Walking Wounded
I have a giant blister growing on my foot,
and I’ve had a breakthrough about what’s at its root.
Its cause is not a secret, no mystery at all.
The truth is that I buy my shoes at least a size too small.
Blame it on my vanity that’s making me a gimp.
My need to wear a daintier size is why I have a limp.
Today’s prompt words are breakthrough, giant, blister, root.
The Fruits of My Labors
I drink smoothies for stamina. Somehow, they maker me brighter.
If I skip one for one day, I’m a more mundane writer.
I grow the fruit right in my yard: papaya plump and round,
and the freshest bananas—as delicious as they sound.
Together, they form food for thought and make me much less grouchy.
My skin acquires a healthy glow. My eyelids are less pouchy.
When I mix these fruits together with oat milk and some berries
and drink them down, all editors respond to my queries.
What we put into our mouths comes out in our thoughts.
Mixed up in our blender or boiled in our pots,
they form a magic elixir, a wild creative brew
that when you imbibe in it, will inspire you!
Today’s prompt words are stamina, drink, mundane, grouch, mix and writer.
Change of Menu
Though my visitor is an excellent cook
who bought a fresh fish right off of the hook,
he said although sturgeon is usually reliable,
he found that this one was sadly not fryable.
Somehow, its innards were too well united
which meant that the rest of it could not be bited.
The end of the story is simply that
we tossed the fish to the dog and the cat,
got into the car and took a small ride
to purchase burgers with fries on the side.
The irony, though, of our untasted sturgeon
is that my guest was a prominent surgeon!
Prompt words are visitor, united, reliable, cook and prominent, Image by John Cameron on Unsplash.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Day of the Dead
It is that spooky time of year when dead folk walk about.
They lasso wild horses to ride, without a doubt.
They leave their earthy prisons and slake their appetites
with dead bread and with other toothsome proffered bites.
Their crimson eyes shine brightly this one night of the year,
as they slake their year-long thirsts for mescal or for beer.
Each year their thoughtful mortals replenish altars nightly,
putting out their favorite brews and foods for them, politely.
They fill town squares with altars that honor friends departed,
revealing that their memories have remained open-hearted.
Candles light their way for them and marigolds form highways
that mark their paths toward friendly altars from their ghostly byways.
Dia de los Muertos is that night that spirits roam,
renewing those past pathways that have led their footsteps home.
If you doubt their coming, view their pathways in the morning
to see how they have visited you, silent, without warning.
Some say it is the field mice that have nibbled on the bread,
but those of faith know that it was their beloved ones instead!
Prompt words today are replenish, prison, crimson, spooky, and politely.
His Hopes: Love Messages
Long after sleep is over and you’ve made your morn’s retreat,
I find an image of your kiss pressed into my sheet.
It summarizes passion and the pounding beat
of two dazzled lovers united in their heat.
I gently kiss your absent lips and smooth the cover neat,
hoping that tonight you will return for a repeat.
Prompt words today are sleep, summarize, dazzle, beat, lipstick.
Dearly Missing Diego
No amount of paranormal could make this holiday worse.
It carries with it sadness I don’t have to rehearse.
I do not fear the skeletons who wander far and near
Has-been-dearly-departeds are not the ones I fear.
Made-up horrors all take flight and vanish o’er the hill
as I recall his silent passage over the kitchen sill
to steal three dozen cookies that no doubt he found yummy
since when he next passed over it, they were in his tummy.
Whole chickens and entire plates of Christmas eats
vanished as he made them his own personal treats.
For eleven years, he upgraded my life
with gentle affection that mitigated strife.
Life oscillates between the pleasure and the pain
as I have to lose a much-loved one again.
Dear Diego passed from us this morning suddenly,
with a brutal speed that I did not foresee.
R.I.P. my lovely friend. Milk Bones are piled up
under your altar picture, just there for you to sup.
My neighbors say when I drive up after it is dark,
they will not know I’m safe at home without your greeting bark.
You won’t be there to moderate Zoe and Morrie’s spats.
And there will be one fewer to bark at owls and bats.
No one will nudge my hand for pats quite the way you do,
and you’ll be missed forever in the family queue.
R.I.P. Diego, Oct 29, 2022
(Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.)
Art and Acquisitions
Those who patronize fine art
start out congenial at the start
but then upset the apple cart
by arriving early at the mart
and increasing rate and pace
so they can win the prestige race
by obstinately using cash
to win the collector’s ten-yard-dash.
Marble statues and fine oils
are thus simply used as foils
used within the competition
between those whose one ambition
is to amass all those things
that a pile of money brings.
But in fact, it is the making
of great art, and not the taking
that produces joy in living.
Buying can’t compete with giving.
Prompt words for today are congenial, race, marble, obstinancy, patronize, art
Food for Thought?
Waiting for the words to prompt that thrill of excitation
that produces more words that lead to motivation,
I clutch my loose leaf binder, hoping for a new addition
that will bring another poem to final fruition.
Yet no gleam of insight shines within my brain.
All the words that join the prompt words seem to me inane.
So, though today a profound poem I probably won’t carve,
I don’t work for payment, so at least I will not starve.
Today, prompt words were culled from five different sites. Click on each word to find its site: gleam, payment, produce, motivation and loose leaf.
Dear Daughter:
Your frenetic new admirer is not my cup of tea,
for even though I told him that he’d have to let you be,
he resorts to tactics like climbing that big tree
to gain visual access to our property.
You, too, must be incisive in telling him to cease
if you’d like his constant efforts to come to a surcease.
For though I am your father, he allots to me no power
but simply remains stubbornly in his leafy bower.
His persistent efforts prove that he is from that faction
that they label OCD, for he shows no reaction
to my constant pleas, so do you agree with me
that it’s necessary to just cut down the tree?
Dear Papa:
Alas, though my new suitor is not your cup of tea,
I find that his flavor is agreeable to me.
I am not your teenage daughter, for I’m almost thirty-three.
So please do not molest him, and do not cut down his tree.
It is a fact, dear parent, I’m of marriageable age.
So cease with your obsession and curb parental rage.
It’s time to cut the apron strings and set your daughter free,
for I prefer another perch to my father’s knee!
Prompt words are frenetic, incisive, faction, allot, and almost.
A Tinder Rebuttal
Stranger conversations may have taken place,
presenting arbitrary details with vehemence and haste.
With insubstantial logic spouted too close to my face,
the slab of beef in front of me was sure to go to waste.
I rued the day I’d made the swipe on Tinder to the right.
I knew that if I answered it would end up in a fight,
but if I was too lenient in pointing out the flaws
in his conspiracy theories, it might be worse, because
one inch given, one foot taken with such crazy sorts of gents,
and so I shoved my plate away and jumped down from the fence,
packed my steak into my go-bag and decided not to linger,
shoving back my chair to leave, I proffered him my finger.
With folks like him, I’d realized, logic is absurd,
so I made my rebuttal without a single word!
Prompt words are stranger, insubstantial, arbitrary, lenient, slab and conversation.
Image by Alessandro Bellone on Unsplash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 