Tag Archives: Word of the Day

Sunset and Moonglow

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img_7667jdbphoto 1/20/2019

Sunset and Moonglow

This moon is not derivative of any other moon.
If I called it a blood moon, I chose my words too soon.
It did not glow as brightly as that vivid red that flowed
when his heartbeat lengthened. When his breathing slowed.

It did not flow as scarlet as life lost by human hand.
It did not pool and sink into the all-obscuring sand.
It’s true that nature paints with blood when mortal creatures die,
but it casts a subtler color when painted on the sky.

The earth is not a marble. Night skies aren’t plastered with stars.
There’s no earthly equivalent for Jupiter or Mars.
When we use manmade metaphors to capture universal
beauties like the evening sky, it seems a real reversal.

When we dream of lovers’ eyes, they should shine like stars.
Stars should not merely twinkle like fireflies caught in jars.
Candy floss swells like a cloud, a sunflower’s like the sun.
Not the other way around. And when the day is done,

the sunset simply is itself and no artist can
duplicate its subtlety with pigments coined by man.

The prompt words today are marble, plaster, derivative and dream.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/rdp-monday-marble/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/21/fowc-with-fandango-plaster/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/your-daily-word-prompt-derivative-january-21-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/dream/

No Head for Business

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No Head for Business

I fear I must be adamant in stating my demands.
In this I am unshakeable. My initial sales price stands.
I do not like this bargaining. I find it all a chore.
I’d rather be off wandering. Business is a bore.
And though I must admit that your demeanor is most affable,
your offer is too little. In fact I find it laughable.
It will do no good to counter offer. I’m set on the price
that would reimburse me for leaving paradise.

I have no bottom offer. This is no power game.
To nickel and to dime it is a practice I find lame.
The palm trees are all swaying, there’s hot water in the pool,
and the more I think about it, I see that I’m a fool
to leave this little Shangri-la. Where would I find its sequel?
It’s clear that for the price I ask I could not find its equal!
Here swinging in my hammock with a cocktail and my pup,
I am so contented that my sales price just went up!!

Prompt words today were chore, affable, adamant and power.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/rdp-friday-chore/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/18/fowc-with-fandango-affable/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/your-daily-word-prompt-adamant-january-18-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/power/

Challenging Fortune

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Click on first photo to enlarge all and read captions.

Macho rules the world, and
to the powerful belong the spoils.
They have us in the palm of their hand.
Time for change?
Who will lead the way? Warrior
or holy man?
And who will profit from the change?
All of these:

Challenging Fortune

Just when we’re feeling cocky—superior and svelte,
fate dishes out an uppercut, or one below the belt.
Its fickleness is onerous. Its lessons often hard.
Some end up with a loving cup and others with a shard.

So if misfortune catches you and holds you in its grasp,
for sure, good fortune harbors another in its clasp.
Rejoicing in their happiness may bring your pain’s surcease,
and looking at a larger view may bring you some release.

Some men are accustomed to eating all the pie.
They see no good in sharing. They vie and vie and vie
to horde the opportunities. It’s their sign of success.
They profit on our labors, grow rich on our duress.

It brings a sort of balance, this giving and this taking.
It teaches us that fortune is not just of our making.
There may not be enough good luck to insist that they share.
Label him a “socialist”If anyone should dare.

Where is the one who’ll stop them? Who will come to show the way?
What warrior or what holy man will  lead us in the fray?
Those who’ve usurped religion seem to have lost the point.
They don’t champion the underdog.  It’s rich men they anoint.

Everything is power and perhaps it always was.
For eons we’ve forgotten this, probably because
the photos of these  greedy men reaching for the stars,
cruising in their massive yachts and their racing cars,

look so pretty on the page. The minute that we see them,
instead of censuring the greed, we simply want to be them.
They stage their wars and make their gains and young men die to aid it.
And instead of ruing war, we honor those who made it.

The prompt words today were shard, onerous, opportunity and uppercut.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/rdp-thursday-shard/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/17/fowc-with-fandango-onerous/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/your-daily-word-prompt-opportunity-january-17-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/uppercut/

Out of Order

7 Replies

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Out of Order

If you’re an avid planner—an agenda sort of man,
life seems to have a fondness for screwing up your plan.
Ideology is fine so long as you take note
that fate seems to have other schemes than life lived out by rote.

Providence is naughty. It thinks irony is divine.
It likes to move our decimal points, nudge columns out of line.
It screws around with calendars, plays jokes with weather, too.
It messes up your Windsor knot, conceals one favorite shoe.

It messes up collections and puts them out of sequence.
confuses medication in its timing and its frequence.
So if life changes the rules after you think you’ve won,
learn what it seeks to teach you: spontaneity is fun!

