Tag Archives: Word of the Day Challenge

Evolution

Evolution

It is said in the beginning that light was of the essence,
as though the entire world was composed of luminescence.
Then particles of matter as the world went rogue
and cells and organisms finally came into vogue.

Evolution would not falter or heed any denial.
Eve wandered through the garden, then floated up the Nile.
Era after era, she mutated and changed,
her features and her hairstyles altered and rearranged.

The things she hung upon herself from shoulders and from ears
were revised era by era as she sauntered down the years.
Wandering down pathways or sauntering fashion’s aisles,
she flashed her varying feathers while testing out her wiles.

From grass skirts to hoop skirts, bustles to bustiers,
man has followed woman, doing what she says.
It is a grand illusion that men control the world
when the world’s whole future lies so tightly curled

within every woman, just waiting to get out,
for when it comes to reproduction, women hold the clout.
Men may seek to end the world and bring about its doom,
but  woman holds the next world safely within her womb.

 

 

 

Word prompts today are luminescenceadept, denial and rogue.

Loner

Loner

An arresting behavior and aquiline nose
insure female attention wherever he goes,
and yet since he walks at a most rapid pace
and there’s always a new book in front of his face,
one must consider, just what are the chances
that he would see even one lady’s advances?

The literature that he daily reads

satisfies all his vicarious needs.
So though he must know what it is that he’s missing—
the adventure and romance and hugging and kissing—
and though more than one gal has chosen to tout it,
I fear he’s unlikely to do much about it.

They flutter their lashes and pooch out their lips,
flex their lithe bodies and rotate their hips,
but nary a glance does our scholar cast on them.
None of his attention is wasted upon them.
For though he is definitely romance-prone,
it seems he prefers to enjoy it alone.

 

 

Prompt words today are aquiline, arrest, literature and afford.

Grandma’s Escape Note

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Grandma’s Escape Note

I’m juggling my remembrances of all you said and did
way back in the past when you were just a kid,
when I was so uptight and the scalawag was you,
causing all my looks of disapproval and of moue.
But now that I am seventy and you’re a kid of fifty,
the fact that things are changed around is somehow sorta nifty.

I’m the one who’s acting up while you are disapproving.
You registered your angst when you heard that I was moving
off to wild Mexico, away from kith and kin,
leaving far behind me all the things that I have been.
The stuff stored in the attic? I’ll leave it all to you.
I don’t have time to deal with it. I’ve still so much to do.

The house is up for sale, so you’ll want to get right to it.
I’ve planted a surprise up there. You’ll know it when you view it.
I’ve cashed out the investments that your dear dad and I
saved up for the future—he was such a frugal guy.
But now that he is gone, I want to be off, too,
so I split up all the money, some for me and some for you.

My part is for my future—a small sweet  hacienda
and provisions and comestibles I’ll buy at the tienda.
Your dinero’s in the attic, some tucked here and some tucked there
to insure that you look closely and make sure that you take care
in examining the past and all those years I cared for you
so you do not dispute what I’m about to do.

If I have twenty years left, I’ll be lucky, so it’s fair
that I have another chance at letting down my hair.
I want to go out dancing and drink shooters and get wild.
I’m tired of a life that is grandmotherly and  mild!
And so I don’t embarrass you, I’m moving farther south,
away from prying eyes and away from word of mouth.

I’m doing you the favor that you didn’t grant to me
all those years you got in trouble and I was there to see.
Now I’ll be the adolescent and you can click your tongue,
for I’ve waited all these years for me to be the one who’s young.
Kiss my grandkids and your grandkids and tell them it’s from me,
but that I can’t stick around because I’m off in search of me!!

Prompt words for today are moue, scalawag, juggle and remembrance.

Failure to Launch

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Failure to Launch

When it comes to doing tasks promotional or clerical,
I find that I’m becoming increasingly hysterical.
It’s tough for me to concentrate. I would rather plot
the next word of a poem. A promoter I am not.

I find that my mind wanders when it comes to drafting
queries and proposals. I prefer to spend time crafting
poems, books or stories; but I find it tough
after creative efforts, doing that extra stuff
to place them or to sell them. Though I do not mind the working, 
when it comes to the rest of it, I simply end up shirking.

Words pile up around me. My file drawers burst apart,
for when it comes to their dispersal, I find I’m weak of heart.
It’s not that I am hoarding words. I’d gladly send them out
into the world to find their place. That’s not what it’s about.

The fact that such acts bore me is a fact that’s inescapable.
I’d like to hand them over to a person who’s more capable.
I delight in going inwards and seeing what is there, 
then putting it on paper for everyone to share.

It would be an equal triumph, I have not a single doubt,

if I could find a person I could pay to send it out;
but, alas, I’ve found a new way in which I am resistant,
as I keep putting off locating an assistant!

Word prompts today are tough, hysterical, capable and triumph.

Mantrap 101 (Grading on the Curve)

Mantrap 101
(Grading on the Curve)

What quantity of your allure
is due to a fine manicure?
What woman ever won a date
by means of being Latinate?
This tidbit I am drawn to share.
What guy was ever known to care
whether your purse matched your shoes?
No sane man has been known to cruise
shoe stores as a place to lure
a conquest, and you may be sure
that when he’s waiting at your gate,
no man is going to berate
the fact that you aren’t wearing Prada.
If your shape rates “Yadda yadda,”
I’d say that you will be successful,
and all the other stuff’s just stressful.
If you want to flummox him,
just skip the rest and hit the gym.

