Tag Archives: Word of the Day

Southern Discomfort

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Southern Discomfort

A barrage of dainty words like “Bless her heart!” and “Y’all.”
greeted me as I approached the entrance to the ball.
As I turned this and that way to fit me through the door,
it was then that I regretted the hoop skirt that I wore.
Finally giving it a yank and then one great yank more,
I fear I heard a ripping sound as something in there tore.

I grabbed a small mint julep from the tray that passed me by,
but waved away the country ham, eschewed the pecan pie,
for the merry widow that I was squeezed  into
already had me short of breath and slowly turning blue.
A few spins around the dance floor with something in my shoe,
convinced me that my southern ball experience was through.

We exited the ballroom, motored out of the plantation,
and in the backseat I surrendered to severe temptation.
Like those giant pythons that shed their skins in zoos,
I peeled off my merry widow and my ball gown and my shoes.
My hoop skirt parachuting out the window brought a smile
as I disposed of finery mile after mile.

As we drew up to the levee and approached the shrimping docks,
I drew on my old Levis and a t-shirt and my Crocs.
By then my southern gentlemen was through with me, I fear.
He was driving rather fast and grinding every gear.
So it won’t be any news to you that our romance was through.
“Southern” is just something that this northern girl can’t do.

 

 

Prompt words used in this post were news, dainty and barrage. Photo is stock footage from “Gone with the Wind.”

https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/30/fowc-with-fandango-news/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/your-daily-word-prompt-dainty-january-30-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/barrage/

Levels of Agility

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Levels of Agility

As I crossed the meadow, I saw a large tree
that seemed to be perfect for climbing to me.
Its shade was inviting and seemed to create
a suitable topic for a debate.
Could I ascend its formidable trunk
and my lack of agility thereby debunk?
Or would I fall down with a tremendous clunk
and wind up in a heap in a terrible funk?

I’ve a poor sense of balance and that could create
a fall that could ruin my mobility rate.
I could fall on my head and get a sound crack
or break both my legs or my neck or my back
or get tangled in branches to such a degree
that they’d need a buzz saw to extricate me.
All in all, my decision finally made,
I spread out a blanket and lay in its shade.

Prompt words for today are balance, tree, inviting and create.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/rdp-tuesday-balance/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/29/fowc-with-fandango-tree/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/your-daily-word-prompt-inviting-january-29-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/create/

Give and Take

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Give and Take

Although a rigid stance is the position you do best,
I match your staid decorum as though it is a test.
I know that later on you’ll give in and acquiesce
to join  me in my usual fluid Arabesque!

 

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Acquiesce was the prompt word For the Word of the Day challenge.

Unholy Fathers

10 Replies

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Unholy Fathers

Those who say they are  devout
but who  abuse their power and clout
to line their pockets, yet profess
to pardon sins their flocks confess
should note that they should be eschewing
acts that might prove their undoing
if they had to confess them to
the masses they are doing them to.

Holy men whose words are truthless
may be exploitative and ruthless
rather than the gentle men
their savior states they should have been.
Those truly holy do not resort
to indulgences meant to extort.
All such ill-gained filthy lucre
cannot give much grace and succor

to the ones collecting it
or for those detecting it
who cover up their loathsome ways.
Not one such sinner ever pays
for deeds for which they should atone.
Their “rules” leave these men alone
to exploit children once again
and go unpunished for their sin.

 

The prompt words today are note, resort and devout.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/rdp-monday-note/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/28/fowc-with-fandango-resort/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/your-daily-word-prompt-devout-january-28-2019/

Cruel Tranquility

13 Replies

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Cruel Tranquility

Welp, I would not have chosen this ending to the story.
It is a sad conclusion—distressing, sad and gory.
The hummingbird, suspended in its helicopter flight,
was brought down from the air with one swift lethal bite.
It was my adorable kitten who stopped its blur of wings.
Tired of scratching posts and batting balls and chasing strings,
she chose a task more difficult—a target ever-moving,
an irresistible challenge but one hardly behooving
a tiny kitten noted for its playfulness and cuteness.
I fear I underestimated her extreme astuteness.
Now she rests in sunlight. Her quarry, limp and torn,
here upon my doormat, I survey, forlorn
over loss of this small creature—its sheer poetry of motion—
as well as this reminder that in garden, air or ocean,
one thing feeds upon another in a constant mortal chain
incredible in beauty, indivisible from pain,
even in a garden where I sought for peace to reign.

 

Prompt words for the day are flight, forlorn, adorable and welp. 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/rdp-sunday-flight/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/27/fowc-with-fandango-forlorn/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/your-daily-word-prompt-adorable-january-27-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/yelp/

Family Reunion: Final Spin

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Family Reunion: Final Spin

The first couple on the dance floor were surely insignificant.
Bent-over spines and frosted hair made them less magnificent
than all the younger dancers who came out to surround them—
making them invisible as they grouped all around them.
The music started and the pairs all commenced their waltzing—
with glides and dips, extended arms, and all that fancy schmaltzing.
Soon, however, they backed off from something in the middle.
Voices hushed throughout the room until only the fiddle,
piano and the clarinets were heard in the night air
as all the others dancers watched a central pair
of waltzers gliding o’er the floor, eyes wrapped up in each other,
once again that little girl just dancing with her brother,
magically suspended in those steps taught by their mother.

