Tag Archives: Wordle

Misnomer, For The Sunday Whirl, June 9, 2024

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Misnomer

Red dragon of my garden, ascending walls and rocks,
seeking out a birth chamber on your extensive walks.
Your strategy is lethal, for the shelter you find best
proves you as an enemy—a thief of life and nest
of bee or wasp or other insect where you’ll lay
your eggs where larvae of your host will become the prey

of your eggs when they have hatched into larvae too,
long after you have left to resume adventures new.
Wingless wasp, you never soar aloft in air,
but your vivid color hints at the despair
of any who receive your sting, so painful that you’ve earned
the title of “Cow Killer Ant” as victims have soon learned.

Cool water will not stem the pain, nor will anything
soothe the throbbing torture of your defensive sting,
but unlike your insect victims, humans will not face
a fate more dire than pain that is extensive as you race,
channeling your power into a new direction,
tunneling into the ground to escape detection.

 

Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 658 are: strategy enemy thieves red dragon air hint water rock nest face channel

Although commonly referred to as the cow killer ant or red velvet ant, this insect is actually a wasp. They get the “velvet” part of their name from the fuzziness of the females, which are wingless and often brightly colored, appearing like a red and black ant. The powerful red velvet ant sting is what has led them to be nicknamed “cow killers”. The female will enter the ground nest of a host species, typically a wasp or bee species, and lay her eggs near the host’s larvae. As D. occidentalis’ larvae develop, the species’ true parasitoid nature is shown. The larvae grow and develop by feeding on and killing the larvae of the host species. [13] Velvet ant larvae will continue to feed until they enter the pupal stage. In this stage, larvae continue to grow into adults. Pupation typically takes 23 days, and most velvet ants are mature and ready to reproduce themselves after this. [15] Velvet ants have an interesting mating style compared to other Hymenopteran species. The male has no parental care responsibilities and the female leaves as soon as she lays her eggs. This is not out of the ordinary for a Hymenopteran species, but velvet ants are though to be monogamous and semelparous. This means females mate just once in their lifetime with only one male. Many entomological organizations suspect velvet ants to mate only once in their lifetime.[16]

(Thanks, Wikipedia, for furnishing research on these insects. I think I’ve seen three in the past 23 years and did an earlier post on the orange and black variety I discovered on my wall many years ago. This one I found near my kitchen door just a few years ago.)

“Unruly Words” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 657

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Unruly Words

This poem wants to dangle or take a giant leap.
I can hear it whirring as it wakens me from sleep.
I think that it’s been restlessly dancing in my dreams,
clicking on its castanets and bursting at its seams.

It may want to be a song, and thus the castanets.
Let’s hope this is the noisiest that this poem gets!
I like my poems whimsical and gentle like a sneeze.
Instead of words that storm and fuss, I prefer a breeze.

I grant that poetry has stirred others to their fate,
but poems that are too preachy tend to irritate.
Please talk to me in gentle words that put me at my ease,
for in this angry world it’s harder to find words that please.

For The Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: clicking whimsical leap poetry songs be whirring dangling fates talk grant storm (Image from a free image generator–couldn’t resist, but I promise not to get carried away with this!)

 

 

Baaad Puns, For Fibbing Friday May 31, 2024

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The questions this week were provided by Jim Adams. Thanks, Jim!

1. Rumpelstiltskin spun straw into gold in exchange for what? He would exchange for only two things: bitcoin or newly pressed stilt covers. 
2. What did humans do before the bobbin was invented? Called ahead for appointments.
3. What is the difference between knitting and crocheting?  a missing knit and an added croche.
4. What does a drop spindle do? Creates a mist to cool off crowds in a heat wave.
5. What does a painted pony have to do with a spinning wheel? They are both parts of a carousel.
6. If you stick a needle in your eye, does that show sincerity? No. It shows stupidity.
7. What was Barthélemy Thimonnier known for? The invention of a wallet one straps to one’s inner thigh to protect against pickpockets.
8. What happened in the Golden Age of sewing?  Thread price futures soared.
9. What breed of sheep makes the best wool? The ones who bring in the best return financially are Polypay sheep.  (A real breed.)
10. What happens when the cotton field gets rotten? Wool prices soar.

