Tag Archives: Word of the Day

Daily Diatribe

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An acquaintance recently commented on Facebook that I should “Give it a rest, Judy!” My answer is that I’m not rioting or burning buildings or occupying state capitol buildings with guns or expressing my feelings by licking meat in grocery stores or coughing in people’s faces. What I am doing is saying what I believe daily, hoping that somewhere, somehow, I’ll sway at least one person to reason. Probably won’t happen. Our country is so firmly divided now that even something catastrophic just seems to pull us more widely apart. It is perhaps the era of our decline that all great cultures in the past have fallen to, but there are ways to fight other than stubbornly and violently standing up purely for one’s own needs and this is my way. So here it is—my:

Daily Diatribe

I’m on permanent curfew, and I don’t give a darn.
I’ll sort out all my closets and finally sort my yarn
by strand size and by color. I’ve been wanting to for years.
I’ll attend to all those “To Do” lists I owe on in arrears.

I’m respecting all the rules—wearing face masks, washing hands.
I’m not rioting or protesting or taking racist stands.
I’m staying home and hoping justice will have its day.
I’m not quoting out of context but I am having my say!

For those who say it’s patriotic doing what you want to—
coughing in people’s faces in an effort just to flaunt you,
I want to say, “How infantile.” If you were mine, I’d spank you.
But for those living with reason, I want to express a “Thank you.”

Those led by a fool with be drawn to foolish action.
If you glorify a sociopath, you’ll be joined in that faction
by white supremacists and bigots. Kindly look around you.
How can the folks who share your views not shock you and astound you?

It’s said you may be judged by the company you keep,
and the seeds that you now sow will be the harvest that you reap.

Prompt words for today are curfew, yarn, respect, justice and context.

Love’s Meander

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Love’s Meander

In those first months of its success,
when first love starts to evanesce,
we flounder in its first excesses,
never guessing what the stresses
are that love will soon let loose–
when the gander feels the noose
and in his imagination
conjures up a short vacation
wherein he is free to wander
here and there and over yonder
to see what other lovebirds might
desire to feel his loving bite.
Needless to say, his sudden bolt
may give his present love a jolt,
and when he chooses to meander,
what cooks the goose may burn the gander!

Word prompts today are bolt, lovebirds, goose, evanesce and imagination. Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash. Used with permission.

No Hints Given

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First the five-foot high undergrowth had to be dealt with.
The state of the lot in July, 2021.

Click on photos to enlarge.

No Hints Given

Outdoors is bright and sunny. The rain has ceased its patter.
The pecking birds are pecking and the chattering birds chatter.
Butterflies stage a homecoming around the tabachine
announcing the retirement of the big machine
that worked the big lot next to me with giant rolling claws,
For eight long hours, it it scooped and scraped without a single pause.
It trounced the giant boulders and put them in their place,
crushed the weeds and tree limbs, leaving not a trace
of all the weeds and rubble, the stones and the debris,
burying it within the earth so we cannot see
all the ugliness of nineteen years’ accumulation.
of our neighborhood’s detritus, so here’s a small ovation.
What new event will crown this lot? What may be coming next?
I guess you’ll have to read about it in upcoming text.

 

I finally got my lot next door cleared of all the debris neighbors have been piling on it for 19 years. Wish I’d gotten a better photo of the “before,” but here are a a few Johnny-come-lately shots.

Prompt words today are outdoors, homecoming, sunny, trounce and text.

McDonald Duck and Friends

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McDonald Duck and Friends

I know a certain Donald— a king of pass the buck
who to leadership is much less suited than that duck
with whom he shares a name but whose smarts and application
far exceed the POTUS who prefers a golf vacation
to tending to affairs of state except to prompt aggression,
medical misinformation, racism, secession
in order to create a place where he would be the King
relieving congress and the courts from every single thing.

He’d sit up in his tower once the senate had resigned,
ruling at his leisure far above the daily grind,
digressing into fun and games—a golf game, maybe two,
stopping in for French fries and big Macs with extra goo.
He’d sit upon his golden thrown waiting for his bribes
to be delivered daily from his well-heeled tribes.
Courts would not be needed, for guns would rule the day,
trading in extortion in lieu of legal pay.

Let the country go to hell so long as billionaires
go on stockpiling more cash to soothe away their cares.

 

Word prompts today are leadership, resign, duck, digress and application. photo by Amir Abbas Abdolali on  Unsplash. Used with permission.

Thinking Cap

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Thinking Cap
What transpires in a brain in just a single minute
would astound us if we listed everything that’s in it.
What miracle surpasses it? Its creative motion
distills possibility from every single notion.

Our thoughts spiral outward into the universe.
From the wheel to a moon landing, back to a Gucci purse.
From minute to universal, from profound to superficial,
from a child’s imaginings to great schemes more official,

The very thought that thought exists chills me to the bone.
Of all nature’s created, the human brain alone
is a miracle most magical. In fact and art and myth it
defines every one of us by what we may do with it.

Prompt words today are notion, spiral, surpass, transpire and minute.

Floral Retribution

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Floral Retribution 

I slink into the plant place and snag a tub of roses—
the kind that is an irritant to weepy eyes and noses.
I could have sent her chocolates, could have brought her fruit,
magazines or houseplants or other sick-room loot;
but she’s such a social-climber, such a diamond Deb
that she won’t even socialize with old friends on the Web.

