Tag Archives: the daily spur

Plethora

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Plethora

If I had any gumption, I’d attack that backlog of
poems that I have written about life and death and love.
Fantastic in their numbers, those poems exist in piles,
bound in three-ring binders and squeezed into hanging files.

Thy cluster in my consciousness, swim nightly through each dream.
They are both strength and weakness as they stretch out, ream on ream.
They allow me no real leisure, for they’re everywhere I look,
begging for confinement in a magazine or book.
They crave to be collected between front and back cover,
but in spite of resolutions, I  simply write another.

This poem and these photos are  no exaggeration. I have 13 file cabinet drawers plus one big bin and a few piles, binders and stacks that contain poems and stories I’ve run off, or ideas for new ones.  I have no idea now many poems I have in my blog and computer that I’ve never run off. 

Prompt words today are fantastic, weakness, backlog, gumption, allow and cluster.

Conjoinings (Interspecies and Otherwise)

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Conjoinings (Interspecies and Otherwise)

Spiders have spiderlings, cats have their kittens.
Elbow-length gloves perhaps produce mittens.
Whenever a boy cockroach happens to mount her,
a girl cockroach procreates right on my counter!

Such coteries tend to insist on inbreeding,
but the world’s solidarity comes from cross-seeding.
Thus, mermaids lure sailors onto the rocks
for intercourse better confined to their docks.

When horses and zebras conjoin, then of course,
the end is a hebra, or perhaps  a zorse?
A tiger from Asia and lion from Niger
might call their offshoot a tion or liger.

The tone of this poem? I admit it is crass.
It ends with a haddock  shtupping a bass.
resulting in baddocks or perhaps a hass.
Another stanza? Bet you’re glad that I pass!!

Prompt words are spiderling, tone, solidarity, coterie, counter and dock.

Merry Merry Quite Contrary

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Merry Merry Quite Contrary

By January, “Merry” is an attitude we’re through with—
that once Christmas is over, we don’t know what to do with.
I’ve never heard one person say “Merry Fourth of July,”
as they send a rocket soaring into the sky.

As I review the situations for a celebration,
“Merry” is never used again to signal our elation.
“Have a merry birthday” is a phrase we don’t adore
as we celebrate the fact we’ve piled up one year more.

By the time Christmas is over, I think we’ve used up “merry.”
Are we tired of this adjective? My thought on this is “Very!”
“Happy” seems to be enough for all else that we do—
sufficient for occasions we celebrate anew.

Prompts today are adore, situation, anew, merry, bother and review.

Humbug

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Humbug

I’m already tired of Christmas before it’s even through,
and there are three more gatherings that I still have to do.
I look into the mirror and do not recognize
that woman that looks back at me in my face’s guise.
Should we discuss those brand new lines etched across my face?
How did they choose their birth date? How did they choose their place?

Perhaps they represent my angst over this Christmas season
that somehow soared way out of hand—nearly beyond reason.
Next year I won’t put up a tree. Stow every Xmas light
up in my spare room closet, safely out of sight.
I won’t say Merry Christmas to everyone I meet.
I’ll fly down to Bermuda and complain about the heat.

I’ll stay in a four-star hotel and won’t regret the tab.
I’ll forget my seafood allergies and dine on shrimp and crab.
Or perhaps I’ll go to Paris and scale the Eiffel Tower,
then sit in a sidewalk restaurant, my expression bored and dour.
My Christmas will be different. Perhaps I’ll dine on horse,
swearing when I’m finished that I’ll have no remorse.

Wherever I might choose to go, whatever choice I make,
I will not trim a tree, no Yuletide spirit will I fake.
I won’t bake star-shaped cookies dozen after dozen
or debate on what to buy for any second cousin.
I’ll make no trips to Walmart, braving holiday masses.
I’ll simply get my Yuletide cheer from bottles and from glasses.

Sangria for my breakfast. Tequila served with lunch.
Mid-afternoon martinis drunk with the cocktail bunch.
No over-saturation with holiday excesses.
No presents piled under the tree and wrapping paper messes.
If I have a hangover, it will be gin or port.
No light strings to untangle. No ornaments to sort.

Then, after all is said and done, the truth will be, I fear,
that my Christmas spirit will re-emerge next year.
For, New Year’s resolutions, as firm as they may be,
seldom last throughout the year. Somehow they seem to flee.
And so it is with Christmas. Much as we try to beat it,
It seems that every year we are destined to repeat it.

 

Prompt words today are birth, discuss, nearly, gathering, represent and mirror.

