Tag Archives: Sunday Swirl

“Python Pariah” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 649, Apr 7, 2024

Python Pariah

The root of all his problems is a bad mood he can’t shake.
Spooning with a garden hose?  A horrible mistake!
Returning now to his old den is not within the cards.
Too humiliating to face his former pards.

Outside it is both cold and wet and ice stands up in slivers.
It’s the sort of weather that can give a snake the shivers. 
Hard to move through ice and snow with neither arm nor limb
and all those constellations of shards of ice on him.

He’s gobbled down a lizard and nibbled on a squirrel,
then lay rigid on the platform until ready to unfurl.
He negotiated train tracks after descending a stair.
Zipped right down the train aisle without paying his fare.

Slipped into the baggage room and curled up in a coil,
rocking with the movement as the train began to roil.
He then passed a dreary spell while digesting his food.
It’s hard to enjoy traveling when in an iffy mood.

When he is finished shivering, then he begins to cough.
He knows not his destination, knows not where he’ll get off.
He only asks that it is warm with places he can hide
and curl up somewhere safe with a real girl snake at his side!

 

The Sunday Whirl Wordle 649 prompt words are: nibbles slithers spoon platform shards root constellations limbs dreary spell shake wet

Mutability for The Sunday Swirl, June 18, 2023

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Mutability

My life is spinning open to spring beyond my grasp,
unsecured by hardware of loop or bar or hasp.
Hope lifts to wing with feathers spreading in its flight,
springing into the future until it’s out of sight.

By what am I driven that I have set Hope free,
to reach out beyond me, perhaps that it might see
all that I desire beyond the status quo
of the lives that I have lived—the truths I’ve claimed to know?

Life in the guise of here and now, of Heaven or of Hell,
is a man-made legend that we know too well.
But when the death knell chimes for us, what new truth might we learn?
Will we face those pearly gates or will we slowly burn?

Might we go on to distant worlds so far that we can’t see—
orbs turning in another realm where we have come to be
in another shape or form, another turn of mind?
And will we still be our own selves when newly redefined
as bird or beast or creature heretofore unseen—
just one more ghostly image cast on time’s flickering screen?

The prompts for The Sunday Swirl Wordle 509 are: hope feathers flight sight guise desire chime beyond spinning open springs drive. Image by Jan Tinneburg on Unsplash.

And for dVerse Pets Open Link Night

 

Fly-Bye on the Day of the Dead

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Fly-Bye on the Day of the Dead

That fly that chose to falter
for a minute on the altar
I’d constructed for my lover
should have made the choice to hover.

The worst choice of all
was to choose to land and crawl
attracting my attention
to a means of his detention.

Namely, to kill the squatter
with a switch of my fly swatter.
Though he was silent ever after,
no more soaring floor and rafter,

it was I who did the gasping,
for the bottle he was clasping
of my mourned-ones favorite drink
soared out to shatter in the sink.

Thus in the battle between darter
and me, he was the martyr
while I strained my funny bone
accepting actions to atone

by cleaning glass shards from the table
and all places I was able
to reach within the kitchen
without grumbling and bitchin’.

Then I quickly made a trip
to buy a sticky strip
so future flies would be defeated
and my actions not repeated.

 

Prompts For the Sunday Swirl Wordle 600
are: bones gasping strip switch shatters battle fly altar martyr bottle crawl falter

Also for NaPoWriMo

Breakup Breakdown, for Wordle 569

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Breakup Breakdown

My tenacious efforts to climb that hard rock face
of the tower of your indifference has brought me great disgrace.

I regret my wasted journey  to regain your love.
What can’t be saved below can’t be re-won above.

My thoughts are swarming wildly like bees around their hive.
They crack my shell of reason. I’ve no wish to be alive.

Though I present a normal face, I’m not sane at all.
I grit my teeth and curl my broken body in a ball.

And though this seems to demonstrate that I am quite agile,
actually, it protects a heart that is most fragile.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 569 prompt words are: regret wasted journey tenacious bees agile rocking climb crack teeth present face. Photo and brooch by jdb.

And…it’s fiction, Dolly!!!!

