Tag Archives: Word of the Day

Fame

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Fame

Of what importance do you hold fame?
 How many people know your name?
Did you choose the challenge of renown?
Are you well-noted in your town
or in your state or in the world?
How often is your face unfurled
on posters hanging in Time’s Square––
your name broadcasted through the air?

What tradeoff made you vain and truthless,
removed your honor,  made you ruthless?
What kind of fortitude is power
turned vain and humorless and dour?
What good these trophies all around you
with no humanity to ground you ?
What good this fame of which you’re fond
If honor’s gone a vagabond?

Words of the day are fame, challenge, fortitude and vagabond. Here are their links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/rdp-thursday-fame/
https://fivedotoh.com/category/one-word-challenge/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/16/fowc-with-fandango-welcome/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/your-daily-word-prompt-fortitude-may-16-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/vagabond/

Winning

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Winning

Any athlete worth his salt
can row or shoot or ski or vault,
balance, skate or box or splash,
hurdle, sprint, relay or dash.

But I find it curious
that all these actions furious
do not bring us closer to
what mankind really needs to do.

Instead of trying to beat each other,
overcome, defeat each other,
trying for cooperation
among each competing nation

just might serve to be a sample
that could be a good example
for the politicians who
do not seem to have a clue

of how to share our planet’s wealth.
Instead, by cunning, war and stealth,
they seek to get more than their share
of minerals and food and air.

What irony that they can’t see
how much better it would be
if we just learned it’s cheaper to
expand our neighborhood to view

every color, every nation
every man of every station
each the same as every other–
everyone as sister, brother.

There’s enough richness, if we dare
to treat the world as though we care
for every country, every nation
as one giant congregation

and not a game wherein we choose
that one or the other has to lose.

The words for today were splash, curious, irony and vault. Here are their links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/15/rdp-wednesday-splash/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/15/fowc-with-fandango-curious/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/15/your-daily-word-prompt-irony-may-15-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/15/vault/

Her Majesty

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image courtesy of Mohammed Metri on Unsplash.


Her Majesty

She had the best instruction in how to act serene––
a necessary attribute if she would be queen.
And though she lacked true courage, at least she appeared plucky.
Daily, they assured her that of all she was most lucky
to have been born of royal blood—to have been truly chosen,
and that is how, over the years, her heart was slowly frozen.

 

The prompt words today were courage, chosen, serene and lucky. Here are their links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/14/rdp-tuesday-courage/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/14/fowc-with-fandango-chosen/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/14/your-daily-word-prompt-serene-may-14-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/lucky/

Lucky: The Pleasures of Advancing Age

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(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Lucky
(The Pleasures of Advancing Age)

If I were a golfer, I fear there’d be no putting,
for my grass is lush and verdant— badly in need of  cutting.
Meanwhile, the bougainvillea has gotten out of hand.
It’s like a barbed wire jungle—every twisted strand.
If I were more rambunctious, I’d grab work gloves and scramble
to gas up the mower and to tackle every  bramble,
but those days of industrious gardening are far back in my past.
Those Olympian feats of plant and tend simply didn’t last.
Instead I lie here in my bed growing and trimming words.
Outside, through the curtains, I hear the wakening birds.
I hear the front gate opening, make out the squeak of wheels.
Is there a single reader who detects how good it feels
to just fluff up the pillows and type on throughout the dawn
as Pasiano trims the thorny vines and mows the blasted lawn?

Prompt words today are verdant, meanwhile, rambunctious and lucky. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/rdp-monday-verdant/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/13/fowc-with-fandango-meanwhile/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/your-daily-word-prompt-rambunctious-may-13-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/lucky/

Too Many Cooks

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Too Many Cooks
(The Food Critic Invades the Kitchen)

In the guise of  gourmand, I fear that you laid waste
to my soup’s exquisite balance after one swift reckless taste.
You lifted up the salt shaker and ruined my day’s work
by heavily over-salting my consommé, you jerk!
Then you made it cloudy by adding a fair dollop
of sour cream that sat there like a tumor or a polyp.
The soup base that I’d toiled over for many an hour,
you squeezed a bit of lime into, transforming sweet to sour.
So in the end when you pronounced the verdict on my soup,
rating it as less than gourmet food and more like goop,
you neglected to take credit for your efforts at its ruin.
Now I rue the day my lovely soup chanced to meet your spoon!!

Prompt words today are gourmand, base, guise and cloudy. Links are below:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/11/rdp-saturday-gourmand/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/11/fowc-with-fandango-base/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/11/your-daily-word-prompt-guise-may-11-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/11/cloudy/

Premeditated

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Premeditated

I’ve got you in my crosshairs, you can’t escape my aim.
In fact it’s very obvious I’ll wound or kill or maim.
Do you see my lifted eyebrow? Is my message coming through?
It should not be ambiguous what’s happening to you.
I really have it in for you. It’s true I mean to bite you.
You’re fully in my power, so there’ll be no need to fight you.
There’s no other fate in store for you. No other choice to make.
After twenty-one days of dieting, I’m having me some cake!!!!

