Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Culinary Taboos

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Culinary Taboos

Hot dogs, tacos, ham on rye
are the ways that I get by.
I don’t like caviar on toast,
and what I really hate the most
are liver, tripe or heart or brains.
These are the things my taste disdains.
I cannot masticate and eat
These things that, think, digest or beat.
The height of what my mouth deplores,
they’re  what my stomach most deplores.
And it has never been my habit
to eat lamb or veal or rabbit,
possibly because it gets
me thinking about former pets
and liaisons with baby creatures
that were very frequent features
in a childhood wherein we
sheltered a menagerie
of magpies, bunnies, kittens, rabbits
that fulfilled my parents’ habits
to collect those orphaned things
that often life presents and brings
to those who notice what is needed
by those abandoned or defeated..
Zippy, Fluffy, Tiger, Poo
were the names of just a few
babies that became our peers
within our formative years,
which is  why I still dispute
eating things so young and cute.
But reasons that I do not eat
any fish or organ meat? 
The answer is succinct and easy.
They just simply make me queazy!

True story? Yes, we really did have a baby raccoon named Zippy and all of these other orphaned animals brought home from the ranch by my father and raised like her own kids by my mother.
And yes, this poem rambles a bit, but for Pete’s sake, look at the prompt words!! Not complaining, just explaining….And that is Zippy up there as an illustration not of a possible cuisine choice, but he was one of our orphaned animal adoptees.

Prompts today are zippy, possible, rye, liaison, height and shelter.

Headline News

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Headline News

I think for a week or two that I will remain
tucked away within the walls of my own domain.
That I made the headlines was flattering, more or less,
but the fact that I’ve turned sexy was a misprint, you might guess.
Still, so many have indulged their need for jokes at my expense
that I have had to seize this means to come to my defense.
Though my physical condition is healthy, fit and agile,
I find my sense of humor is becoming rather fragile.

It is “sixty” I turned yesterday, not “sexy” as reported.
Years have passed since I was so venereally comported.
My past generosity in spreading love around
I left back in the sixties and since then I have found
that piety becomes me, so I’ve trod another path,
thus, you’ll understand my embarrassment and wrath
at what some find as funny and so I took the action
of insisting that the paper issue a retraction.

But the form of their retraction, I must say, I found unkind.
The headline I’m not sexy was not what I had in mind.

Prompts today are.: domain,  indulge, agile, misprint and  generous,   Image by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash.

Fleeced and Avenged

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Fleeced and Avenged

When first my antagonist burst upon the scene,
he was an enterprising human sales machine.
I was his favorite client, an accomplishment for sure—
innocent and gullible and open to the lure.
I had little experience foreshadowing the end.
No idea at all what lay waiting ’round the bend.
But I fear his achievement was unduly brief,
because Daddy called the sheriff, declaring him a thief.
Now he’s living in the jailhouse and his board and room is free.
He’s living on the county now—not on little old me!

 

Today’s prompts are achievement, foreshadow, antagonist, enterprise, burst and accomplishment.  Image from Pinterest.

Undertow

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Undertow

Dreams conflate reality, making it surreal—
blend present, past and future until they all congeal.
Therein we twist reality into a tangled fray
that’s lived at night but vanishes in the light of day.

We blunder through their memory, half knowing what is real,
trying to sort out whether we know or sense or feel.
If we could just replay them like a picture show,
we might bring to the surface their mysterious undertow.

 

Prompts today are: only, twist, blunder, vanish and conflate.

Grandpa’s Solo Visits

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Grandpa’s Solo Visits

It’s mysterious how the volume of our cereal goes down
whenever Grandpa chooses to visit in our town.
Without Grandma’s influence, his willpower is zilch
and so he takes this opportunity to filch
our Coco Puffs and Captain Crunch and other cereal,
for he likes a little crackling in his morning meal
along with all the sugar, ‘cuz he swears it puts some zip
in his faltering “get-along” and soothes his aching hip.
None of us tell Grandma, because once he has his fill,
when we all go out for ice cream, Grandpa picks up the bill!!!!

Prompts today are: volume, cereal, mysterious, filch, influence and crackling. Before you ask, this is pure fiction. Sadly, I never had a grandpa. They both died before I was born. If I’d had one, though, I wish he’d been like this grandpa.

No Pattern

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No Pattern

To placate her parents, they said that she’d improve.
With praxis and time’s passage, she would slip into the groove.
They said that she would blossom like all the other girls,
subscribe to dolls and ruffles, to lipstick and to curls.
But she remained mysterious, preferring other things.
She asked for cars and baseballs instead of pretty rings.
She didn’t set the table or ask to dry the dishes.
To help her dad cut firewood fell more within her wishes.
No formula they set for her worked out for her because
stubbornly and true to self, she turned out who she was!

Prompt words are placate, subscribe, mysterious, praxis, table and blossom. Image by Reeney Jenkins on Unsplash.

Qualms

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Qualms

He’s preoccupied with thoughts of flight with no intent to stay.
Amid the fuss, his only thought? He has to run away.
What creates the tension? His need to keep at bay
the awareness that his nuptials are scheduled for today.

Does the groom have any doubts? I think, perhaps, he may.
His wedding vows have slipped his mind and stolen clean away.
When he’s asked the pertinent question, dare he utter, “Nay?”
The music starts and he walks down the aisle on feet of clay.

 

 

 

Prompts today are  run, preoccupation,  create, tense, nuptials, amid.
Image by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash.

Uphill Climb

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Uphill Climb

Wind decries my progress on this uphill trail—
any ingress I might make impeded by the gale.
Moths whip against my shoulders. Birds soar far over head.
On days like this I feel as though I’d rather stay in bed.

But blessings spiral downward once the sun begins to rise
and another glorious day appears before my eyes.
Dull thoughts dry up in morning light and inspiration dawns—
all struggles of this waking up dispensed of with my yawns.

 

 

Prompt words today are decry, dull, wind, ingress, downward and moths.

Cycles

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Cycles

Gulches carved by raindrops, sandcastles swamped by waves.
Drip by drip, stalactites transgressing into caves.
The way of nature, changing things, sometimes recklessly.
Tearing down what man has built, always impartially.

The ennui of summer days give way to winter’s shout––
dumping drifts of snow and then blowing it about.
A fairy ring of mushrooms gives birth to what was fallen.
A single bumblebee extracting nectar, spreading pollen.

Prompt words today are gulch, ring, impartial, ennui, reckless and sandcastles. All images by me except for the photo of stalagmites and stalactites by Jakub Micuch on Unsplash.

“To Do”

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My real “To Do” pile!!!
See this ‘to do” list? Does it happen to have feeding time on it?

Click on photos to enlarge and read commentary.

“To Do”

My networking agenda is getting rather full,
and I feel much-encumbered by its towering pull.
File after file lined up row on row,
I encounter my “to do” pile everywhere I go.

If I were more resourceful, I would have got them done,
Instead I follow other paths and thus accomplish none.
My list grows longer by the day, yet I ignore its flow
streaming off my desktop onto the floor below.

If I allow defection and follow unplanned whims,
wasting time in tidepools and swinging off of limbs,
what do I care if niftier friends do as their lists insist.
There’s more to life than what I’ve written up on any list.

 

Prompt words for today are : nifty, resourceful, network, list, encumbered, flow.