Tag Archives: the daily spur

6 A.M., Dec. 24, 2020

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6 A.M., December 24, 2020

All around my room and all around the house,
everything is still and quiet as a mouse.
All the sounds of living are muffled by the night,
as if a large hand censors both my hearing and my sight.

Then the greater world is thrust into my ear—
a single church bell tolling is all that I can hear
signaling the hour—6 A.M. again—
a barrage of fireworks setting up its din

to welcome us to Christmas Eve though it is merely morn.
It is our second  notice that a child will be born.
First the star low in the west—a bauble in the sky
tells the whole world of the day that is coming nigh.

Odors of the pine tree, presentiment of myrrh,
the stirring of the dogs, the cat’s insistent purr,
the roasting of the turkey—the onions in the dressing
bring another sense to transmit the Christmas blessing.

A touch of lips ‘neath mistletoe can’t be far away,
bringing that last sense of touch to calm the worldly fray.
May all the troubles of the world thereby find surcease
and for this brief holiday, may all the world find peace.

Prompt words today are mouse, great, bauble and living. Image by Peter Bucks on Unsplash, used with permission.

Verbless

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Prompt words today are unperturbed, antipathy, quixotic and trophy.
(And, sadly, for the third day now, no prompt from The Daily Spur.)

Verbless

Today I am anything but unperturbed,
for the prompt words, I find, seem to be under-verbed.
We’re over-adjectived and over-nouned,
but is there a single verb to be found?

It’s hard to accept this sudden antipathy
displayed by prompt-sites’ crass lack of empathy
in shunning action words. I find a line
that is lacking in verbs, overly supine—

just lying there motionless, lacking in verve—
a mere trophy sentence, no guts and no nerve!
Perhaps if the Daily Spur came out of hiding,
heeding this gentle but most sincere chiding,

together, the prompt sites could conspire to curb
their Quixotic attitude towards that lost verb.
But, in the meantime, can anyone curb
my agitation by suggesting a verb????

 Image by Matt Walsh on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Sweethearts

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Rumored to be apocryphal, it was the honest truth.
A man named Mr. Goodbar married Baby Ruth.
With lives eerily congruous, it was no surprise.
The fact that they were sweethearts? Impossible to disguise.
He was a little brittle and she was a little nuts,
but still they loved each other—with no ands or buts.
It was such a juicy story that she found him oh so dapper,
and he could barely wait to see what was beneath her wrapper!
After they were married, we were sure there’d be no maybes
that with no delay they’d be producing Sugar Babies!!

.

Word prompts for the day are eerie, elucidate, apocryphal, congruous and juice.

Melania’s Revenge

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Teenvogue.com photo
Sun Photo

Teen Vogue and Sun Photos

Melania’s Revenge

As he descends the air stairs, his waving hand waving,
his wife walks beside him as though she is braving
the air that’s around her. She seems to be craving
release from a torment, but she is behaving
because of a settlement scored when he won—
more money for her and more for her son.

But they can’t make her smile a believable smile—
one that masks her boredom and covers her bile.
His hand swatted away, she walks on her own
due to numerous deeds for which he must atone.
The hole in her soul must be so hard to fill,
for living with a jerk is the bitterest pill.

Even she has her pride. It’s an act of sedition
expressing her angst for four years of perdition—
a vehement act that expresses her pride
that though docile outside, she’s a rebel inside.
Some say she’s a dreamer, as though in the dreaming
she escapes a life over which she’d be screaming

if she really cared —but she doesn’t, you know.
If it weren’t for the valium and all of that dough—
she’d no doubt go crazy. Stark raving mad,
over having to spend her whole life with this cad,
but the latest new fashions and a life on the lazy
make up for a husband certifiably crazy!

And as for the people who make her life hell?
She’ll just crook her pinkie and ring her small bell
and tell them to rip out the damnable roses
and then flaunt her power in all of their noses,
by creating a garden—a dull boring park
that will prove that Melania’s at last left her mark.

courtesy #Getty and @marycjordan

Prompt words today are hole, vehement, wave, sedition and dreamer.

School Reunions

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School Reunions

Entangled in the distant past, we recall and illuminate
those fifty-year-old stories as we gather to ruminate.
Pranks, first loves and scandals so far back in our past,
it’s as though it was a movie in which we all were cast.

That thumbtack “someone” placed upon our history teacher’s chair.
Will the scoundrel confess at last? But no, he doesn’t dare.
And in our sixties, will we snitch? No, there is not one.
Not one of us reveals the answer to that smoking gun.

The raided slumber parties, the trips up England’s hill,
we tell the stories of our past until we’ve had our fill,
then jump to doleful stories of tragedies and sorrows—
the few of those lost in their youth, deprived of all their morrows.

