Something Fishy
Those who embrace fish cuisine need to heed my warning,
for even though a new catch comes in every single morning,
our local seafood retailer it’s rumored is a mobster
who concocts a fishy mishmash and pawns it off as lobster.
It’s mushier than lobster and they say a wee bit pallid,
so if you want the real deal, better stick with tuna salad.
Prompt words today are lobster, embrace, concoct, retailer, tuna salad.
Chasm
I flounce, you plod. You reach the crest
while I have chosen to stop and rest.
From far below, I scan the skies.
dreaming, as you supervise.
You are inflexible and frigid,
I the opposite of rigid.
As I wander here and there,
you search for me and tear your hair.
What tantrums over my transgressions
must be prompted by my digressions.
Comparable to day and night,
you are the darkness to my light.
This, dear, is the dichotomy—
the chasm between you and me.
Prompts for today are flounce, crest, supervise, comparable, tantrum, inflexible and dichotomy. Image from Unsplash.
Sea Shanty
We dined upon quahaug clams, oysters and shrimp,
but the sauce tasted funny, the lettuce was limp,
and an onerous numbness in our lips and our legs
immediately suggested we’d been served the dregs
of a past morning’s catch, so we rued our selection
and sought out a mole to back up our detection
of who had slipped up and served us bad shellfish.
What entrepreneur was so greedy and selfish
that he’d risk our lives simply for filthy lucre?
We appealed to the waiters to provide some succor
and spurred on by our pleas and sizable tips,
they gave us proof that our angry sore lips
were the product of clams a few days past their prime,
so we sued that rude restauranteur for his crime.
He was found guilty and is now in the cooler
where if he’d been smarter and a little less crueler,
our clams would have been in the days before serving.
And we all agree no convict’s more deserving
of a stay in the hoosegow, and because of our plight,
when we’re in a mood to go out for a bite,
we skip all the seafood joints, pass them right by
and go out for a burger or a nice meat pie.
prompt words are slip, selection, mole, dregs, quahaug, immediately and onerous. Image by Louis Hansel on Unsplash.
New Words Coined or Words Remembered?
To *neotorize a new word when you can’t find a rhyme
is not really playing fair, in fact it is a crime.
Surely any writer who is worth her salt
is expected to have words enough stored in her mental vault
so no errant *wyvern can abscond with them,
and fly them off to some tall tree, where, perched upon a limb,
he’ll breath fire, thus reducing all the words to ash,
dispensing all their fragments with a tremendous lash
of tail as he flies off again in a hunt bicoastal,
for words shared by any means: books, magazines or postal.
No honeyed tongue can save them once charred and ground to dust,
but still all words that they contained should be recalled and must
once more be written down so those words purloined and embered
by the next generation can be read and thus remembered.
No need to coin new words to express those thoughts once thought.
Better to recall the ones poets of old have wrought.
Hard enough to put them in the rows they once assumed.
Half the work is over once the old words are exhumed.
Why go to twice the work when half the work will do?
And best that once restored, you hide them from the wyvern’s view!!!!
*to neotorize is to coin new words, terms or expressions.
*a wyvern is a legendary creature with a dragon’s head and wings, a reptilian body.
Prompt words today are ash, abscond, expect, *neotorize, honey, *wyvern and coastal
Shelled Sanctity
This retreat for turtles in the mountains of Nepal
has the godliest turtles on our Earthly spinning ball.
See the holiest of holies in their tiny saffron robes,
doing daily meditations by pushing tiny globes
first eastward and then westward with a pointed beak,
defining piety by actions instead of how they speak.
See lurking in the shadows, a million tiny ants,
bending low to watch their passing, those tiny sycophants—
who profess to kiss the ground that the turtles walk upon,
but instead just make use of the paths they’ve made when they are gone.
Busy small collectors, they build layer upon layer
of food to nourish bodies, but murmur not a prayer
in thanks for what they’re given, for they know right well
proper thanks is being given by the Brothers of the Shell.
Prompts today are lurking, define, saffron, satirical, godliest, turtles and sycophant.
Rudely Interrupted
Notwithstanding what the newspapers say, I am not capricious.
I merely have a questioning eye that’s oftentimes suspicious.
I found the blade and saw the blood and what I had surveyed
I felt was information that must be conveyed.
