Tag Archives: the daily spur

Practice Makes Perfect

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Practice Makes Perfect

His patience in predicament has become legendary—
a necessary attribute in one so prone to marry.
He tolerated petulance in the child bride
married out of loneliness after his first wife died.
He tried to build her confidence, but finally set her free,
realizing what she needed most was liberty.
His third wife used another means to put him to the test,
running up his credit cards while feathering his nest.
His fourth wife played around, and the kin of number five
turned his peaceful home into a frantic humming hive.
Only in his dotage did he finally meet his prize—
not as stunning in her beauty, but lovely in his eyes.
No grand faults to overlook. No predicaments to fix.
No petulance to deal with. No relatives to nix.
Marriage done at any age can be pleasure or blight,
but  when he married in his eighties, he finally got it right!!

 

Prompts for today are tolerate, predicament, nest, legendary and confidence. Photos by JD Mason on Unsplash, used with permission.

The Great Unquoted

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The Great Unquoted

Folks from the country are rarely surveyed.
They’re too far from the action so rarely waylaid
by people with surveys or long questionnaires
who don’t know the difference between bulls and mares.

They’re afraid of  rogue bulls (or perhaps they are steers?)
Then wood ticks and snakes are additional fears.
So they’re given to mutiny when asked to go
to where they consider the folks are so slow

that they’re dumb as the fence posts  that border the road.
They aren’t up on the lingo. Their clothes aren’t in mode,
but farm folks are happy no matter what season.
If they’d taken a survey, they’d find the top reason

is that folks armed with clip boards don’t haunt every nook.
They don’t stand at the corner or invade your brook
when a fellow stands fishing and thinking great thoughts.
They don’t snoop in your garbage or peek in your pots.

Here in the country, while working or drinking, 
we keep to ourselves all the thoughts we are thinking.
Let city folks keep all their lists, charts and numbers.
We county folk prefer our bucolic slumbers.

Prompt words today are afraid, top, country, mutiny and post. And for dVerse Poets Open Link.

He might look like a city boy, but that’s my dad stretched out under a tree down by the river, thinking great thoughts. I think my mom had him dressed up for a church picnic.

Mystery Bride

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Mystery Bride

As ceremonies go, theirs was most whimsical in nature—
as original in rite as in its nomenclature,
for to the credit of the groom, who set custom aside,
it was he who chose to take the last name of the bride.

Right off, it captured interest the day the knot was tied
when his wife-to-be was clothed with little left to hide.
Swathed in camouflage from her head top to her toes,
you couldn’t see the bride at all. You only saw her clothes.

So since no one had met the bride, when  their “I do’s” were said
without the bridal burqa being lifted from her head,
nobody really knew at all what his Mrs. looked like.
The groom was heard to say it only mattered what she cooked like.

And so the mystery of the bride remains up to this day.
If his family’s seen her, not one of them will say.
And though his treatment of his bride is thought by some as vicious,
all agreed the wedding cake she baked was most delicious.

Prompts today are cinch, ceremony, whimsical, capture and interest.
Photo by Omar Belattar on Unsplash, used with permission.

Advice to Dorothy as She Elopes with the Tin Man

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Advice to Dorothy as She Elopes with the Tin Man

I can’t fathom your limerence. Why would you settle
for an older lover who’s made out of metal?
It’s good to be flexible, but don’t you think
that this is a rather impossible link?
Your honeymoon’s bound to be rather a bust.
If you go to the beach, he is likely to rust,
or if you go skiing, his joints will freeze rigid.
It’s hard to make love to a tin man who’s frigid!
You’re young and you’re limber. Your life’s at its start.
Why pick a lover who hasn’t a heart?
Please take my advice when it comes to men:
no lions, no scarecrows, no men made of tin.

 

Prompt words for today are flexible, gambit, limerence, fathom and metal.

Mama’s Brief Lapse

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Mama’s Brief Lapse

I simply will not gossip. I’ll reveal not one small detail
about the time your mom decided, “No more buying retail!”
Hereafter, she’d cruise bargain basements, seeking out her booty.
Designer stores? Off-limits. Prada? Way too snooty.

This concept lasted months, at least, but it was just a phase.
One morning, she emerged as though she’d been in a haze
and had a small epiphany, there lying on her chaise,
climbed into her Ferrari and headed to Hermès

where the road to her recovery was smoothed by flattery
in corsetry and ballgowns, in sportswear and in hattery
as she restored her wardrobe with finery more grand
than she had ever managed buying second hand!!!