 

For Fibbing Friday

“Final Payment” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 656

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Image by Vitaly Taranov on Unsplash

Final Payment

Bees hum and die in brambles, hidden from our sight, 
and scrawled across the sky, untethered in their flight,
are birds swept by a tempest, urged on by its blast,
as down below, the earth cracks, and our future’s cast
in hurricanes and fires and climate change so vast 
that mankind’s ancient rituals no longer work their magic.
Our cut-down trampled forestlands foretell a future tragic.
We leap ahead to our own end, speed it on its way,
waiting for that reckoning for which we’ll have to pay.

For The Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: trample crack swept untethered hum urge scrawled bees sky ritual leap brambles

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle #652

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Memory 

The habits of mind come trickling through,
to add their salt to your simmering brew
of appointments and stories and poems and tasks
and all of the other things modern life asks
that you fill up your time with—full to the brim 
from its secretive roots to its furthest stretched limb.

It’s shadows and sunlight, it’s flowers and stones—
from the flesh of your life to its skin and its bones.
Those niggling doubts that fill corners of mind,
crowding out thoughts of a cheerier kind
as all your vast memory falls to the axe
of that onerous visitor’s tuggings and hacks.
Stripping your mind to set it to rest,
drawing its sunrise to fade in the west.

For The Sunday Whirl #652 the prompt words are: vast salty simmering habits mind trickle secretive brim axe roots shadows stones

Plagiarist, For the Sunday Whirl, Apr 21, 2024

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Plagiarist

I track my sleepy footprints down to the salty sea,
with only tide and sand to keep me company.

Now and then a wispy cloud silvers the rising moon,
breaking into filigree, then vanishing too soon.

A moonbeam cracks the tidal swell and draws a slender line,
whispering this story that now I claim as mine.

Huddling on the outskirts of wave and slivered light,
I nonetheless declare my self as part of this calm night.

Sly interloper that I am, still all I hear and see
opens up its arms and seems to welcome me.

 

For the Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: draw cracks sly sliver sleepy footprints stories moon outskirts wispy sky sea

A Semi-Tall Tale for The. Sunday Whirl Wordle 650 and NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 12

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Image by Satish Nagapuri on Unsplash
JDB Photo
JDB Photo

 

 

 A Semi-Tall Story

Once upon a time, dear friends, long before creation,
the spirits of the universe formed a delegation
to invent our ancestors: the cell  and then the fish,
and eons later, they decided to fulfill the wish
of the lowly haddock to wallow in the mud
with toes and feet to stay erect while walking through the crud.
And thus was born the dinosaur, king of a twig-strewn world,
crashing through the underbrush as all it touched unfurled.

Those parts of earth unbroken eventually gave birth
to animals less violent and much smaller in girth.
Warm-blooded, they awakened to divine memory,
invented words and realized that what had come to be
was what the spirits of the universe had foreseen long ago
while looking in a crystal ball. The predicted it, and lo,
that chain occurred unbroken—ending with you and me,
sitting here upon the ledge of infinity. 

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 650, the prompt words are: twigs divine wake blood wallow cell memory ancestors crystal creation ledge unbroken.  I am combining this prompt with the NaPoWriMo prompt from two days ago, which I forgot to do.  The 12th prompt of the monthly series was to write a tall story. This one is only tallish as it’s based on evolution. The Spirits of the Universe might qualify as the tall part of the tale.

“Python Pariah” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 649, Apr 7, 2024

Python Pariah

The root of all his problems is a bad mood he can’t shake.
Spooning with a garden hose?  A horrible mistake!
Returning now to his old den is not within the cards.
Too humiliating to face his former pards.

Outside it is both cold and wet and ice stands up in slivers.
It’s the sort of weather that can give a snake the shivers. 
Hard to move through ice and snow with neither arm nor limb
and all those constellations of shards of ice on him.

He’s gobbled down a lizard and nibbled on a squirrel,
then lay rigid on the platform until ready to unfurl.
He negotiated train tracks after descending a stair.
Zipped right down the train aisle without paying his fare.

Slipped into the baggage room and curled up in a coil,
rocking with the movement as the train began to roil.
He then passed a dreary spell while digesting his food.
It’s hard to enjoy traveling when in an iffy mood.

