Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Just Desserts

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Just Desserts

Was my brother ornery or was he merely dumb?
Once he told me rubber bands were a new sort of gum
that didn’t blow good bubbles, but at least you could rechew it,
saving you the money of having to renew it.

Given any option, he was bound to choose the crazy one,
and if the choice involved some work, sure to choose the lazy one.
He always had ideas about how to do work faster,
and without exception, they resulted in disaster.

Like the time he used Dad’s blowtorch to trim all of our trees,
not taking into full account the briskness of the breeze
and set the house on fire, slightly singing the outside,
and when the firetrucks arrived, he asked them for a ride!

Once when men came to fix the roof, I heard the kitty mewing
and knew at once there was a chance that more mischief was brewing.
Whatever put it in his head to waterproof the cat
by dipping it from tail to neck in the tarring vat?

He’d do things like putting red ants inside my skirt,
and when my folks weren’t watching, he’d spit on my dessert,
then eat the rest himself when I asked to leave the table.
He found ways to torment me whenever he was able.

Entertainment such as this was what amused my brother,
giving ulcers to my dad and white hairs to my mother.
But growing up with brother turned out fortunate for me,
for he gave a clear pattern of what I shouldn’t be.

And now that I have kids myself to tend and love and cook for,
I have a sure advantage, for I know just what to look for.
I see things with my brother’s eye and remove such temptations
that might lead to misdirections in their moral educations.

And as for my brother’s childhood deportment flaws,
just desserts were finally served. I know this because
fate dished out the punishment for his childhood errors
by giving him two sons that I hear are holy terrors!

Prompt words today are waterproof, idea, head, ornery and option.

Special Delivery

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Special Delivery

Fetch the doctor and bring him home.
I’m giving birth to a new poem.
If he gives you the runaround,
I guess I’ll be hospital-bound,
for I’ve got fever, cramps and chills
that can’t be cured by any pills.

I’m falling into a big pit
and I can’t get rid of it.
The lacuna waits for me.
It is the well of poetry
that I’ll fall into if no saint
comes to rid me of the taint
of words that rhyme or words that don’t.
 I fear that if the doctor won’t,
surely I’ll be ripped apart
by narratives that must depart.

They’ve been gestating so long
that I fear something will go wrong.
So call the doctor. Tell the fellow
that my fingers have gone yellow
from the words that can’t get out.
I’m getting rheumatism, gout.

I’ve got a mass within my heart
and I don’t know how best to start
to free the words that must be born—
that from my body must be torn.
Womb and brain and heart and spleen
stuffed full but yearning to be lean.

Emptied of words, stripped to the core,
then I”ll have room to sprout some more.
For though I grow the poems right well
and have fine stories I can tell—
although I’m bursting with the stuff,
I know that words are not enough.
For years they have been telling me
it’s all in the delivery.

 

 

Prompt words are fetch, runaround, chills, yellow and lacuna.
Photo by Freestocks on Unsplash.

Helpmate

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Helpmate

I treasure your good nature—your kindnesses and grins.
How you do not fustigate me for my many sins.
You tackle my complexities and understand my meaning,
sort through my poor excuses and somehow end up gleaning
positive from negative, just remembering what
in any lesser person would be the details cut.
You bring out the best in me so I’m a better man—
living by not what I did but by what I can. 
You help me aim for goals that without you I’d disdain,
constantly reminding me of what I can attain.

Prompt words are tackle, treasure, fustigate, category and glean

Mall Mode

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Mall Mode

Shopping malls and market finds are sites of great commotion.
They thrive on hype and slick techniques and tactics of promotion.

They are keen on chicanery that brings you in to buy.
You simply cannot wait to get your portion of the pie.

Pizza Huts and Burger Kings vie for your attention
if you seek a little break to ease the shopping tension.

But you must know the lingo that goes with hot new styles.
The modern world depends on more than simply fashion’s wiles.

When you see a friend’s dope shoes as well as her new hat,
you know enough to call them goat and not to call them phat.

Prompts today are market finds, keen, technique, chicanery and promotion. I might even try to squeeze in some prompts from Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Her prompts today are: “hat,”  “hit,” “hot,” and “hut.” Image by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash, used with permission.

Lift

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Click on photos to enlarge.


Lift

You burn the air with tail and wing,
not thinking about anything.

Each lift of pinion simple, sure,
anonymous, unplanned and pure.

No slipshod planning, everything
insures facility of wing.

Each barb, each shaft composed with care
made less of matter than of air.

We only guess. We do not know,
what hand has engineered it so,

 merely wonder at its might
as we watch your easy flight,

lifting up with ease most rare
by miracle of wing on air.

 

Prompt words today are burn, simple, slipshod and wing.

Peddler’s Daughter

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Peddler’s Daughter

My father was a spruiker. At the juncture of each road,
he pulled his wagon to the side and spilled out all his load.
His wagon, heavy-laden, contained such treasures that
he knew he would sell something. He had his spiel down flat.

He had an old pump organ whose callithumpian tunes
filled the air with music from the treetops to the dunes.
People came from miles away to see what caused the din,
then grouped around the wagon to see what was within.

This commenced the distribution of all my papa’s treasures:
clothes and pans and furbelows and other worldly pleasures:
squeezeboxes and vases and women’s pantaloons,
chamber pots and laces and inflatable pontoons.

Pre-loved dolls for little girls and balls for little boys.
Jump ropes, checkers, building blocks, assorted wind-up toys.
Tobacco  plugs for Grandpa and canning jars for Gran.
Corsets for vain ladies to decrease their middle span.

Bridles for one’s horses and ropes to lead their cows.
Chicken feed and saddles and feeding trays for sows.
There was hardly anything that wagon did not hold,
and my father’s selling spiel was loud and brash and bold.