She has her chi-chi social circle—stylish, rich and arty,
so cannot bother to attend her best friend’s birthday party.
Yet when she breaks her leg and is in need of a diversion,
her new friends stay away as though they have a mass aversion
to hospitals and folks who do not share complete perfection.
In short, her newest “besties” stage the ultimate defection.

And thus it is her old friends that she calls to cheer her day,
forgetting that she is the one who threw us all away.
So when I come into her room and hear her cough and wheeze,
I’ll just withdraw with card and gift and my apologies.
She needs no further problems added to her maladies.
It’s been so long that I forgot about her allergies!

Prompt Words for today are snag, tub, rose, slink and fruit.

Grandma’s Fond Farewell

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Photo thanks to Matthew T. Rader on Unsplash, used with permission

Grandma’s Fond Farewell

Your gossamer lies are a shortcut to hell.
I can see right through them, I know you so well.
You’re strung out on acid or some new equivalent.
After so much of this, I’ve grown ambivalent.

As you heft up your back pack to strap to your bike,
I’m relieved that you’re finally taking a hike.
The fact that you’re storming out suits me just fine.
Let your dad deal with his son like I dealt with mine!!!

Word prompts today are: gossamer, shortcut, acid, heft and equivalent.

Sixteen

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Sixteen

She met him at the harvest dance.
An act of fate, they met by chance.
The very first grown man she kissed,
he was a traveling journalist,
and she had barely got love’s gist
when he vanished in the mist.
For reference, she had not any.
She had not made love with many
and those she’d had were only boys,
as unacquainted with the joys
of mature love as she had been,
for they were only kids, not men.

She found it tedious at best
to spoon with any of the rest,
and yet she tried, and kept a list
in which she rated and she dissed
those teenage lovers that were left
once journalism left her bereft
of seasoned lover who had pleased her
whereas all the rest just squeezed her
wrong, somehow. They smacked and cuddled,
yet, somehow, they all just muddled
what she’d had occasion once, perchance,
to experience at the harvest dance.

She finally devised a plot
wherein she could improve her lot.
She’d do a deed of much renown
to draw her lover back to town.
And this is why she planned the prank
wherein she would rob the bank.
Of course she’d send the money back.
The larcenous gene she seemed to lack,
but this would create so much news
that she was fairly sure he’d choose
to come investigate the crime,
and that would be the perfect time
to improve her skills of woo.
He’d be her prey and she’d count coup.

For a week, her schemes just perked.
She watched and waited, planned and lurked
watching for the perfect time 
to enact her lovelorn crime.
And, finally, the time seemed good.
She donned a long-armed cloak with hood,
took her daddy’s gun and, masked,
said “Stick ’em up” when she was asked
if she was seeking to deposit,
distressing her, it seems, because it
seemed to  cause so little pause,
from the teller, perhaps because
the teller, who was also masked,
gave her a sucker before she asked
what transaction she might mean
to request on this Halloween!

And so it was the plot was foiled.
By mistiming, her plans were spoiled.
She abandoned larceny
and resumed her tomfoolery
with the local high school boys
wherein they all discovered joys
by practice to bring that surcease
she’d sought to learn by expertise.

 

Prompt words for today are journalist, reference,  tedious, list and pleased.

Bunglery at the Ritz Apartments

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Bunglery at the Ritz Apartments

We’re making the assumption that this ritzy part of town
is the perfect place for our next heist to go down.
Jimmy has it in his noggin that we’ve gotta hit the best,
so it should be the penthouse. We should forget all the rest.
But I think he’s a blockhead. We should choose another floor.
Penthouses have alarms in every room, on every door. 
So we settle on the first floor,  but still wind up in jail,
and I’m in here for the long term ’cause I cannot meet my bail.
The docs have sewn up gashes on my arm and my left calf,
but my wounds don’t equal Jimmy’s, not even by a half
And when he pays his own bail, he tells me,”Go to the Devil.”
I forgot folks with the biggest dogs live on the lowest level.

Prompt words for today are settle, block, noggin, heist and assumption.

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Reconnaissance

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Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash, used with permission

Reconnaissance

Enter our shell-shocked hero, all his battles won.
His glorious sorties over, his service finally done.
The stash he found cathartic? He stole it from his son.
Exulting in this final raid, he thought he’d have some fun.

He only took a bit of it. Each day he took some more.
He chewed the bag a little bit, as though to make a door.
He saw his son’s perplexity, searching through the house.
Had a rat made off with it? Could it have been a mouse?

He found his son’s new hiding places—where he had been loitering,
making use of thirty years of army reconnoitering.
The freezer in the garage, a tea tin in the drain.
What enemy made raids into such difficult terrain?

His son could believe sorties over mountaintop and ridge,
but how might a mouse invade a freezer or a fridge?
This mystery went unsolved for at least a decade more,
at which point it was finally told and became family lore.

How his father returned home, fatigued by years of war
and found relief from raiding his teenager’s secret store.
And how these retirement maneuvers against his puzzled son
helped salve the scars of battle with a little fun.

Word prompts for today are fatigue, stash, cathartic, exult and hero.