Tag Archives: Writer’s Digest Prompt

Rejecting Advice, for the Writer’s Digest Prompt

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Unsolicited Advice

With buckets of advice and a blizzard of suggestions,
and prolific answers to all of life’s great questions,
he blusters and pontificates and tells us how to live
with advice he never follows, but which, nonetheless, he gives.

He imparts his wisdom to everyone he meets:
from how to run your business to your life between the sheets.
Advice on morals, love and sex (all in his domain)
make even brief encounters such a royal pain.

You know he’ll scratch his whiskers and open up his yap
and once again you will be caught in his vocal trap.
And so you’ve found that at first sight, you must avoid detection
by altering your footsteps to an alternate direction.

For the Writer’s Digest Rejecting Advice prompt.

Lost Places

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Lost Places

Some of us find the world
in the places where we are born.
Some of us can find no place there at all
except in retrospect.

We write books about these lost places
as though we knew what they were all about;
as though just by living there, we understood that place.
Actually, by writing about them we visit them again
and feel as much a stranger as we did before.

That is how we can stand to write about them.
They become the exotic other lands we’ve traveled to.
Misfortune becomes the best part of the story;
and we, at last, are grateful for it.

For the Writer’s Digest “Lost ” prompt

Cozy in My Skin

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Cozy in My Skin

I seem to fit my life now, I’m cozy in my skin.
No matter how far out it goes, I always fit right in.
When I gain a pound or two, my skin grows out to hold it,
and when my skin begins to sag enough for me to fold it,
my flesh grows out to fill it in. It’s become symbiotic.
That state of growing me out to my skin’s become hypnotic.

When encountering fresh pastries, a fugue state might ensue.
A box of chocolates empties, though I only ate a few.
Whole pizzas vanish in thin air, to my midnight grief.
They left the box behind them, this culinary thief!
The thought of uninvited guests is not very nice.
I make much of the mystery. Could it be dogs or mice?

Perhaps once more the kittens have discovered a way in
and at night when the lights go out, pursue their lives of sin.
Feasting on my pizza. Gorging on my pies.
Surveying my milk chocolate with their greedy feline eyes.
I spin a pretty fantasy, but the truths of this tale
are revealed to me each morning as I step upon the scale.

For the Writer’s Digest Prompt, a Cozy Poem

Back to the Beginning

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Back to the Beginning

When I began my journey, I was jocular and young—
no hardness in my heart and no burrs upon my tongue.
I hadn’t joined the fracas and the chilling of the years.
I had none of life’s baggage—no heartaches and no fears.

Life had not disseminated all her tawdry facts
and I had not encountered them by gossip or by acts.
No tricksters had deceived me. My heart remained intact.
I knew not what I’d missed. I was naïve of what I lacked.

And now that I am older, I’ve returned to what I had
before I had decided I must follow every fad.
The things that I’ve acquired? I am loosening my hold.
I’ve found that satisfaction is not something that is sold.

I have simplified agendas, taking time to see and do
all the things I overlooked while in the human zoo.
The progress of a caterpillar on a hanging vine
as effective as a church in reaching the divine.

The flutter of a wing, the morning calls of birds
reveal as much about the world as news reports or words.
Drawing back into what’s basic and screening the uncouth
has helped me in regaining the lighter heart of youth.

 

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/wednesday-poetry-prompts-713

Bar Stool Brush-Off

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Writer’s Digest Prompt: Write a poem making use of at least three of these words: ghost, crack, free, hand, check, know. I used them all at least once.

Bar Stool Brush-Off

There’s not a ghost of a chance
that you’ll crack my code,
free-wheeling know-it-all
that you are.
But as your hand smooths
that errant strand of hair
back into its perfect place,
I’ll hand you this:
every time you check your reflection
in the mirror behind the bar,
it is clear no number of looks
will clue you in to yourself.

http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/wednesday-poetry-prompts-368