Tag Archives: the daily spur

Poetic License in a Temperate Climate

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Poetic License in a Temperate Climate

December’s moved south of the border where it isn’t so icy and cold,
but still of all of the months of the year, it’s the one where the weather’s most bold.

It’s that time of the year where I profit from staying in bed until nine,
my bed being where I feel warmest—snuggled in blankets, supine.

At seven and eight it is silent, each dog still curled in his bed,
as I burrow into my poem of the day, rousting it out of my head.

It finds a new home on my hard drive, thus quelling my need to relate
as all of my creative juices suddenly seem to abate.

As my poetry swells to fruition, I finally stir from my nest
to dress in my toe socks and leggings, my sweater and wooly warm vest.

A poem survives any weather, surrounded by peers on the screen,
but even in temperate countries, December remains the most mean.

By April, I’ll feel warm and toasty and I’ll need a different reason
for staying in bed until nine when it is such a perfectly temperate season.

 

Yes, it’s true. I even wear them in bed!  Prompt words today are December, profit, silent,
quell and home.

Family Feud

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Family Feud

The quarrels in my family are numerous at best.
If I say they are ubiquitous, believe me, I don’t jest.
Daddy’s always angry. Mama’s always in a tiff.
If discord had an odor, you’d always get a whiff
as you wandered past our windows or entered our front door,
and if you thought to mention them, we’d only produce more.

Bring up race relations and there’ll be no interstice
between Daddy’s rants and ravings that display his prejudice
and Mama’s stepping in with her opposing point of view.
Then before you know it, they’ll unite to lambast you!
We seldom have a visitor and have no friends at all.
No salesmen knock upon our door and no neighbors call.

If I threw a slumber party and had friends to spend the night,
the angst here’s so infectious that we’d have a pillow fight.
No cousins ever join us at Thanksgiving to give thanks
because our extended family has fired us from its ranks.
We are the loneliest clan in town, and that for sure’s no fiction.
But— if we have nothing else, at least we have conviction!

 

Before you ask, this is fiction! Prompt words today are ubiquitous, tiff, prejudice, interstice and mention. Image by Afif Kusuma on Unsplash.

Divisible

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Divisible* 

Our species has malfunctioned and we’ve finally met our match.
It’s waited all these years for the right time for it to hatch.
First there was the ice age where we had to deal with frost,
but it seems like global warming is the place where we’ll be lost.
We’ve flaunted our dominion and must be reprimanded
It seems as though our prototype’s about to be disbanded.
It’s ironic that a virus so small that it’s invisible
might be the thing that proves that mankind might be divisible.


Divisible: capable of being divided by another number without a remainder.

Prompt words today are malfunction, flaunt, prototype, frost and match.

Weirdest Poem Ever

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Suttee Reevaluated

Baked potato, sweet potato, makes me sigh.
Put butter in the schism and my oh my.
Sure to go right to your thigh,
but I don’t care. Do you know why?

Baked potatoes taste so good,
they soothe the pains of widowhood.
Place other pleasures on your lips.
Forget about your waist and hips.

Suttee is way overrated.
That fact cannot be debated.
So instead of jumping in,
go and raid the potato bin.

Toss taters on the red hot coals
and reassess your former goals.
Get a life. Take off the ring.
immolation’s not the thing.

 

Prompt words are sweet potato, schism, sure, immolate and good.

After Four Hours Sleep

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After Four Hours Sleep

Her key quietly turning in a lock three rooms away
rarely meets my consciousness at this time of day.
She must think me a layabout when she arrives at nine
and finds me soundly sleeping, blissfully supine.

The dishes that I washed last night, she places on a shelf
(The ones I didn’t find the time to put away myself.)
She sorts clothes from the hamper, each color in its mound,
and takes them to the laundry room, all without a sound.

What time she arises I’ve never thought to ask,
but before she climbs the hill to this thrice-weekly task,
she has her family duties and the morning meal to fix.
Surely she must start her busy day at least at six.

When finally at nine-thirty she hears me leave my hive,
she must give a prayer of thanks to find I’m still alive.
And though she doesn’t find me to be demanding or haughty,
nonetheless this sleeping-in must seem to her most naughty.

How can she know I lay awake until four hours ago?
She cannot know the truth of it unless I tell her so.
No book will ever tell the tale of how I tossed and turned,
immolating castoff words in midnight oil I burned.

Words can be a blessing when they find a way to sort themselves—
lining up on paper where they’ve learned how to comport themselves,
but making lists of words to use did not bring on sleep.
Instead, I lay with open eyes, my thoughts all in a heap.

