Rebuttal
My waterfall of words is more than just conjecture,
so do not list my weaknesses in yet another lecture.
Misery begets misery. The truth of this is told.
So when you berate me, intimidate and scold,
the intermittent piercings of sharp words I spew out
are but a reaction to the cruelties you tout.
Prompts for today are pierce, intermittent, weakness conjecture, miserable, waterfall. Image by Kusuma on Unsplash.
(Click on photos to see larger views.)
Things That Go Bump In The Night
On Samhain tiny goblins compete with tinier witches,
holding out their candy bags with pleading looks and twitches.
Trading in their own names like Sandy, John and Luke,
they go by their pseudonyms of Zombie, Ghoul and Spook.
They only have ’til midnight to cease their operation
of collecting candy, to their great consternation,
for it is at the midnight hour that real ghouls congregate
with witches, ghosts and zombies at the graveyard gate.
Old miners follow flume trails down looking for the gold
that seemed to evade them in the days of old.
Dead school marms lift their rulers looking for a kid to swat,
And zombies execute last haunts before their final rot.
Ghoulies swoop down from the trees and witches brew their brews,
vowing to force feed their glop to any kid they choose.
So best be in your beds before the midnight toll
lest you be absconded with by zombie or by troll!!!!!
Prompts for today are spook, twitch, *Samhain, *flume, operation, pseudonym,
*Flumes were wooden troughs elevated on trestles that ran down a mountainside to bring gold down from futher up the mountain. They were also used in the transportation of logs in the logging industry. We used to hike up the flume trail at summer camp in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
*Our Halloween evolved as a combination of All Souls Day and Samhain, an early Gaelic and Celtic harvest festival which contained many of the elements that evolved into the custom of dressing up in costumes and trick-or-treating.
Rich Folk, Poor Folk
Just because you are loquacious
doesn’t mean that you’re sagacious.
Those who form lucrative pacts
to try to contradict the facts
may wage a campaign national
to promote thoughts irrational,
creating facts out of pure fiction
by making use of fancy diction.
In higher circles, they make jokes
about the gullible simple folks
who hand over all their earnings
forgetting all their earlier learnings
and write their own obituary,
trading futures for cash-and-carry.
Better odds that comets destroy Earth
than that we reclaim their worth,
yet those who bilk and deserve blame,
wrestle not with guilt and shame.
They buy their Guccis and parade
in decorations for which we’ve paid.
Prompt words today are obituary, decorate, comet, sagacious, wrestle, circle and irrational. Image by Melissa Walker on Unsplash.
Screwing it Up
The superlative woman never winds up in the middle,
for in other people’s marriages she has no urge to fiddle.
Not one fraction of her being is cunning or deceptive.
She belittles no one but is always most receptive
to helping friends with problems, and she always finds an answer
in combatting any problem short of income tax or cancer.
Has she any weakness? I’ve found only one so far.
She is totally hopeless at opening a jar!
Though she tries unscrewing it using all her might,
somehow every lid she meets is just screwed on too tight,
and though she’s never screwed up in anything she did,
it avails her little when unscrewing a lid.
Prompt words for today are superlative, belittle, deceptive, fraction, middle, woman and irrational.
Click on Photos to Enlarge.
Wild Nights
I’m caught up in my surreal dream,
irrational as it might seem,
of tabby cats and wolverines
in leather jackets and distressed jeans,
their animal natures left behind
for culture of a human kind.
Armadillos playing squash,
then coming over for a nosh.
Butterflies on roller skates
hobnobbing with potentates,
wings integral in lifting up
to table level as they sup.
Kangaroos keep up the beat
by drumming with their paws and feet.
Cicadas sound their castanets,
summoning their sobriquets*
as rain joins in with steady drumming,
to accompany their humming.
Varied species get along:
wolf and canary join in song,
the party only breaking up
when I’m awakened by my pup
and the pets of my imagination
succumb once more to sublimation.
*In Mexico, cicadas are nicknamed “Rainbirds” because their noisy clatter announces the imminent arrival of the rainy season.
Prompt words today are: culture, squash, surreal,integral, wolf, tabby cat and irrational. Photos of cat, butterfly, cicada and Zoe biting my ear are all by me. The rest are thanks to Unsplash.
Unlimited Viewing Possibilities
The very lovely playa was a playground for the rich
who lay around on blankets, wearing not a stitch.
