Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Bad News

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Bad News

Life puts a bookmark on our pain
so we can visit it again.
Read its memory and absorb
the angst of our whole spinning orb.
Day after day, the pain is writ
in newspapers that carry it
to every mountaintop and shore.
As time advances, there’s always more.

Everywhere we share the pain.
Love is born, then lost again.
Countries advance but at the cost
of what another country’s lost.
The riches that the rich accrue
are for working man to rue.
One needs an exoskeleton
to protect him from the ill they’ve done.

War and pestilence  and greed
are given growth to by the need
of mankind to accrue still more
through exploitation and through war. 
There’s no escaping behind a door,
for daily, News just brings us more.

Prompt words today are exoskeleton, absorb, working, advance, lover, bookmark. Images from Unsplash.

Oops. Looks like the exoskeleton link didn’t work yesterday, so here it is again today: https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2023/03/02/rdp-wednesday-exoskeleton/

Computer Updates

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Computer Updates

Modern life is a rigmarole, day after day.
It radiates chaos for which you must pay.
If you’re hindered by change, then this isn’t your world.
Week after week, more updates are hurled
that change the position of all that you do.
How do I find “send?” I haven’t a clue!

They make no provision for those who are old
who have to remember instructions they’re told.
And just when they’ve memorized everything new,
all the things that they need have been placed out of view.
I find it uncouth that the programmers make
change after change just for change’s sake.

What is the purpose of transforming a word
into a symbol? I find it absurd.
Then putting it somewhere we don’t think to look
so we have to survey every corner and nook
just to perform a task we once found easy?
It makes us confused and a little bit queasy

that computer techs constantly accelerate
change so we’re always just out of date!!!!
Does it give them a lift and make them feel jolly
that they’re making their predecessors melancholy
for the old times when all the things found yesterday
were in the same place when looked for today????

Does anyone else keep getting the “Exchange Password Required” message dozens of times a day from Microsoft??? It is driving me crazy!!!!

Prompts for the day are radiate, hinder, rigmarole, couth, provision and melancholy. Click on the links to see what websites have provided the prompts.

 

Infirm Ingratitude

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(Click on photos to enlarge)


Infirm Ingratitude

Since I broke my arm and leg and am out of commission,
all my friends and neighbors have assumed it as a mission
to bring us over casseroles—two or three a day.
Way too many meals-on-wheels for us to put away.

Not one of us encouraged them, yet they seem to compete
in conjuring up mixtures that they feel that we should eat!
And though it’s rude to quibble over what it has elicited,
allow me to point out that all this food was unsolicited.

One concoction more has just wound up at my door
that I know my family is sure to abhor.
That the dogs and cats won’t eat it is our in-family joke. 
I’d put it down the drain, but our garbage disposal broke.

My husband says it’s wasteful to throw out all this food,
but I would have to chain up my picky-eater brood
and pry their clenched jaws open to get them to just taste
all this food my husband has said I shouldn’t waste!!!

Yet I’ve lately noticed that he, too, seems way less able
to consume the edibles delivered to our table.
So I’ve devised a plan and tonight is my rehearsal
for my plot to deal with leftover food dispersal.

My broken leg is slowing down the speed with which I dash
to sneak out after midnight bearing our inedible trash.
I lug the laden bags out with my one good arm,
hoping that my passing won’t trigger the alarm

to turn the backyard floodlights on to wake up all the neighbors
so that they can witness my furtive nightly labors.
Now it is my incentive to speedily get well
just to end this present culinary Hell!!!!

Prompts today are: chains, concoction, unsolicited, quibble, compete and encourage.

Winter Provisioning

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Winter Provisioning

The cows are in the pasture, plump but in the nude,
watching for their daily hay bales to be renewed.
My prestigious assignment is to drive the truck
while Daddy tips the hay bales off, for he has all the luck!
The cows think he’s their savior while I’m just the chauffeur.
So though my appearance does not cause a stir,
when they see his welcome face, they speed by in a blur
to break into the hay bales that my dad has spread,
and that is how in winter, daily, our cows are fed!!!

