Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Playing with Fire

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Playing with Fire

In the circles she lives in, she’s queen of the realm.
Wherever she goes, she must be at the helm.
They call her the Admiral, head of the fleet.
She’ll hear no debate and she’ll bear no defeat.

When she is challenged, she’s ready to fight.
Incadescent with anger, she’ll insist that she’s right.
Once her rage is incited, she could drive you to drink.
Your role is to follow. Her role is to think.

When you rub her together with one of her kind,
they’re bound to express a difference of mind,
and since neither can bear an opposing notion,
it’s bound to lead to explosive emotion.

Rub them together and they’re sure to fight.
Like sulphur on sandpaper, they will ignite.
So keep them apart, these glorious dames,
or one or the other will go up in flames.

 

 

Prompts today are in the circle, realm, incadescent, fleet and drink.
Image by Olga Bast on Unsplash.

Ephemera

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Ephemera

Time drips off its pendulum from three to four to five,
trickling off the minutes that we’ve been alive.
Vapid little seconds are flung off with each tick,
hardly ever noticed as  their passing is so quick.

The richest man on earth cannot buy more than he’s accorded.
Hours can’t be put in storage and so they can’t be hoarded.
Days can’t be the building blocks of a fine estate,
for they are just chalk marks wiped daily off our slate.

 

Prompt words today are trickle, pendulum, storage, vapid and estate. Illustration: The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali.

Catnap

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Catnap

I’m in the tidepool of repose, floating on my dream—
Hushed and very far away from exhaustion’s scream.
The telephone’s not ringing, I have nowhere to go
except to float in currents of my dreaming’s flow.
All my finicky habits stream out ahead of me
and vanish in the currents, to leave me calm and free.
My head falls to the chair back, waking me from my nap,
but as if to calm me, the cat jumps in my lap.
I fall in with his plans for me, do not avoid his scheming,
but as I gently stroke him, I fall back to my dreaming.

 

Prompt words today are tidepool, repose, telephone, finicky and exhaustion.

Solar Debacle

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Solar Debacle

Dad decided it would be wise
if we could  economize
by finally going fully solar
as skies turned overcast and polar.
No hot baths. No stove or fridge.
No TV, no lights for bridge.

Seeing the cards was too much trouble.
Mom couldn’t trump. Sis couldn’t double.
And so it was unanimous
that no one felt magnanimous.
We were one in our conviction
of our father’s dereliction.

All of us just felt derision
over Dad’s ill-timed decision.
Solar’s fine when there is sun,
but when all is said and done,
life is short and it’s no fun
when Mother Nature gives us none.

 

Since I’m in Mountain Standard time, it is only 11:42 here, so even though my blog is set for Central time, I’m counting this as getting in under the line before midnight.

Prompt words today are solar, bridge, magnanimous, convict and trouble. Free photo found on pxfuel.com

Yesterday’s Cars

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Yesterday’s Cars

Yesterday’s cars slanted down where they should
have had fins at the tail, and were square at the hood.
Some required a stepstool to enter the door,
then had a big bump centered there in the floor

The grandfathers of cars weren’t for the faint-hearted.
They required you crank them before they got  started,
and inevitably, when the tires went flat,
a service station wasn’t where you were at.

With no Triple A, the onus was on you
to figure out what you had to do.
The jacks were all manual. Tubes needed air,
so many the driver gave up in despair.

With Mom in the front seat and kids in the rumble,
dad  would pump and unscrew and blather and bumble,
then put out his thumb to beg for a ride
in a car that was passing that had room inside.

He was not feinting his look of distress,
and neither was mom, although I confess
it was an adventure for sister and me
who watched the procedure giggling with glee

as inevitably, he would hoof it to town
and we’d open the car doors, jump happily down
and cavort in a field, searching out hidden treasure
and picking up cockleburs in equal measure.

Then when dad caught a ride back with a fixed wheel,
we’d drive on to a diner for a well-deserved meal,
then be on our way, trouble-free and much faster
for the rest of our trip that was free from disaster.

 

And HERE are another two special photos of Model A’s you won’t want to miss.

Prompt words today are yesterday’s cars, slope, require, feint and inevitable. Image by Philip Schroeder on Unsplash. 

I must admit that this particular situation is fiction, although the predicament certainly must have been reenacted many times in an era earlier than mine.

