Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

By and By

3 Replies

By and By

Lately, when she couldn’t sleep, she debated whether
she should forsake winter for a more salubrious weather.
Hidden under blankets with a heater at her feet,
she dreamed of balmy breezes and the sunlight’s heat.

In less than a day, she could drive down to the border
and find a small posada where she could sit and order
margaritas by the pitcherful beside a sunlit sea—
a novel fallen from her hand, a chihuahua on her knee.

Tacos or enchiladas? In her hometown, she’d be loath
to order either one of them, but here she’d order both,
all her peccadillos unviewed by censoring eye.
She pledged an oath to do it in the by and by.

Prompt words today are border, both, salubrious, peccadillo, winter and hidden.

“. . . In the sweet by and byWe shall meet on that beautiful shoreIn the sweet by and byWe shall meet on that beautiful shore . . .”


—lyrics by S. Fillmore Bennett and music by Joseph  P. Webster

Alibi

3 Replies

Alibi

There’s an untrue rumor that I can’t dispel
about a certain ruby ring found within my cell.
They’ve just heard from my lawyer, but haven’t heard from me
about why that ruby ring was not beneath the tree
with my lawyer’s wife’s name on it, for she’d seen the receipt
in his bottom desk drawer and, thrilled with the deceit,

thought, “It is a gift for me. I’d better feign surprise.”
But in fact she had no need at all for this disguise,
for there was no tiny box with her name upon it—
no ruby ring within it, waiting for her to don it.
Instead, a brand new blender turned out to be her present,
and can you guess that her reaction wasn’t very pleasant?

Just where was the ruby ring? Her angst knew no restraint
as former suspicions resumed with no constraint.
His frolics with his secretary he’d declared long over.
Was he lying to her? Was he still a rover?
Her honeyed voice escaped her. Her shrieks grew shrill and scary.
How could her husband leave her arms to screw his secretary?

That’s how one more deception about the jewel missing
ended with me out on bail and my lawyer kissing
his wife for once, declaring how he preferred her culture
to any lowly secretary, then went on, the vulture,
saying how I stole the ring right out of his pocket
before he left my jail cell and heard the jailer lock it.

Now he said he’d go and if the warden didn’t mind it,
he’d do a search through all my cell to see if he could find it.
Then quickly, he reclaimed the ring to slip upon a ledge
underneath my mattress, at the very edge.
The fingers of his mistress and his wife were the same  size,
and so his wife was placated as she slipped on her prize.

And the diamond ring that he bought his secretary
after he took her ruby back was indeed so very
much bigger and expensive that she didn’t mind
exchanging her first Christmas rock for a better kind.
And rudely roused and blamed, fresh from my Christmas nap,
I had no objection, charged with another rap.

For my lawyer paid my bail and also said that he’s
defending me pro bono—foregoing any fees!!!

 

Prompt words today are just, dispel, frolic, constraint, culture and ruby.

Illegals Need Not Apply

10 Replies

Illegals Need Not Apply

We’ve established a mandate to clean up our town—
evict all the illegals, tear their shacks down.
Any esculent foodstuff we find in their digs,
we’ll put in a trough and feed to the pigs,
but our lawyer has issued strong words of advisement
that we must buy a one-week advertisement

telling them where they can pick up their things
before they take off to spread out their wings
to head out for another gullible city
so naive, as we once were, that they will take pity
on these ignorant folks with no backing or dough
who claim that they all have no place to go.

If they’d displayed gumption and shown their compliance
by earning our favor and conquered reliance
(we suspect) on whiskey or illegal drugs,
become steadfast citizens, not (alleged) thugs,
things might have been different, the outcome more pleasant,
but as it is, affairs at the present

have favored their ouster. The townfolks’ conviction
is that they warrant immediate eviction.
We’re God-fearing folks here. We know one-and-all
that when God sees the smallest of sparrows to fall,
he doesn’t mean illegal immigrants or
any of the other indigent poor

who come from the south or the east or the west
trying to find out the place that is best.
What of the jobs that they took cleaning houses,
picking our fruit, ironing our blouses,
cooking our hamburgers, watching our kids,
tending our gardens and getting rid

of our garbage? I’m pretty sure we can find
others to fill them of our own kind.
What college graduate or spoiled kid
of indulgent parents would not want to bid
on a menial job at minimum wage?
I’m sure our “want” ads will be all the rage.

Prompt words today are esculent (fit to be eaten), advertisement, mandate, gumption, reliance and outcome.

Plethora

12 Replies

Plethora

If I had any gumption, I’d attack that backlog of
poems that I have written about life and death and love.
Fantastic in their numbers, those poems exist in piles,
bound in three-ring binders and squeezed into hanging files.

Thy cluster in my consciousness, swim nightly through each dream.
They are both strength and weakness as they stretch out, ream on ream.
They allow me no real leisure, for they’re everywhere I look,
begging for confinement in a magazine or book.
They crave to be collected between front and back cover,
but in spite of resolutions, I  simply write another.

This poem and these photos are  no exaggeration. I have 13 file cabinet drawers plus one big bin and a few piles, binders and stacks that contain poems and stories I’ve run off, or ideas for new ones.  I have no idea now many poems I have in my blog and computer that I’ve never run off. 

Prompt words today are fantastic, weakness, backlog, gumption, allow and cluster.

Conjoinings (Interspecies and Otherwise)

14 Replies

Conjoinings (Interspecies and Otherwise)

Spiders have spiderlings, cats have their kittens.
Elbow-length gloves perhaps produce mittens.
Whenever a boy cockroach happens to mount her,
a girl cockroach procreates right on my counter!

