Tag Archives: your daily word

Different Strokes

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Different Strokes

Life’s not always better when lived within a bubble.
Boring regularity might be traded for trouble
by some who find that firewalls just hold in what is boring.
They prefer the heat of flames—the crackling and the roaring.
They do not stress the cognitive. The sensual’s what rules.
They consider rational thinkers as the fools.
They do not heed the laws of men nor mind the dull world’s censure.
They behold the world as one long and wild adventure.
It takes all types to fill the world—some to become the members
who put out all the fires while the others stir the embers.

 

Prompt words today were firewall, behold, traded for trouble and cognitive.

Advice on the Introduction of a New Species

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photo by Andrew Rice used with permission

Advice on the Introduction of a New Species

Lions don’t do well in a setting too bucolic.
Their herding instinct’s lethal and they flunk in ovine frolic.
Lions need to stalk and kill. They need open savannas.
They’d eat all the lambs and for dessert, eat all their nannas!
And if we shut the lions up, they’d go into decline.
Living in small cages simply isn’t leonine.
Lions need to roam the plains lest they become pathetic.
There’s nothing half so sad as a lion that’s apathetic.

Oh no. I somehow erased the pingbacks for the four prompts for this poem! Thanks to okcforgottenman for pointing this out. Well, better late than never. The prompt words were lion, apathetic, shut and bucolic.

What’s He Got Cookin’?

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What’s He Got Cookin’?

My love is not a work of art. He hasn’t any poise.
When he tries to sing a song, it comes across as noise.
He writhes instead of dancing. His rhythm’s nonexistent.
When germs land upon him, if they are nonresistant,
they get sick instead of him, for they have met their match.
He has no hair upon his head except for one small batch
that grows out of each nostril, so I really needn’t mention
that when it comes to loving him, I have no competition.
Yet in spite of all, he coincides with my fond wishes.
He may not have much cooking, but at least he does the dishes!

And for a little musical accompaniment to the poem, go HERE.

Prompt words today were sick, writhe, match and noise,

I need to issue a disclaimer for the second line, which is pure poetic license.  Most probably a number of the others are, as well.

Dark Thoughts

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Dark Thoughts

At four in the morning, the old cat begins her morning crabby  high-pitched “wahhhhrrr.” The wind picks up and I go to pee. Open my laptop and with its very first light, a tiny beetle flies to the screen to wander back and forth, in search of what? Company or bugs even more miniscule? And where has it been in the interim? In what obscure corner of my world has it been waiting for light, like the old cat, barely able to restrain itself , seeking my company at my first sign of stirring?

Does the rest of the world wait for me like this, or is it death lurking in the shadows, waiting for its time? Has life slowed down to this one long communal waiting? My sick friend has left but leaves behind her some of her dejection. I cannot shake it. Return to it after each short departure into the world. I feel an eternity of the ills of the world around me. Optimist rebel in an enemy camp all my life, I now feel myself sinking into the ordinary world. My mood refuses to shift with the sunrise. Even the old cat, still unfed, leaves me alone to my dark mood.

I fear the power of sleep, not wanting to return to that half-remembered dream I woke from. Fear this new self I seem to be becoming. Suddenly, I fear eternity—feel it not my friend.

Prompt words today are camp, rebel, eternity.

School Field Trip

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School Field Trip

Youth days at the aquarium are inimical to fishes,
for students feed the goldfish far beyond our wishes.
They agitate the sharks and rays by knocking on the glass.
They irritate the piranhas and terrorize the bass.
Scientific discovery is great for teens and tots,
but part of education is discovering the “nots.”
I think we’ll bring an ending to this day at the aquarium,
and for your next school outing would you please choose the terrarium?

Prompt words today were discovery, aquarium, youth and inimical.

Bloggers

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And no fair switching to your other keyboard!!!

 

 

 

 


Bloggers

We volley bandishments about, exchanging back and forth
words sent on the Internet from east, west, south and north.
We cajole and we wheedle as we trade behests.
From district one to district two, we answer all requests.
Janet wants a recipe that Dolly can provide.
Lydia posts Trump travesties that she cannot abide.

Angloswiss , VJ and Cee and Bob from far Australia,
trading photographs of houses, flowers and regalia.
Fashion blogs and flower blogs and fantasy and news.
We write of  our journeys, our fetes and family dos.
Poems about our handbags, our fashion and our shoes,
answering each other’s queries, cancelling each other’s blues.