 

Prompt words today were collection, avid, ideology and plan.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/ragtag-daily-prompt-tuesday-collection/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/15/fowc-with-fandango-avid/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/your-daily-word-prompt-ideology-january-15-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/plan/

Ta Ta

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images-1                                                jdbphoto

Ta Ta

It’s an exquisite loss, your going away,
and it’s also timely, I’m given to say.
You may find it inane that I’m saved while you’re lost,
but it’s true that some friendships come at a cost.
You’ve departed, it’s clear. This I so plainly see,
but your leaving has given me something back: me!

 

Prompt words today are timely, inane, lost and exquisite.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/rdp-sunday-timely/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/13/fowc-with-fandango-inane/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/your-daily-word-prompt-lost-january-13-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/exquisite/

Truth Serum

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Truth Serum

I’d like to form a splinter group of all the friends I know
to reconnoiter memories and then to tell and show.
Candidness, of course, would be most elemental—
telling truth and all the truth merely instrumental
in getting to the crux of things, in solving all the puzzles.
Life’s not got at best with blinders and with muzzles.

Our lives are rivers that we’d float together, in snug boats
comprised of past anecdotes from sagas to mere quotes.
Who hasn’t lived a movie if they’ve lived a life at all?
If only we had the courage, trust and gall 
to reveal our true life story—both its triumph and its shame
and to share it with each other with no censorship or blame.

The prompt words today are river, instrumental, memories and splinter.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/rdp-saturday-river/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/12/fowc-with-fandango-instrumental/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/your-daily-word-prompt-memories-january-12-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/splinter/

The Memento

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The Memento

Yes, I received your letter and the enmity enclosed.
And yes, it has accomplished what you probably supposed.
I here enclose your photograph. I have no further need of it.
If I want to end the grieving, I must dispose of the seed of it.

I’m burning all your letters and crumbling your dried roses,
disposing of your paintings of me in different poses.
I’m in need of no mementos to bring you back again.
I need no souvenirs to remember all the pain.

These ashes are the lovelock you asked me for that night.
I found it in your pillowcase the morning of our fight.
Its cremated remains were easiest to send.
They are so easily scattered to signify our end.

The prompt words today are letter, enmity, photograph and accomplish.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/rdp-friday-letter/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/11/fowc-with-fandango-enmity/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/your-daily-word-prompt-photograph-january-11-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/accomplish/

An Ode to the Annoyingly Ebullient

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* jdbphoto

An Ode to the Annoyingly Ebullient

Her ebullient nature sometimes seemed a little cloying.
Others less endowed with cheer could find it most annoying.
It seemed that her ambition was to slipcover the earth
with a shell of levity—a monologue of mirth.
That others didn’t seem to have her appetite for humor
based on romance serials and hearsay and on rumor
didn’t seem to faze her. Her allusions’ rarity
coupled with her seeming lack of storytelling clarity
fazed her not a bit. Though no one else seemed to be buying it,
she kept on unrelentingly with her “pie in the sky” ing it.

 

But, there is hope. Click on the below arrow to learn more:

 

Prompt words today are ebullient, ambition, clarity and appetite. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/rdp-wednesday-ebullient/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/09/fowc-with-fandango-ambition/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/your-daily-word-prompt-clarity-january-9-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/appetite/

In Defense of Immaturity

12 Replies

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In Defense of Immaturity

Kids say immaturity
is not all it’s cracked up to be.
First, they have no salary,
and as of yet, ice cream’s not free,
so they depend on you and me
to determine when ice cream will be!

We tell them not to climb that tree
and put restrictions on TV.
We tell them that they have to pee
on potty chairs, not Grandpa’s knee.
We tell them they must walk, then see
each lurch and fall and laugh with glee.

Imagine notoriety
based on what one’s foibles be. 
Kids’ natural spontaneity—
their need to roughhouse, smash and flee
is often quashed, you will agree,
with all those in authority!

It’s tough to be a kid, you see,
given their great temerity.
So grant a bit of charity.
Recognize the disparity
between what we’d like kids to be
and their genetic heredity!

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/07/immature/

Home is the Sailor

7 Replies

 

Home is the Sailor

Homecomings call for clemency and memory that is short,
for when a sailor comes back home to his favorite port,
he doesn’t like returning to atone for past mistakes.
He’d rather do his penance for the new ones that he makes.

This isn’t any riddle, no mystery is involved.
It’s simply that some other bad habits  have evolved.
He finds he cannot take the time to mend what he’s forgotten
when he has so many other newer habits ill-begotten.

 

 

The prompt words today are homecoming, clemency and riddle.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/rdp-sunday-homecoming/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/your-daily-word-prompt-clemency-january-6-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/riddle/