Scrooge Holds Forth on Christmas

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Scrooge Holds Forth on Christmas

It can be a bit frenetic, this yearly Yuletide season,
creating a fiasco beyond any rhyme or reason.
It carries us along on a tide of fir and holly,
demanding we be spirit-filled and reverent and jolly

until we’re nearly saturated with the Yultide spirit,
kind of sick of Christmas before we’re even near it.
All this peace and loving can be a royal pain—
pine needles barely cleared away before they’re here again.

We’re blanketed in blessings, gift-wrapped and over-gay
in an over-decorated binge-filled treacle holiday.
Oh for just one Christmas without reindeer-decked pajamas,
on a sun-filled beach somewhere—perhaps in the Bahamas!!!!

Prompts today are Yuletide, blanket, nearly, fiasco, carry and royal.

Over Zealous Under Zero

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Over Zealous Under Zero

The icicles are monstrous, yet I’m being diplomatic
and trying not to alter my friend’s hopeful schematic.
Feeling if I squelch her passionate ambition
that in the future I will suffer some sort of attrition.

So I’ll take a hike with her in regions rough and hilly,
never mentioning that I’m feeling over-chilly.
My rating of both temperature and walk is less than zero,
but I’ll keep my mouth shut, thereby ranking as a hero!

Prompts today are icicle, diplomatic, rating, attrition, monstrous and so. Last photo by Dino Reichmuth on Unsplash. Rest, by me.

“True” Art

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The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet
Banksy
Mandy Barker
Banksy
Mandy Barker

“True” Art

Ugliness invades the exquisite hall:
brazen rude truths hung up on the wall.
Training the rich to see the real world—
the truth of the starving so crudely unfurled.

Exquisite lives overlooking the grime
of ghettos and junkyards, pollution and crime.
Riches amassed while refusing to see
how greed contributes to poverty.

Idiosyncrasies. Truth told in chrome.
Sad themes and base metals invade the rich home.
Landscapes with hardships depicted in oil:
rusted-out car frames returning to soil.

Thus crude art invades the beautiful world
with the ugly truth blatantly unfurled.
And though robber barons might greedily yearn for it,
and they might hang it, they sadly don’t learn from it.

 

Prompt words today are chrome, hardship, landscape, brazen, trainer and idiosyncrasies.

Paragon

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Paragon

I’m a paragon of virtue. I don’t eat me any carbs.
My comebacks are not prickly. My rejoinders bear no barbs.
I never take shortcuts. My work habits are precise.
I’m sure you can foresee that I won’t practice any vice.

I have huge moral fiber. My ethics can’t be beat.
I do not gossip, lie or steal. I do not fight or cheat.
I’m studious and ethical. My boss says I’m a smartie,
but as you might have guessed by now, not much fun at a party!!!

Prompt words today are paragon, foresee, huge and shortcut.

I took this photo of a friend’s dinner when we went out to listen to music last Friday night. Decided that come what may, I’d use it as an illustration for today’s prompt words, only four of which had been posted by the time I decided to write this. As you can see, it is a bit of a stretch, but a resolution is a resolution!

Duelling Chefs

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Duelling Chefs

I try to think up a riposte
to my neighbor’s blatant boast
his guacamole is the best,
well-noted for its creamy zest.

He made it for my solstice party,
cilantro sprigs to make it arty.
And, concerned that we’d run out,
he brought an extra carton out.

Superfluous, for, undiminished,
even his first bowl went unfinished,
for I made guacamole, too,
and it was mine that counted coup.

The two were polar opposites.
Mine was the best. His was the pits.
For though his pot of guac was fine,
I put the pot inside of mine!

Prompt words today are solstice, superfluous, riposte,

polar, concern and carton. Image by Yakshi Virmani on Unsplash.

 

Selfie Generation

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I sat in the food court at the mall yesterday and watched an eight or nine-year-old girl and her baby sister, who couldn’t have been more than three, posing for selfies at a table, the smaller girl mimicking her “older” sister’s every pouty, hopefully sensual grimace. They finally became aware of the fact that I was photographing them photographing themselves and they shifted chairs, turning their backs to me, but went on for another few minutes, determining the face they wanted to turn to the world by what they saw reflected in the older sister’s phone.

Selfie Generation

I like a crinkly sort of smile
that lacks a single trace of guile.
Smiles sinister are not my thing,
nor are the polar chills they bring.

Selfies contain In their morass 
little I might label class.
Sexy smiles, much composed
of postured puckers, planned and posed.

Babies imitate their sisters,
miming come-ons to strange misters
who might stumble on their page
that online might become the rage.

They learn the lingo and the walk.
Mime the postures, talk the talk.
Mindful of how they come and go,
everything done for the show.

Prompt words today are morass, sinister, crinkle, polar, talk and come.