Tag Archives: your daily word

Tittynope (Leftovers)

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Self-Portrait by Judy Dykstra-Brown, Mixed Media Assemblage8″X12″

Tittynope

A small bit of time left over on the windowsill of life,
I am no longer daughter, student, siren, wife.
My new definition is to simply be—
one last leaf that’s clinging to the family tree.

Not merely a copy of those who came before,
I tried to build on what they were and add a small bit more.
First coddled but then soon set free to follow my own course,
the path I took led me away from my original source.

Paper, brush and pencil—all things to amuse
led to many pastimes where life was not a ruse.
Soldering irons, glue pots and thing after thing
that wandering through market stalls and flea markets could bring.

Putting them together became a way to be,
journeying out to find them but ending up at me.
And now that I’m together, gathered into one,
I am still collecting, not sure that I am done.

 

Prompts today are coddle, copy, tittynope  (A small quantity of anything left over)   ruse, course and windowsill.

Trump Card

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Trump Card

Spin your web. Enact your plan.
Insist you’re of the common man.
Hang a pendant on a chain
Sway it forth and back again
just a dozen times or so,
mesmerizing in its flow.

If you mollify their fears
with promises placed in their ears,
you need give them little proof.
Just call the liberals aloof
and assure them that you’re not.
They’ll overlook your sins and yacht.

Call black white and call white black.
Blame others for what they lack.
Forbid care for the halt and lame.
Point a finger, blame the blame.
Soon they’ll have you in their head.
Certain folks like to be led.

Monkey see and monkey do.
The gullible will follow you

Prompt words today are follow, mollify, monkey,  dozen and gullible.

Vacation Plans

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Vacation Plans

Since my store of giddy-up is no longer stellar,
I’m limiting vacation plans to rooftop room and cellar.
My travel guru’s dubious. She says I’ll change my mind.
She thinks I’m merely ground down by the daily grind.

Though I rehearse refusals, the practice doesn’t work.
She merely puts them down as a momentary quirk.
In fact she has been needling me to book a new vacation
and poo-poos my refusals to my great perturbation.

My  stubborn change of attitude regarding foreign travel,
she’s sure that she can pick at till it starts to unravel;
but these are the travel plans for which I’d like to vouch.
The scenery is gorgeous between my bed and couch!

 

Prompt words today are travel, roof, guru, dubious, needle and rehearsal.

Inflated Hopes

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Inflated Hopes

What was once a halfpence now may be a dollar.
A whisper given time may turn out to be a holler.
Idealistic bloggers swept away with their next word
may pound away at keyboards not knowing they’re absurd.

Their statements may be loaded with inanities or tears
that may gain profundity through the fog of years.
So if you cannot see the wisdom of this rhyme,
I’m sure you finally will. You need to give it time.

Prompt words today are keyboard, swept, halfpence, tears, load and idealistic.

“Depauperate” ed

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de·paup·er·ate/dəˈpôpərət/adjective.
BIOLOGY(of a flora, fauna, or ecosystem) lacking
in numbers or variety of species.“oceanic islands
are generally depauperate in mayflies”
(of a plant or animal) imperfectly
developed. “a depauperate inflorescence.”

“Depauperate” ed

Depauperate? I must admit, I’ve never seen the word.
Nor is it an adjective that I have ever heard.
Did I de”pauper”ate the beggar when I handed him a twenty?
Transform him from a pauper into a life of plenty?

My command of language ranks from “pretty good” to “better,”
and usually prompt words leave me in fine fetter,
but when I see a word like this, I end up fuss and fretting.
Just how obscure are prompt words likely to be getting?

Exactly where on Earth did the prompter find this word
that you might admit is overly absurd?
If one needs a dictionary and still cannot use it,
you can bet that some of us are likely to abuse it.

We’re thankful for each prompt word, but when you cook it up,
kindly choose one that makes sense when we look it up.
A prompt word should inspire us and make us want to use it,
but with words like “depauperate” some of us will abuse it!

Note: Meant in good fun…but you will admit it was a hard word to use? 

Prompt words today are depauperate, exactly, fret, command and need.

Poor Spousal Support

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Poor Spousal Support

His espousal of a single life was open to debate,
for with a wife and three small girls, it came a little late.
But he lusted for the “good life” now that he earned a lot.
He yearned for wild night life and planned to buy a yacht.

That their spousal settlement was measly, it is true,
but her husband was a lawyer, so what was she to do?
She made the children T-shirts  with an acronym
that best described their father and what she thought of him.

When people were inquisitive, she told them they should say
that CHEAP was an acronym, and without delay,
that  the meaning of it was “Chump Husband Earns A Pittance”
and that is why he’s often late in sending their remittance.

And on the T-shirt’s back, she reserved another space
for another acronym  for their dad to face:
There it spelled out HUNGER, whose letters expressed fairly
the naked  truth: “His UnderNourished Genepool ‘s Eating Rarely!!!

