Tag Archives: your daily word

A Halloween Bedtime Story

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Click on photos to increase your terror!

A Halloween Bedtime Story

There’s a world that is intangible except at Halloween.
It teems with banshees and with ghosts at other times unseen.
Strange monsters with long fingers and pumpkins for a head
lurk inside your closet, hang out under your bed.

When they finally emerge, it does no good to shout.
They’ll grab you in their mighty grasp and turn you inside out.
Put your arms outside the covers or one foot on the floor,
and you’ll provide a tasty lunch the monsters will adore.

For once they have a single limb securely in their clench,
they’ll have you all in seconds. Your destruction is a cinch!
Though Halloween is much beloved by all you candy lovers,
Once at home and snug in bed, best stay beneath the covers!

Prompt words today are  pumpkin, mighty, intangible, banshee, cinch, inside out.

Memory

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Memory

Life is like a labyrinth. Things may be just fine,
yet we don’t know what awaits us farther down the line.

We can’t discern our futures, so we must enjoy today
so at least we’ll have a past to remember, come what may.

Changes of perspective are bound to come with time.
We may not have the passions that we had in our prime.

We are changeable creatures. So nature has intended.
If we hold onto earlier goals, our lives may get upended.

In times of adversity, we still possess rare treasures.
Our recollections are where we can hoard our former pleasures.

 

Prompt words for today are down the line, adversity, labyrinth, discern, change of perspective and creature.

Cats Trump Dogs: Oct 14, 2020

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Cats Trump Dogs

My dogs are perspicacious with insights most profound.
They’re aware of every flutter, on top of every sound.
Their vigilance professional, with duty it is fraught.
Nary a squirrel has crossed the yard without being caught!

No passerby is overlooked, no lizard, snake or newt.
Their senses are omniscient, their judgments most astute.
They keep my backyard creature-free, pristine for lawn and blossom.
They will not suffer gopher or mole or vole or possum.

Guard duty’s not a hobby. They see it as a task
that they were truly born for. I need not even ask.
The cats they see as horrors—wily and uncouth.
They cannot bear their presence. They see it as the truth

that cats are unorthodox. Not banished to the ground,
they roam the roof and wall and trees, rambling all around.
They tease the dogs from far above, safe from all their fury.
Sauntering off slowly, for they aren’t in any hurry.

Prompt words for the day are professional, unorthodox, hobby, perspicacious, truth and horror.

Foxes Under Moonlight

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Foxes Under Moonlight

The phantasms rise in tandem as they seep out of their boxes
to caress the bats and tantalize the foxes
by swooping through their caves and pulling at their tails.
Of all the foxes’ problems, they cause the most travails.

On Halloween they haunt the world, including you and me,
but in the interim, they aren’t allowed to wander free.
They’re restricted to the meadows, the byways and those places
where they are not likely to encounter human faces.

Phantasms are not cordial. They harry and they tease.
They seep into the smallest crack and travel on the breeze.
They stir up other spirits and agitate the fleas,
causing havoc everywhere and doing what they please.

So though they might harass your world every Halloween,
and though they might be spine-tingling and horrible and mean,
it is the one night of the year they leave the foxes be,
so the foxes are beholding to the likes of you and me.

If you should dare to wander through the forest and the trees
on this All-Saints evening, get down on your knees
and peer into the burrow of the soundly sleeping foxes
curled up in a ball with their noses near their soxes.

See them sleeping soundly, undisturbed within their dreams—
twitching in contentment under the moon’s full beams?
Your one night of terror is the fox’s only break.
Be grateful for your haunting, if just for the foxes’ sake!

Word prompts today are interim, cordial, phantasm, tandem, outside the box and dusk. Ghosts may take it easier on foxes on Prince Edward Island, as is evidenced by this fox that I observed spending a good half hour or so basking in the sun of the yard of my friends Dianne and Andy. Or perhaps it was the sunlight that drove the phantasms away. Or our presence.

Dem Bones

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Dem Bones

The skeletons are all tucked in, safely in their beds
with naughty vitriolic dreams swirling through their heads.
Their atrocious behavior saved for another day,
they will not raise a ruckus. They’re holding it at bay.
They’re resting up for Halloween which is the night that they
will throw aside their covers and come out to play!

 

Prompt words today are ruckus, vitriol, atrocious, play and skeleton.

Bored of the Rings

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Bored of the Rings

I admit I am incurious about matters Uchronian.
When it comes to fantasy, my thoughts tend toward draconian.
Fiction is my genre but I like it more realistic—
my interest not quite stretching to themes that are more mystic.

Fantasy’s not toothsome. It’s lacking in its juice.
Give me fantasy or suicide, and I will choose the noose!
These plots I am averse to seem to have a different muse.
Werewolves in the moonlight? Characters I must accuse.