Tryst, for the Sunday Swirl Wordle 567

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Tryst

I try to breathe the mountains as I travel through the night.
The reaching arms of towering trees no terrors do ignite.

The growls of hidden creatures as I challenge their domain
build my determination and strengthen my disdain.

The moon and stars will light my way until the coming dawn.
No regrets erase my firm resolve to journey on.

My skin relays the message that relieves all my distress,
as it receives the comfort of the evening wind’s caress.

A whip-poor-will calls out to me from its perch above
that the very night protects me as I proceed toward my love.

 

Prompts for The Sunday Swirl Wordle 567 are: build challenge erase skin growl firm
night regrets until breathe mountains try

 

 

Tree of Love: For Wordle 559

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Tree of Love

Your hair, tangled in the breeze, streams wickedly away
as though that breath that moves the clouds has you in its sway.
The seeds of love that you have sown grow  branches that deceive,
for as I try to climb them, they offer no reprieve.

The song you cast upon the wind is no boon to me,
for as I climb ever higher in affection’s tree,
the effort steals my breath away and in my lovelorn greed,
both hands and heart are pierced by love and begin to bleed.

That mouth that bestowed kisses earlier on the heath,
as you turn to chart my progress, has suddenly grown teeth,
and as I recall your kisses, no matter how sublime,
I decide that their rewards are, alas, not worth the climb.


For The Sunday Swirl Wordle 559 the prompt words are: tangle breeze stream clouds sway reprieve teeth bleed seeds climb branches boon. First image by Adrian Fernandez on Unsplash. Second image by me.

Flower Power

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Flower Power

As it slipped off the shelf, the flower gave a growl.
It never intended to go on the prowl.

It’s against flower ethics to go off on one’s own,
unopened, unblossomed and not fully grown.

No flower’s a star. They’re all one of the bunch,
but given a shot at it, I have a hunch

that beneath every garden, the flowers below
are driven to rise up—to open and crow,

to greet the new morning and bask in its heat,
and that then they ‘d be off if they only had feet.

Their one chance at freedom is if they are clipped
and bunched into bunches, then bartered and shipped

to  exotic places where the minute they’re sold,
they’ll be off to adventures and their world will unfold.

Then if perchance they are placed up on shelves,
they may tumble to earth to be all by themselves.

Short-lived as they are, they might think as they fall
from their limited knowledge, that they’ve seen it all!!

 

For Sunday Swirl’s Wordle 553, the prompt words are: star shelf growl slip open flower crow against prowl beneath beat shot.

New Puppy: The Sunday Whirl 540

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New Puppy

She’s distracted in a heartbeat by a petal or a stone.
No errant tuft of grass is ever left alone.
She does battle with the gate, makes fairy trails through sand,
makes a complicated plaything of a single human hand.

The spill of lacy shadows by the sun above the trees,
the ticking of a clock or the slightest little breeze
all demand attention. There’s no limit to the things
that become her playthings: bottles, fingers, strings.

Only sunset brings a finish to frenetic hours of play.
There is a certain surcease, finally, at the end of day.
But 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. and 6.a.m. again
mark hours when new playtimes are scheduled to begin.

Prompt words today are: sunset finish  string spill heartbeat trails  tick stone gate

For The Sunday Whirl 540 Wordle

Yin, Yang and the Sea: Sunday Swirl Wordle 528

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This boy hand casting his line seemed to be either saluting or cursing the ocean.

Yin, Yang and the Sea

The sea strikes turquoise dissonance, then shhhsh’s it away,
releasing all the tension pent up by the day.
It speaks an easy language as it rolls along the bay,
but as often as it visits, we know it will not stay.

One by one, the waves roll in, devoid of parity.
They cannot seem to achieve any regularity.
With macho strokes of fury, they claw at rocks and beach,
gouging out in anger all that they can reach,
then turning female, lap the sand with gentle licks of tongue,
smoothing all the sand back that formerly it flung. 

The sea spreads riches on the beach, then takes them back again.
Theme after theme played out here in a continual spin.
Smoothing and then rippling, blue deepening to black,
all the sea might take away, one day it will bring back.

For the Sunday Swirl Wordle 528, the prompts are: turquoise, dissonance, tension, easy, one, female, shh, with, stay, themes, release, speaks