Tag Archives: Word of the Day

Climate Shift

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Climate Shift

The lady’s mood was known to oscillate season to season.
One month she was crazy and the next given to reason.
Winter, in particular, seemed to fray her nerves,
when no truffles were available to top off her hors d’ oeuvres.

She saw inclement weather as a personal rebuff.
She simply abhorred snowflakes—their frigidity and fluff.
She wrote a letter to the mayor, for she knew it was a fact
there was a ban on nasty weather that he could enact.

The letter that she wrote him finally reached him in December,
but in the rush of Christmas, he neglected to remember
that she had made demands until the New Year celebration
was over, whereupon he said he’d take a small vacation

to try to conduct research in a sunnier location—
perhaps a South American or Carribean nation—
to see just how they managed to defray this colder weather.
Then he’d fly off to another just to further study whether

just what, if anything, there might be to be done
to do away with winter and attract more sun.
His efforts were so thorough that , booking after booking,
when he didn’t find an answer, he had to go on looking.

From Belize to Barbados, Aruba to St. Kitt,
the solution kept evading him, yet he sought after it.
Then, finally, in June, the lady got her wishes.
No snowflakes on her shoulders and truffles for her dishes.

For when the mayor came back from his research in milder lands,
He brought the sun back with him, thus meeting her demands.

Prompt words today are oscillate, particular, month and rebuff.

The Return

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The Return 

Girded by a pressure suit, guided by skill and science,
an astronaut must learn the lessons of complete compliance.
It requires trust and backbone to travel through the dark,
trusting hands thousands of miles away to guide that ark

that speeds him through the solar system, up to regions where
his surroundings are devoid of gravity and air.
Accepting the unknown and resisting terror’s bark,
he hurtles into outer space, accepting danger’s lark.

What prompts him to accept the threat of loneliness and death—
to face an end from fire or from lack of breath?
It is exceptional valor, proving bravery and worth
to face his end so far from the comforts of this earth.

Does he face a different heaven in another clime,
his molecules merged after death to a different time?
Is he bound to spend infinity apart from worlds he’s known,
blown into the universe, forever, now, alone?

No earth he knows to go to to blend back in the world.
From his own nature’s cycle, now forever hurled.
Does he merge into a wider world, another evolution,
absorbed within the rules of a new orb’s revolution?

Will he travel back again in centuries far distant,
in an alien craft, his molecules so insistent
to return to their origins that they are drawn back home
to the soil of this Earth or to the ocean’s foam?

Or can he find his way back home again solely on his own,
intent on his not spending eternity alone?
How wide is one’s soul’s orbit? How vast its gravity?
Can it bring a shipless astronaut back from infinity?

 

Word prompts for today are backbone bark, science and gird.

Brain vs Brawn

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Brain vs Brawn

Performing ablutions and feeding the dogs,
writing to prompts and checking out blogs.
My movement these mornings is slightly curtailed
now that my circadian rhythms have failed.
With two hours’ sleep, it’s dubious that
my exercise will exceed petting the cat.
You may claim that you still can do a mean pushup,
but lately some of us just can’t get our tushup.
Good for all of you folks with perpetual youth,
although bragging of it I find slightly uncouth.
Do I blather on about crosswords I’ve done
or winning at Scrabble? It just isn’t done.
I don’t swagger around with my I.Q. in view.
Clearly, I have something better to do.
So cover that body. Put your pecs in a shroud.
That muscle shirt clearly should not be allowed.
Put clothes on those biceps, obscure that tight tush.
We know that you pump and you pull and you push,
but must you show us? We find it importunate
that you should flaunt them to all the unfortunate.
We don’t display that we’re learned and clever.
We don’t quote Chaucer. Well, not hardly ever.
We won’t humiliate your split infinitive
if you won’t show off your muscles definitive.
Those of us flabby and rotund and loose
hereby are suggesting that we call a truce.
We will not correct your split infinitive
if you won’t show off  your muscles definitive.

Prompt words today are movement, dubious, claim and ablution.

“Comeuppance Rears Its Ugly Head–Again!”

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“Comeuppance Rears Its Ugly Head–Again!”

I’ve an issue with these prompts that give us words that are obscure.
Any more weird words will be more than I can endure.
I yearn for words more ordinary so my poem can shine.
Shame on you for choosing words that stand out above mine

like a boil on proboscis or a zit on a smooth cheek.
A prompt word should suggest a theme, but never prompt an “Eeeek!”
A prompt word should strike lightning but not burn down all the trees.
Think before you prompt, dear friends. No more “comeuppance,” please!

* “Comeuppance” has been the prompt word for two of the four prompt sites I use in the past week and one suggested it twice, withdrawing the earlier prompt after I’d already written my poem, so I rewrote the line, thankfully, only to have the word pop up a few days later in another prompt site, then again in this one a few days later! Now, if you want to see “comeuppance” for a fourth time, click on the link for “obscure.” I hereby give the word its own comeuppance by means of this poem.