And when I finally sorted them, deciding which to reap,
knowing which to throw away and which ones I should keep,
(a wordsmith’s substitution for merely counting sheep)
I closed up my computer and finally fell asleep.

 

Prompt words are layabout, haughty, sure, immolate and book.

Bake-Off

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Bake-Off

“Spot on!” she said and doffed her hat and focused on her goal.
The loss of her attention was sure to take its toll
at this phase of her endeavor, so, intent upon her role,
she broke another egg into the center of the bowl
where the flour and the sugar had formed a sort of hole,
whipped it until frothy and then began to roll
wet and dry together to form a small atoll,
then folded it all over to form a solid whole.
She took so naturally to baking that the process soothed her soul,
and the brilliance of her artistry, the whole world did extoll.
If her genius were a recipe, yeast would have been its soul.

 

Prompt words today are loss, spot, naturally, phase and focus.

The Rear Admiral Earns His Title

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The Rear Admiral Earns His Title

The ensign and Rear Admiral, together in a boat,
after their ship’s sinking, the only ones afloat,
were trying to determine what caused their craft to sink,
dumping them at midnight from their sleep into the drink.
“Who’s at fault?” they speculated.
What misdeed had instigated
this horrific interlude
that left them soaked and nearly nude?

What meeting could be worse?
Could any tryst be more adverse?
And thus they squandered precious time
in expostulations and in mime
when they could have better plotted
in the time they were allotted
how to get out of this mess,
for it’s true, I must confess

that the boat they were in now
had a knothole in the bow
and as they fussed and fretted,
their feet and  then their legs were wetted
by seawater seeping in
that was soon up to their chin,
and  of the highest and the lowest
the one who turned out to be slowest

was cast out upon the sea,
claiming his priority,
while the one who was most rapid,
keen of eye and much less vapid,
grabbed the only life vest there
where there should have been a pair,
and shifted into his high gear
leaving the admiral in the rear.

 

Prompts for today are: meeting, squander, instigate, ensign and fault.

Avarice

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Avarice

The clutching maw of avarice devours everything,
like a furnace, burning up all that life might bring.

Alas, there is no medicine to curb its constant need—
for its constant hunger and its consistent greed.

It’s hollow heart cannot  recall what loving may be for,
so when love is given, it just calls out for more

without using what’s been given by returning it in kind—
never using its own heart for what it was designed.

Pity those who take and take without ever giving,
never fully realizing all the joys of living.

 

 

Prompts today are furnace, hollow, avarice, pity and medicine.
Image by Meg Jerrad on Unsplash.

Prediction

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Prediction

In the family photo, Auntie stands with arms akimbo,
glancing over sideways at my cousin’s latest bimbo.
One cultured eyebrow raised and her disgust so thinly veiled,
there’d probably be a small explosion if only she exhaled.

Uncle’s blind to everything and stands with grin on face,
unmindful of his youngest son’s ultimate disgrace.
He has had a little turkey and a great amount of wine
and thinks his son’s new girlfriend is exceptionally fine.

My cousin looks besotted and the girl looks fine to me,
though she wears a lot of makeup and shows a lot of knee.
But if my cousin marries her, I’m sure it will be fine.
With Auntie as her drill sergeant, she’ll soon fall into line.

She’ll polish and distill her ’til the flavor is all gone,
bleed out all her color ’til she’s fashionably wan.
Then, just like Uncle Marty, Cousin Jeb will start to stray,
looking for fresh pastures when the old one turns to hay.

Prompts today are akimbo, everything, culture, veiled and uncle. Disclaimer: the  real lady attached to these legs and shoes is anything but a bimbo–a smart, cool lady. Photo is for illustration purposes only.

Expiration Date

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Expiration Date

Love is a narcotic that makes us think we’re wise-—
nature’s slick conspiracy for matching girls and guys.
It hangs around in barrooms, obscured in eyes and talk,
and before you know it, it makes you walk the walk
down rose-petaled aisles on your way to say “I do,”
in something new or borrowed and something old and blue.

Then love becomes a train wreck, beginning with the pastor
and continuing through daily life until the last disaster
when “I do” becomes “I won’t,” and all love’s vows once-spoken
wind up in love’s dump heap—abandoned, crushed and broken.
Blame it all on Cupid, that chubby little liar,
who never warns us that our love is likely to expire.

Prompt words for today are conspiracy, guys, narcotic, wreck and talk. Image by Niki Sanders on Unsplash.