Tag Archives: Word of the Day

Orgulous of Orgulous!

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Orgulous* of Orgulous!!!

I’m suffering from reluctance and a bit of perturbation
that is interfering with my blog’s administration.
Embarrassed for this rhyme, I’ve no proclivity to flout it.
I’m sure my stats will plummet. There is no doubt about it.

We’ll ascribe the blame to Ragtag, for “orgulous” is the word
they’ve chosen for our prompt today—a choice that is absurd.
Who uses it in common speech, or formal speech, in fact?
Any poem I used it in, I’d afterwards redact.

I’m not a jolly blogger. I’m delaying activation.
I feel no need to add to my reader’s education
by using words requiring their use of dictionaries.
I prefer clear writing that requires no further queries.

It’s habit that demands that I find a way around this.
But now I feel no further need to otherwise expound this.
I’ve flailed around in writing this. I edit and I stumble.
Tomorrow may they choose a word that is a bit more humble!

 

*Orgulous: haughty, proud, ostentatious, disdainful!.

Prompt words for today are stats, jolly, activation and orgulous. (Good grief!)

Summer Courtship

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Our back yard. Lots of places to hide in yards like this up and down the block, as well as in the deep ditches of the school yard across the street.

Summer Courtship

Those summer nights of hide and seek where we were willing quarry,
our efforts to make curfew were too often dilatory.
Our neighborhood adventures stretched out under the stars—
those shadowed venturings abroad, hiding behind cars,
in barrow pits or hedges, darting through the dark,
avoiding passing car lights and the dog’s insistent bark.
Bigger kids the kingpins of this nightly sequestering,
lying still as death with our fears of capture festering.
That titillating strain of remaining undetected,
somehow in our memories has made us more connected.
How we so consistently lay spread out on the ground
cowering, but secretly hoping to be found
by that special someone who, in our pre-teen flush
even then, in passing, could bring about our blush.
All this search and parrying that we called summer games
very soon would fill our lives called by other names.

 

Prompt words today are strain, kingpin, nightly and dilatory.

Night of the Dragon

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photo with permission from Lachlan Gowen on Unsplash

Night of the Dragon

Behold the dragon, how it flows
from its tail up to its nose.
Thirty feet and thirty arms
move the dragon’s sinuous charms—
its razor teeth, its threatening frown—
through the streets of Chinatown.
On its head, a golden crown.
Its many humps move up and down,
forming valleys, growing hills
while moving over rocks and rills.
Straightening out to cross the bridges
spanning between neighboring ridges.
Never flying through the air,
 rising only up the stair.
So many mortals make one beast,
 one night a year to roil and feast
 on errant spirits wandering out
their vile sentiments to flout,
chancing their ends once more to free
 those rotten souls they used to be.
 One night of all we form the back
 that otherwise the dragons lack.
 We form their arms and form their feet,
 arousing awe in all we meet.
 And thus it happens, once a year,
we become that which most we fear.

Prompt words for today are flow, behold and dragon.

Advice on the Introduction of a New Species

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photo by Andrew Rice used with permission

Advice on the Introduction of a New Species

Lions don’t do well in a setting too bucolic.
Their herding instinct’s lethal and they flunk in ovine frolic.
Lions need to stalk and kill. They need open savannas.
They’d eat all the lambs and for dessert, eat all their nannas!
And if we shut the lions up, they’d go into decline.
Living in small cages simply isn’t leonine.
Lions need to roam the plains lest they become pathetic.
There’s nothing half so sad as a lion that’s apathetic.

Oh no. I somehow erased the pingbacks for the four prompts for this poem! Thanks to okcforgottenman for pointing this out. Well, better late than never. The prompt words were lion, apathetic, shut and bucolic.

What’s He Got Cookin’?

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What’s He Got Cookin’?

My love is not a work of art. He hasn’t any poise.
When he tries to sing a song, it comes across as noise.
He writhes instead of dancing. His rhythm’s nonexistent.
When germs land upon him, if they are nonresistant,
they get sick instead of him, for they have met their match.
He has no hair upon his head except for one small batch
that grows out of each nostril, so I really needn’t mention
that when it comes to loving him, I have no competition.
Yet in spite of all, he coincides with my fond wishes.
He may not have much cooking, but at least he does the dishes!