A Game of Thrones and Narnia are not a fit for me.
J.R.R. Tolkien is not my cup of tea.
I prefer Jane Austen, the Brontes and Anne Tyler.
But Ursula Le Guin? Please forgive if I revile her.

 

I beg forgiveness from science fiction/fantasy fans, as I know there are many I admire in this group, but I simply am not engaged by fantasy as I am by reality—even fictionalized reality (which I acknowledge as an oxymoron.) I must admit that I don’t really revile Ursula Le GuIn. It was either that or “file her,” which didn’t quite work as well. There are some limitations in rhyming, so I admit “revile” is harsh. And, to be fair, my husband and I once listened to the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on a trip back and forth across the U.S. and when we arrived home after that six-week trip, we sat in our driveway in our motor home for an extra half-hour to hear its end, but nonetheless, I was not motivated to wander farther along the paths of fantasy. And, to be fair, give a person a word like “Uchronia” as a prompt word and what do you expect?  Revenge was in order.  ;o)

Prompt words for the day are juice, fit, Uchronia, incurious, muse and moon. 

Cat and Mouse

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Cat and Mouse

My cat is feeling obdurate and that is no surprise.
I see it in extended claws. I see it in his eyes.
His back is hunched into an arc. His hair all stands on end.
His lips are stretched back in a hiss, his teeth ready to rend.

When he lets go a loud remark, it sounds more like a chatter.
I look up from my magazine to see what is the matter.
The prism on the windowsill reflects a flashing gleam
and he springs into action to try to catch its beam.

Like an arrow, straight and sure, he shoots across the room,
but when he does, his target’s gone. Vanished in the gloom.
It seems his prey has vanished. It’s nowhere to be found.
He’s wasted all his energy: his speed, his stealth, his bound.

The cat door closes with a swish. He’s off to other pleasures.
Out in the sultry cloud-swathed world, he’ll resort to other measures.
He saunters by the hen house, hungry, but it’s no use
He still bears the scars of the rooster’s last abuse.

While the men are busy milking, he’ll crouch there in the dirt
hoping if he’s lucky to receive a friendly squirt.
He’ll troll the barn for mice and rats, then comb the prairie grass
for game that’s more digestible than prey that’s made of glass.

Prompt words for today are prism, scream, sultry, obdurate, letting go and cat.

The Littlest Zombie

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The Littlest Zombie

Three small travelers, each attired in a different disguise
observe the  lambent candlelight filling the pumpkin’s eyes.
Its outside is a Jack-o-Lantern, while all its insides 
were scooped out for the candle, and then turned into pies.

A lurching small cadaver reaches out a hand,
intent on trick-and-treating, though he can barely stand.
He’s had a whiff of candy, which has made him come alive.
He’s seen the tiny Hershey bars. He hopes they’ll give him five!

Leaving, he now remembers to walk with legs unbent.
He breathes hard through his mask where his sister cut a vent.
He imitates the groans and huffs of the walking dead,
though if he’d had his druthers, he’d have been a dog instead.

But brother said a dog just barks and never moans and groans
and that barking trick-or-treaters are only given bones!
And so he screws his face up and puffs on down the block,
scaring all the littler kids with his zombie walk! 

 

Prompt words for today are whiff, imitate, cadaver, lambent and candy and also for OctPoWriMo.

 

Quiet Zone

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Quiet Zone

I don’t like loud music and fireworks are scary.
Loud noises, in fact, make me nervous and chary.
So though I find music within a dog’s howl,
Loud barking’s a noise that my ears find most foul.
And although I like lullabies, ballads and hums,
I do not like tubas or cymbals or drums.
I like noises with dignity. What I am after
is whispers and titters, not shouts and loud laughter.
So if you’re my friend, this advice must be outed:
words with real wisdom don’t need to be shouted.

Prompt words for today are scary, howl, dignity, firework and chary.

Advice to Myself at 73

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It’s never too late to experience growing pains. If it is our onus in life to grow and to change, with no cutoff point after which we are absolved of this duty, then why are we dumbfounded when those pains of adolescence occur again and again at each stage of life? We perhaps grow more serious over the years, but need we become less sensitized? Does the snub, the willful wounding, the being overlooked, the derision become less important? If so, why? Perhaps it is a mark of self-worth, and that is good, but if it is merely the building of a cocoon around ourselves, except in the direst of circumstances, it becomes more of a punishment than a defense.

We are born into this world to experience and therefore, are given defenses to deal with the negative, but when those defenses grow to isolate us, then they become more than protective blankets. They become walls which become our prisons. We were meant to experience and to be vulnerable to changes. And lest we atrophy, from the cradle to the crematorium, we need to fight to keep ourselves open to those experiences that invite change.

 

Prompt words for today are: serious, dumbfounded, cremate, onus and growing pains.