 

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash. Used with permission. Word prompts today are tidbit, berate, lure and quantity.

Voting Our Destruction

Voting Our Destruction

Some birds will still sing and flora abide
no matter what human might reside
in the colorless house with the POTUS inside.
But not so for those that have already died.
In the past year, seven more
have ceased to run or swim or roar.

The outcome of our land and sea,
each animal , insect and tree
depends on policies they make.
Will Earth survive or will we bake
on the spit of reckless choices,
protests made by unheard voices?

Will we find, at end of day
we’ve voted our kids’ lives away?
These are the species lost to us
in last year’s sparring, useless fuss:

                      • Sumatran Rhino. …
                      • Chinese paddlefish. …
                      • Yangtze giant softshell turtle. …
                      • Indian Cheetah. …
                      • Spix Macaw. …
                      • Catarina Pupfish. …
                      • Indochinese tiger

What new denizens will perish
from this Earth we say we cherish?
Yet we vote its life away
And we’re the ones who’ll have to pay.

 

Today the loss of species is estimated to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times than that of the natural extinction rate. WWF reports that between 0.01% and 0.1% of all species go extinct every year. Considering the fact that there are around two million species on the planet, it means between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year. And note, we are talking about species of which humans are one.

As per the 2018 report of World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), there’s a 60% decline in the population of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians in just 40 years. As per the IUCN Red List, more than 30,000 species are threatened with extinction, which means 27% of the nearly 1,12,000 species accessed so far are under grave danger.

In the past ten years, 33 plant species have become extinct. The species listed above in my poem all vanished in 2019. I was unable to find a list for 2020.

 

Prompt words today are flora, outcome, fated and reside.
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November 3, 2020

November 3, 2020

We’re all on tenterhooks, watching and waiting.
We’re tired of tirades. We’re tired of debating.
All of our liberties turned inside out.
What was once done in peace has turned into a bout.
They storm and they threaten and set up false boxes—
the eagle of freedom brought down by vile foxes.

We can’t vouch for our system when so much goes wrong—
when our national anthem’s drowned out by a throng
of those who think that because they are white,
they are superior and have the right
to put down minorities and to change facts,
their white supremacy pardoning the acts

of looting and burning and intimidation.
These acts being staged with no trepidation
thanks to the POTUS who sits calmly by
and approves of it all from his perch in the sky.
We anticipate violence—fear it’s the ones
sowing disorder who have all the guns.

What is the solution? To arm everyone
and have a big shootout when voting is done?
Increasingly, I fear our cyber connection
has been both a bane and a lethal infection.
The villains know how to make use of it
to foment disaster and cause a big fit.

It reaches out hands to enter our homes.
It slashes and pierces and rabidly foams.
Hiding its poison in all of the cracks—
in viruses, malicious websites and hacks.
Turn out the villains, then work on the system
that welcomed them in and pampered and kissed ’em.

Our system of governance was made to be changed,
lest it be exploited by the deranged.
Enact campaign finance and firearms control,
then stem the electoral college’s role.
Time-worn practices need doing in,
for the robes of liberty have grown too thin.

Threadbare and tattered, she quakes at the blast
of self-serving politicians that tear at the past.

Prompt words today are tenterhooks, anticipate, storm and vouch. Image by Peggy Zinn on Unsplash. Used with permission.

After the Election

 

After the Election

Once the storm’s been pacified, I’ve made a lucid choice.
Never again will I listen to that orange fool’s voice!!!!

Prompt words today are lucid, pacify, storm and choice.

Edible Augury

Edible Augury

It was a type of augury, our playing with our food,
though Daddy said to stop it and Mom said it was rude.
Surprises in spaghetti, discovered loop by loop—
the future written out in words within our alphabet soup.

Mashed potatoes were our crystal balls. They told us what we’d be
stirring them around our plates to see what we could see.
We flattened peas with tines of forks and piled them in  towers
and when they fell, we saw if they foretold our future powers.

When Grandma saw us doing it, she’d rap us on the fingers
with a colossal soup spoon. The memory still lingers.
And yet I still play with my food—a type of edible rune.
I like it more these days since I’ve outlived the ominous spoon!

Image by Rakhmt Suwndi on Unsplash. Used with permision. Word prompts today are spoon, ominous, augury and surprising.

Light and Dark

Our Children Follow in Our Footsteps

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Light and Dark

Darkness is a costume that light dons every night,
drawing ghoulish shadows around her blinding light.
Outlandish to surrender to midnight’s inky stain,
then return as Aurora—shedding her light again.
Why do we seek our opposites? What could the purpose be?
The mountains meet the valleys. Desert gives way to sea.
Every single element and every creature, too—
Christian and agnostic, Arab, Hindu, Jew,
lives with all these contrasts jostling within.
Goodness gives way to evil. Piety battles sin.
Frolicking or feuding, our inner natures jell—
drawing us toward Heaven and/or jerking us toward Hell.
Day by day how can we know how we’ll go down in history?
This alchemy of opposites still remains Nature’s mystery.

Word Prompts today are shadows, outlandish, ghoulish, frolic, light and costume.