Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Dressed to Kill the Blues

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Dressed to Kill the Blues

If you’re feeling washed out like your blossoming’s through,
feeling less than capricious and aged and blue,
why not ransack your closet to find something gaudy,
colorful, crazy, a little bit bawdy?

Don’t nurse a depression that you can dress up.
Why be a sad dog when you could be a pup?
Wilder clothes make you happy. Put joie in your vivre.
Tight clothes and stilettos—a  trick up your sleeve.

That impulse to give up is something to hide.
Folks will respond to what they see outside.
So when life deals the doldrums, why give in and mess it up?
You will feel better if only you  dress it up.

Prompts for the day are washed out, nurse, capricious, ransack and  blossoming.

 

Lest you think this is how my friends and I always dress, I’ll reveal that this was a Poor Taste party I threw one New Years Eve. Friends were to come dressed in the worst possible taste and to bring a dish that was tacky but delicious. It was a fun party!!!! 

Making Hay

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Making Hay

Take dinner at your leisure but with breakfast please make haste
lest one minute of your day you should think to waste.

Contemplate your choices. Delegate with care.
Of capricious working mates, I warn you to beware.

If you nurse idle habits, they’re sure to grow and thrive,
so don’t rest on your laurels while you are still alive.

Life is given as a gift so please don’t abuse it.
What a waste of riches if you choose not to use it.

Prompt words today are breakfast,  capricious, haste,  delegate and nurse. If you don’t understand the  allusion in the title, go HERE for enlightenment. Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Birthday Heist

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Birthday Heist

The rumors are untrue. He is a scurrilous liar.
I did not steal the birthday cake. I did not start the fire.

My serenity is not a ruse. I’m innocent of error.
I swear I had no hand in your recent birthday terror.

The dog has done his utmost to brand me as the thief,
but the fool is barely lucid. Could you not see his relief

when you started to upbraid me as he chased me, headed south,
crumbs falling from his chest hair, frosting around his mouth?

Oh that I knew your language and I could tell you that,
but instead, for ever after, you’ll be blaming “that damn cat!!”

Evidence of an earlier crime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtfDaBi8XE

Prompt words today are liars, lucid, scurrilous, utmost and serenity.

Ascension Dementia.

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Ascension Dementia

When it comes to penthouse parties, I’m an equivocator
if it is a building that lacks an elevator.
Lately, my flair for climbing stairs seems to be out of whack.
When it comes to floor ascension, I do not have the knack.

My gumption seems to flag a bit as I reach the brink,
for as I run short of breath, I simply cannot think.
Thus, I’m an oxymoron, for when I climb the stair,
my mental acuity simply isn’t there.

At the bottom I am boisterous and have a lot of pep
that vanishes too quickly as I take step after step.
I try to remember what I climbed nine stories for,
but I can’t for the life of me remember anymore.

 

(According to poetic lexicography, an oxymoron is someone who loses mental acuity due to oxygen loss to the brain.)

Prompts today are flag,  gumption, oxymoron, whack and boisterous.

 

Sad Movies

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Sad Movies

This movie’s so sad it should come with a tissue
and  a spare one as well with the first one they issue.
I blush to admit how my tears are just gushing. 
I’m surrounded by neighbors complaining and shushing.
It’s uncanny that I’d pay good money for this.
Nine dollars for me and nine dollars for sis.
I don’t need the mood swing. I don’t need this sadness—
exchanging for tears my earlier gladness.
If they’re going  to produce such sad entertainment,
a least they could provide adequate containment
for all of the tears and the blowing of noses.
Entertainment this year was no bed of roses!

Prompt words today are swing, uncanny, blush, issue and spare.

Fresh Resolution

Fresh Resolution

I’m not in possession. I’m off of the bottle.
My recovery is going full throttle.
I’ll be home every night in time for my supper.
Not a reefer in sight, nor a downer or upper.

What lies beneath my new resolution,
my seeking forgiveness and absolution,
is simply a need to set myself right.
I’m tired of the subterfuge every night.

