Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Craft Maintenance

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Photo by Simon Goetz on Unsplash, used with permission.

Craft Maintenance

Love is like a speedboat, threatening disaster
as we plummet toward our fate, going ever faster.

In youth, insecurity helps to fuel the pace
as our fear of failure keeps us in the race.

Thus is our pursuit of love fueled by the chase,
but as we proceed in life, this may not be the case.

Our boats fill up with children and the race  soon ceases.
The boards begin to shrink and paint curls off in pieces.

Still, since marriage is a boat we need to keep afloat,
love is our incentive to renovate the boat!

 

Photo by Anne Nygard on Unsplash, used with permission.

Prompt words today are pursuit, renovate, incentive and boat.

Providence

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Providence

The angriest skies contain the germ of the next day’s sun.
No matter what pervades your day, once that day is done,
your prospects for a better day already have been cast,
for the material of our future is gathered from our past.

Clear skies are born from thunder clouds and summer days from mist.
Tomorrow’s field of flowers is held in the tempest’s fist.
You may call me Pollyanna, but I can attest
to the truth that oftentimes the worst is followed by the best.

 

 

 

 

 Prompt words today are clear skies,contain, angry,pervade and material.

Gone Fishing

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Gone Fishing

I brandish my brain and confer with the night,
assiduously, wait for new thoughts to bite.
I go fishing for words that will serve as the bait
as what I am thinking I try to relate.

Floating on dreams, I troll their broad sea.
As I fish in them, I’m fishing in me.
Pulling out words from the seas where they ride
bright flashes of light that bring them topside.

Who knows what deep currents wash shores of insight
unless we cast nets to draw them to light?
In our forgotten midnights, their legions are teeming.
We must troll their dark depths for these riches of dreaming.

The lush waters of night invite interruption.
They do not view our hooks as corruption.
We’re their reason for being. They are food for our thought.
We cast lines in their depths that we may be taught.

Prompt words for today are brandish, confer, assiduous and forgotten. Painting by Isidro Xilonzochitl.

Over Head

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Over Head

Lying in the hammock, searching for my words,
I come up with nothing, so I consult the birds.
They lift up off my trees to circle in a ring
as though they’re reconnoitering every single thing.

Swooping to partake of swirling clouds of  gnats,
eying all my fruit trees, teasing both the cats,
who, crouched up on the roof, dream culinary wishes—
far above their heads, those tiny feathered fishes

far out of their reach, but so mesmerizing that 
they far exceed temptation of squirrel or of rat.
Cats find bird movements insolent, drifting high up there.
Such an outrê thing to do, floating in the air!

Prompt words today are consult, insolent, outré and reconnoiter.

Containment

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Containment

Flitting here and flitting there,
sometimes just in my underwear,
unsmitten by the winter weather,
rarely am I aware whether
there is sun or snow or rain
outside the walls of my domain,
the fervor of the climate being
something far beyond my seeing.

The phrase that March is coming in
like a lion? Beyond my ken.
They’re merely lyrics in a song.
I’ve been a shut-in for so long
that weather doesn’t apply to me.
For one year, I’ve been climate-free,
nestled here, cat on my knee
in front of laptop or T.V.

Two thousand twenty and twenty-one
have addicted me to other fun
than outside social interactions.
I have narrowed my reactions
to the confines of four walls.
No homes of friends, cafes or malls.
It’s been a year since forced to choose
any other type of shoes
than flip-flops or my Birkenstocks.
Or since I donned a pair of socks.

Have styles changed, or is the blouse
purchased before banned to my house
still in vogue? How would I know?
Where does anybody go 
that it is possible to share it?
There’s nowhere left for me to wear it!
My social life is now in traction,
suffering from under-action.

No pub-crawls, dining out or dancing.
No hobnobbing and no romancing.
No skiing and no beach vacation.
Simply solo relaxation!
We suffer lives of self-containment.
No other trips or entertainment.
The whole world sharing one elation—
the prospects of a vaccination!

Prompt words today are flit, smitten, phrase and fervor.

A Little Tip

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A Little Tip

Although I’m a big tipper, no gratificación
will be awaiting waiters who linger on the phone
and let my soup or burger get cold up on the shelf.
I’ll send my food back to the chef and spend your tip myself!

I’ve declared a moratorium on mandatory tips.
My money will not cross your palm if cold food meets my lips.
If you’re somewhere slumbering and my drink is late,
will it affect the money left beneath my plate?

You can bet your lazy ass it will. So get your butt in gear
before my lips get parched and dry from waiting for a beer.
If my bread basket is meager and the bread is old and dry,
I’ll save your 25 percent for another guy.

I’ll give it as a baksheesh for some kid that I pass
who hasn’t done a thing for me—just like your sorry ass.
Lagging in your service won’t win a lagniappe.
Lollygagging will not put a feather in your cap.

So if you seek a tip from me, attention will be fateful.
I only give gratuities for service when I’m grateful!

 

Word prompts today are slumber, moratorium, meager and lagniappe. Photo downloaded from Unsplash with permission.

Nesting

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Nesting

Boxes fit in boxes and rings fit inside rings.
In this world no end exists to these nesting things.
Other things just roll around looking for their place.
They fall out of one thing into another space.
There is some serendipity to when they finally fit,
but all of these repeating shapes will find a place to sit.
And though the more astute among us may find places faster,
those who roll around a bit may find a world much vaster.

The daily prompts today are repeating shapes, fallout, serendipity and astute.

Worst Poem Ever

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Worst Poem Ever

Since today’s theme is brevity, it’s time that I must beat.
I’ll write my poem and then I will stage a fast retreat.
I must do the task alone and be focused and stalwart,
because you cannot simply go and buy a poem at Walmart!

 

Prompt words today are brevity, retreat, theme and stalwart. Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash, used with permission.

A Fulmination on Fizgigs

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A Fulmination on Fizgigs

What I go through to write blogs is absurd.
I’m desperate for topics. I search for each word.
Superior writing often evades me,
but still I am happy when someone upbraids me
to get off the bench and engage in the play
of Ragtag, Fandango or Word of the day.

Each day I search out a possible angle.
I plot and I worry, I scheme and I wangle
to make use of each prompt word, however absurd.
I will not be bettered by any strange word!
So, bring on your fizgigs and your mollynogging,
I won’t be intimidated in my own blogging!

And although some readers might be irritated
by having to look up words obscure and dated,
and though I must struggle, often in vain,
to make use of prompt words that I find inane,
still I’ll plod on, stubborn to the ending,
regardless of what crazy prompt word is pending!!!

 

Word prompts for today are bench, superior, happiest, fizgig and wangle.

Wise Men and Fools

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Wise Men and Fools

Pompous men and religious zealots rush into the fray
professing as the solid truth speculations they
determine to be necessary for things to be righted
and other fools support them because they are short-sighted.
But wisdom is as wisdom does and not as wisdom thinks.
It floats up to the surface when foolishness just sinks.
It tends toward calm and practical when flightier heads turn manic
and is irreconcilable with discord and with panic.

Fools may build vain edifices reaching to the skies
that are palatial prisons—follies in disguise.
In time of war, a bunker furnishes more protection,
offering a wiser choice to screen us from detection.
Fools raise their hands and wave at us, inviting their own end,
standing straight and rigid when a wiser man might bend.
Fools rush in where sages might not speculate,
instead letting  the evidence sit and percolate.

Sages, fools and charlatans mixed up in the fray.
For those who cannot tell the difference, now we’ll all have to pay.

 

Prompt words for today are wisdom, irreconcilable, practical and palatial.