Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

“International Cheffery” , for Word of the Day, May 31, 2025

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“International Cheffery”

In the garden or on the hoof,
in the lake or on the roof,
we grow it, herd it, shoot it, hook it.
Pick it, wash it, chop it, cook it.

Wherever we see food, we take it.
Stir it, spit it, fry or bake it.
In Japan is the exception.
Some ancient chef had a conception

that he would not cook the fish–
just serve it raw upon the dish.
It is a strange way to be fed–
to eat a fish that’s merely dead!

In African countries, I have found,
they build a fire on the ground
and cook their food in cauldrons there
flavored with spices hot and rare.

In Sicily, the mafia bosses
favor rich tomato sauces.
First they’re fed by wife or mother,
then they go out and kill each other.

Mexicans use corn instead
of wheat to make their daily bread.
They fold it around beans or meat
and chilis to turn up the heat!

America’s a country where
there’s food from every country there.
What’s unique in our repast
is that we want our food here fast!

The word of the day prompt is chef.

Keyboard Athlete, for Word of the Day, May 26, 2025

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jdb photo

Keyboard Athlete

Not a great sportswoman—champion of none.
I sport a camera when having my fun.
My skill is not measured in baskets or bases.
I score my points while clicking at faces.

Though I’m not the most physical person you’ll meet,
I do exercise caution when crossing the street.
My main lack of muscle tone’s merely because
My pushup experience is mainly in bras.

As you vault over hurdles and excel at tennis,
the extensions I do are less of a menace.
Though I’m not an expert at sprinting or jogging,
my fingers are well-toned through everyday blogging.

For the Word of the Day Challenge, the prompt word is everyday.

“The Passenger,” for Word of the Day, May 13, 2025

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The Passenger

I see her back her car outside.
She never offers me a ride.
I go the same way she is going,
but she passes, still unknowing.

After ten long years, I stand
making no sign with head or hand.
My legs are tired. My back is bent.
My footsteps follow where she went.

It takes two minutes to go by car.
I take an hour to go that far.
If she knew, perhaps she’d say,
“Would you like a ride today?”

She would have rolled her window down
to offer me a ride to town.
I’d dust my clothes and step inside,
grateful, at long last, for the ride.

And at the bottom of the hill,
as though, perhaps, she’d had her fill,
She’d say, “I’m turning left from here.”
And I’d assemble all my gear,

and give my thank-you, even though
I need to go where she will go.
Charity goes just so far,
I think, as I exit the car.

I live about two-thirds of the way up a very tall mountain in Mexico, and often as I drive down to the main road, I give a ride to whomever I encounter walking down the cobblestones—especially the women, most of whom work as housekeepers in the houses in my fraccionamiento. But now and then when I am in a hurry or when I see a man suspicious-looking or dusted by his labors, I drive on by. Then I wonder what he is thinking as I guiltily observe him in the rear vision mirror.

 

The Word of The Day Challenge  today is passenger. Forgottenman found this poem I published long ago and suggested I used it for this prompt. He knows I am exhausted. Sweet, sweet man. Here it is.

“Jailbird” for Word of the Day

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Jailbird

It was a bit before midnight the night before Xmas Eve in 1975. I was just home from a party at my sister’s house, where my mother was staying, still in my long party dress with an apron over it because I was preparing the meal for Xmas Eve, when they would all be coming to my house for and afternoon meal.  I’d just opened the fridge to put the cranberries in to jell when there was a LOUD pounding on the door.  Startled, I called out, “Who is it?”  I couldn’t imagine, but they sounded in a good bit of distress.

“Police, Ma’am. Open up!”  Of course I thought it must be a joke.

“Okay, really, who is it? Buffy?”  Sure it must be friends make a drop-by after they left the bar, I used the first name that came to mind of someone who might think it was funny to rouse me out of bed on what now, by the clock, was already Xmas Eve.”

“Open up. We have a warrant for your arrest!!!”  This didn’t sound like the voice of any friend of mine.  I opened the drapes and peered out, and sure enough, there was a police car parked in the street in front of my apartment, its lights shining brightly and its cherry top rotating and sending a circle of red through the neighborhood.  I could see the drapes of apartments on the floors above opening as well in our L shaped apartment complex.  I opened the door, and there were two uniformed policemen, handcuffs extended, ready to haul me off to jail… for what?