When folks passed, salutations were snappy and most clever
with their eyes averted, for it’s certain that they never
wanted to be caught in the act when they were staring
at the certain body parts acquaintances were baring.
For no matter what their habitus, everyone was nude,
and to stare at body fat was considered rude.
But for sure some bikers were deserving of medals
as they kept eyes straight ahead, attending to their pedals,
limiting their viewpoint to a small straight-ahead niche,
avoiding the environment spread out on the beach.
Prompts for today are snappy, medal, salutations, habitus, environment, playground. Image by Shifaaz Shamoon on Unsplash.
Driven
If only we had been more patient
when our child’s skills were nascent.
Hadn’t prodded, hadn’t shoved,
that young one we so dearly loved,
had not created goals irrational
local, regional and national,
vying for ribbons and for gold,
pushing for numbers over-bold.
If we had stressed an education,
built a stabler foundation,
put less zhuzh into her clothes
and more of it in what she knows,
the cyberbullies who mocked her fall
would have had no power at all,
to instigate the wounded pride
that led her to her suicide.
But as it is, it was our sin
that did our lovely daughter in.
Prompt words are ribbon, zhuzh, numbers, nascent,foundation,cyberbullying and irrational. Image by Kirklai on Unsplash.
Culinary Differences
(Coping with an Artistic Palate)
I’ll admit that I’m perplexed
for my spouse is sorely vexed
because he finds my menus bland
and untouched by artistic hand.
He finds my soup so pale and thin, it
needs a bit of color in it,
so I asked him how to do
more pleasing palettes for my stew.
He painted me a portrait of
a consommé he said he’d love
with so many veggies in it
and a ruby wine to thin it.
He’d like to wrap his mouth around
colors that are more profound.
to the point where I’m perplexed
over what I should cook next.
My color combination tends
towards browns and whites of various blends.
Might I aspire to red and yellow,
with pickled beets in lemon Jell-o?
He says my taste in food is static
whereas his is more erratic.
But, tired of his bitch and moan,
perhaps I’ll let him cook his own.
Alternate ending: (don’t read this one, Sam)
He suggests a novel dish
of tomato aspic around fish?
The thought of it makes my lips pucker.
Perhaps I’ll just divorce the -ucker!!!
Prompts today are red and yellow, pickle, perplexed, aspire, mouth, portrait and erratic. All of the images are from Unsplash.
Detente in the Animal Kingdom
The queen of hippopatamuses feels a bit perplexed
for she crossed the hyenas and now she has been hexed.
They’ve jinxed her favorite swimming hole so she has to swim
in a muddy tiny pond with crocs around the rim.
When she lumbers from the pond to have her usual binge
on grass, her favorite supper, she feels a little twinge.
It seems like in the puddle where she most recently sat,
waddling through the bottom mud, dragging all her fat,
she must have nudged a bit too close to a crocodile
and snagged a bit of hippo fat on his croco-smile.
He’s swinging there behind her, his tooth hooked on her tush,
creating a great disarray while crashing through the bush.
With her competing waddle, they’re an ecological threat,
destroying all the underbrush as they thrash and vet.
How will they resolve this problem that they cause?
First it’s necessary that they cool down and pause
to make peace with the hyenas so they can use their claws
to disentangle hippo skin from the croc’s sharp jaws,
thus restoring order and reinstating peace
so all this inter-species angst finally will cease!!!
Prompt words today are jinx, swing, perplexed,disarray, compete, twinge and hippopatamus. Image by J. Anders on Unsplash.
Defences Make Good Neighbors
My neighbor is gregarious but I never talk back,
although I feel I’ll detonate for rejoinders I lack.
They all swell up inside me because they come too late
to be used against her in a retaliatory debate.
If only I’d known what to say before it was too dated,
but alas, past tirades can’t be rejuvenated.
Her face and clothes are scrumptious, but her view of life is black.
She sees the worst in people, and it turn they see it back.
Every time I look at her, no matter how I try,
I only see a personage that I want to pass by.
So all her earthly beauty, her jewels and her clothing
cannot compensate for a world of mutual loathing.
Prompts for today are rejuvenate, before, scrumptious, detonate, look, black and gregarious. Image by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash.
My apologies to Robert Frost for parodying his last line of “Mending Wall.” (Good fences make good neighbors.) Actually, eight years ago I wrote a parody of his poem as well. HERE it is if you aren’t already tired of the topic.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 