Tag Archives: the daily spur

Smiths

5 Replies

Smiths

Like a seal or fish or otter
slips into its world of  water,
so do smiths of any sort—
(word or metalsmith) cavort
in their shops or in their minds
to create wonders of two kinds.

The smith’s returns of mind or hammer,
while they may create a clamor
by their constant stimulation,
forge in us a strong sensation,
opening our minds and eyes
to thoughts formerly in disguise.

Never underestimate
those born to shape and malleate.
They build our knowledge, blow on blow,
to show us different ways to go.
The words or metal that they wrangle
into book or silver spangle,
swell the whole world’s education,
then add to its decoration.

Prompt words today are  spangle, malleate,  otter, sensation and return.

Rosehips

4 Replies

 

Prairie Rose

Prairie Rose, sister of mine,
here at a distance,
I imagine you in full bloom
before your long winter.

I gather the best parts of you close in memory,
taking care with your acicula, as I have my whole life,
wondering why you seemed to need those parts
that kept us from clutching you too closely.

I thank you for seeding the future of our line.
Your grandchildren, the harvest of your life,
playful as otters even in their twenties,
award your existence by theirs.

We bring you with love back to where you came from,
 scatter your fallen petals
on the prairie loam,
and shovel it over that you may join it.

In case you didn’t know it, as I didn’t, “acicula” are needlelike parts: thorns, spines, bristles, or needlelike crystals. The singular form is  “aciculum.”

The rose hips are where the rose seeds are contained. Not doing any deadheading of the old rose blooms will allow the rose hips to form, which can then be harvested either to use the seeds inside to grow a new rose bush. Rosehips may be eaten, taking care to avoid the hairs that line the inside of the fruit and often times cover the seeds. They are literally itching powder and uncomfortable enough when they come into contact with your skin, let alone ingesting them!

Word prompts today are otter, shovel, harvest, acicula and mine.

Beggars Can’t Be Choosers

15 Replies

Beggars Can’t Be Choosers

My disgruntled spouse surveyed the plum,
then squeezed its flesh beneath his thumb,
saw that there were plenty more
in the tree that grew next door,
and though the crop was most abundant,
he merely saw it as redundant.

There were no grapes for him to filch.
Bananas? It had proffered zilch.
No oranges or apples to
seed and peel and slice and chew.
No limes or lemons to produce
a glass of fresh-squeezed zesty juice.

It made him sad and rather glum
to see plum after purple plum
hung on the tree. Could I dispute
his  claim that we’d have to commute
to steal instead various fruit?
I felt his argument was moot.

One must make do with what might come.
The progeny of plum was plum.
If he required figs or berries,
peaches, kiwi fruit or cherries,
he’d have to head out to the store
or plant a a dozen trees or more.

He’d have to mulch and trim and spray,
water every other day,
and wait for years for fruit to grow,
but he was hungry now and so
he went outside and picked him some
plum after plum and plum and plum.

 


Prompt words today are glum, commute, zilch and abundant. Images thanks to Marius Karotkis and Kelly Neil on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Question and Answer

6 Replies

 

Question and Answer

When all our colors fade to white
and night is day and day is night,
and I am you and you are me,
erased for perpetuity,
when spectral is our whole domain,
when death obtrudes, what will remain?

When death obtrudes, what will remain?
When spectral is our whole domain,
and all our colors fade to white,
when night is day and day is night,
we will be one—our you and me
erased for perpetuity.


Prompt words today are perpetuity, erase, spectral, obtrude and white.

Worst Nightmare

15 Replies


Worst Nightmare

I stood without a podium,
alone there in the odeum.
The lantern light was odious,
the theater commodious.
My stomach tied up in a knot,
I realized that I had not
even seen a single script
and therefore I was ill-equipped
no matter how hard I was driven,
to say the words that I’d been given.

And furthermore, how crass and rude
that I was standing in the nude,
center stage, in full display,
without a clue of what to say,
before an audience, all staring
at the body I was baring!
And here I brought the curtain down
and awoke to find a dressing gown
draped around me in a heap,
relieved to find I’d been asleep!!!

 

For those of you who will ask, this is not fiction. This is a dream I’ve dreamed a number of times during my life.  Prompt words for today are lantern, knot, Odeum and without. Image by Velizar-Ivanov on Unsplash.