Derrick tells of travels and the highlights of his dinners.
Regina writes of travel life and family and sinners.
We all have our favorite schticks from India to Nome.
Marilyn writes of birds and dogs and Manja writes of Rome.
Me? I merely write the poems that the prompts demand,
and be they dumb or heart-wrenching, pedestrian or grand,
abject apologies offered if you find them bland.

Prompt words today were shoe, district, volley and abject.
There were a dozen other bloggers I would have liked to include, but I had to be ready and on the road by 9 this morning so I was rushed in getting this out. To all the other blogs I regularly follow, you know who you are.

Friendly Advice

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Friendly Advice

If I’m not mistaken, you are caught there in your bubble
in your torn old housecoat with your legs covered in stubble.
Your pupils are dilated and your eyes are blank and glassy.
The air in this closed room has turned stale and dank and gassy.

I’m going to turn the light on now. You’ve been here in the dark
too long, so I am taking you outside to the park.
You’ve mourned enough. It’s time that you returned to the living.
It’s true years take away, but it’s also true they’re giving.

We’ll buy pistachio ice cream, feed your favorite duck
and talk about how fortunate we are to have such luck
to be alive and free and here in this glorious place
with ice cream in our tummies and sunlight on our face.

Go and take a shower and put on your best duds.
Wipe away your dolor with water and with suds.
Blow dry your hair until it looks casual and sporty.
I think that even you can survive this turning forty!!

 

Prompt words today were pupil, bubble, dark and mistaken.

The Drying of Sheets in the Wind

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                                      photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash, used with permission

The Drying of Sheets in the Wind

When the world seems in a mess and you wax sanctimonious,
railing at the ills of those who make it less harmonious,
remember that life’s curses are only temporary.
When world events eat at your mind and the world feels scary,
remember bed sheets on the line, drying in the sun—
the sound of flapping in the wind as their drying was done.
The smell of bright clean sunlight on each wind-softened fold,
or the cracking of their ice crystals stiffening in the cold.

Remember their warmth around you, fresh from mother’s mangle?
Snapping them out in the air, her bracelets’s harmonious jangle?
Her even movements folding them, then spreading them once more
 for you to slip into your bed as she stood at the door,
storybook in hand for that nightly big procession
through story after story, read in that grand progression
of venturings into a world that seemed so vast and magic,
long before you knew the world to also be so tragic.

Let memories of your mother still be a comfort to you—
with memories of fresh white sheets. And let them both renew you.

 

Prompt words are sheets, temporary, curse , sanctimonious. Wow. What a list. How are these going to come together?

Lover’s Spat

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Lover’s Spat.

When I said I didn’t miss you, I admit that I lied.
I didn’t get enough of you. I left unsatisfied.
If you, too, detect a movement in your stone cold heart,
perhaps you could begin with a phone call as a start.

I didn’t mean to say it. You didn’t mean to scream.
I’m willing to atone for it by any means you deem.
Breaking up is hard to do but staying mad is harder.
I spend way too much time in bed, too much time in my larder.

I’m gaining weight and losing hair, burst into tears repeatedly.
I fly off the handle and insult my friends most heatedly.
So I propose our meeting via taxi, boat or plane.
Our last tryst was insufficient. It didn’t heal the pain.

If you’ll come out of hiding, then I will do the same.
If you’ll agree to meet with me, I’ll even take the blame.
You’ll be right and I’ll be wrong. I’ll take the higher road.
The digs that I once took at you will produce the motherlode.

Prompt words for today were taxi, movement, propose and hide.

Over-automation

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Over-automation

The multifarious uses of all of her devices
led to manifold laziness and other slothful vices.
She never had to scramble to remember anything.
She only pushed a button and her troubles all took wing.
She had no special training. She eschewed an education,
for Alexa solved all problems with her handy automation—
turning on the TV set and opening the doors,
setting off the cleaning robots, expelling the boors,
reminding of vacations and birthdays and appointments,
disciplining naughty kids for lapses in deportments.
Alexa went to work for her and mapped out all her spreadsheets,
polished all her silverware and ironed out her bedsheets.
There was literally nothing that Alexa couldn’t do.
She cooked her children’s breakfasts and took them to the zoo.
Yet still she was suffused by fatigue and wan and thin.
No one could imagine the stress that she was in.
More and more she wound up with her stomach in a knot.
remembering the uses for devices that she’d got!

Prompt words today are knot, scramble, vacation and multifarious.