Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Substitutions

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Substitutions

An open window, an open door
from a block away or more,
may leak a song whose melody
brings forth a long-lost memory.

Its strains may bring a prompt detection
of an overlooked reflection—
that abrupt awareness of
those substitutes for human love.

A cat, a dog, a garden full
of beauty that exerts its pull—
diversions that can take the place
of a well-loved absent face.

So we fill in each empty spot
where each loved-one, alas, is not,
making do with what what’s around—
those near-distractions that we’ve found.

Prompts for today are substitute, abrupt, reflect and music.

I spent all day trying to fight off a migraine. Soon after I woke up I lost half my vision—could only seen the right side of my head by turning my head sideways.  I took a couple of caffeine pills, hoping that it was the beginning of a migraine—fearing the alternative more. My vision eventually came back but a nagging little headache persisted so I took more caffeine, tried to eat around 3 but had terrible indigestion and more of a headache. Finally, I took an Extra-Strength Tylenol along with a Coke, which I knew would give me arm and/or leg cramps, but it was preferable to a full-strength migraine. Went down to the hammock with an audible book so I could close my eyes, Morrie jumped up on my lap and Diego hung his head over the side of the hammock seeking my other hand. I pulled my cowl neck over my head to avoid their stinky bodies and breaths (bath-time is in order) and finally, blessedly, fell asleep. Aroused by a phone call from a good friend, after hanging up, I was seized by a massive foot cramp, got up and stamped it out and came up to the house where the pups and kitties were glad to finally have their meal a few hours late. Not the best day in the world but it brings me to the reason for telling you my woes, other than your sympathy—that being the reason why I haven’t yet written and published my poem for the day. So, finally, at 8 in the evening, here it is.

 

Hopeful Holidays

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Hopeful Holidays

In almost every culture, at least once every year,
there is some celebration that brings on belly-cheer.
So bring out the turkey, the cranberries and beer.
Commence that over-eating that we all hold dear.

Over-feeding is a statement, a type of family caring,
as are the ugly Christmas sweaters you seem to be wearing.
After all the wrapping up comes all the paper tearing,
all the boxes opening and all the surprise-baring.
Then we dedicate ourselves to other acts of daring,
be it ham or goose or turkey, lutefisk or herring.
Lucky, lucky people to have family for bearing:
Aunt Stella’s time-worn stories and Uncle Herman’s swearing.
Each of us just wondering how far-flung friends are faring.
Here’s hoping you have friends and family with whom you are sharing.

Even though we may have  masks spread out from ear-to-ear,
let’s end the year departing from these months of constant fear
to shift our expectations into a higher gear,
hoping 2021 turns out to be less queer!!!

 

Prompt words today were caring, lucky, dedicated and belly-cheer.

Merry Christmas everyone. Treasure your families, even in their absence.
This, too, shall pass.  xooxox

For Jay, April 23, 1947––December 14, 2020

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For Jay, April 23, 1947—December 14, 2020

The billow of the curtains, the deep tolling of a bell
below me in the village, what stories they might tell
if I only knew their language. The voice of bronze and wind
may just be a passing zephyr, or the tale told of a friend
seven days departed, now reduced to ash and bone.
Words scattered by a priest, to bless and to atone
for some small ineptitudes, hardly sin at all,
now he sits upon a shelf in my entrance hall.
Does he sense our daily passing? Does he know we know his worth?
Does he long for his reunion with water and with earth?
Soon, my friend, you’ll be released for a final time—
freed from the ineptitude of flames and bells and rhyme
to record your passing in sermon or in verse
as you rise again once more to join the universe.

R.I.P. Jay—friend, father, brother, lover. Fellow expat, now a citizen of the Universe.

We spread Jay’s ashes in Lake Chapala on December 29, 2020. If you’d like to read about the ceremony and see photos, go HERE.

Prompt words today are billow, inept, admire and bells.

Turn About

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Turn About

Your claims that you are virtuous are hard to reconcile
with the lurid stories told by victims of your guile.
Each one, in the beginning, considered you sublime,
an assessment always altered when they’d known you for a time.
All your avowed compacts of fidelity and marriage
voiced in times of passion in the backseat of your carriage
never were remembered in the glare of a new day.
Your women were like handkerchiefs—used, then thrown away.
All hope you’ll get your just deserts, with someone doing to you
what you have done to others—to first woo and then eschew you.

 

Prompt words are virtuous, compact, sublime and reconcile.

Sneaky Peeky

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Sneaky-Peeky

I’ll admit I’m not exempt
from feelings that are quite verklempt,
for I find it over-pleasant
when opening a Christmas present
to find that object wrapped inside
(the very one you tried to hide,
but in fact, through search and guile
I’ve known about for quite awhile.)

I discovered it a week ago
as I was searching high and low
to see what you had bought for me.
I simply couldn’t wait to see.
Yet see me ahh and oh and ooh,
putting on a show for you?
What you see as over-reacting
is in fact just over-acting.

Prompt words today are joy, guile, present and verklempt.

 

 

Man Child

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Man Child

He’s a bomb at being serious. He’s jolly, rash and wild.
In essence, he’s never grown up. He’s a perpetual child.
His rustic simplicity is anything but charming,
for he’s redolent of fishing smells and horse riding and farming.

His impetuosity has often brought on trouble,
leading to some barroom brawls and the resulting rubble.
For all these things, he’s won a sort of infamous renown,
and he’s banned from almost all the pubs in his little town.

The local folks have made excuses for him all his life,
but such crass indulgences won’t garner him a wife.
He’d like to have some kids himself–a most unlikely bid
so long as he himself insists on acting like a kid.

Word prompts for today are bomb, jolly,  rustic simplicity, impetuous.

Festive Is

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Festive Is

. . . ribbons and candles and holly.
Christmas trees, parties both raucous and jolly.
Confetti in hair and the nerve to kiss boys
beneath the mistletoe, and other joys.

Presents and eggnog and wedding cake, too.
Fireworks. Flags waving red, white and blue.
Easter egg optimism in the hunting,
papel picado and streamers and bunting.

Festive is hearts charged up with the living.
Anticipation and loving and giving.
Remembrance of exploits and births and unitings,
Easter ham slicings and turkey leg bitings.

May baskets on doorsteps. Socks hung in a row.
Eggnog and streamers wherever you go.
Who knows where festivity had its first starts—
Easter egg rolling or Valentine hearts?

Square dances, cloggings and Virginia reelings
end up on the feet but start with warm feelings
that set toes to tapping and make folks so restive
that they have no choice but to end up as festive!

Before presents and food and new decorations
increase credit card debt to new elevations,
perhaps we’ll remember to go back to the start
and return the horse to in front of the cart.

Our kids need to learn that joy can’t be bought,
and it’s up to us that the lesson be taught.
Before it’s too late, we must somehow impart
that there’s no charge for love and no price tag on heart.

Word prompts today are festive, nerve, optimism and charge.

Nightly Visit

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Nightly Visit

Like those of a recluse aunt, both cloistered and suspicious,
her midnight visits to our house have hardly been auspicious.
Under the mask of darkness, she ends her nightly wait.
Inching along the garden wall to circumvent the gate,
far above the threat of jaws and the dog’s wild bark,
she comes for nightly dining in the protective dark.

The cats’ leftover kibble is her nightly fare.
She comes in brief installments, until the bowl is bare.
I hear her loud enjoyment, the bowl’s scrape and the crunching,
intent on my midnight screen, I can’t resist her munching.
I steal across the tile floor, shoeless in my glide.
How can she know I’m coming, sealed as I am, inside?

Furtive, I reach the door and hear her final mastication.
But all I capture when I look is her evacuation.
She cannot hear or see me, a glass door in between,
the whole room dark behind me, yet she remains unseen.
Just one time in the dozens I think that I may
have born witness to her shadow before she slipped away.

In the lamplight’s subtle glow, I thought I saw a tail
and a mounded body obscured my nighttime’s veil.
I snapped an unlit photo and it is it alone
that bears witness to the possum outlined against the stone.
She glides so silently away to some handy location,
waiting for my departure to resume her mastication.

I know that she’s no midnight dream, no figment of delusion.
She’s that shy part of our family who prefers her seclusion.
Within my nightly flood of words she’s a welcome diversion.
I welcome that slight mystery brought on by her incursion.
I don’t hold it against her, this  hide-and-seek revival,
as I pour a bit more kibble out to insure her survival.

Is it only my imagination, or can you, too, make out the mound of her body and a long, slender curled tail in the shadows of this photo—just behind the dish?

dPrompt words today are mask, auspicious, laud and family.

Reuniting with an Old Friend at the School Reunion

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Reuniting with an Old Friend at the School Reunion

You astound me with your gibberish. Where did you learn this stuff?
After just a minute or two, I feel I’ve had enough.

I pride myself on faithfulness, but nonetheless I fear
somehow over all the years you’ve turned a little queer.

I never pegged you for a fool way back in our youth,
yet I think you got shorter on wits as you got long of tooth.

Though friends of long duration are my favorite kind,
somehow I feel that you’re one friend I need to leave behind.

Word prompts today are peg, gibberish, astound and faithful. Image by Janko Ferlic on Unsplash.

 

Why We Write

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And looks like I’ve changed my mind about not writing about this.

We write to share that part of us that might not otherwise be shared. The page is like a Fibber Magee and Molly closet where we store all those leftover parts of ourselves. Open the page and everything comes spilling out: organized, disorganized, jovial, sad, rational or irrational. Everything gets crammed into the page. We may not be lionized for it. Our words may be stolen and presented as someone else’s, but the important thing is to write them. Words are like a pressure valve, freeing pent-up emotions. They furnish a release that is somehow part of the solution to the problems they describe. 

A page written by Cervantes.

Prompt words today are write, lionize, share and jovial.