Changes
All those natural places that soothe us with their peace,
their beauty and their silence offer us release
until some pugnacious tourist rips the scene apart,
instilling angst and turmoil where formerly was heart.
Word prompts for the day are pugnacious, tourist, natural and peace.
Luxuriating in Being Left
In retrospect the loss of you has turned into a gain.
I’m rejoicing in the comfort of not having to explain.
I can do just what I want to, every day and every hour.
I am a snool to no one. I do not cringe or cower.
I sleep in in the morning with no breakfast to prepare.
I can dress the way I want to, choose the length of my own hair.
When I go to bed at night, I spread out in the middle.
I’m cool as any cucumber, not bacon on a griddle.
I wish your new love well with you, but I’m fine as I am,
for it’s the truth that when you left, I didn’t give a damn!
Prompt words today are nacre, comfort, rejoice and explain. Snool is an additional word I may or may not use. The definition of snool is: a cringing person, to cringe or cower, or the opposite: to reduce to submission, cow or bully. There is one extra word today because I also used yesterday’s word from on prompt site because it was published too late to be used yesterday.
The Course
All life falls
putrid
to the
forest floor,
or to
stream
bottom,
weighted down
by stones
rolled by the current,
daily farther
down.
Thus is life
flushed
from one form
to another,
feeding the earth
or worms
or trees
or insects,
burrowing through
the richness
of decay.
Crucial,
no matter
how we fight it.
Botox and fine needles
cannot stop it,
only cushion
its footsteps.
As we are
pursued
like all life,
around the course
we can
veer
off of
but never
escape.
Trump Tower II
The architecture of the house takes his needs to heart.
To create a perfect climate in every single part
was a top priority, so when the north winds blow,
within, he feels no ill-effects from gale or rain or snow.
He’ll find the ambient temperature is perfect day and night.
Summer, winter, spring or fall, be it day or night,
his family will not feel the cold, succumb to summer’s scorch
In the bedroom or the living room, the basement or the porch.
The sound control in every room functions without a hitch,
so when he whispers secrets, the staff can never snitch.
Noise produced in one room is not heard in any other.
He’s protected from Ivanka’s soaps and rock played by her brother.
All-in-all the ambience surrounds them like a glove—
be it balmy climate or all the sounds they love.
Bird song or the ocean or mixtures of the two.
What animal sounds they might crave—an auditory zoo.
Species may vanish off the earth but he will always hear them.
It’s nice to enjoy species without having to be near them.
Doves cooing, elephants trumpeting, a lion’s hearty roar
might persuade a burglar to remain outside his door.
What cares he if the oceans rise and masses do not love it?
His house converts into a boat so you can float above it.
The whole world may freeze stiff or burn for all that he may care,
for he’ll be protected safely, tucked up in his fine lair.
Prompt words today are architecture, ambient, succumb, snitch.
Red-Tailed Hawk
Through the air high up above the graceful soarer weaves,
his shadow cast against the wall and stones and grass and leaves.
Without a modicum of sound, he drifts and circles ’round.
If those below detect him, it will not be by sound.
He seems to simply levitate, on wings lacking in motion,
betraying not one sign of his means of locomotion.
Below small dirt volcanoes betray presence of prey.
Small denizens of tunnels emerge from them each day.
Opting for the light after so many hours below,
darting back to safety when a human comes to mow,
they steal the seed corn, sheer the roots, consume the tender shoots.
As often as the mounds are pressed flat by heavy boots,
the next day there’s another to take each burrow’s place.
Always another obstacle for opponents to face.
What act is fair for man to take in thinning nature’s riches?
What will I do to rid my lot of undersurface ditches?
The neighbors mount a protest, asking for an end
to creatures that usurp their space, and still I do not bend.
But here there is a creature who merely by its will
has the means to swiftly dip and fall upon its kill.
When the Red-Tailed Hawk dips low, watching from above,
I shudder as the claws surround the vole’s form like a glove.