Wheeler Dealer

10 Replies


Wheeler Dealer

Our precocious daughter, swathed in leather, first tattoo
in view below her crop top, reached out and grabbed a few
peanuts from the table and demanded, “Amirite?”
Crumbled off the peanut shells and took a hungry bite.

She had argued that a motorbike was the best solution
to getting her to school with minimum pollution.
(Our driving her to school, consuming so much gas,
creates carbon monoxide at a level that’s most crass.)

“Umitebee” said her father, and I nodded my accord.
As her sole benefactors, just what we could afford
influenced our decision, and instead of motorbike,
we simply told our daughter to go and take a hike!

Prompt words are benefactor, leather, precocious, and amirite,

am·i·rite: exclamation ,INFORMAL, US  am I right? (used to invite confirmation or assert that one’s previous statement is correct) “not much point to it now, amirite?”

The More the Scarier

7 Replies

The More the Scarier

When a single apparition tried to haunt the candy store,
they just admired his costume and gave him one treat more
than all the trick or treaters who’d appeared before his visit.
I wonder if his timing isn’t very good or is it?

When he planned his visit, he was counting on horrific,
but when the owner simply said his costume was terrific,
his esteem somehow defrayed his disappointment that
the only creature that he seemed to scare was just the cat.

He returned to the graveyard and stirred his sleeping mate,
insisting on their return—this time as double date.
And their double-haunting in fact turned out so well,
 next year they’re showing up with all the denizens of hell!!!!

Prompt words today are apparition, costume, horrific, esteem and mate. Image by Kevin Escate on Unsplash.

Degrees of Possession

3 Replies

Degrees of Possession

When a ghost is newly dead and lacking in his knowledge,
is it perhaps required of him to go to haunting college?
Does he become a boogeyman, thereby saving face
only when he’s studied hard and learned to glide with grace
up the stairs and down the stairs and way down to the basement,
polishing his scary moves and practicing debasement?
Will he then earn the esteem of every other ghoul
who passed his apprenticeship at apparition school?

Prompt words for the day are haunting, college, boogeyman, esteem and grace.

Yes, that’s me scaring my sis Patti way back when I was trying to earn my spook degree. If you can think of a better name for this poem, please suggest it. This was as good as I could do.

Little Altars Everywhere

14 Replies

Click on photos to enlarge.

This is one of the pieces I made for a Day of the Dead show at Jesus Lopez Vega’s Gallery in Ajijic opening on November 2, 2021 on Rio Zula, one block south of the Carretera. This piece is 20 inches high and 12 inches wide. It includes a miniature I made of an actual book entitled “Noche de Muerto en Michoacan, Muestratio Portico” that is sitting on the chair. Other offerings mentioned below are on the table, along with a photo of the dear departed.

Little Altars Everywhere

There’s no pleasing the likes of a departed soul.
Take for instance the corpses out for a stroll
on Day of the Dead with their garb all in shreds
when other departed remain in their beds.
They think they’re entitled to dead bread and beer,
flowers and candles and when you come near,
they’ll say they’re entitled to sweets and tamales.
Once a year this is how they get their jollies.
All over the city, we bring them their due,
and when it comes your turn, we will bring it to you!

 

Prompt words today are corpse, title, pleasing, garb and city.

Dear John

7 Replies

Dear John

My kenspeckle lover, well-known for deceit,
you cannot resist every siren you meet.
If you’re depressed, they brighten your day.
Do you think that I’m so naive and fey
that I do not notice the scent you bring home
when you return from wherever you roam?
If I kept a notebook of all of the times
you were unfaithful and caught them in rhymes,
they would be encyclopedic in length,
devoid of affection and brute in their strength.

I’d be better off, they would prove, if alone,
for “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone,”
considering all of your dalliance and sin,
if applied to you, would be spread out so thin
that the bone left for me would be naught but a sliver,
my portion of flesh just a scrap of your liver,
the rest of you spread out so far and so wide,
apportioned to lovers you thought you could hide.

I’ve packed up your bags, keeping one of them free
to return the part of you you left with me.
Take it along with you as you depart.
 I’ve already filled that part of my heart
that you have left empty these many long years
with one who’s supplied what you left in arrears.

 

 

Prompts today are: kenspeckle, better, notebook, deceit and depressed.

Kenspeckle: adjective,SCOTTISH, easily recognizable; conspicuous.
“he loved walking in the village, where he was a kenspeckle figure”