Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Escargot

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Escargot

I am an ally of the truth, which lives the whole world over,
hiding beneath leaves of grass or hyacinths or clover.

A tiny snail detective, sliding slowly with no sound,
scoping out a food source over every edge and mound—

with its single jaw at work, nature’s innovation
cleans up all her messes with its constant mastication.

Cutter ants march by like time, disposing hour by hour,
of beauty we aren’t finished with, flower after flower,

but the snail goes gliding by, almost beyond detection,
eating everything in sight—less picky in selection.

From animal waste to fungus, and even other snails,
the appetite of gastropods seemingly never fails.

And then, ludicrous humans, knowing not what they do,
themselves devour these creatures who deign to dine on poo!

 

Prompt words today are snail,  innovation, detective, march, ally and clover.

Dreamworld

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Dreamworld

My dreams are irregular and I cannot control them.
Every night I enter them in order to patrol them.

Sometimes I feel marooned there, like a miner with no pick,
a writer with no pencil, a conductor with no stick.

Vanity is left behind. No room for it in dreams.
Life’s garment that we’ve sewn with care is ripped out at its seams.

It does no good to gripe or moan that you have lost control,
for dreams move us outside ourselves as though that is their goal.

On the outside looking in, our life becomes a role
in which we play ourself in our quest to find our soul.

Prompts today are dreams, irregular, maroon, gripe, miner and vanity.

Process of Elimination

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Process of Elimination

The child asked her grandpa to teach her how to spell,
and he could not deny her, though he knew good and well
that spelling class for him had been a different sort of Hell.

They had not been his forte, the chalk board and the book,
and so this was a challenge he timorously took. 
He had to find a method to help, by hook or crook!

He said to make a menu of all the words she sought
and he would make a list of all the spellings they were not—
a reverse teaching method that, thankfully, she bought! 

So, she gave her assent to all his ballyhoo,
discounting his misspellings of “tuthbrush”  “taribul” “hoo,”
on her route to finding  spellings that were new.

Thus she learned to overlook solutions that he sold her
in the loving ill-contrived way he sought to mold her
and used the dictionary, ruling out spellings he’d told her. 

Prompts today are: timorous, toothbrush, ballyhoo, assent, spell and menu.

Improving on the Masters

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Improving on the Masters

Surreptitiously, I raise the quill to make a thin gray line
to festoon the drawing that is not even mine,
then tuck my small utensil securely in my purse.
Nightly I make this journey, and nightly I rehearse

what I will say if caught at last, imagining the worse.

The art museum’s climate—chill and dry and dark
gives way to summer’s damp heat as I hurry through the park,
find my car and drive away, speeding ever faster
lest I be finally detected, improving on a master.

 

Prompt words today are festoon, surreptitiously, quill, utensil, thin, climate.

Love Objects

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Love Objects

While brides and grooms may view their love as something indivisible,

others find committed love as something they find risible.

With no direct object, love’s intransitive to some.
Instead of one love interest, they relish what may come.

Holy men may meditate on all that love can be,
while lesser men make light of it and take it on their knee

with a chortle and a crass approach that says they’ll have a look,
but don’t intend to be the one strung up on a hook,

captured and rebranded as a certain lady’s mister,
as he has equal feelings for her best friend and her sister.

Such men prefer to spread their light of love throughout the earth.
For them their love is dappled, a thing of fun and mirth.

Gurus, priests and bon vivants can’t settle on just one.
They’ll spread their love throughout their world before the day is done.

Prompt words are intransitive, meditate, risible (provoking laughter), chortle, look and dappled. Images of wedding scene, guru and partiers are from Unsplash.

Sunshine in Winter

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Sunshine in Winter

The sun casts its apricity against the bitter wind,
trying to convince us that it is our friend.
And though it cooks us in the summer, in winter, I admit,
when it warms us with its rays, I pray it will not quit.

Frozen in the wilderness, I resume my plea
that the rays of father Sol will manage to find me.
Once they desert their provenance, do those rays remember he
gave them clear direction to be sure to shine on me?

 

Prompt word are apricity (the warmth of the sun in winter, obsolete) cook, provenance, bitter, wilderness, resume.

Compositionally Befuddled

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Compositionally Befuddled

I’m not the beneficiary of your gift for words.
My acumen for spinning tales is simply for the birds.
When I type, the words roll out but they’re not all right.
Then the need to sort them out ends up as my plight.

I need a thesaurus for the simplest of statements.
I ask for enlargements when I really seek abatements.
I chafe under the rub of words, waiting for a rebuke.
Although I want a kumquat, I wind up with a cuke.

I could use some help most days when choosing words to keep.
Sometimes I have nightmares rifling through words in my sleep.
So when I err, be kind my friends, for I fear it’s true
that I have scant facility for what I choose to do!!!

 

Prompt words today are keep, type, rebuke, chafe, beneficiary and thesaurus.

Unsolicited Advice

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Unsolicited Advice

With buckets of advice and a blizzard of suggestions,
and prolific answers to all of life’s great questions,
he blusters and pontificates and tells us how to live
with advice he never follows, but which, nonetheless, he gives.

He imparts his wisdom to everyone he meets:
from how to run your business to your life between the sheets.
Advice on morals, love and sex (all in his domain)
make even brief encounters such a royal pain.

You know he’ll scratch his whiskers and open up his yap
and once again you will be caught in his vocal trap.
And so you’ve found that at first sight, you must avoid detection
by altering your footsteps to an alternate direction.

Prompt words today are whiskers, sheet, prolific, bluster, bucket and blizzard. Image by Roberto Quezada on Unsplash.

Kudzu

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Kudzu

By the statue of the satyr where the kudzu is the thickest,
I toil pulling roots out, and I swear I am the quickest.
Every place I see the vine, I vow that I will best it.
I remove  it from the soil, conquering it lest it
cover all my property from here up to the sea,
knowing if it had its way, that it would cover me!!!

Prompt words today are satyr, place, kudzu, toil, root and me.

School Reunion

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School Reunion

We’re grateful for the tiger in his ancient baseball shirt.
He’s still sliding into bases while we’re dishing out the dirt.

Non-Trumper against Trumper, human rightist against bigot,
all the ways we’ve grown apart, gushing from the spigot.

When the debate gets heated, he brings about a shift,
repeating old glories until we get his drift

and switch our conversation way back to the past
to all those high school memories that thankfully still last

and that turn the party back to what it should have been:
turning old friends back to what they all were way back when.

Prompts today are heater, party, grateful, tiger and shift. Image by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash.