaf and vine.
So when birds perch upon it, they’re exposed from tail to plume.
I can see them from the terrace and see them from my room

as they feed upon the flowers against a bright blue sky,
exposed there as they lately are to every human eye.
In addition, I’d been duly warned by  neighbors recently
that since the ants had visited, they can’t help viewing me

as I go about life’s duties on my terrace, in my yard,
and if my drapes are open, they had found that it was hard
to deflect their eyes from bedroom views. I’d been duly alerted
that if our mutual embarrassment was to be averted

that I should be more careful until our hedge filled out
lest I inadvertently forget and walk about
in fewer clothes than usual or pursued private actions
not intended to be shared for neighborly reactions.

So when I left the hot tub seeking to slake my thirst
and headed for the kitchen, I, too, witnessed the worst.
Through bare branches, void of leaf, male neighbors stood askance
viewing me against their will as I took the chance

naked as a jaybird, to scurry to the house
devoid of any raiment—swimsuit, pants or blouse.
Now this might have been exciting when there was less to see
in my earlier years, preceding seventy-three,

but I fear the scene they viewed was more a shock than titillating.
Certainly not the scene that they had been anticipating
as they strolled out with their guests for a visual interlude.
I’m sure they’d no intent to view their neighbor in the nude!

Prompt words today are plume, zenith, thirst, duly and share.

Happy Hour

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Happy Hour

Let’s get together to workshop our souls,
then toss our past regrets back in their bowls.

Though life’s a lottery, full of calamity,
we are the agents of all of its amity.

Choices we make determine our ends.
Fate’s only responsible for its trick bends.

You bring the biscuits and I’ll provide wine.
We’ll discuss life as we sip and we dine.

No better remedy for life’s aversions
than hors d’oeuvres and drinks to provide our diversions.

 

Prompt for today are workshop, lottery, biscuit, calamity and agent.

Bad Words!!!!

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words

Prompt words today are encephalopathy, such, cattywampus, comminatory and partner.

Bad Words!!!!

I’m feeling vengeful toward “comminatory,” a term I find absurd.
Fatigued by “encephalopathy.” Who heard of such a word?
Has the world of prompts gone “cattywampus?” Have you all gone mad?
Can such words be shaped into a poem that isn’t bad?
How can one partner such weird words? What’s a scribe to do?
Except to face the challenge and write a poem she’ll rue!

Paper Star

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Paper Star

Born to a family with great clout,
endued with fame, there was no doubt
she, too, would take the world by storm.
Yet, she went against the norm.

Coached in wit and charm and fame,
she didn’t want to play the game.
Sure of herself, without a doubt,
she felt no need to preen or flout.

She renounced usage of the name
and chose a lifestyle much more tame.
Given a choice, selected knowledge,
studied hard and went to college.

Took lifelong sabbatical
from being brash or radical.
Did not grace the silver screen.
Lived out her life private, unseen.

Avoided fame and tabloid papers,
forwent scandal, Oscars, capers.
Became a mother and a wife.
Gave up fame, but had a life.

Word prompts today are radical, coach, usage, endue and doubt. Image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

By All Means

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By All Means

Grandmother Air, Grandfather Tree,
forgive our eccentricity
in doing what we’ve done to thee.

The parricide that we have done
is more than just a smoking gun.
If it’s a war, chaos has won.

By burning, we’ve killed both of you.
Nature’s response should be our clue
that our end, too, is well in view.

No prankster when you make your threat,
you state explicitly, and yet,
still your message we fail to get.

An accurate interpretation
is that man’s manipulation
has resulted in great agitation.

Everything’s off-balanced and
gotten rather out of hand.
So nature has to make a stand.

Her arsenal is most minute.
and though mankind is most astute,
ironically, hard to refute.

Fools will say that we have won,
but still, when all is said and done,
we still hold the smoking gun.

If we don’t change our reckless course,
and solve our problem at its source,
she will respond with greater force.

Be it virus, fire or wind,
if our ways we do not mend,
we’ll be the means to our own end.

Prompt words today are eccentric, air, accurate, prankster and grandfather.