Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Nature’s Alarm Clock: Morning Matins

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Morning Matins

Birds of diverse attitudes
join voice to sing beatitudes.
The stodgiest cannot refrain
from joining every day again—
unrepentant in their choices,
upon awakening, to join voices.
This reunion stirs the world.
Squirrels in their burrows tightly curled,
unwind to greet the light of day
as inch by inch it lifts its ray.
The donkey lifts its voice to bray
and chickens, as they strain to lay,
raise their clucks to join the chorus,
the world’s alarm clock sounding for us.
The whole world wakening, bit by bit,
prompting us all to wake with it.

 

Prompts today are: stodgy, beatitude, inch and reunion. And yes, I know that’s a rooster, not a chicken, but although they didn’t make the poem, roosters are the best alarm of all.

Bad Actor

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Bad Actor

Why are you now limping? Dish me out the dirt.
Are you a malingerer or are you really hurt?
It seems as though you are in pain, especially since
each step you take is punctuated  by a little wince.

Feigning discomfort’s sinful—neither savvy nor a notion,
and this you should consider if you’re seeking a promotion.
You must ban such actions and revise your plans anew
to remain a member of my retinue.

Prompt words today are punctuate, malinger, sinful, savvy, ban and promotion.

Tough Girl

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Tough Girl

She’s a diamond in the rough,
shiny, beautiful and tough.
Not one to be steered by force,
she’ll decide her lifetime’s course.
Not likely to be shamed or battered,
no way will her dreams be shattered.
She will boggle macho men,
for she won’t play the cackling hen.
Won’t be distracted from her goal
of what she feels to be her role.
Be just what she wants to be,
undeflected by any “he.”

Prompts today are boggle, shattered, distracted, cackle, decide and diamond. Image by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash.

Let’s Walk!

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Let’s Walk!
Your trendy vinyl raincoat should have served as premonition
that there’d be a soggy ending to our expedition.
Now the clouds are scudding over and the rain begins to fall
in a trance-inducing rhythm that socks it to us all
as we boogie down the sidewalk on the way to somewhere better
that now we’ll get to faster and for sure a whole lot wetter.

Prompt words today are sock, premonition, scud, trendy, trance and vinyl.

Tittynope (Leftovers)

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Self-Portrait by Judy Dykstra-Brown, Mixed Media Assemblage8″X12″

Tittynope

A small bit of time left over on the windowsill of life,
I am no longer daughter, student, siren, wife.
My new definition is to simply be—
one last leaf that’s clinging to the family tree.

Not merely a copy of those who came before,
I tried to build on what they were and add a small bit more.
First coddled but then soon set free to follow my own course,
the path I took led me away from my original source.

Paper, brush and pencil—all things to amuse
led to many pastimes where life was not a ruse.
Soldering irons, glue pots and thing after thing
that wandering through market stalls and flea markets could bring.

Putting them together became a way to be,
journeying out to find them but ending up at me.
And now that I’m together, gathered into one,
I am still collecting, not sure that I am done.

 

Prompts today are coddle, copy, tittynope  (A small quantity of anything left over)   ruse, course and windowsill.

Trump Card

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Trump Card

Spin your web. Enact your plan.
Insist you’re of the common man.
Hang a pendant on a chain
Sway it forth and back again
just a dozen times or so,
mesmerizing in its flow.

If you mollify their fears
with promises placed in their ears,
you need give them little proof.
Just call the liberals aloof
and assure them that you’re not.
They’ll overlook your sins and yacht.

Call black white and call white black.
Blame others for what they lack.
Forbid care for the halt and lame.
Point a finger, blame the blame.
Soon they’ll have you in their head.
Certain folks like to be led.

Monkey see and monkey do.
The gullible will follow you

Prompt words today are follow, mollify, monkey,  dozen and gullible.

Vacation Plans

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Vacation Plans

Since my store of giddy-up is no longer stellar,
I’m limiting vacation plans to rooftop room and cellar.
My travel guru’s dubious. She says I’ll change my mind.
She thinks I’m merely ground down by the daily grind.

Though I rehearse refusals, the practice doesn’t work.
She merely puts them down as a momentary quirk.
In fact she has been needling me to book a new vacation
and poo-poos my refusals to my great perturbation.

My  stubborn change of attitude regarding foreign travel,
she’s sure that she can pick at till it starts to unravel;
but these are the travel plans for which I’d like to vouch.
The scenery is gorgeous between my bed and couch!

 

Prompt words today are travel, roof, guru, dubious, needle and rehearsal.

Inflated Hopes

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Inflated Hopes

What was once a halfpence now may be a dollar.
A whisper given time may turn out to be a holler.
Idealistic bloggers swept away with their next word
may pound away at keyboards not knowing they’re absurd.

Their statements may be loaded with inanities or tears
that may gain profundity through the fog of years.
So if you cannot see the wisdom of this rhyme,
I’m sure you finally will. You need to give it time.

Prompt words today are keyboard, swept, halfpence, tears, load and idealistic.

Hindsight

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Hindsight

I admit I was a casualty of your new addition
as you engineered your life into its new rendition.
How could I not have known that there would be a repetition
of the mess you left behind in our love’s fruition?

You drew me like a magnet. I was brazen, cruel and bold.
Reveling in the heat of you, I overlooked the cold
wasteland that you left behind—family, wife and kids—
our new life an adventure that left their lives in the skids.

Now the present situation repeats what once was,
with me the one who’s left behind. Most fitting, though, because
I saw the whole thing once before in a rear vision mirror
as you put the car we fled in into a higher gear.

Prompt words today are brazen, repetition, casualty and magnet.

Poor Spousal Support

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Poor Spousal Support

His espousal of a single life was open to debate,
for with a wife and three small girls, it came a little late.
But he lusted for the “good life” now that he earned a lot.
He yearned for wild night life and planned to buy a yacht.

That their spousal settlement was measly, it is true,
but her husband was a lawyer, so what was she to do?
She made the children T-shirts  with an acronym
that best described their father and what she thought of him.

When people were inquisitive, she told them they should say
that CHEAP was an acronym, and without delay,
that  the meaning of it was “Chump Husband Earns A Pittance”
and that is why he’s often late in sending their remittance.

And on the T-shirt’s back, she reserved another space
for another acronym  for their dad to face:
There it spelled out HUNGER, whose letters expressed fairly
the naked  truth: “His UnderNourished Genepool ‘s Eating Rarely!!!

Prompt words today are measly, reserved, acronym, espousal, settlement and inquisitive.