Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Battered Wife

Battered Wife

It’s inherent in her nature that my friend just marries losers.
She says that she likes nice guys, then she hooks up with these bruisers.
I introduced her to a gentle man I hoped could be her type,
but she judged him with her eyes instead of listening to my hype.

He was placid, kind and jovial, but had a shiny head,
so she chose a sexy surly love interest instead.
Although the nicer guy leaves her feeling somewhat curious,
it seems her needs are better met by a man more furious.

 

Prompt words are placid, jovial, shiny, inherent, need and furious. Image by Kat on Unsplash.

Fake News

Fake News

Soon enough real journalism
will become anachronism.
Cretins overly ambitious
will decide that it’s propitious
to forever go online
quoting “truths” most asinine,
overlooking elemental
wisdom that is fundamental,
adding to the whole tableau
with things they “think” but do not “know,”
and God have mercy on the masses
who vote to reelect these asses.

Prompt words today are anachronism, fundamental, propitious, asinine, mercy and tableau. Image by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash.

Poetic Quandaries

Poetic Quandaries

Prompts can be unpredictable. Of that you can be sure—
if not impossible to use, then probably obscure.
It’s hard not to exaggerate when words are such a stretch.
Hard not to bitch about them. Hard not to whine and kvetch.

We march in lock step in these blogs, so penitent we’re not.
It is the prompters who weave tangled nets in which we’re caught. 
It’s hard for us to devise plans that make use of each word
and add alliteration? Folks it is absurd!!!!

Frost never had such rules to follow–and such provocations.
No such tribulations and no such vacillations.
No trying to put up with a prompt that was absurd,
but on the other hand, he had to think up every word.

Prompts are unpredictable (You can say that again–ha!!!), plan, penitent, march, exaggerate and alliteration.

For another poem for today’s alliteration prompt, go HERE!!!

Father at the Fridge

Father at the Fridge

Even though our fridge is huge since we chose to embiggen it,
everything worth munching or gulping down or swiggin’ it
seems to always be in back or buried in a pile
at the bottom of a stack of foods that we revile.

Of course all of us realize it isn’t too judicious
to hide in back the very foods that we find most delicious.
We’re in receipt of evidence yet judgement’s been suspended
about the guilty family member who’s been apprehended

burying the good food, for though there is no doubt
of who hid all the cookies behind the sauerkraut,
while we’ve been eating lettuce, the guy who has been “pie”ing it
is the selfsame person who, alas, is the one buying it.

Prompt words today are embiggen, receipt, suspended, judicious, refrigerator and doubt.

Art Imitates Nature

Art Imitates Nature

Suspended in this plastic world, my heart a gaping wound
if not for all the beauty in which it is cocooned.
How would we salvage anything from war and greed and lust
without art’s kind revision of all that is unjust
to make us reclaim hope in life simply because we must?
It’s the alchemy of nature to which we are beholden.
It takes our baser natures, transforming them to golden.

 

Prompts today are golden, salvage, wound, plastic, suspended, and revision.

What She Had Cookin’

What She Had Cookin’

A wizard in the kitchen, she performed well her thaumaturgy
by transforming  porridge into fine cuisine for me.
Each dish she served just seemed my hunger to inflate
as she put spells on my stomach and magic on my plate.

Her stew pot made by blood boil, her milk pudding made me purr,
every single dish a symbol of my love for her.
Then lying in her oaken bed, my hunger still intact,
She finally quenched my appetite. And that, folks, is a fact!!!!!

Prompt words today are: oak, intact, stomach, thaumaturgysymbol and porridge.

*Pronounced thaw’ muh tour gee,  with the accent on the first syllable, thaumaturgy is the performance of miracles; specifically : magic.

Say hey, good lookin’ – what ya got cookin’?
How’s about cookin’ somethin’ u
p with me?
Hey, sweet baby – don’t you think maybe
We can find us a brand new recipe?

I got a hot rod Ford, and a two dollar bill
And I know a spot right over the hill
There’s soda pop and the dancing’s free
So if you wanna have fun, come along with me
Say hey, good lookin’ – what ya got cookin’?
How’s about cooking somethin’ up with me?

I’m free and ready, so we can go steady
How’s about savin’ all your time for me?
No more lookin’, I know I been tookin’
How
s about keepin’ steady company?