When he is finished shivering, then he begins to cough.
He knows not his destination, knows not where he’ll get off.
He only asks that it is warm with places he can hide
and curl up somewhere safe with a real girl snake at his side!

 

The Sunday Whirl Wordle 649 prompt words are: nibbles slithers spoon platform shards root constellations limbs dreary spell shake wet

“What a Turtle Has and Hasn’t” for Wordle 648, Mar 31, 2024

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What a Turtle Has and Hasn’t

It’s true that turtles can make do
with fewer bones than mortals do,
for all the bones that they may lack
are compensated by their back
which curves skyward and then back down
to form a solid armored gown.

They spill no blood, pray not for healing
with such protection  for their ceiling.
Thus does creation seed the waters
with its tough-shelled  sons and daughters,
for though they may lack fins and gills,
they can overcome these ills.

If, perchance, you’re given to wonder
how a turtle breathes when under
water for up to an hour,
it simply executes its power
to hold its breath instead of breathing,
and when it comes to turtles teething,

instead of teeth, they have a beak,
(although it’s ill-advised to peek
inside a turtle’s mouth for proof)
its mouth is toothless, jaw and roof.
Please leave turtles their private places––
whether under shell or in their faces.

Consider sacred what God hath wrought,
instead of thinking of what they’re not!

 

I am so happy to have an excuse to use this photo of a turtle that I snapped last week! 
Thanks for this fortunate prompt!!!! For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 648 the prompt words are: creation seeds waters blood breathe turtle sacred bones curve sky pray heal

“He Sits,” For The Sunday Whirl Wordle #647

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“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
It is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable”
––Sydney J. Harris

He Sits

He sits, nearly invisible, in shadowed recesses
of his mansion’s broad front porch, picking at the tresses
of a well-worn antique doll, its dress once rich, now tattered,
its fine-textured porcelain now age-checkered and shattered.

Watch how his rumpled holiness now shifts his ancient bones
to shuffle off to wander through his mansion’s inner zones.
To trail his amber fingernails over collected treasures,
weeping over memories of his rich life’s past pleasures.

Up a spiral staircase, down its upper hall,
measuring his footsteps, careful not to fall,
the skin of memory remains to guide him on this path
toward that inner sanctum that’s become its aftermath.

Passing long-unopened chambers, he cracks open a door
to see a trail of building blocks scattered across the floor.
A blackboard with last lessons chalked across its slate––
a question and an answer whose two sides don’t equate.

Seeds of contrition start to sprout in his guilt-plowed brain.
If a past could be repurchased, he would do it all again
differently, replacing all his hard-won treasures
with time spent more rewardingly in familial pleasures.

 

Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl are: amber rumpled holiness skin ancient bones invisible weep chambers three seeds spiral  Image by AI (I will not do this often.)

If you are wondering about the quote I used to introduce my poem, here is a brief biography of Sydney J. Harris from Wikipedia:

Sydney Justin Harris was born in London, but his family moved to the United States when he was five years old. Harris grew up in Chicago, where he spent the rest of his life. He attended high school with Saul Bellow, who was his lifelong friend. In 1934, at age 17, Harris began his newspaper career with the Chicago Herald and Examiner. He became a drama critic (1941) and a columnist for the Chicago Daily News (1944). He held those positions until the paper’s demise in 1978 and continued to write his column for its sister paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, until his death in 1986.[3]

Harris’s politics were considered liberal and his work landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents. He spoke in favor of women’s rights and civil rights.[4] His last column was an essay against capital punishment.[5]

Harris often used aphorisms in his writings, such as this excerpt from Pieces of Eight (1982): “Superior people are only those who let it be discovered by others; the need to make it evident forfeits the very virtue they aspire to.”[6] And this from Clearing the Ground (1986): “Terrorism is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; war is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.”[7]

He was also a drama critic, teacher, and lecturer, and he received numerous honorary doctorates during his career, including from Villa Maria College, Shimer College, and Lenoir Rhyne College.[8] In 1980–1982 he was the visiting scholar at Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina. For many years he was a member of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. He was recognized with awards from organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In later years, he divided his time between Chicago and Door County, Wisconsin. Harris was married twice, and fathered five children. He died at age 69 of complications following heart bypass surgery.[9]