Prompt words today are lightning, issue, obscure and yearn. Illustration thanks to DP on Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Hopscotch

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Hopscotch

One foot, two feet, doing fine.
Do not stray over the line.
This childhood game of balanced action
far in the past, a mere abstraction—

a metaphor far from unique
for the balance that you seek
as you advance as you are able,
moving forward, sometimes stable

on two feet. balanced and steady,
resting there and getting ready
for that time when one foot only
rests on firm ground, feeling lonely.

One leg, balanced in the air
is enough to curl your hair
but two firm squares are there ahead,
so you hop up to them, instead—

balanced on one foot or two
in each adventure offered you.
So life advances, hop after hop
No choice except to never stop.

 

Prompt words today are forward, unique, ulotrichous (curly-haired), abstraction. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Knowing

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Knowing

We cast long shadows in the sun,
but shorter as the day is done,
and when we shrink into our selves,
placing  our souls upon their shelves,
what shadows last? Are our souls
made of  Teflon or are they bowls?
The world’s vendettas should be left
back in the wide world lest their heft
leave our spotless souls bereft
and our inner natures cleft.

Those whom we honor with boundless fame
and lionize in face and name
might sport a very great divide
if we were to see inside—
their nature split  between what they
profess to be—what they might say
and what their true intentions are.
Their true motives might be far
from what we perceive as their intentions.
We cannot know a soul’s dimensions
except by looking at the facts
of how the outer person acts.

What they profess that they believe
may often be used to deceive.
But heart-to-heart, it is absurd
to think truth is conveyed by word.
Some part of us knows deeper meaning
devoid of boasting, strutting, preening.
The soul requires no advertisement,
seeks no excess aggrandizement.
In our soul of souls we know
what is authentic and what’s for show.
That shadow that we cast without
within has very little clout.

 

This poem is both a commentary and assessment of those who have lately been much in the arena and about ourselves–including myself.

Prompt words today are long shadows, vendetta and lionize.

Final Cure

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Final Cure

Her health was being challenged by a constant series of woes.
She had chilblains on her fingers and corns between her toes.
She suffered migraine headaches, and her joints became rheumatic
during the rainy season, when she also turned asthmatic.
Since her approach to cures was stubbornly heuristic,
the remedies she chose to use tended toward pluralistic.
Her health care ran the gamut from Kabbalah to holistic.
One day she saw a doctor and the next she saw a mystic.
And since the switching back and forth became a sort of Hell,
in the end she gave them all up and decided to get well!

 

Prompt words for the day are health, series, heuristic and woe.

Married to the Sun

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Married to the Sun

One ray makes an incision through a layer of cloud to land
like a stream of gold upon my outstretched hand.
It is no illusion that its trail of liquid gold
winds around my finger. It’s a beauty to behold.

All my life, it’s true I’ve not belonged to anyone,
but now it is official. I am married to the sun.
Why else would just one sun ray make the decision to linger
of all the places in the world, only upon my finger?

 

Prompt words for today are trail, liquid, illusion and linger.

Pieces of Toast

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Pieces of Toast

They dip into
the smooth
round yolk
of a fading dream.

They interfere,
these conscious words,
an uninvited jentacular
mob that enters

without invitation,
shedding their crumbs.
I make exception
and surrender
control,

accepting
their sharp crisp corners
into the broken centers
of my smooth round
subterranean
stanzas.

Words for the day are mob, interfere, jentacular and exception. Image by Mae Mu on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Also, for dVerse Poets Open Link Night

 

Zoo Snafu

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Zoo Snafu

When first he thought he’d try to woo,
he took his date out to the zoo.
He  paid her way and opened doors,
protected her from wild boars
that were, of course, all kept in cages,
viewers safe from all their rages.

Nonetheless he fantasized
that his date must be surprised
at his bravery and daring-do
as demonstrated at the zoo.
Later on, he thought it best
that they should have a little rest.

To fuel them for their promenade,
bought hot dogs, fries and lemonade,
then found a bench and sat them down
somewhere near to monkey town.
He found a napkin and tucked it in
somewhere between her neck and chin,

daubed mustard from her upper lip,
Oh, he was gallant, polite, hip!
Then, after they had had a rest
he thought perhaps it would be best
to resume their stroll to view
the llamas and the kangaroo.

When they loitered for awhile
‘tween hippos and the crocodile,
he thought it might not be remiss
to try to steal a little kiss.
And self-assured she wouldn’t mind,
he worried about just what kind.

Should it be passionate or peck?
Oh her lips or on her neck?
Would it be a sin of remission
not to ask for her permission?
And should his hands go high or low?
How was a kiss-rookie to know?

So, in the end, he shook her hand
between the gnu and the eland.
Then they resumed their galavanting—
monkey, lion, elephanting—
Better not to act in haste.
Thus this first date, alas, was chaste.

Prompt words for today are galavant, remiss and assured.