I’m tired of hearing pleas to desist.
Tired of struggling just to exist.
So I’ll be your lover if you’ll be my baby.
For the rest of my life I’ll go straight again—maybe.

Prompt words today are bottle, upper, twist, beneath and possession. Image by Michael Longmire on Unsplash, used with permission.

Agates

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Agates

Often, when our hired hand took a break from work,
he’d comb the land for agates, then return with a smirk,
pockets full of shiny stones he’d removed from the clay,
bragging to my father that this was his lucky day.

Down along the river, on sunny days they shone,
mixed in with the detritus of  rocks and sand and bone.
You’d have thought that they were diamonds he’d removed from the earth,
but he didn’t judge their beauty simply by their worth.

He had learned to capture happiness anywhere he found it,
sorting out the beauty from what he found around it.
A simple man, for him it was not something he could buy.
He found beauty in a blade of grass or clouds up in the sky.

Lucky man, therefore he found beauty everywhere—
In his wife’s shy smile and his children’s flaxen hair,
wheat fields spread like blankets before the combine’s blade,
he gloried in all the riches that the earth had made.

 

Prompt words today are agate, smirk, remove, often and land. Image from USGS on Unsplash, used with permission.

 

Mergers and Acquisitions

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Mergers and Acquisitions

Their marriage was nefarious for its machinations,
for it was less love story than it was amalgamations:
wedding of fluid assets, portfolio combining,
mid-cap stocks and pipelines, oil shares and mining.

Their merger started out with a proposal to borrow—
an essay for a loan that somehow upon the morrow
turned into a merger that wed family and family
to create a union that was more of an anomaly

than it was a love story—a joining of two powers 
that should have woven dollar signs into the wedding bowers.
Thus is a son or daughter turned into corporate pawn
as simply as a corporate schemata is redrawn.

 

Prompt words today are fluid, nefarious, borrow, amalgamate and essay.

Die Laughing

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Die Laughing

Much of his popularity 
stemmed from his jocularity.
Those who described him as laconic
were certainly being ironic,
for he was fond of show and tell—
where he was rumored to excel
and used his talents more than once
to amuse a captive audience.
His violent end was unexpected.
His funny bone became infected
and went for too long undetected
until his remains were dissected.
But all agreed he’d be amused
to know a bone so overused
would be the one that would so lend
itself to bring about his end.

 

Prompt words today are jocularity, laconic, amused, violent and show. Image by Denis Agati on Unsplash, used with permission.

Spring Brakes

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Spring Brakes

Her freshman year at college, my sis brought home a guest
that dad said was a nincompoop–rude and badly dressed.
His pants were tight, his buttons opened half way down his chest,
but my sister made excuses for the crudeness he expressed
by saying he was sensitive and recently depressed.

He strode into the kitchen and jerked open the door
of the refrigerator and began to pour
milk right from the carton, down his chin onto the floor.
What’s more, when he was finished, he asked if there was more!
Well, I could sense Dad’s anger before I heard his roar.

“He can’t help his behavior, he’s parched!” my sister cried,
pleading with our father as he threw the jerk outside.
Where, by his own volition, the kid sauntered to his ride,
put the keys in the ignition and, gathering his pride,
put the pedal to the metal, but then the engine died!

To inject a bit of humor would probably be rude,
but I simply can’t resist expounding on the dude.
My parents called his parents who came a bit unglued
and gave the kid a lecture on respect and rectitude,
imposing a Spring Break spell of solitude.

And that is why my sister spent her term vacation
in a state of martyrdom and excess perturbation.
I chalked it up to part of her farther education
and gloried just a little bit in her situation,
trying to abstain from another smug oration.

And that’s part of the story of when sister was a fool
and chose a dud as boyfriend, but to dwell on it is cruel.
That year she learned more lessons that weren’t taught in school.
When it came to spring vacation, it became her rule
that mixing  dads and boyfriends really wasn’t cool.

 

Photo by Mark Decile on Unsplash, used with permission. Prompts today are parched, nincompoop, inject, bide and guest.