 

Prompt words today are smooth, snooty, details, haze and concept.

Extended Family

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Extended Family

My furry raider sloshed through rain
out to the barn and back again,
but next trip was a passenger
his human cuddled close to her
so both could view the transient
new mother so intently bent
over her bounty, newly born
this blustery, rainy, wind-swept morn.

One more thing born that rainy day
around three homeless ones that lay
snuggled down within the hay
protected from the weather’s fray—
a sense of family between
an old male cat, once feral, mean—
who had been taken in himself
and these three waifs, curled on a shelf
within that barn where I’d found him.
Now both of us discovered them
and that day welcomed them, all three
to our extended family.

Prompt words today are raider,  slosh, transient, bounty, and passenger.

When First Love Expires (Not a Reblog)

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When First Love Expires

Go tell the young ladies. Go tell the young men.
Those shattered by lost love will find love again.
We recover from passion. Rarely does it kill,
and there’s plenty more of it over the hill.

That queen of your pulse, that king of your heart,
may not be your ending. It may be your start.
Don’t retire with your failure, but once more begin.
Take the leap and try love all over again.

That sweet grass dried up, we harvest as hay.
First love is a beacon that just lights the way
for your next lover—an adequate light
to create a harvest from yesterday’s blight.

Love is a virus that’s hopelessly catching—
a miraculous egg that just goes on hatching.
So do not despair if your first love expires.
Make further use of the lust it inspires.

 

The prompts for today are beacon, adequate, recover, leap and king.

Presidential Seal

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Presidential Seal

He’s an annoying sycophant, his screw loose in its socket.
One hand in the treasury, the other in his pocket.
What he may label progress is progress just for him
and his self-serving buddies. For the rest of us, it’s dim.
What’s seen as prosperity I fear is selling out.
How can it be that all cannot see what it’s about?

He’s selling off our parklands. Selling off our world.
The seas rise up to claim us. The hurricane’s unfurled.
The fires blaze around us. Nature has gone spastic
as it disgorges methane and chokes on all our plastic.
Lady Liberty’s in mourning. Our flags all fall to tatters.
Our leaders lost in their affairs instead of in what matters.

Our people, so short-sighted, will be called upon to pay.
The eagle on his office crest is but a bird of prey.
Both eagles and vultures are adroit at seeing,
but they are not equal when it comes to being.
I fear the presidential crest now marks what he will steal.
Its bird is now a turkey for a reigning monarch’s meal.

He claps his hands and purses lips–a barking preening fool–
as he does his silly act upon his circus stool.
He gives the presidential seal a different connotation
as he balances upon his nose the future of our nation.
Hoping that this earthly globe is one that he won’t drop.
Hoping his buffoonery one day soon will stop.

Prompt words today are annoying, progress, vulture, adroit and seeing.

First Step

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Click on photos to enlarge.


First Step

Looking out of your front door
there is a whole world to explore.
Standing here behind the glass,
you only need to choose to pass
into that world wherein your muse
will enter you to help you choose
which world you’ll hold within your hands.
Which foreign soil. Which country’s sands.
If you falter. If you sigh,
doubt yourself and wonder why,
feel yourself less fit and spry
and fear that you will not get by,
issue yourself a reprimand.
Pack your bag and take your hand
and lead yourself outside the door.
This leaving’s what a door is for.
Gather up your courage and
set off for that foreign land.

Prompts for today are looking out of my front door, glass, muse, spry and hands.

And, for Thursday Doors.

Mutter

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Mutter

Did you hear the scandal? Did you hear the “rumor?”
Did she break a fingernail? Does she have a tumor?
She isn’t going to write a poem. She doesn’t like one word
suggested as a prompt today. She thinks they are absurd.
Nothing to rhyme with “traffic.” She’d rather play in it
than try to think up any rhyme if “ruckus” has a say in it.
Her salad days are over. She’s too old to be this clever.
When she saw the word “cycle,” her muse just muttered, “Never!”
So for the second time this week, she’s whining and complaining.
But I see the prompt words tricked her, for she used them while explaining!

 

Prompt words today are traffic, rumor, cycle, ruckus and salad.