Tag Archives: your daily word

Family Reunion: Final Spin

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Family Reunion: Final Spin

The first couple on the dance floor were surely insignificant.
Bent-over spines and frosted hair made them less magnificent
than all the younger dancers who came out to surround them—
making them invisible as they grouped all around them.
The music started and the pairs all commenced their waltzing—
with glides and dips, extended arms, and all that fancy schmaltzing.
Soon, however, they backed off from something in the middle.
Voices hushed throughout the room until only the fiddle,
piano and the clarinets were heard in the night air
as all the others dancers watched a central pair
of waltzers gliding o’er the floor, eyes wrapped up in each other,
once again that little girl just dancing with her brother,
magically suspended in those steps taught by their mother.

The prompt words today are frosted, pair, insignificant and waltzing. And, the cat bit me on the tip of my little finger today and I’m wearing a bandaid, so forgive any typing errors. Especially regarding ‘”[{}]or/?  It may have been a very aggressive love nip or a hurry up and feed me nip or an excessive response to a really good ear scratch/neck rub, but whichever it was, it was very naughty and brought blood. Perhaps vestigial remains of the blood moon of a few nights ago.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/rdp-saturday-frosted/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/26/fowc-with-fandango-pair/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/your-daily-word-prompt-insignificant-january-26-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/waltzing/

Left

21 Replies

jdbphoto

Left

We were a marvelous combination, determined to survive.
When we were together, each of us more alive.
There was no way to forecast what our end would be.
Never did I dream that love’s survivor would be me.

It’s best that love can’t forecast the future that is pending
We might not choose ever to love if we could know its ending.
For it is inevitable, after true love’s gain,
for one or the other, the ending will be pain.

 

 

The prompt words today are forecast, determined, marvelous and combine.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/rdp-friday-forecast/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/25/fowc-with-fandango-determined/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/your-daily-word-prompt-marvelous-january-25-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/combine/

Voyeur

8 Replies

jdbphoto          

Voyeur

Steady days and vagrant nights pull this way and that.
By day a busy beaver, midnights a roving cat

haunting every low-life bar, spending bucks and time,
trying to find that side of life apart from the sublime.

Dipping into shadows. Edging around the slime
of the seamier pleasures. Contemplating crime.

Eying dangerous companions but staying self-contained.
All dangerous encounters simply mimed and feigned.

Flirting with the dark side, but reined in by the light,
only skirting stealthily the pleasures of the night.

 


(Photo for illustrative purposes only.  In no way is the poem really about the person pictured!) The prompt words today were vagrant, range, slime and haunting. 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/rdp-thursday-vagrant/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/24/fowc-with-fandango-range/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/your-daily-word-prompt-slime-january-24-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/haunting/

New Man at the Opera

4 Replies

img_1469 3

New Man at the Opera

With his head held at this angle, in the cape of a magician,
it’s true that he looks noble, but he’s merely a technician
in a laboratory where I fear they are uncouth—
where they dissect small animals and magnify the truth.
They then sell us the results at an inflated price.
Although he looks a gentleman, he isn’t very nice.

They say his former conquests are piled to the roof.
You’ll be his next small animal if you don’t stand aloof.
He distilled all their beauty into a fine elixir
that promises eternal youth. It is indeed a fixer
of wrinkles and of attitudes gained throughout a life
of the constant labor of motherhood and wife.

Thus goes all the gossip at the opera today
as the local ladies inspect, dissect and weigh
the assets and the defects of the newest man in town.
They titter and they bug their eyes. They giggle and they frown.
And by the end of the first act, they still don’t have a clue
about the way that they should act. What is it they should do

if they attract his interest? Should they snub or should they charm?
Each single lady fantasizes clinging to his arm.
The gossip after all may be a slight exaggeration
based loosely on the truth but still with no verification.
By interval, they’ve thought it through and make repeated passes
past the box he sits in, or view him through their glasses.

And early the next morning, they begin their primping—
their lipsticking and powdering, their combing, curling, crimping.
They line up on the sidewalk, waiting for their turn
to enter through his doorway to have their chance to learn
the truth about his mystery. In all, they numbered ten,
those maidens who there entered, and were never seen again!!!

 

 

The prompt words today are angle, noble, laboratory and magnify.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/rdp-tuesday-angle/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/22/fowc-with-fandango-noble/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/your-daily-word-prompt-laboratory-january-22-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/magnify/

Sunset and Moonglow

9 Replies

img_7667jdbphoto 1/20/2019

Sunset and Moonglow

This moon is not derivative of any other moon.
If I called it a blood moon, I chose my words too soon.
It did not glow as brightly as that vivid red that flowed
when his heartbeat lengthened. When his breathing slowed.

It did not flow as scarlet as life lost by human hand.
It did not pool and sink into the all-obscuring sand.
It’s true that nature paints with blood when mortal creatures die,
but it casts a subtler color when painted on the sky.

The earth is not a marble. Night skies aren’t plastered with stars.
There’s no earthly equivalent for Jupiter or Mars.
When we use manmade metaphors to capture universal
beauties like the evening sky, it seems a real reversal.

When we dream of lovers’ eyes, they should shine like stars.
Stars should not merely twinkle like fireflies caught in jars.
Candy floss swells like a cloud, a sunflower’s like the sun.
Not the other way around. And when the day is done,

the sunset simply is itself and no artist can
duplicate its subtlety with pigments coined by man.