The prompt words today are frosted, pair, insignificant and waltzing. And, the cat bit me on the tip of my little finger today and I’m wearing a bandaid, so forgive any typing errors. Especially regarding ‘”[{}]or/?  It may have been a very aggressive love nip or a hurry up and feed me nip or an excessive response to a really good ear scratch/neck rub, but whichever it was, it was very naughty and brought blood. Perhaps vestigial remains of the blood moon of a few nights ago.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/rdp-saturday-frosted/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/26/fowc-with-fandango-pair/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/your-daily-word-prompt-insignificant-january-26-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/waltzing/

Left

21 Replies

jdbphoto

Left

We were a marvelous combination, determined to survive.
When we were together, each of us more alive.
There was no way to forecast what our end would be.
Never did I dream that love’s survivor would be me.

It’s best that love can’t forecast the future that is pending
We might not choose ever to love if we could know its ending.
For it is inevitable, after true love’s gain,
for one or the other, the ending will be pain.

 

 

The prompt words today are forecast, determined, marvelous and combine.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/rdp-friday-forecast/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/25/fowc-with-fandango-determined/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/your-daily-word-prompt-marvelous-january-25-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/combine/

Voyeur

8 Replies

jdbphoto          

Voyeur

Steady days and vagrant nights pull this way and that.
By day a busy beaver, midnights a roving cat

haunting every low-life bar, spending bucks and time,
trying to find that side of life apart from the sublime.

Dipping into shadows. Edging around the slime
of the seamier pleasures. Contemplating crime.

Eying dangerous companions but staying self-contained.
All dangerous encounters simply mimed and feigned.

Flirting with the dark side, but reined in by the light,
only skirting stealthily the pleasures of the night.

 


(Photo for illustrative purposes only.  In no way is the poem really about the person pictured!) The prompt words today were vagrant, range, slime and haunting. 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/rdp-thursday-vagrant/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/24/fowc-with-fandango-range/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/your-daily-word-prompt-slime-january-24-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/haunting/

Intervention

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Intervention

There is no need to instigate a further conversation.
I do not wish to carry on further investigation.
Your research notes are copious. You are immersed in piles of them.
Why must you accumulate miles and miles and miles of them?

Please, conquer your obsession. Let us get on with our lives.
Your number one obsession has me breaking out in hives!
I rue the day I prompted you to have a little look
at what I just considered an entertaining book.

I didn’t have a single clue–not an inkling that
you would quickly be obsessed with the Vampire Lestat!
A Discovery of Witches then joined your Zombie thing.
Every occult creature in graveyard or on wing

has seemed to colonize your mind, squeezing out all other
former occupations: football, hockey and your mother!!!
This is an intervention. I’m unplugging the TV,
seizing all your Anne Rice books. Replacing them with me.

Try to read me like a book. Look here into my eyes.
Vampires aren’t the only creatures who can mesmerize.
We’ll toss your zombies in a pile and stage a mass cremation.
Our sex life should improve a lot with their elimination.

I won’t need to bite your neck. My seductions won’t be gory.
They’ll be the furthest thing from an American Horror Story.
Things that go bump in the night need not all make you wary.
Let me raise your pulse rate by a means that is less scary!!!

Prompt words today are immerse, copious, extreme and instigate.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/rdp-wednesday-immerse/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/23/fowc-with-fandango-copious/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/your-daily-word-prompt-extreme-january-23-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/instigate/

New Man at the Opera

4 Replies

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New Man at the Opera

With his head held at this angle, in the cape of a magician,
it’s true that he looks noble, but he’s merely a technician
in a laboratory where I fear they are uncouth—
where they dissect small animals and magnify the truth.
They then sell us the results at an inflated price.
Although he looks a gentleman, he isn’t very nice.

They say his former conquests are piled to the roof.
You’ll be his next small animal if you don’t stand aloof.
He distilled all their beauty into a fine elixir
that promises eternal youth. It is indeed a fixer
of wrinkles and of attitudes gained throughout a life
of the constant labor of motherhood and wife.

Thus goes all the gossip at the opera today
as the local ladies inspect, dissect and weigh
the assets and the defects of the newest man in town.
They titter and they bug their eyes. They giggle and they frown.
And by the end of the first act, they still don’t have a clue
about the way that they should act. What is it they should do

if they attract his interest? Should they snub or should they charm?
Each single lady fantasizes clinging to his arm.
The gossip after all may be a slight exaggeration
based loosely on the truth but still with no verification.
By interval, they’ve thought it through and make repeated passes
past the box he sits in, or view him through their glasses.

And early the next morning, they begin their primping—
their lipsticking and powdering, their combing, curling, crimping.
They line up on the sidewalk, waiting for their turn
to enter through his doorway to have their chance to learn
the truth about his mystery. In all, they numbered ten,
those maidens who there entered, and were never seen again!!!

 

 

The prompt words today are angle, noble, laboratory and magnify.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/rdp-tuesday-angle/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/22/fowc-with-fandango-noble/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/your-daily-word-prompt-laboratory-january-22-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/magnify/