Tag Archives: Word of the Day

Sum of Us

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Sum of Us

Sensible habits and sensible shoes,
sensible houses in sensible hues—
An ideology shared by the most.
Normal descendants of which you can boast.
Develop your life by typical measures.
Don’t be bedeviled by uncommon pleasures.
Hop onto the bandwagon. Change is a sin.
Why ever be more than what you have been?

Living for tradition and keen on the past,
you’ll remain in the mold from which you were cast.
There’s nothing wrong with the status quo
so long as you’re demonstrating that you know
it’s also okay to go off on your own
and turn into the new person that you have grown.
Unique and different isn’t a sin.
It’s simply the you that you are still in.

The world has evolved by some species changing,
shuffling and growing, moving, rearranging,
and peace in the world is contingent on seeing
all of the ways of thinking and being.
So long as they’re peaceful and let you be you,
give them a chance. Afford them their due.
Don’t censure others for who they’ve become.
Add up the equation and accept the sum.

 

My “given” words today are bedevil, sensible, ideology and keen. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/11/rdp-thursday-bedevil/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/11/fowc-with-fandango-sensible/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/11/your-daily-word-prompt-ideology-april-11-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/11/keen/

The Sesquipedalian’s Absolution

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The Sesquipedalian’s Absolution

When we use ostentatious words,  most folks are not forgiving,
so the perspicacious reader might have a slight misgiving
and greet such words with sideways looks—a sneer, a frown, a cough—
feeling I pontificate, just trying to show off.
Words like “moon” and “June” and “spoon,” ” flowers” and “zephyrus vapors”
are thought more suitable to poems and literary papers
than words like “perspicacious” which might have made you wary,
but—I, too, had to look it up in the dictionary!!!
If you must extract vengeance, please direct it to its source,
for I rely on daily prompts to help me plan my course.
Words like “and” and “but” and “the,” are words that I might cite,
but you can blame “Ragtag” and “FOWC” for words more erudite!

 

 

Words for the day are perspicacious, pontificate, flower and vengeance Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/10/rdp-wednesday-perspicacious/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/10/fowc-with-fandango-pontificate/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/10/your-daily-word-prompt-flower-april-10-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/10/vengence/

Retribution

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

They’ve been building a monstrous three-story house across the street for months, the noise level increasing each day, but yesterday, my neighbor down below also started power-washing his house. They’ve continued today, and in addition, my neighbors on the other side have had gardeners operating unbelievably LOUD leaf blowers and chain saws.  It really is unbearable.  Only just now did all the men stop at once for their lunch break, enabling me to plan my revenge while writing today’s poem. Perfectly timed, just as I am typing this last line of my introduction, the power washers have started up again.

Retribution

Brain jarring poundings and drillings and sputterings
give rise to my angry cantankerous mutterings.
Construction on one side, leaf blowers over there.
High pressure power washers shatter the air.
From every direction, I’m besieged by noise.
It’s destroying my brainpower, shredding my poise.
No brilliant solution tops up my mind.
Sabotage is illegal and murder unkind.
I’ve turned up the music, closed windows and doors,
but still I can hear their mechanical roars
and grindings and crashes and rumblings and banging.
I contemplate suicide. Pills, gun or hanging?
Why aren’t my neighbors disturbed by the clamors
of chainsaws, cement mixers, trucks and jackhammers?
After all, it’s their property where men are working.
Yet none of my neighbors seem to be lurking.
They’ve probably all gone away for the day—
finding a quieter place they can stay.
They’ll return in the evening when noises decrease
hungry for dinner and a little peace—
and that’s when I’ll open each window and door,
turn my music amps up and even the score!!!!!

 

Prompt words today are hungry, cantankerous, brilliant and tops.Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/rdp-tuesday-hungry/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/09/fowc-with-fandango-cantankerous/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/your-daily-word-prompt-brilliant-april-9-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/tops/

“The Fix”

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“The Fix”

–a difficult or awkward situation from which it is hard to
extricate oneself; a predicament.“how on earth did you get
into such a fix?”
predicament, plight, difficult a, difficult situation, awkward
situation, spot of trouble, bit of bother, corner,
ticklish/tricky situation, tight spot
–a dose of a narcotic drug to which one is addicted.
   “he hadn’t had his fix.”