Withholding with One Hand and Giving with Another

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Withholding with One Hand and Giving with Another

She feared that too much dieting would make her moribund,
and so she kept on dining until she was rotund.
She viewed dieting with horror yet felt terror when she viewed
her own form in the mirror, be it fully–clothed or nude.
Of all those excess curves and rolls, she wanted to be free.
Her rosy cheeks were garish, and she willed them not to be.
Yet her psychology of wishing misplaced not a single ounce.
She shed no flesh or inches, lost not one single bounce.

Until she fell in love one day and grew over-excited
when her amorous feelings led to passions unrequited.
And so she lost her taste for food and other worldly pleasures,
this lovelorn depression supplanting former measures
of trying to lose inches around her thighs and trunk,
and so her mass diminished as she slowly shrunk
from size eighteen to fifteen and eventually ten
and that girl in the mirror turned willowly and thin.

Men started to walk by her house and one man chose to linger,
and within the year there was a gold band on her finger.
Thus did she learn the lesson that our wishes might be met
by simply being deprived of what we want to get.
Sometimes deprivation triggers something we need more,
for we do not always know what life may have in store
when it withholds its blessings. It may be that when we wait,
exactly what we’ve wanted is dished out to us by fate!

 

Prompt words today are free, garish, terror, horror, rotund and psychology.

Human Drama

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Human Drama

The wings of destiny are stilled, waiting for our play.
Astonished at our slowness, confused at the delay.
Disappointment in mankind by now’s a usual thing.
What new human horror will the future bring?

We’ve poisoned oceans, sullied air and burdened earth with junk.
Enough to put Ma Nature in a perpetual funk.
She balks and sends out warriors to try to curb our lusts,
but still mankind continues to turn shouldn’ts into musts.

She now sees she was misguided in creating human fools,
with all  of their excesses flaunting all her rules.
Soon she’ll find another way to try to clear her slate of them
as destiny stands waiting to see what is the fate of them.

 

Prompt words today are disappointment, astonish, delay, destiny and wing,

Miser

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Miser

Money was his nemesis. He rued its silvery glow.
The piles of it below his bed had nowhere else to go.
For although he was a hoarder, always craving more of it,
his life was not made better even by just a bit.

His clothes were all in tatters. His house was falling down.
He had outstanding debts and bills in every store in town.
Not one thing about him suggested his success.
Every single outward sign only signaled distress.

He lived his life in misery. Inadequate. Alone.
Miserly and miserable, life stripped to the bone.
But when he finally passed away, his name slipped into lore.
He was the man who wasted life simply by wanting more.

Prompt words today are nemesis, inadequate, silvery, while and signal.

Well-Armed

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Well-Armed

Folks who are idolatrous
have deified the octopus.
The Durga of the watery world,
with her many arms unfurled,
when she suffers from upheaval,
she turns dangerous and evil.

Don’t underrate this ocean creature—
a lethal underwater feature.
Rankled, she exacts revenge,
her disturbed leisure to avenge,
for warfare is the medium
with which she relieves tedium.

A predator from dawn to dawn,
I could write an essay on
the sustenance she preys upon.
First they’re there and then they’re gone,
turned into impromptu feast
by this many-suckered beast.

This queen of the underworld
is lethal with her arms unfurled,
so if perchance you come upon her,
do not think that you can con her.
For if you try, I have a hunch
you might become her choice for lunch.

 

Durga is a fierce warrior goddess. She is depicted in Hindu art as riding on a lion or a tiger. She has many arms and is always brandishing a variety of weapons.

Prompt words today are octopus, essay, upheaval, rankle and medium. Image by Serena Repice Lentini on Unsplash. 

Update Fatigue

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Update Fatigue

I’m frenetically trying to dance to the beat,
determined that I don’t become obsolete.
I try not to repeat the historical me,
but I fear I’m as modern as I’m going to be.

This deluge of new things to learn and to do—
updates to look up and new settings to view—
leaves me no time for just simply living,
for petting the cat and for chatting and giving.

There’s no app for real life and so I’m less queasier,
finding my off-line life to be much easier.
Rules don’t change in a confusing whirr.
Positions don’t shift. Things remain where they were.

I’m simply not fit for the internet crew.
Too often I’m swamped over what I must do
to keep up with the changes and so I’m retiring.
All my accounts are slowly expiring.

Amazon, Facebook, WordPress and Skype
I’ll leave to the more agile changeable type
of online explorer who likes daily derangements,
frequent repositionings and rearrangements.

I’ll sit here on my porch that remains where it was
with my laptop unopened simply because
without viruses, hackers and updates and spam,
I can just rest and remain who I am!

 

 

So my instant updatesI think I’ll turn off.

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Word prompts today are deluge, repeat,frenetic, obsolete and plea.