Tag Archives: the daily spur

Revolt at Walmart

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Revolt at Walmart

Give us the proper rebate if you want us to behave.
We have our coupons in our hands and we’re not going to cave.
It is not iniquity to ask for what you’re due.
Accede to our demands or we’re going to mount a coup.

So what if it’s a misprint in the paper? Not our fault.
Produce what you offered, for we’re not going to halt.
Although you say to honor it would amount to a steal,
20 for 1 seems to us a reasonable deal!

Prompt words for the day are proper, beam, rebate, iniquity and behave.

Gardener

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Gardener

As life tautens its string and pulls me along,
I delay thoughts of my funeral gong
with a story, a rhyme, a poem or a song,

creativity being the one way I know
to write my own ending for the end of the show.
Our quota of years, that cessation of flow,

that furtive departure, that summons to go,
that human surrender to the undertow,
need not be an ending to all that we know.

That’s why I have chosen to come here and stow
what little I’ve learned in an orderly row
of words on this page, following head to toe,

that tell parts of my life, be they pleasure or woe.
I plant them here, hoping that they will grow
into tall verdant meadows that you’ll want to mow.

Prompt words today are creativity, human, furtive, tauten and quota.

Overeducated

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Overeducated

I rue the day I sent my oldest kid to college,
for ever since he’s been deluging us with knowledge.
From “dermatones” to other concepts we can’t grasp,
his pedestrian lectures make us want to gasp.
He uses words archaic since majoring in Chaucer,
ostentatiously positioning his “cuppe” in his saucer.
He bores us all to death when his golf club raises turf.
He doesn’t raise a divot. Instead he cuts a kerf!
Constantly, he leaves us in a state of consternation
simply by engulfing us in too much information.

 

 

Prompt words today are dermatone, tear, archaic, kerf and pedestrian. Illustration thanks to Muhammad Rizwan on Unsplash.

Words for a Formerly Rejected Would-be Lover

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Words for a Formerly Rejected Would-be Lover

The prospects are quite iffy that you’ll shift my view,
but come equipped with custard and I’ll take a spin with you.
We’ll see if we have anything in common other than
a taste for boiled custard and a mania for flan.

Prompt words today are shift, spin, custard, iffy and equipped. Image by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash.

Night Traveler

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Night Traveler

Beneath the moon’s rotation and a sky cobbled by stars,
I lie upon my back and search for Jupiter and Mars.
The Milky Way creates a bridge for my imagination
which journeys down its highway without any hesitation.

Sequestered as I am by walls and blackness of the night,
there are no other travelers to share my nightly flight.
Only approach of daylight can bring this traveler home
as the morning draws a curtain over heaven’s dome.

 

Prompts today are bridge, sequestered, rotation, cobbled and approach. Image thanks to Ibrahim Shabil on Unsplash.

Illegal Crossing

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Illegal Crossing

The impatient pedestrian does not have time to wait.
If lights don’t change immediately, he’s going to be late.
The airs of his entitlement swirl busily about him.
He goes into a tirade when events begin to flout him.
He’s held his breath so long that his face is cobalt blue.
The city should adjust these lights. In fact, he’s going to sue.

Bliss for him is getting exactly what he wishes.
He is the shark who simply devours all the littler fishes.
And so he puts his hand up to stroll against the lights,
thinking all the motorists will grant him crossing rights.
But in seconds he is flattened and this just goes to show,
even if you’re a big shot, you can’t go against the flow.

 

Prompt words today are cobalt, pedestrian, bliss, tirade and entitlement. Image by Pawel Czerwinsky on Unsplash.

Infestation

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Infestation

When she screams like a banshee, running through the house,
just because she saw a tiny little mouse,
the mouse bilks all her efforts to thus scare it away
by slipping in the closet where in time it may
produce many other creatures of its ilk
in a tiny nest it has established in the silk
contents of her drawer of sexy lingerie—
picking for its bed her favorite negligee.

So, if she’s so lucky as to score a kiss
and, planning for a night of amatory bliss,
she reaches in her drawer, completely unaware
of the little visitors housed in her underwear,
no doubt she’ll find reminders of that earlier day
and the previous companion she thought she’d chased away.
Then her latest conquest will beat a fast retreat
as her former screams she ventures to repeat.

 

 

Word prompts today are banshee, reminder, bliss, bilk and house. Illustration thanks to Frenjamin Benklin on Unsplash.

 

Admonitions from the Editor of the Southern Christian Monitor

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Admonitions from the Editor of The Southern Christian Monitor

Good gracious, sir can you not mend your pertinent demeanor?
Clean up your language, cease your slurs. Find language that is cleaner!
When you speak, why must you be such a surly gent?
For once why don’t you try to say something we can print?
Your thoughts are fine. It’s just the words with which you choose to state them.
It simply is your word choice that makes us excoriate them.
As my southern mama used to say, “For goodness sakes, y’all,
if you can’t say it politely, don’t say anything at all!”

 

Disclaimer: There is to my knowledge no such publication as The Southern Christian Monitor. This poem is pure fiction, prompted by the prompt words!!!

Prompt words today are gracious, slur, pertinent, mend and print. Image by Roman Kraft on Unsplash.

New Neighbor

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New Neighbor

We exercise due diligence, but still we find we can’t
avoid the proclamations and the daily rant
that we’ve had to put up with, lately, ever since
our new caustic neighbor started peering o’er the fence,
raising his head above it by standing on a stump
to spread the raving tirade that he loves to dump

on anybody present who’s so unfortunate
as to visit our back yard and encounter this nut.
Every time I go outside, I must absorb  his spewing.
He seems to have some radar that tracks all that we’re doing,
so when I take the garbage out, he’s always out there, too,
spreading verbal garbage that he’s amassed anew.

I guess there’s only one way to get out of this groove.
It may seem excessive, but I think we’ll have to move.
We’ll find a brand new house that has a tall back wall
and rebuff any neighbors who should try to call.
We’ll be the sort of neighbors that no one seems to know,
but we’ll have blessed privacy when we go out to mow !

Prompt words today are stump, anybody, caustic, diligent and absorb. Image by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash.

7 A.M.

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Waking up Mom

 

7 A.M.

Their rebuke is most benign.
Cats yowl protest. The dogs all whine.

As outside dogs slip into gear,
Zoe wakes up and bites my ear.

Their stomachs are a timetable
that I will meet if I am able.

I drag myself out of my bed.
If only I could sleep instead!

The hour that I hit the hay
I fear was not so far away.

Three hours of sleep or perhaps four
were all I had. Surely, not more.

Just as I thought to jump sleep’s hurdle
I remembered, “Daily Wordle!”

Grabbed computer, filled every square,
weeding out vowels my only care.

Wordle in five or four or three?
I cannot sleep until I see.

But later, morning comes too soon
as animals begin their croon.

I move to kitchen to feed cats,
open the door, put bowls on mats,

fill with kibble and with wet 
catfood, and they still their fret.

Move to back door, feed each dog
different portions, mind in fog.

Zoe inside, big dogs out,
fends off pilfering and pout.

What I gain in remuneration
is their ceasing excitation.

Whines replaced by scraping beat
of metal dishes on concrete,

clicking jaw and lapping tongue
as cats and dogs both old and young

enjoy results of their design.
Then, back to bed as they all dine!

Prompt words today are concrete, remuneration, design, rebuke and timetable.

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