And for a little musical accompaniment to the poem, go HERE.

Prompt words today were sick, writhe, match and noise,

I need to issue a disclaimer for the second line, which is pure poetic license.  Most probably a number of the others are, as well.

School Field Trip

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School Field Trip

Youth days at the aquarium are inimical to fishes,
for students feed the goldfish far beyond our wishes.
They agitate the sharks and rays by knocking on the glass.
They irritate the piranhas and terrorize the bass.
Scientific discovery is great for teens and tots,
but part of education is discovering the “nots.”
I think we’ll bring an ending to this day at the aquarium,
and for your next school outing would you please choose the terrarium?

Prompt words today were discovery, aquarium, youth and inimical.

Bloggers

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And no fair switching to your other keyboard!!!

 

 

 

 


Bloggers

We volley bandishments about, exchanging back and forth
words sent on the Internet from east, west, south and north.
We cajole and we wheedle as we trade behests.
From district one to district two, we answer all requests.
Janet wants a recipe that Dolly can provide.
Lydia posts Trump travesties that she cannot abide.

Angloswiss , VJ and Cee and Bob from far Australia,
trading photographs of houses, flowers and regalia.
Fashion blogs and flower blogs and fantasy and news.
We write of  our journeys, our fetes and family dos.
Poems about our handbags, our fashion and our shoes,
answering each other’s queries, cancelling each other’s blues.

Derrick tells of travels and the highlights of his dinners.
Regina writes of travel life and family and sinners.
We all have our favorite schticks from India to Nome.
Marilyn writes of birds and dogs and Manja writes of Rome.
Me? I merely write the poems that the prompts demand,
and be they dumb or heart-wrenching, pedestrian or grand,
abject apologies offered if you find them bland.

Prompt words today were shoe, district, volley and abject.
There were a dozen other bloggers I would have liked to include, but I had to be ready and on the road by 9 this morning so I was rushed in getting this out. To all the other blogs I regularly follow, you know who you are.

Friendly Advice

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Friendly Advice

If I’m not mistaken, you are caught there in your bubble
in your torn old housecoat with your legs covered in stubble.
Your pupils are dilated and your eyes are blank and glassy.
The air in this closed room has turned stale and dank and gassy.

I’m going to turn the light on now. You’ve been here in the dark
too long, so I am taking you outside to the park.
You’ve mourned enough. It’s time that you returned to the living.
It’s true years take away, but it’s also true they’re giving.

We’ll buy pistachio ice cream, feed your favorite duck
and talk about how fortunate we are to have such luck
to be alive and free and here in this glorious place
with ice cream in our tummies and sunlight on our face.

Go and take a shower and put on your best duds.
Wipe away your dolor with water and with suds.
Blow dry your hair until it looks casual and sporty.
I think that even you can survive this turning forty!!

 

Prompt words today were pupil, bubble, dark and mistaken.

Celebration for Two

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Celebration for Two

The radiator’s sputtering and crumbs of birthday cake
fly out from the thrown back sheet and spread out in your wake.
Red wine from toppled glasses forms a little lake
so perhaps staging the party in our bed was a mistake!

 

Prompt words today are sputter, manage,, mistake.
Word of the Day didn’t publish a word today.

The Drying of Sheets in the Wind

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                                      photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash, used with permission

The Drying of Sheets in the Wind

When the world seems in a mess and you wax sanctimonious,
railing at the ills of those who make it less harmonious,
remember that life’s curses are only temporary.
When world events eat at your mind and the world feels scary,
remember bed sheets on the line, drying in the sun—
the sound of flapping in the wind as their drying was done.
The smell of bright clean sunlight on each wind-softened fold,
or the cracking of their ice crystals stiffening in the cold.

Remember their warmth around you, fresh from mother’s mangle?
Snapping them out in the air, her bracelets’s harmonious jangle?
Her even movements folding them, then spreading them once more
 for you to slip into your bed as she stood at the door,
storybook in hand for that nightly big procession
through story after story, read in that grand progression
of venturings into a world that seemed so vast and magic,
long before you knew the world to also be so tragic.

Let memories of your mother still be a comfort to you—
with memories of fresh white sheets. And let them both renew you.

 

Prompt words are sheets, temporary, curse , sanctimonious. Wow. What a list. How are these going to come together?