Wings flapping for the lift-off, caught in sun’s early ray,
the bird with prey in claw now lifts and opts to fly away.
Their shadow soars onto my lawn over the wall between,
the prey it’s holding as it lifts too tiny to be seen.
Nature will deal with nature. It needs no intervening.
It is a way that our world has to deal with its own gleaning.
Image from Unsplash. Prompt words today are weaves, modicum, opt, blame and levitate.
Testing Fido
This test is good in ascertaining
if your dog recalls his training
and, further, it is meant to see
the extent of his fidelity.
In a fire or in a quake,
what action is he bound to take?
Will he quiver, cower and shake,
lose his head and run or quake
or will adrenalin make him faster
to locate and to save his master?
I do not wish to amplify
where your canine’s faults might lie,
but in times of peril he must
justify his master’s trust.
Just leave a burger in a pan
to start a fire if you can.
Feign sleep and see if he reacts
by waking you or if he acts
in his own interest first, and eats
the burger before he retreats
to give you ample time and warning
to view the damage before morning!
Will frenzy beat out appetite?
Or will Fido choose to bite
the burger, and the hand that feeds him,
forsaking the one who needs him?
I know this is a horrible poem, but for once the prompts defeated me. I was going to junk it, but will post it as testimony to the fact I tried. Sort of. Prompt words today were ascertain, fidelity, amplify and frenzy.
Mother-to-Daughter
My mother had a tranquil life the years before my birth,
when I increased her headaches in addition to her girth.
I was a question-asker—a most impertinent child,
and my ever-present inquiries drove my mother wild.
The preponderance of these queries got greater year-by-year.
Why was my reflection backwards when looking in the mirror?
Where did babies come from and where were they before?
When she and daddy went to bed, why did they lock their door?
It wasn’t until later that we seemed to trade places
and then it was my mother who put me through my paces.
Why was I coming home so late? Why was my lipstick smudged?
By the time that I was seventeen, I was the party judged.
Thus did life do a turn-about concerning endless questions,
with the one who was interrogator now doling out confessions.
Prompt word today are preponderance, impertinent, tranquil and birth.
Christmas Cancelled!!!
Lower the pinãta. Bring the party to a halt.
Cease your roar of protest, for I’m not the one at fault
for curbing your frivolity and quashing all our fun.
If you need a scapegoat, Father Christmas is the one
who turned Rudolph out to pasture and retired his sleigh to blocks.
while Gaea, Christ and Santa Claus have some major talks.
The Christ child won’t be crowned this year. The elves are on vacation.
Santa will stay a figment of your imagination.
The only Santas left are those “Ho ho” ing for their wages.
St. Nicholas gave up the ghost when we put kids in cages.
He sold off Donner and Blitzen when we turned our backs
on nature’s other creatures: the elephants and yaks.
All the endangered creatures in the forest and the seas,
those crippled by pollution, global warming and disease.
He closed up his workshop as we squandered nature’s gifts,
deserted the North Pole as the glaciers formed their rifts.
Now bad boys won’t get presents and, alas, the good ones either.
We’re being banished to our rooms while nature takes a breather.
Will Christmas come another year? I guess we’ll wait and see.
Next year will we be perched on or turned over Santa’s knee?
Hubris
The amber glow of candle light reflects against the wall,
but caught up in your hubris, you don’t notice it at all.
You seize the chance to prattle on about your newest deal,
overlooking table settings and this tender veal
I’ve cooked just to your liking. The asparagus grows cold
as you expound on how intelligent you are, and bold.
While I, my dear, think my own thoughts concerning your bombast,
of how this anniversary might well be our last.
Tsk, Tsk!!!
Though I applaud your intellect, your word-usage and clarity,
I’m taking steps to deal with your outlandish temerity.
Since I sincerely hold that obscure words should be panned,
hereby, I proclaim that such smug words will be banned.
So words like “impignorate”—found in no sane vocabulary
hereafter will be turned in to the lexicon constabulary!
Word prompts today are steps, temerity, impignorate and proclaim