It was my second  year of teaching English in Cheyenne, Wyoming. So far as I knew, I was free of any felonies short of perhaps driving home after a few drinks at the Corner Bar with my fellow teachers, but if guilty of that, I had never been caught. What in the world could be happening?

What was I being arrested for?

“Outstanding speeding ticket, Ma’am.”  They allowed me to get my coat, one of them following me into the bedroom as I collected it, then they directed me out to the car. As we approached the police car, one opened the back door and the other one demanded that I put my hands behind my back to be cuffed.

“You’re going to handcuff me? You must be kidding me!  I have an outstanding speeding ticket that I forgot to pay because the day I was supposed to pay it, I accompanied the high school pom pom girls to Casper for a cross country meet as their sponsor!!! You are going to not only drag me in on Xmas Eve, but you’re going to handcuff me?

They exchanged looks, and I think I detected a bit of embarrassment on their part. The handcuffs were put away and I sat in the screened back seat with my hands, at least, free.

When we arrived at the jail, I was booked and told I could make one phone call.  I called my principal, thinking after all the reason I had neglected to pay my fine was in the pursuit of school business.  “Jim, can you come bail me out of jail? I’ve been arrested.”  He laughed.  “Judy, go to bed. It’s too late for one of your jokes. We’ll see you tomorrow!”  And he hung up!!!! Could I make another call? No, I was limited to one. Again, I made my plea. I was a local schoolteacher. Not paying the speeding ticket was an oversight. I was chaperoning at a school activity! Probably half of the police officers on the force had gone to my school!  Finally, they granted me one more phone call.  I called my sister, and because my mother by habit carried a lot of cash, luckily they had the bail money on hand.

As I awaited my savior, “Where should we put her?” One of the arresting officers  asked.

“Put her in the drunk tank. She’s no better than any of the rest of them!” the desk sergeant directed.

And so it was that I joined all of the rest of the undesirables in the county jail.  As I passed down the corridor to the drunk tank, I passed the cell of a local man being held for murder and a number of other detainees who looked a bit surprised at seeing a local schoolteacher in a floor length party dress being hauled off to the drunk tank. I later discovered that the judge of traffic court, disgusted at all the unpaid fines, had directed that every person with an outstanding fine to pay should be rounded up as a lesson in what happened to those neglectful of their civic duty to pay their debt to society!!!!

My sister arrived in about 1/2 hour with my bail money and gave me a ride home, chuckling all the way. The next day when my family arrived at my house, when I opened my Xmas stocking, there was a plastic set of handcuffs in its very bottom. Evidently my enterprising brother-in-law had somehow located a set in some venue open on Xmas Eve. My mother’s gift to me that year was to pay my bail money.It was, all in all, one of my most memorable Christmases.  True story.

For Word of the Day Challenge: Lawbreaker

Credo

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Credo

It’s the opposite of sinecure, this writing of a blog,
but it’s my distinctive effort and my chosen cog
infrangible and constant in the spinning wheel of life,
it is my way to join the world with minimum pain and strife.

There may be repercussions, for you may not agree.
You may not shelter thoughts that coincide with me.
For sure, great fame and fortune are not slated to be mine,
but spending hours a day at this seems to suit me fine!!!!


That’s Ollie and Roo, a few years ago. They thought I didn’t know they were hanging out back there until I pulled the computer screen down to see why it was shaking back and forth as they wrestled.

This time I did something different and wrote a line in sequence for each prompt word before seeing any of the other prompt words. It is a fun game. I challenge you to do the same and link to this blog. The best way to do this is to favorite the six websites below. They all give daily words and you can click on the site, establish the link, write the line and go on to the next. It’s easier than you think once you establish the favorites. Or, just use the words below but look at one at a time and write your line before looking at the next. With my memory, it is easy. I could write down all six and look at the first and immediately forget the others if I don’t concentrate on them.