“Huzzah huzzah, huzzzah!” he’d call out to the crowd,
his bounty spread for viewing and touching was allowed.
Everything available–all that you could see
except for one thing on the wagon seat, and that small girl was me!!!!

 

Prompt words today are spruiker, juncture, callithumpian, lade and distribution. Image by Tamara Garcevic on Unsplash, used with permission.

spruiker noun at spruik verb. DEFINITIONS1. 1. (Australian English) someone who tries to persuade people to buy something, use a service, etc often in a dishonest or exaggerated way.

Callithumpian refers to a band of discordant instruments or a noisy parade.

“The Fool Doth Think He Is Wise”

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“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
–Wm. Shakespeare
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
                                                                                    —Charles Darwin  in The Descent of Man
“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating
that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.”
–(Wikipedia)

“The Fool Doth Think He Is Wise”

Although his conclusion was toothsome and salty,
it was my colleague’s premise I found to be faulty.
His logic? Ramshackle, for facts in his keeping
would make a logician run, screaming and leaping,
out of the room and over the hill,
when of this insanity, he’d had his fill.

Light intellect teamed up with heavy endeavor,
expressed by a soul neither heartful nor clever
is a dangerous pairing in this Internet world,
where such like-minded fools, their illogic unfurled,
can find a wide audience, hardly deserved,
that would leave Einstein weeping and Hawking unnerved.

 

Prompt words are colleague, ramshackle, leaping, premise and heavy.

He Said, She Said

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He Said, She Said

When she questioned his fidelity, he said she was a loser,
though he was the real lowlife—a bully and a bruiser.
“We’re not a pair,” he snapped at her. “I never took an oath
that I would be true to you, in fact, I’m rather loath
to say that when I married you, it wasn’t a mistake.
The only thing I liked about it was the wedding cake!

I’d had a few too many the day that we were hitched
and ever since we had the kids, you have bitched and bitched.
You like to snap my head off If I partake with the boys
and come home after midnight. If I make the slightest noise
and if I wake the kids up, well, so what? They’re my kids, too.
Perhaps they’d like to spend some time with me instead of you.

So what if it is 3 a.m.? Tomorrow we’ll sleep in.
You’d think that playing with your kids past midnight is a sin!!!!
The way to keep your man is to practice your felicity.
Instead of gripes, I’d like to see some wifely elasticity.
I always was a party guy. I always was a rover.
If you expect much more of me, my time with you is over.”

To Which She Answered:

The kids are at my mother’s, your packed bag in the garage.
Almost from the beginning, our marriage was a mirage.
I’ve called the man to change the locks. I’ve closed our bank account.
There’s money in your suitcase—a very small amount.
My father bought our house and my salary, at best,
is what was in the bank account. You drank up all the rest.

So what if it is 3 a.m.? You’re used to nighttime games.
Check your little black book. It’s sure to yield some names.
If you’ve had too much to drink, it’s best you don’t drive far,
but I’m sure that you’ll be comfy sleeping in the car.
I’ve decided to withdraw from marital complicity,
and that will bring you what you want. In short, your wife’s felicity!!

Prompts today are “not a pair,” snap, partake, felicity and loser. Photo by Elvis Bekmanis on Unsplash, used with permission.

Final Curtain

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Final Curtain

Behind a tangle of bushes and impenetrable wood,
paint peeling from its walls in strips, the ancient mansion stood.
A blemish on our neighborhood, the property condemned.
By its neighbors’ pristine hedges, its boundaries were hemmed
like burnsides on each side of an unruly mustache.
And no amount of pressure and no amount of cash
could persuade the one who lived there—a widow old and frail
to repair her ravaged property or put it up for sale.

And though neighbors voiced their protests, she challenged one and all
simply by remaining behind her crumbling wall.
At night, thin wispy music from her gramophone
leaked out through the bushes as she danced on all alone
over creaking floorboards, reliving bygone days
and a life once vivid now diminished to a haze.
Reenacting dramas of a life gone by too fast,
she played the heroine while other roles all went uncast.

 

Prompt words today are challenge, blemish, burnsides, tangle and property. Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash, used with permission.

Beach Rendezvous

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Beach Rendezvous

Your andante whistle matches your advance—measured and slow, as though you know where you are going, but are in no hurry to get there. You’ve grown weird and amphibious—spending equal time in water and on land, a surfboard your new mount, your cowboy hat metamorphosed into a billed cap worn backwards.

You have achieved some notoriety due to that prowess in water that you never found on dry land. You, who crashed cars into traffic cones and bicycles into fences, weave effortlessly from wave to wave, then ride their crests. You nosh on kale and granola, leaving McDonald’s in the past. Who would ever guess that this cowboy farmer would start surfing from scratch at the age of thirty, thereby achieving a fame he’d never earned in the rodeo?

You scratch your forehead, freeing a long blond lock from its imprisonment, pull off your cap and take a playful swap at my shoulder as we draw close enough to share a hug, a kiss.  Classmates our whole lives from elementary school through college, we have somehow slipped into different generations—you the proverbial beach boy surfer, me the middle-aged mommy herding kids away from sand crabs and beached stingrays, you gliding between them on water, already a fixture in this cool beach town–your whole life composed of what for me is an occasional weekend visit lugging picnic basket, beach towels, blanket, umbrella and three children aged four to ten.

“Daddy!” the kids scream, running toward us streaming seawater from their heels. One by one, you grab them under their arms, spinning them in wild circles, then, with the smallest one on your shoulders and grasping the hands of the others on either side, you make off for the water to reacquaint them with their aquatic side. The picture I took that day shows four kids playing in the water. I had given birth to three of them. You gave birth to the fourth.

Prompt words today are andante,amphibious, scratch, achieving, nosh and weird.