Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

En Mass Transit

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En Mass Transit

Traffic comes and traffic goes,
but where they all go, no one knows.
They gun their engine, shift a gear
to be anywhere but here.
North goes south and south goes north,
driving, driving back and forth.
Wearing tires out, burning gas,
changing where they are en masse.
In New York, Paris, Pittsburg, Rome,
Nobody seems to just stay home!

 

The Word of the Day Prompt today is traffic.,

The Custodian’s Lament

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The Custodian’s Lament

I’m deluged by duty and lack an excuse.
A note from my mother won’t stop this abuse.
My boss has turned into that proverbial bully
who insists that I carry my job tasks out fully.
He says sweep the corridor, empty the trash.
It’s a menial method for earning my cash.
Wish I’d paid more attention in school back when
my teachers insisted that I take my pen
and answer those questions in English and math,
and started my life out on some other path.
Now I’m pushing a mop instead of  a pen,
thinking too late of what might have been!

 

Prompts for today are excuse, corridor, proverbial, deluge and duty. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash, used with permission.

Marriage Vows

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Marriage Vows

Sure of their joyful union, they’ll never rue the day
that they exchanged their vows on that blissful day in May,
but read their bitter interviews gathered five years hence,
accusing and denying, angry, bitter, tense.
Those whom God hath brought together let no human flout.
Every couple means their vows when given, there’s no doubt,
but kids and bills and taxes and a pretty new assistant
can create a need to grow increasingly more distant.
Hard to keep compliant to a former vow
when fate intervenes with that ever-changing now.

 

Prompts for today are union, sure, joyful, may and interview.

The Window-Peeker Parses the School Marm

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The Window-Peeker Parses the School Marm

Though you’re unaware that you’re in my view,
as you sit parsing sentences, I’m parsing you.
And though you may find my excuse to be spurious,
I’m not lascivious. I’m only curious.

I peer through your window to discover a clue
if tight-lipped and buttoned-up is the real you.
I peek through a bush after climbing your fence.
Do you underline verbs and determine their tense?

No bushes or flower vines hamper my vision
to soften the view or to curb my derision.
Your life is as clear and empty and sparse
as the students you aim for and lines that you parse.

Every inch covered from your toes to your chin,
terry cloth robe. No booze and no men.
No bright colored pictures to cover your wall.
Not one detail to alter your image at all.

You sit at a desk looking tired and grim,
pallid and stringy and scrawny of limb—
essays piled to left and to right,
your strict narrow lips revealed in the light.

Everything minimum, like you have taught.
Strip sentences bare. Make them sparse, clear and taut.
Then you push back your chair, straight-backed and hard-seated
and seem to sigh. Is your patience defeated?

As you move to the window, a surge of past fear.
Have you sensed an old student is hovering near?
As you come to view the moon’s budding crescent,
I slip over the fence and become evanescent.

 

On day 29 of NaPoWriMo, they urged us to peek into a window and tell what we see.
Meanwhile, the prompts from five other sites were: curious, hamper, evanescent, parse and minimum.

Moratorium

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Moratorium

I’m waging a campaign against your excesses.
You don’t need more shoes or jewels or dresses.
I’m sending a notice to wherever you shop
that your random purchases just have to stop!

Your profligate spending’s way out of control.
Abstemious behavior should be your new goal.
I abhor that I’m having to start this campaign
and hope that my efforts will not be in vain.

I’m not suggesting that you turn ascetic,
It’s simply that your present life is pathetic.
You buy and you buy and you buy and you buy
’til the Amazon boxes are stacked to the sky.

Then you head to the mall to buy a bit more,
’til your closet is fuller, I swear, than the store!
Now my salary cannot keep up with the strain,
so I must insist, dear, you try to refrain.

To help, I have cancelled your credit cards, then
tackled your charge accounts, closing all ten.
I’ve taken you off my bank account, too.
hoping to try to educate you

to the fact that life’s more than spending and spending.
I hope that my excessive acts will be ending
your own excesses, and that you’ll find
new hobbies to fill your acquisitive mind.

Prompt words today are random, abhor, abstemious, ascetic and campaign.

Our Better: Nature

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Our Better: Nature

Science just can’t help it. It has to interfere,
trying to come up with things that formerly weren’t here:
pesticides and atom bombs, styrofoam and plastic,
genetic engineering and other “cures” more drastic.