Prompts for the day are sinecure, distinctive, infrangible, repercussion, shelter and fame.

Scorpion in the Sacristy

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Scorpion in the Sacristy

Minuscule but powerful, it causes us to shake.
The most masculine among us have been known to quake
and to seek protection whenever one is seen,
for it is rumored that their punch is wicked mean.
They inspire colorful language from the subjects of their strikes,
because it’s understatement to simply scream out “Yikes!”
when stricken by a scorpion. The occasion calls for more,
and that is why the village priest was pardoned when he swore
as he removed the host veil and was stung upon the hand,
for though the Holy Father issued a reprimand
for the sin of taking the name of Christ in vain,
since the priest was still in shock and reeling in his pain,
not one of his parishioners, it’s said, has censored him,
for each and every one of them thanked God  it wasn’t them!

Prompt words today are colorful, minuscule, punch, quake, protection and seen.

Spring Picnic

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Aunt Stella being silly at a family picnic. I was imitating her.

Spring Picnic

That first tidbit of food
swallowed—
that morsel of potato salad
or that sip of lemonade—
activates what April picnics
are fated to attract
as surely as ants—
afternoon rains,
predicted as a slight chance
for this vicinity,
but now diluvial
in their force.

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link. Night  and also making use of these six prompts from different sites: food, vicinity, diluvial, tidbit, activate and afternoon.

(Hover over the photo for a second to read the caption.)

Sculpted

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Sculpted

These lines upon my face are ripple marks that represent
all of my life’s ebb and flow, those tides that life has sent.
Calligraphy defining those advantages provided
along with life’s misfortunes that somehow I abided.

Life gives and takes away, sometimes in equal measure—
pain spicing our life as surely as the pleasure—
smile lines as well as creases left by frowns.
Surely, there’s no shortage of life’s ups and downs.

It is the hand of nature sculpting animal and flower,
altering and remolding hour after hour.
From dinosaur to newborn babe—fish and bird and tree,
there is no end to our world’s originality.

Time is the finest sculptor of everything we see.
It is the very master of creativity.
Animal, vegetable, mineral—no two things quite the same.
Constant alteration is evolution’s game.

 

Prompt words today are ripple marks, represent, spice, definition, shortage and advantage.

Man Vs. Machine

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Man Vs. Machine

It is expedient that we convene
to discuss this new machine.
With teamwork, could we not achieve
all our higher-ups believe
needs to be done by this contraption
that according to its caption
can do the work of many men,
perhaps, it says, the work of ten?

Farewell to manpower, hello panic.
Made obsolete by things mechanic!
While ensconced in our cocoons,
it seems that corporate buffoons
have been brisk to seal our fate
and, alas, we’ve learned too late
that man by man, we’ll be ejected
by this means today detected.

And this is why I’m doubly keen
on dealing with this damn machine,
for men have brains but robots don’t.
If we retaliate, it won’t,
I think that we should make the hit
and simply throw a wrench in it!
Thereby persuading all our bosses
of better ways to stem their losses.

Word prompts today are cocoon, brisk, teamwork, expedient, discuss and farewell.

Bucket Listless

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Bucket Listless

Before I have to face the heavenly ordeal—
(perhaps discovering that what I’ve scoffed at is for real.)
Before I kick the bucket, and while I’m still alive,
I’ve been told I have to choose a thing or five
and label them my “bucket list,” a practice I abhor,
(and even if I did, I can only think of four
things that might elate me as I shuffle toward the door.)

If I had the energy, I’d surely take to wing
and fly to foreign spaces to see everything
I didn’t see the first time, when I was in my youth
and as short of brains as  I was short of tooth.
Something about youth draws fortune to our side,
and when you bring up adventure, I think of ones I tried
and shake my head in wonder, surprised that no one died.

I’d like to go to Ireland or on a last safari,
or maybe back to India to replace the sari
I buried my dear cat in because he loved it so,
yet I fear my energy is at an all-time low,
so I will spend my dotage sitting in my chair,
thinking of adventures that I do not dare
pursuing, for I find I dread their wear and tear!!!

Prompts today are: bucket list, elated, heavenly, ordeal, alive and wings.