Prompt words today are measly, reserved, acronym, espousal, settlement and inquisitive.

By and By

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By and By

Lately, when she couldn’t sleep, she debated whether
she should forsake winter for a more salubrious weather.
Hidden under blankets with a heater at her feet,
she dreamed of balmy breezes and the sunlight’s heat.

In less than a day, she could drive down to the border
and find a small posada where she could sit and order
margaritas by the pitcherful beside a sunlit sea—
a novel fallen from her hand, a chihuahua on her knee.

Tacos or enchiladas? In her hometown, she’d be loath
to order either one of them, but here she’d order both,
all her peccadillos unviewed by censoring eye.
She pledged an oath to do it in the by and by.

Prompt words today are border, both, salubrious, peccadillo, winter and hidden.

“. . . In the sweet by and byWe shall meet on that beautiful shoreIn the sweet by and byWe shall meet on that beautiful shore . . .”


—lyrics by S. Fillmore Bennett and music by Joseph  P. Webster

Home for the Holidays

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Home for the Holidays

The advent of a new year has me in a tizzy,
feeling discombobulated, very nearly dizzy.
For no matter how experienced I am in greeting new years,
It suddenly occurs to me that there are very few years
left for me to celebrate, so I will not roam 
far from that place I love best. I’ll celebrate at home.

Prompt words today are tizzy, advent, experienced.

Alibi

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Alibi

There’s an untrue rumor that I can’t dispel
about a certain ruby ring found within my cell.
They’ve just heard from my lawyer, but haven’t heard from me
about why that ruby ring was not beneath the tree
with my lawyer’s wife’s name on it, for she’d seen the receipt
in his bottom desk drawer and, thrilled with the deceit,

thought, “It is a gift for me. I’d better feign surprise.”
But in fact she had no need at all for this disguise,
for there was no tiny box with her name upon it—
no ruby ring within it, waiting for her to don it.
Instead, a brand new blender turned out to be her present,
and can you guess that her reaction wasn’t very pleasant?

Just where was the ruby ring? Her angst knew no restraint
as former suspicions resumed with no constraint.
His frolics with his secretary he’d declared long over.
Was he lying to her? Was he still a rover?
Her honeyed voice escaped her. Her shrieks grew shrill and scary.
How could her husband leave her arms to screw his secretary?

That’s how one more deception about the jewel missing
ended with me out on bail and my lawyer kissing
his wife for once, declaring how he preferred her culture
to any lowly secretary, then went on, the vulture,
saying how I stole the ring right out of his pocket
before he left my jail cell and heard the jailer lock it.

Now he said he’d go and if the warden didn’t mind it,
he’d do a search through all my cell to see if he could find it.
Then quickly, he reclaimed the ring to slip upon a ledge
underneath my mattress, at the very edge.
The fingers of his mistress and his wife were the same  size,
and so his wife was placated as she slipped on her prize.

And the diamond ring that he bought his secretary
after he took her ruby back was indeed so very
much bigger and expensive that she didn’t mind
exchanging her first Christmas rock for a better kind.
And rudely roused and blamed, fresh from my Christmas nap,
I had no objection, charged with another rap.

For my lawyer paid my bail and also said that he’s
defending me pro bono—foregoing any fees!!!

 

Prompt words today are just, dispel, frolic, constraint, culture and ruby.

Illegals Need Not Apply

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Illegals Need Not Apply

We’ve established a mandate to clean up our town—
evict all the illegals, tear their shacks down.
Any esculent foodstuff we find in their digs,
we’ll put in a trough and feed to the pigs,
but our lawyer has issued strong words of advisement
that we must buy a one-week advertisement

telling them where they can pick up their things
before they take off to spread out their wings
to head out for another gullible city
so naive, as we once were, that they will take pity
on these ignorant folks with no backing or dough
who claim that they all have no place to go.

If they’d displayed gumption and shown their compliance
by earning our favor and conquered reliance
(we suspect) on whiskey or illegal drugs,
become steadfast citizens, not (alleged) thugs,
things might have been different, the outcome more pleasant,
but as it is, affairs at the present

have favored their ouster. The townfolks’ conviction
is that they warrant immediate eviction.
We’re God-fearing folks here. We know one-and-all
that when God sees the smallest of sparrows to fall,
he doesn’t mean illegal immigrants or
any of the other indigent poor

who come from the south or the east or the west
trying to find out the place that is best.
What of the jobs that they took cleaning houses,
picking our fruit, ironing our blouses,
cooking our hamburgers, watching our kids,
tending our gardens and getting rid

of our garbage? I’m pretty sure we can find
others to fill them of our own kind.
What college graduate or spoiled kid
of indulgent parents would not want to bid
on a menial job at minimum wage?
I’m sure our “want” ads will be all the rage.

Prompt words today are esculent (fit to be eaten), advertisement, mandate, gumption, reliance and outcome.