The prompt words today are marble, plaster, derivative and dream.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/rdp-monday-marble/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/21/fowc-with-fandango-plaster/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/your-daily-word-prompt-derivative-january-21-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/dream/

No Head for Business

7 Replies

IMG_0436

No Head for Business

I fear I must be adamant in stating my demands.
In this I am unshakeable. My initial sales price stands.
I do not like this bargaining. I find it all a chore.
I’d rather be off wandering. Business is a bore.
And though I must admit that your demeanor is most affable,
your offer is too little. In fact I find it laughable.
It will do no good to counter offer. I’m set on the price
that would reimburse me for leaving paradise.

I have no bottom offer. This is no power game.
To nickel and to dime it is a practice I find lame.
The palm trees are all swaying, there’s hot water in the pool,
and the more I think about it, I see that I’m a fool
to leave this little Shangri-la. Where would I find its sequel?
It’s clear that for the price I ask I could not find its equal!
Here swinging in my hammock with a cocktail and my pup,
I am so contented that my sales price just went up!!

Prompt words today were chore, affable, adamant and power.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/rdp-friday-chore/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/18/fowc-with-fandango-affable/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/your-daily-word-prompt-adamant-january-18-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/18/power/

Challenging Fortune

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Click on first photo to enlarge all and read captions.

Macho rules the world, and
to the powerful belong the spoils.
They have us in the palm of their hand.
Time for change?
Who will lead the way? Warrior
or holy man?
And who will profit from the change?
All of these:

Challenging Fortune

Just when we’re feeling cocky—superior and svelte,
fate dishes out an uppercut, or one below the belt.
Its fickleness is onerous. Its lessons often hard.
Some end up with a loving cup and others with a shard.

So if misfortune catches you and holds you in its grasp,
for sure, good fortune harbors another in its clasp.
Rejoicing in their happiness may bring your pain’s surcease,
and looking at a larger view may bring you some release.

Some men are accustomed to eating all the pie.
They see no good in sharing. They vie and vie and vie
to horde the opportunities. It’s their sign of success.
They profit on our labors, grow rich on our duress.

It brings a sort of balance, this giving and this taking.
It teaches us that fortune is not just of our making.
There may not be enough good luck to insist that they share.
Label him a “socialist”If anyone should dare.

Where is the one who’ll stop them? Who will come to show the way?
What warrior or what holy man will  lead us in the fray?
Those who’ve usurped religion seem to have lost the point.
They don’t champion the underdog.  It’s rich men they anoint.

Everything is power and perhaps it always was.
For eons we’ve forgotten this, probably because
the photos of these  greedy men reaching for the stars,
cruising in their massive yachts and their racing cars,

look so pretty on the page. The minute that we see them,
instead of censuring the greed, we simply want to be them.
They stage their wars and make their gains and young men die to aid it.
And instead of ruing war, we honor those who made it.

The prompt words today were shard, onerous, opportunity and uppercut.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/rdp-thursday-shard/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/17/fowc-with-fandango-onerous/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/your-daily-word-prompt-opportunity-january-17-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/uppercut/

Journeys

9 Replies

Click on any photo to enlarge all.

 

Journeys

Every conversation is a quest two people enter
from opposite  directions to converge at its center.
The hard part of the journey commences with their greeting—
an intricate endeavor not completed with first meeting.

With each new associate, we visit a new land.
With each conversation, our horizons expand
into lands exotic, tragic or entertaining.
Perhaps enemy territory—often with no training.

Do we take umbrage with their words or enter, unprotesting,
the world that they offer—experimenting, testing
new mental mountains, jungles where vivid birds might call,
beckoning us onwards, or do we meet a wall

that offers us no access—sealed up, rigid, cold—
closed to all explorers, nearly obscured with mold?
What journeys do we offer ourselves to those we meet?
Do we offer easy access or promise sure defeat?

Life was designed for journeying. Daily, new vacations.
Some conversations novels and others mere quotations.
Some trips an experience you wouldn’t choose again—
just another whistle stop on life’s commuter train.

 

The prompt words today are quest, umbrage, intricate and associate.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/rdp-wednesday-quest/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/16/fowc-with-fandango-umbrage/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/intricate/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/your-daily-word-prompt-associate-january-16-2019/

Out of Order

7 Replies

IMG_3816

Out of Order

If you’re an avid planner—an agenda sort of man,
life seems to have a fondness for screwing up your plan.
Ideology is fine so long as you take note
that fate seems to have other schemes than life lived out by rote.

Providence is naughty. It thinks irony is divine.
It likes to move our decimal points, nudge columns out of line.
It screws around with calendars, plays jokes with weather, too.
It messes up your Windsor knot, conceals one favorite shoe.

It messes up collections and puts them out of sequence.
confuses medication in its timing and its frequence.
So if life changes the rules after you think you’ve won,
learn what it seeks to teach you: spontaneity is fun!

 

Prompt words today were collection, avid, ideology and plan.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/ragtag-daily-prompt-tuesday-collection/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/15/fowc-with-fandango-avid/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/your-daily-word-prompt-ideology-january-15-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/plan/

Basking

16 Replies

Basking

Cats love of apricity is more than just a fluke.
It is a vital tendency and so we can’t rebuke
our cats for lying prone a lot in any ray of sun.
A cat’s in need of toasting as much as any bun.
If you can imagine a Kardashian without
the flash of any flashbulb, you will without a doubt
be able to imagine a cat without the rays
filtered through venetian blinds, or fully in the blaze
of a scorching summer sun. A cat can withstand all
the heat that we can give them, in summer, winter fall.
And if there is no sun at all, a cat can just make do
with the full attention of a surrogate like you!!!

(Enlarge all photos by clicking on any one.)

Prompt words for today are vital, rebuke, apricity and imagine.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/rdp-monday-vital/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/14/fowc-with-fandango-rebuke/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/your-daily-word-prompt-apricity-january-14-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/14/imagine/