Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

New Words Coined or Words Remembered?

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New Words Coined or Words Remembered?

To *neotorize a new word when you can’t find a rhyme
is not really playing fair, in fact it is a crime.
Surely any writer who is worth her salt
is expected to have words enough stored in her mental vault

so no errant *wyvern can abscond with them,
and fly them off to some tall tree, where, perched upon a limb,
he’ll breath fire, thus reducing all the words to ash,
dispensing all their fragments with a tremendous lash

of tail as he flies off again in a hunt bicoastal,
for words shared by any means: books, magazines or postal.
No honeyed tongue can save them once charred and ground to dust,
but still all words that they contained should be recalled and must

once more be written down so those words purloined and embered
by the next generation can be read and thus remembered.
No need to coin new words to express those thoughts once thought.
Better to recall the ones poets of old have wrought.

Hard enough to put them in the rows they once assumed.
Half the work is over once the old words are exhumed.
Why go to twice the work when half the work will do?
And best that once restored, you hide them from the wyvern’s view!!!!

 

*to neotorize is to coin new words, terms or expressions.
*a wyvern is a legendary creature with a dragon’s head and wings, a reptilian body.

Prompt words today are ash, abscond, expect, *neotorize, honey, *wyvern and  coastal

Shelled Sanctity

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Shelled Sanctity

This retreat for turtles in the mountains of Nepal
has the godliest turtles on our Earthly spinning ball.

See the holiest of holies in their tiny saffron robes,
doing daily meditations by pushing tiny globes

first eastward and then westward with a pointed beak,
defining piety by actions instead of how they speak.

See lurking in the shadows, a million tiny ants,
bending low to watch their passing, those tiny sycophants—

who profess to kiss the ground that the turtles walk upon,
but instead just make use of the paths they’ve made when they are gone.

Busy small collectors, they build layer upon layer
of food to nourish bodies, but murmur not a prayer

in thanks for what they’re given, for they know right well
proper thanks is being given by the Brothers of the Shell.

 

Prompts today are lurking, define, saffron, satirical, godliest, turtles and sycophant.

Rudely Interrupted

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Rudely Interrupted

Notwithstanding what the newspapers say, I am not capricious.
I merely have a questioning eye that’s oftentimes suspicious.

I found the blade and saw the blood and what I had surveyed
I felt was information that must be conveyed.

It’s true the entire police force was at once deployed
and also true the mayor was excessively annoyed 

that it was his summer barbecue  that was rudely stormed.
by the selfsame vice squad that he had lately formed.

Only to have them tell him when he did his yearly preps
for his fabled pig roast on his own front steps,

he should remove the grisly evidence lest neighbors be alarmed
that it might have been a human being that was harmed.

The mayor, truly irked at the action he’d incited,
resumed his annual picnic and I was not invited!!!

 

Prompts today are capricious, blade, survey, deploy, questioner, newspaper and notwithstanding. If you want to play along, the links to the prompt sites are under the prompt words. Image by Hassan Rafhaan on Unsplash.

Resolution

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Resolution

She refused to remain the underdog, tethered to her stanchion.
She’d trade her present hovel for a stately mansion.
She’d update all her fashions and tone her waist and thighs,
exercise with vigor to decrease her zaftig size.
She’d become more vivacious, more up on all the news.
She’d practice stealth and cunning in interpreting the clues
of what it took to rise up in the elite scene,
responsive to what it might take to be a social queen.
But alas, it never happened, for to her great sorrow,
she kept putting self-improvement off until tomorrow.

Prompt words today are mansion, update, responsive, stealth,  vivacious and underdog.

Isosceles

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Isosceles

A silly argument at best,
and yet it would not come to rest.
They simply could not seem to cease
their debate on “isosceles.”
They could not bring to a fruition
discussion on its definition.

He said the answer had to be
that the triangle had three
even sides, while she said two,
and they wondered what to do
to resolve their worrisome plight
and  determine who was right.

In every other prior fight,
there was a book to set them right,
yet while spring cleaning, they’d packed up
every book and dish and cup
to maintain their purity
with absolute surety.

But both of them thought it was ruthless
to remain unschooled and truthless
on this subject math-related
they so hotly had debated.
So in the end, they thought they must
unpack the boxes and chance the dust.

They placed the boxes around the border
in some semblance of neat order,
opening one, then two and three
to try to solve the mystery,
kneeling there on bended knee
to try to find some verity.

When finally they found the truth,
to be two sides, ’twas sad, foresooth,
that in the end, they found the fight
still had not been set to right,
for neither would admit to be
the one who had insisted three!