Such coteries tend to insist on inbreeding,
but the world’s solidarity comes from cross-seeding.
Thus, mermaids lure sailors onto the rocks
for intercourse better confined to their docks.

When horses and zebras conjoin, then of course,
the end is a hebra, or perhaps  a zorse?
A tiger from Asia and lion from Niger
might call their offshoot a tion or liger.

The tone of this poem? I admit it is crass.
It ends with a haddock  shtupping a bass.
resulting in baddocks or perhaps a hass.
Another stanza? Bet you’re glad that I pass!!

Prompt words are spiderling, tone, solidarity, coterie, counter and dock.

Merry Merry Quite Contrary

28 Replies

Merry Merry Quite Contrary

By January, “Merry” is an attitude we’re through with—
that once Christmas is over, we don’t know what to do with.
I’ve never heard one person say “Merry Fourth of July,”
as they send a rocket soaring into the sky.

As I review the situations for a celebration,
“Merry” is never used again to signal our elation.
“Have a merry birthday” is a phrase we don’t adore
as we celebrate the fact we’ve piled up one year more.

By the time Christmas is over, I think we’ve used up “merry.”
Are we tired of this adjective? My thought on this is “Very!”
“Happy” seems to be enough for all else that we do—
sufficient for occasions we celebrate anew.

Prompts today are adore, situation, anew, merry, bother and review.

Humbug

16 Replies

Humbug

I’m already tired of Christmas before it’s even through,
and there are three more gatherings that I still have to do.
I look into the mirror and do not recognize
that woman that looks back at me in my face’s guise.
Should we discuss those brand new lines etched across my face?
How did they choose their birth date? How did they choose their place?

Perhaps they represent my angst over this Christmas season
that somehow soared way out of hand—nearly beyond reason.
Next year I won’t put up a tree. Stow every Xmas light
up in my spare room closet, safely out of sight.
I won’t say Merry Christmas to everyone I meet.
I’ll fly down to Bermuda and complain about the heat.

I’ll stay in a four-star hotel and won’t regret the tab.
I’ll forget my seafood allergies and dine on shrimp and crab.
Or perhaps I’ll go to Paris and scale the Eiffel Tower,
then sit in a sidewalk restaurant, my expression bored and dour.
My Christmas will be different. Perhaps I’ll dine on horse,
swearing when I’m finished that I’ll have no remorse.

Wherever I might choose to go, whatever choice I make,
I will not trim a tree, no Yuletide spirit will I fake.
I won’t bake star-shaped cookies dozen after dozen
or debate on what to buy for any second cousin.
I’ll make no trips to Walmart, braving holiday masses.
I’ll simply get my Yuletide cheer from bottles and from glasses.

Sangria for my breakfast. Tequila served with lunch.
Mid-afternoon martinis drunk with the cocktail bunch.
No over-saturation with holiday excesses.
No presents piled under the tree and wrapping paper messes.
If I have a hangover, it will be gin or port.
No light strings to untangle. No ornaments to sort.

Then, after all is said and done, the truth will be, I fear,
that my Christmas spirit will re-emerge next year.
For, New Year’s resolutions, as firm as they may be,
seldom last throughout the year. Somehow they seem to flee.
And so it is with Christmas. Much as we try to beat it,
It seems that every year we are destined to repeat it.

 

Prompt words today are birth, discuss, nearly, gathering, represent and mirror.

Scrooge Holds Forth on Christmas

8 Replies

Scrooge Holds Forth on Christmas

It can be a bit frenetic, this yearly Yuletide season,
creating a fiasco beyond any rhyme or reason.
It carries us along on a tide of fir and holly,
demanding we be spirit-filled and reverent and jolly

until we’re nearly saturated with the Yultide spirit,
kind of sick of Christmas before we’re even near it.
All this peace and loving can be a royal pain—
pine needles barely cleared away before they’re here again.

We’re blanketed in blessings, gift-wrapped and over-gay
in an over-decorated binge-filled treacle holiday.
Oh for just one Christmas without reindeer-decked pajamas,
on a sun-filled beach somewhere—perhaps in the Bahamas!!!!

Prompts today are Yuletide, blanket, nearly, fiasco, carry and royal.

Over Zealous Under Zero

23 Replies

Over Zealous Under Zero

The icicles are monstrous, yet I’m being diplomatic
and trying not to alter my friend’s hopeful schematic.
Feeling if I squelch her passionate ambition
that in the future I will suffer some sort of attrition.

So I’ll take a hike with her in regions rough and hilly,
never mentioning that I’m feeling over-chilly.
My rating of both temperature and walk is less than zero,
but I’ll keep my mouth shut, thereby ranking as a hero!

Prompts today are icicle, diplomatic, rating, attrition, monstrous and so. Last photo by Dino Reichmuth on Unsplash. Rest, by me.

“True” Art

2 Replies
The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet
Banksy
Mandy Barker
Banksy
Mandy Barker

“True” Art

Ugliness invades the exquisite hall:
brazen rude truths hung up on the wall.
Training the rich to see the real world—
the truth of the starving so crudely unfurled.

Exquisite lives overlooking the grime
of ghettos and junkyards, pollution and crime.
Riches amassed while refusing to see
how greed contributes to poverty.

Idiosyncrasies. Truth told in chrome.
Sad themes and base metals invade the rich home.
Landscapes with hardships depicted in oil:
rusted-out car frames returning to soil.

Thus crude art invades the beautiful world
with the ugly truth blatantly unfurled.
And though robber barons might greedily yearn for it,
and they might hang it, they sadly don’t learn from it.

 

Prompt words today are chrome, hardship, landscape, brazen, trainer and idiosyncrasies.