I’m gonna throw my date book over the fence
And buy me one for five or ten cents
I’ll keep it till it’s covered with age
Cause I’m writin’ your name down on every page

Say hey, good lookin’ – what ya got cookin’?
How’s about cookin’ somethin’ up with me?

Tending the Zoo

Tending the Zoo

Grooming tasks inside the the zoo seem to go on forever
with so many body parts to clean or trim or sever,
but when it comes to manicures, one group must be exempted,
for when it comes to ungulates, the groomers are not tempted
to attempt to trim the hooves of rhino or of elephant.
Even the most burliest of manicurists find they can’t!!!

And in respect to dentistry, though elephants are easy,
when it comes to giraffes, zoo dentists are most queasy.
Giraffes are not unruly, capricious or uncouth.
The problem is the distance between the turf and tooth.
And thinning out a lion’s mane simply can’t be done.
Relinquishing their hairs? They won’t part with even one.

And every time the groomers’ van goes into parking gear,
far up in the shady green, the monkeys disappear.
For though every mosquito, every flea and every tick
that invades their body may itch or make them sick,
inter-monkey grooming is a method sure to please
better than the insect sprays, which only make them sneeze!

 

Prompt words today are green, ungulate, relinquish, capricious, shady and exempt. Image by Thomas Oxford on Unsplash.

Gain and Loss

Gain and Loss

I’ve found I simply must inure
myself to things I must endure.
I’m overweight and immature
and told my writing is obscure
written in a dialect

that people find hard to detect.

I joined a gym, but now my trainer
says he cannot make it plainer
than to say I won’t lose weight
until I choose to fill my plate
with other food and smaller portions
to decrease present proportions.

I thought if I became a spinner
I’d become a weight-loss winner,
but in fact, no pounds I’m doffing—
only panting, wheezing, coughing.
But I didn’t waste the time.
At least I came up with this rhyme.

Now perhaps if you’d elect
to check my poem’s dialect,
you’d find that though my waist and thighs
have not decreased in girth or size,
perhaps I have lost one small thang.
Have I lost, perhaps, my Dakota twang?

Today’s prompt words are winner, dialect, coughing, proportion, trainer and obscure. Image by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash.

Spray-paint and Poetry

Spray-paint and Poetry

Written as calligraphy or scrawled upon a wall,
a book tucked in our pocket or extending down the hall,
expressed as tight couplets or as an angry stew,
words impart great insight and volunteer a view
into minds of wisdom or the hapless few
who unfortunately have little else to do

but to spray-paint imprecations of gender or of race
here in public places where all of us must face
those dark spots of the soul brought into public view
so volunteers of vitriol can share with me and you
those murky muddy sentiments better buried deep
instead of out here in the world to cause us all to weep.

If left to steep within the soul perhaps some inner magic
might turn them into poetry—profound and deep and tragic.
Some inner mental chemistry performing that gestation
that makes insight of vitriol, transforming imprecation
into understanding to write upon the pages
of potential misanthropes transformed now into sages.

 

Or, in a nutshell:

Metamorphosis

imprecation
perturbation
emanation
vacillation
gestation
germination
education
equation
mutation
anticipation
excitation
elation
maturation
new creation

True, probably more graffiti is about love than hate,
but these poems are written in response to the latter.

Guiding words today are hapless, imprecation, insight, volunteer, mud and calligraphy.

Reading Challenged


Reading Challenged

Diana Gabaldon’s romances are way too historic.
Koolkosherkitchen‘s recipes? Delicious, but caloric.
Mo Willems counts on pigeons to chase away the blues,
but I’d never volunteer to fill any pigeon’s shoes
due to my fear of flying, so even in a pinch,
to read of being  airborne causes me to flinch.

Can’t read Cormac McCarthy or Murakami either.
When violence erupts in books, I have to take a breather.
Harlequin romances are too mushily romantic,
for I prefer my novels less sexually pedantic.
All-in-all you might have guessed I’ve little left to read
and so instead I write all day to satisfy my need

to hang out with a word or two that has not been written
by writers such as those above by whom I’ve not been smitten.
And though my poems aren’t edible or sexually explicit,
violent or airborne, I feel it is implicit
that I need an appointment with my therapist to see
if I can even stomach silly verses penned by me!

Prompt words are pinch, historic, appointment, volunteer, and flying. Image by Brendan Stephens on Unsplash.