 

Prompts today are plump, renew, prestigious, watch, assignment and pasture. Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

Conjuring

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Conjuring

You are my homing pigeon, my wise old owl and dove.
My balsam for the pains of life, a well-remembered love.
Your presence is reality. It does not deviate.
You are a special part of life I can’t eradicate.
I breathe your name into the night and it draws you here.
Equal parts of holy and risque, you hover near.
And although your presence lasts mere minutes at a time,
it is time enough to prompt this laudatory rhyme!

 

Prompt words today are risque, name, balsam, deviate, reality and pigeon.

Wedding Ows

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Wedding Ows

Our wedding plans are complicated by the groom’s lasciviousness
that I find incongruous to his vows of  exclusivi”us”ness.
That marriage vows will tame him I fear will prove misleading.
He’ll make his heart available  as long as it is beating
to any passing lady who looks in his direction,
a fact which as you see has not escaped his bride’s detection.
You might think I’m a martyr to forgive this faithless phony,
but I am looking forward to the future alimony!

Prompt words today are complicated, available, lasciviousness, patient, incongruous and misleading. Image by Nathan Walker on Unsplash.

Musical Intercession

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Musical Intercession

If I delete the news from home and flip all my attention
to aspects of the world escaping major media’s mention—
consign my concentration to birdsong and the tide
that washes out world sorrows that I bear inside
and fills me with the opposite of what the news exports—
that awareness of perfection that is what nature reports—
my life becomes more peaceful as my mind is set at ease
by nature’s lullaby sung to the music of the bees.

 

Prompts today are delete, home, flip, consign, opposite, birdsong.

A Cautionary Tale

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A Cautionary Tale

I’m held spellbound by your plan. It is ingenious for sure.
You might be a benefactor and your motives may be pure,
but still you are a diplomat and know your way around
all of the maneuverings that daily may be found

in politics and daily life and so I wonder why
the minute that I said I’d sell, you made an offer to buy.
Is it, as you say, because you know I need the cash,
or are your motives otherwise and have I been too rash

in leaping at your offer? Perhaps I’ll look around
and see if there’s a better deal waiting to be found.
Conspiracies are floating ’round. I hear there is an air full.
In politics and real estate, you cannot be too careful.

 

Prompt words today are spellbound, why, benefactor, ingenious, diplomatic. Image by Maria Lin Kim Luhn on Unsplash

Pro or Con?

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Pro or Con?

Sternutation means to sneeze—
(to create a noisy breeze)
but no one knows what perturbation
might be set off by a  sternation.
Could it be the sternum’s action
when it raises in reaction
caused by the excessive sneezing,
coughing, sputtering and wheezing
brought on by the summer gusts
that stir up pollen, raise up dust?

At the height of of last year’s forum
where we barely drew a quorum,
we discussed the summer pollen
that had lately daily fallen.
Prodigals returning home
bemoaned the flower bits and loam
raised into the gusty air
that stripped the flowers and pathways bare.

It’s true folks stare when you are sneezing,
but perhaps you find this pleasing.
If raised sternums cause sternation,
causing your lungs full dilation,
perhaps it is good for you
to rid your lungs of dust and goo.
So tell me, when you’re on vacation,
Are you pro or consternation?

Prompt words today are forum, height, stare, prodigal, summer and consternation.

Flipped

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Flipped

Do you feel a bit off-kilter,
like your life has lost its filter,
friends are either crass or boring,
same old stories leave you snoring,
news from north, east, west and south
has you foaming at the mouth?

What politicians have to say
more like folklore every day?
The world more than you can abide
now that our heroes all have died?
How do you sift the lies from fact—
determine how you should react?

Ladies and gents, I have to say
that I do not know the way
to save a world that’s in a pickle.
Best that we just toss a nickel
and see what way the flipped coin goes.
Heads are yesses, tails are noes!!!!

Prompt words today are filter, boring, foaming, react, folklore and lady. Image from Unsplash.