Prompt words today are wonder, prior, cleaning, semblance, isosceles, argument and purity.

Why I Can’t Do The Prompts Today

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Why I Can’t Do The Prompts Today

I think I’ll be a morning grouch
and spend these hours on the couch
making lists of things for doing—
certain things that involve gluing,
cleaning, sorting, chopping, timing—
things that do not involve rhyming.

A sea of things I’ve been concealing,
chores that stack up to the ceiling,
divert me from acts of creation
with chores of limitless cessation.
Hobbies I’d rather pursue
put off by what I’ve gotta do.

Pay my house fees, cook the stew,
trim the bushes, find the glue
to fix the statue, sort my purse,
clean out the junk drawer, then rehearse
my poems for next Friday’s reading.
Fix my blouse. Restore its beading.

Answer emails, call the plumber.
Modern life is such a bummer.
Sometimes I think I exist
solely to check off a list.
At any rate, as I have ranted,
other parts of me recanted.

It seems I’m such a winsome elf
that this poem just wrote itself!!!!!!

Prompts today are winsome, sea, certain, list, grouch, hobby and concealing.

Obstruction of Poetry (The Wandering Muse)

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Obstruction of Poetry
(The Wandering Muse)

I’ve no wish to obstruct the truth. The fault is purely mine.
The reason why I’m having such a struggle, line by line,
is because my poet muse is taking a vacation,
having lately moved herself to a new location.

She took my genius with her, in spite of friends’ directions
that I should submit her to most vigorous inspections.
In my innocence, I failed, for though I checked her cape,
her briefcase, pockets and her purse, she made her great escape

by smuggling my genius out, displaying her fine wit
by tucking it into a place where I did not find it.
No place could be more obvious, yet I didn’t think to peek
in the place where genius often hides—between the tongue and cheek!

Prompt words are obstruct,  genius, cape, fail, innocent and direct. Image by Natasha Hall on Unsplash.

Failed Reformation

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Failed Reformation

In between sit-ups and stretches,
hubby moans and groans and kvetches.
For him there is no correlation
between fitness and elation.
Each new feasible solution
resulting in his diminution

though undefined, I think just might
bring about my spouse’s flight
to avoid any surprises
involving his exercises.
What he should look like and should weigh
bring disagreements every day,

for though I want him lean and svelte,
if you asked him what he felt,
he’d say a form more soft and paunchy
suits a man who is more raunchy.
While I tout vegetables and soys,
he wants to be one of the boys.

Hamburgers and fries and shakes,
baked potatoes and rib eye steaks
are the menus he prefers,
so when we order, it’s “his and hers.”
Chef salad is what I will choose.
His order? Pork chops, pie and booze!

Prompts today are flight, disagreement, stretches, feasible, undefined and correlation. Photo by ehimetalor akhere unuabona on Unsplash.

August Buffet

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August Buffet

Although we came for the buffet,
what harm is there if we delay?
That pile of leaves looks so inviting.
The kid in me it is inciting.

Piled up so deep and dense and crunchy,
even though I’m feeling lunchy,
still I have a need more urgent,
childish thoughts now more resurgent.

All of spring’s precipitation
prompted lush leaves and the inception
of my hopes for autumn joys
shared by kids—both girls and boys

in festering imaginations
for these countless generations.
And so, we take a giant leap
to dive into the glorious heap,

Rolling in their crisp and crunch,
forestalling  our urgency to munch.
Then, brushing off our fronts and backs,
we go inside for drinks and snacks.

2015

 

 


Prompts today are crunchy, look, buffet, August, spring and precipitation. Image of  leaves by Patrick Connor and buffet by Markus Winkler, both @Unsplash and image of me by Forgottenman. Other images by me.

That Last Infernal Prompt

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She said: Feeling sad.

That Last Infernal Prompt

She was the only casualty of the delphic clue
so obscure no other blogger knew quite what to do
with a word like “xiphisternal.” What other site was rude
enough to pose a prompt word so juvenile and crude?

She tried to write a ballad that would win her wide renown.
Instead, the stress of writing it was what brought her down.
That heart attack (her cause of death) was ironically infernal,
for the last pain that she felt on earth was sadly xiphisternal

 

Prompt words today are juvenile, casualty, ballad, delphic, xiphisternal and down.
To save your looking it up as I was forced to do,  the xiphisternal joint (or xiphisternal symphysis) is a location near the bottom of the sternum, where the body of the sternum and the xiphoid process meet.

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