It’s true the entire police force was at once deployed
and also true the mayor was excessively annoyed
that it was his summer barbecue that was rudely stormed.
by the selfsame vice squad that he had lately formed.
Only to have them tell him when he did his yearly preps
for his fabled pig roast on his own front steps,
he should remove the grisly evidence lest neighbors be alarmed
that it might have been a human being that was harmed.
The mayor, truly irked at the action he’d incited,
resumed his annual picnic and I was not invited!!!
Prompts today are capricious, blade, survey, deploy, questioner, newspaper and notwithstanding. If you want to play along, the links to the prompt sites are under the prompt words. Image by Hassan Rafhaan on Unsplash.
Isosceles
A silly argument at best,
and yet it would not come to rest.
They simply could not seem to cease
their debate on “isosceles.”
They could not bring to a fruition
discussion on its definition.
He said the answer had to be
that the triangle had three
even sides, while she said two,
and they wondered what to do
to resolve their worrisome plight
and determine who was right.
In every other prior fight,
there was a book to set them right,
yet while spring cleaning, they’d packed up
every book and dish and cup
to maintain their purity
with absolute surety.
But both of them thought it was ruthless
to remain unschooled and truthless
on this subject math-related
they so hotly had debated.
So in the end, they thought they must
unpack the boxes and chance the dust.
They placed the boxes around the border
in some semblance of neat order,
opening one, then two and three
to try to solve the mystery,
kneeling there on bended knee
to try to find some verity.
When finally they found the truth,
to be two sides, ’twas sad, foresooth,
that in the end, they found the fight
still had not been set to right,
for neither would admit to be
the one who had insisted three!
Prompt words today are wonder, prior, cleaning, semblance, isosceles, argument and purity.
Why I Can’t Do The Prompts Today
I think I’ll be a morning grouch
and spend these hours on the couch
making lists of things for doing—
certain things that involve gluing,
cleaning, sorting, chopping, timing—
things that do not involve rhyming.
A sea of things I’ve been concealing,
chores that stack up to the ceiling,
divert me from acts of creation
with chores of limitless cessation.
Hobbies I’d rather pursue
put off by what I’ve gotta do.
Pay my house fees, cook the stew,
trim the bushes, find the glue
to fix the statue, sort my purse,
clean out the junk drawer, then rehearse
my poems for next Friday’s reading.
Fix my blouse. Restore its beading.
Answer emails, call the plumber.
Modern life is such a bummer.
Sometimes I think I exist
solely to check off a list.
At any rate, as I have ranted,
other parts of me recanted.
It seems I’m such a winsome elf
that this poem just wrote itself!!!!!!
Prompts today are winsome, sea, certain, list, grouch, hobby and concealing.
Obstruction of Poetry
(The Wandering Muse)
I’ve no wish to obstruct the truth. The fault is purely mine.
The reason why I’m having such a struggle, line by line,
is because my poet muse is taking a vacation,
having lately moved herself to a new location.
She took my genius with her, in spite of friends’ directions
that I should submit her to most vigorous inspections.
In my innocence, I failed, for though I checked her cape,
her briefcase, pockets and her purse, she made her great escape
by smuggling my genius out, displaying her fine wit
by tucking it into a place where I did not find it.
No place could be more obvious, yet I didn’t think to peek
in the place where genius often hides—between the tongue and cheek!
Prompt words are obstruct, genius, cape, fail, innocent and direct. Image by Natasha Hall on Unsplash.
Failed Reformation
In between sit-ups and stretches,
hubby moans and groans and kvetches.
For him there is no correlation
between fitness and elation.
Each new feasible solution
resulting in his diminution
though undefined, I think just might
bring about my spouse’s flight
to avoid any surprises
involving his exercises.
What he should look like and should weigh
bring disagreements every day,
for though I want him lean and svelte,
if you asked him what he felt,
he’d say a form more soft and paunchy
suits a man who is more raunchy.
While I tout vegetables and soys,
he wants to be one of the boys.
Hamburgers and fries and shakes,
baked potatoes and rib eye steaks
are the menus he prefers,
so when we order, it’s “his and hers.”
Chef salad is what I will choose.
His order? Pork chops, pie and booze!
Prompts today are flight, disagreement, stretches, feasible, undefined and correlation. Photo by ehimetalor akhere unuabona on Unsplash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 