 

 

The prompt words are crosshairs, ambiguous, obvious and eyebrow:
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/10/fowc-with-fandango-crosshairs/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/10/your-daily-word-prompt-ambiguous-may-10-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/10/obvious/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/10/rdp-friday-eyebrow/

 

Not a Clue

11 Replies

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Not a Clue

“Jejune” is a word that I bet you don’t know.
It simply means tedious, dreary or slow.
Guileless or boring, simple or naive—
artless and unworldly with naught up your sleeve.

When it comes to semantics, jejune folks won’t quibble.
They do not distinguish between drip or dribble.
When they need a haircut, please tell them they’re hairy.
Calling them “hirsute” will just make them wary.

If  big words should reach the apex of your tongue,
consider taking it down just a rung.
Jejune folks like small words like “pretty” and “cute.”
Words like “alluring” will render them mute.

Words like “obstreperous” also won’t do.
If you use a big word, they won’t have a clue.
Don’t call it a “wen” when it’s merely a pimple.
Things are much clearer when words are left simple.

 

 

Chritsine issued me a further challenge after she read their poem, so I wrote another. You can fine a link to her challenge and also my poem–short and silly– HERE.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/08/rp-wednesday-grateful/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/08/fowc-with-fandango-semantics/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/08/your-daily-word-prompt-jejune-may-8-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/08/apex/

Mac and Cheese

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I dedicate this poem to my ultimate chef friends Dolly
and Gordon, hard as it may be for them to bear.

Mac and Cheese

“Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat; stir in flour, salt, and pepper until smooth, about 5 minutes. Slowly pour milk into butter-flour mixture while continuously stirring until mixture is smooth and bubbling, about 5 minutes. Add Cheddar cheese to milk mixture and stir until cheese is melted, 2 to 4 minutes.”

I found the recipe on my Mac
for noodles swathed in creamy Jack.
I bought the cheese. Grated it up,
dreaming of when I would sup.
I was tenacious with the grater.
Nobody holds a cheese block straighter!
And I was forthright in each thrust,
for tiny cheese curls are a must.

I mixed the flour in melted butter,
watched the whole mess spit and sputter.
Added pepper, salt and flour.
Stirred for what seemed like an hour.
Added the milk in rapid whirls,
and then poured in the cheesy curls.
Round and and round and round it went.
Turned down the stove, turned on the vent.

Boiled the noodles until tender.
Then, when it was time to render
cheese to noodles, asked my crony
just to drain the macaroni.
But, as he was headed back,
his arm collided with my Mac,
flipping it into the cheese
with such artistry and ease

that for a moment it looked to me
as part of the whole recipe.
But cheese on Mac of Apple kind
is not quite what I had in mind.
My Mac expired in smoke and sparking.
Dogs ran in with joyful barking
to lap up congealing cheese
from counter, stove front, floor and knees.

Cheese, computer, pan and noodle—
I tossed the whole kit and kaboodle
out the window into the grass
where dogs and cats and ants en masse
ate their fill until they popped,
while I wiped and scoured and mopped.
(I doubt that you could find my match
at scrubbing up a cheesy patch.)

But if you need a recipe
for Mac and Cheese, don’t count on me.
Though boiling noodles I learned by heart,
I fear I flunked the whole “Mac” part.


Prompt words were match, forthright, tenacious and noodle. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/rdp-tuesday-match/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/07/fowc-with-fandango-forthright/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/your-daily-word-prompt-tenacious-may-7-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/noodle/

Melancholy

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Melancholy

The campfire collapses into a plaintive rune,
echoing the plangent wolf call of a loon
that floats the silver pathway of the water-jellied moon.

I face our final parting. As I hear its taunting croon,
the humid night surrounds me in its tight cocoon.
Life is a cruel comedy whose laughter ebbs too soon.

 

The rune “pertho” designates secrets and chance. It’s sign is water.

Prompt words are plangent, anyway, comedy and river. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/rdp-monday-plangent/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/06/fowc-with-fandango-anyway/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/your-daily-word-prompt-comedy-may-6-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/river/

Traveler

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Traveler

I always took the long road home, hoping to take full measure
of all the things along the way in which I could take pleasure.
When life did all its best to make me speed along its road,
I simply switched to unpaved trails to find the mother lode.
My gains were not substantial when measured against gold.
Most of what I’ve acquired cannot be bought or sold,
but the bounty that I gathered will stand me in good stead
as I plan more journeys from my dying bed.
With all my riches gathered, with all my unseen gain,
I will have booked a ticket on the astral plane!

 

The prompts today are road, speed, substantial and astral. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/rdp-sunday-road/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/05/fowc-with-fandango-speed/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/your-daily-word-prompt-substantial-may-5-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/astral/