Hayrides by the river, pep rallies and school dances,
boys passing girls in cars on Main, pondering their chances.
Wild Homecoming raids on barns where we were building floats,
whisperings in Civics class and furtively passed notes.

Both schools we passed those years in have been felled by wrecking crews,
replaced by newer buildings, erasing all the clues
of years we spent within them, the carvings on the desks,
all our various antics as we lived out youth’s burlesques.

Our memories getting dimmer, each five years, we choose to meet
to reminisce and chew the fat. To drink and dance and eat.
We don’t discuss the present. It’s as though it’s in a haze
as we go back to live our half-remembered yesterdays.

Prompt words today are entangle, doleful, ruminate and jump.

Early Morning Ecstasy

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Early Morning Ecstasy

That surge of elation when I awaken
is because the next hours have not yet been taken.
No obligations, no duties or meetings.
I can follow my heart—pay heed to its beatings.
I follow my thoughts wherever they please.
I milk them for meaning, fingers on the keys.
Does my mind correlate with the sound of the birds,
Or are the birds harmonizing with my words?
The climate is perfect right here in my head,
computer on stomach, stretched out on my bed.

 

 

The word prompts for today are: Elation, Awaken, Climate, Correlate and milk.

Agastopia

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Agastopia

I simply cannot reconcile that glimmer in your eyes
with any look that I’ve received from any other guys.
My friends say you’re perfidious, yet I don’t get that message.
“Danger” is an ending that your gazes do not presage.
If the frustration that I’m feeling is transmitted in my gaze,
perhaps you will decipher it while wandering its maze.
For every time you’re present, I’m a prisoner of pondering
that question in your eyes that always sets my mind to wandering
down pathways we meander, walking hand-in-hand.
So long as you are in my thoughts, my heart is in remand.
We need a kind interpreter to set our looks aright.
Perhaps there’s a happy ending for him to expedite.

 

Prompt words today are frustration, reconcile, agastopia, perfidious and message.

Agastopia: Admiration of  or a fixation on a particular part of someone’s body.

Emily

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Emily

An introspective traveler, my trips are of a kind
wherein I follow footsteps left there by my mind.
They are a kind of loving, these journeys that I take—
the only sort of antics that I ever make.
Outside of them, I squirrel away, hidden in my rooms,
but oh, my friends, within my mind, my next adventure looms!

 

If you are an Emily Dickinson fan, you might enjoy this other poem I wrote, inspired by one of her poems.

Photo of Emily Dickinson from the Emily Dickinson Museum. Prompt words today are footprint, introspective, loving, antics and hide.

On the Road

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Remember many years ago when roads were just two-lane
and strings of Wally Byamers would drive across the plain,
swarms of silver trailers, in a never-ending chain
that made passing all of them a headache and a pain?
With oncoming traffic to take into account,
It was an endless chore of weaving in and out.

As a little girl, I’d stand beside the highway,
watching all the traffic whizzing by my tiny byway.
And once I saw a cherry top wave a trailer down
that was leading a whole caravan of airstreams through our town.
“Yada yada yada,” said their leader to the cop
when he gave the orders for their caravan to stop.

What was their infraction? They’d done not done one thing wrong!
The problem was their caravan, the cop said, “It’s too long.”
Thirty airstreams in a row was courting a disaster.
Couldn’t half of them just try to drive a little faster
to create a distance, giving other cars a break.
A little space between them before they overtake

another clump of traffic that will have them in-and-outing,
rolling down their windows and gesturing and shouting?
But, proud as any Samurai, the leader shouted, “No!”
“Without me here to lead them, they won’t know where to go!”
And that’s why thirty airstreams are parked in our back field,
waiting for their leader, who has refused to yield.

He’s camped out in our jailhouse, relieved if truth will tell—
rescued from constant wandering and cozy in his cell.

Word prompts for the day are yada yada yada, only, caravan, proud and samurai.

Do-It-Yourself!

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Executing

Do-It-Yourself!

He’d written the definitive how-to-do-it guide,
but needed a good editor, so I had applied.

He was a woodsy sort of bloke, self-confident and curious,
but once I got to know him, I found him to be spurious.

Though he seemed independent, when I asked him to replace
a light bulb in its socket, he did a turn-of-face.

He balked and had a certain emergency of bladder
when asked if he would simply climb up on a ladder!

It seems the very sort of jobs he taught us to be doing,
due to his acrophobia, were ones he was eschewing!

When it came to home improvement, he was words upon a shelf,
giving literal meaning to the term “do-it-yourself!”

Prompt words today are woodsy, replace, independent, editor and spurious.