Although you assure me you are strictly on the level,
your very need to do so makes me think you are the devil.
I find your ethics tenuous, they’re there and then they vanish.
Your motives start out lily white but end up rather tannish.
You’re fine at razzle-dazzle. You expertly shoot the breeze.
You flatter and finagle, you smile and flirt and tease,
but have you really done the job or were you merely acting?
Is your expertise for real or merely reenacting
what you saw in movies or surveyed on the TV?
Has fiction finally managed to replace reality?

Did you get your medical knowhow from college texts you’ve read,
or learn your bedside manner viewing Chicago Med?
Do you really know the way to set a joist or beam?
Can you really hem a skirt or sew an even seam?
Do you know how to fix my brakes, change oil and do a lube
or did you merely look it up last night on You Tube?
TV is our Bible and whatever we may view
becomes the thing it is okay to become or do.
We put our idols in office, be they hero, fool or rogue.
What is most entertaining becomes what is in vogue.

Why has the world fallen into this state of dereliction?
Simply because we cannot—distinguish fact from fiction!!!

The words of the day are dazzle, tenuous, breeze and level. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/rdp-monday-dazzle/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/08/fowc-with-fandango-tenuous/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/your-daily-word-prompt-breeze-april-8-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/level/

The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a poem based on a slang word or phrase or acronym specific to a certain job. Hmmm. That’s a corker!!! Mine seems to work on so many different levels lately, but particularly when it comes to politics.

Unplanned Sighting

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I had driven Yolanda home after giving her the gift for Yoli, which was too fragile to hand carry down the hill, and the day too hot as well. Her street is a long one with no guaranteed fast exit to the carretera as side streets are  usually plugged with trucks parked in their middle or chairs and canopy out for a funeral visitation or children playing soccer or neighbors gathered in front of a makeshift tienda—table spread with crisp snacks or candies or huge jug of horchata. So after leaving her off, I drove the long blocks to the main street that leads down to the malecon—and the glorious monstrous magnolia tree that is home to dozens of huge snowy egrets—most of whom bedeck its top branches like glorious white magnolias. Maddening that in my rush I didn’t grab my camera, as one particular egret was putting on an incredible show. If it was a mating ritual, no creature other than myself seemed to be noticing, but, in lieu of a camera, I have to try to share it with you.  The photos above are of previous viewings and none of them present the incredible performance I saw today.  Oh, that I had been able to show you that glorious long neck snaking out in an expanding “S,” again and again against the unbroken blue of the sky, then the whipping of the fragile long  feathers of the underwings!                    

 

Unplanned Sighting

Delicate white fan,
glorious in its expanse,
puffed chest expanding upwards,
    above it sinuous long neck expanding, roiling upwards
as though in supplication, or crowing splendor,
wing fanning and then whipping out, again and again
that S of neck from the top of the
biggest tree in town
majestically
jeweled with the glorious bedecking
of egrets at rest, tucked into themselves,
unlike you, glorious worshiper of calm blue sky,
spreading your feathers as though seeking to be the envy
of all those others whose gazes seem to be
directed inwards, to private memories.
     Only I, human observer of your world, to witness
caught helpless, without camera,
­­­­only an eye and tongue
to try to convey
your lovely
fragile
swaying

ballet of puffed
             pride or
grooming?

 

Only three prompt words today. One of the sites didn’t post.  The words are chest, envy and gaze. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/rdp-sunday-chest/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/07/fowc-with-fandango-envy/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/gaze/

 

If

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If

 

 

Prompt words today are coast, natural, aghast and venturesome. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/rdp-saturday-coast/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/06/fowc-with-fandango-natural/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/your-daily-word-prompt-aghast-april-6-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/venturesome-2/

The NaPoWriMo post is: Today, write a poem that emphasizes the power of “if,” of the woulds and coulds and shoulds of the world.

Past Due

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Past Due

No laundry can remove the lipstick stains from all your collars,
and you can’t buy atonement with all your guilty dollars.
I won’t condone your straying or ease one guilty thought.
My trust in you can’t be restored. Forgiveness can’t be bought.

You’ve plenty of excuses backed up with your regret,
but your tears won’t get you anything but wet.
I’m tired of all your stories, unaffected by your tears.
Fidelity is something you can’t pay for in arrears.

 

Prompt words today are laundry, condone, plenty and collar. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/rdp-friday-laundry
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/05/fowc-with-fandango-condone/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/your-daily-word-prompt-plenty-april-5-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/collar/

Rewind

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Rewind

Cast-off loves better unmet,
daredevil acts you’d best forget—
so many choices in your past
that people said would never last
Prescient in part, their words are sage.
It’s true that you have turned the page
on all the foolishness of youth,
and yet, it must be said in truth
that memories of all that’s past
will last and last and last and last.