Mother Nature chuckles and sends a flood or fire,
a hurricane or drought or backlashes more dire.
We try to get the best of her, but in the end she’ll win.
for though we try to overlook it, she’s the body that we’re in!

When we seek to alter her, we also alter us.
She’s the vehicle we ride in and we can’t get off the bus.
We’re poisoning her lifeblood and littering her skies,
interfering with her cycles in ways that are not wise.

When we overpopulate, she counters with a virus.
Her avalanches bury us, her floods and mudslides mire us.
If we were Nature’s employees, I think that she would fire us,
bemoaning that decision she made to ever hire us.


Two of my usual prompt sites had not published their word by the time I did my prompt poem today so I only used three prompts. This morning they are published so I’m writing a second poem.The Ragtag prompt today is Help and the Word of the Day prompt is science.

Kissing Frogs

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Kissing Frogs

If you blow on a warty frog, he’ll worship you for life,
and if you are a princess, he might make you his wife.
Of course it won’t be easy with an amphibian beau,
for you’re sure to draw attention everywhere you go.
Although you’ll be very high and he’ll be extremely low,
as you hop along together, he’s bound to find you slow.
He won’t be good at dancing for with that tiny bod on him,
it will be a certainty that some dancer will trod on him.

A certain growth of character is a prerequisite
for any royal daughter to go along with it.
Your kids would be unusual for though a son or daughter
would excel at feats like swimming in the water,
when it came to royal functions, their gooses would be cooked,
for in any ceremony, they’d be overlooked.
So it’s all right to blow on frogs, to kiss them or to carry them,
but if you are a princess, it is best that you don’t marry them!

Prompts for today are blow, worship, warty, prerequisite and growth.

Cowboy on an Off-White Charger (Prompts and NaPoWriMo 2021 day 22)

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Cowboy on an Off-White Charger

You say I’m queen of your affection, yet your ambit has grown larger.
I hear you’ve put some extra miles on your faithful charger.
You say she is exhausted, her endurance sorely taxed.
She may need reshoeing and your credit card is maxed.

The extent of your travels and the speed with which you charge
have lately increased greatly—to have doubled, by and large.
If our love’s become monotonous, perhaps you seek new favors.
Perhaps you choose to taste delights of various other flavors.

You say your boots are dusty and nonchalantly stroll
out to find a shoeshine boy to cleanse your dirty sole.
Yet what you seek to polish may be a point that’s moot.
I think that what needs polishing may not be a boot.

Prompt words today are dusty boots, monotonous, ambit, speed and queen. The NaPoWriMo prompt today discussed different poetic devices. In lieu of just using one of them, I decided to try to use metonymy, polysemy, synecdoche and metalepsis in one poem. Image by Karen Cantu on Unsplash, used with permission.

Bad Words!!!!

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words

Prompt words today are encephalopathy, such, cattywampus, comminatory and partner.

Bad Words!!!!

I’m feeling vengeful toward “comminatory,” a term I find absurd.
Fatigued by “encephalopathy.” Who heard of such a word?
Has the world of prompts gone “cattywampus?” Have you all gone mad?
Can such words be shaped into a poem that isn’t bad?
How can one partner such weird words? What’s a scribe to do?
Except to face the challenge and write a poem she’ll rue!

Tyrant: NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 19: The Rant

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Tyrant

Your arguments are specious, without a gram of proof,
but when we try to point this out, you only seem aloof.
Though you fancy that you’ve sex appeal and charm and woo and sizzle,
your expected rain of compliments turns out to be a drizzle.

That odor you find fragrant with which you mask your stench
would not be necessary if you were just a mensch*,
but the bald reality that you need to face
is that most of your actions are selfish, rude and base.

All your resolutions sworn to in the past
were but fabrications never meant to last.
In short, you are a narcissist thinking of you alone
with a thousand selfish vanities for which you won’t atone.

That’s why, my dear, you sit there in your ivory tower
wondering why your riches, your accomplishments and power
somehow do not satisfy when done for yourself only,
for all your grand accomplishments just leave you feeling lonely.

*mensch: a person of integrity and honor

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to write a humorous rant. In this poem, you may excoriate to your heart’s content all the things that get on your nerves.
Prompts today are sizzle, fragrant, past, specious and reality.images from Unsplash, used with permission