You’ll play them over in the dark,
your mind the screen, as you embark
upon that nightly rerun of
each painful unrequited love.
Foolish decisions you once made
reemerge in dream’s charade.
All mixed together, puzzling, dense—
a mire that defies good sense.
Until there, in your deepest being,
you’ll find the truth of what you’re seeing.

 

Prompt words for today are cast-off or cast off, prescient and daredevil. And, for NaPoWriMo: write your own sad poem, but one that, like Teicher’s, achieves sadness through simplicity.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/rdp-thursday-cast-off-cast-off/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/04/fowc-with-fandango-prescient/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/daredevil/

 

Little Sins: NaPoWriMo 2019 Day 3 Plus Multiple Prompts

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Little Sins

Lynnie Brost and I, washing our sins away in the bathtub
and singing of it to the strains of holy music
from The Back to the Bible Broadcast
on the radio in the living room.

My older sisters stretched out on the porch
reading Photoplay and giggling
at our penitent antics,
feeling no need
to confess the sins
of Vivian dances
and the back seats of cars.

At the age of five,
How could we articulate our sins?
The tiny plastic sword—a wingless caduceus
I’d filched from a junk drawer where hundreds resided,
rewards for the cancer drive her mother supervised.
My mother head of the Sister Kenny Polio
drive, where rewards were merely
of the conscience.
How I had wanted
one of those
tiny swords.
Why

had I not just asked for one?

We
worried most
back in our innocence—
back when our sins were the least.
Back when in our minds, the value of what we wanted
was linked as much to how much we wanted it
as to its material value.

That two-penny sucker taken from the open jar
in the Peck family’s remodeled basement.
My mother asked where I’d gotten it.
My ashamed confession,
that long trip
next door
to
confess again.
No problem. That’s what they were there for.

But my mother,
knowing the power of the little sin,
was teaching me the dangers
of its contact.

What could it hurt,
sugar packets pocketed at Starbucks,
extra ketchup and mustard scooped by handfuls into purses?
Little sins overshadowed by the big sins of this world
and yet, somehow, shameful in their pettiness.
Drenched in these small sins,
what contracts do we,
unknowing,
make?

To steal from the rich and give to the poor,
then display our generosity on our lapels
by the scarlet badge of the caduceus?
Noble Robin Hoods, we justify
by our assurance that
they’ve stolen
from us
as
well.
and thus,
those who need most to learn
become instead our teachers,
educating us that their own sins are justified—
what we ourselves would do
if only we had
their power.

Prompt words today are articulate, contacts, drench and penitent.

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem that “involves a story or action that unfolds over an appreciable length of time, focusing on imagery, sound or emotional content.”
Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/rdp-wednesday-articulate/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/03/fowc-with-fandango-contacts/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/penitent/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/your-daily-word-prompt-drench-april-3-2019/

 

 

 

 

 

Why Me? NaPoWriMo 2019 Day 2

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Why Me?

Today I have the doldrums. My smile is upside down.
I cannot go to meet my cronies in the town.
My misery is absolute, I’m coughing and I’m sneezing,
and all this blowing of the nose is definitely unpleasing.

My bones could use some stretching, but I fear this will not be,
and Sandy, Harriet and Glen today I will not see.
I’ll try to talk to Gloria on the telephone
explaining why it’s best today that I am alone.

Why in fifteen minutes, as they shoot the  breeze.
will I be forced to lie abed, to blow my nose and sneeze?
Almond croissants and coffee and congeniality
are theirs while I am sentenced to echinacea tea!

The world just isn’t fair, my friend. I’m such a sorrowful wretch.
The only pleasure left in life to lie here and to kvetch!
It is life’s  idiosyncrasy that nine times out of ten
when I most want to paint the town, instead I must stay in.

What master of the universe sees that such a function
turns out to be a flop as a method of conjunction
with busy friends  that for two months I haven’t seen together
and in the one time we can meet, keeps me on such short tether?

 

The prompt words today are stretch, idiosyncrasy, absolute and upside. In addition, the NaPoWriMo prompt for today is to write a poem that ends in a question. Here are links to all:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/02/rdp-tuesday-stretch/
FOWC with Fandango — Idiosyncrasy
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/02/your-daily-word-prompt-absolute-april-2-
2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/02/upside/
NaPoWriMo