What Does the Fox Say?

He's lost his cunning
Emaciated folly
Degeneration

Hollow, Misery, Shallow

I shall go to the hollow.
It's nothing to hallow--
just a place where some tombstones
sit crookedly shallow,
where, fearful and flattened, they hid from the foe--in misery minding their mortars below
until all the others had safely retreated.
They held through the firestorm that suddenly heated the rocks where they huddled:
hopeless, heroic
No sign of their sacrifice
Tombstones are stoic.

Jumble, Grin, Naked

 Naked trees, smashed homes
Jumble of glass, iron, mud, blood
"We'll rebuild", he grins.

They said, "It's too dainty a tune
to be played on a contrabassoon."
But the thought tantalized him,
And so he surprised them
With a haunting rendition of bass Clair de Lune.











Dainty;  adjective: Delicate and pretty or choice, delicious and tasty; noun: something delicious, especially a small piece of food.

Haunting; adjective: Evoking strong emotion, especially a sense of sadness, that persists for a long time.

Tantalize; transitive verb: To tease or torment people by letting them see, but not have, something they desire; to cause one to be tantalized.

Obit for an Oceanographer

Did I mention the fate of the fearless first mate
who dove into the deep with the best of intentions?
Well, sadly, along with his fidgety nature,
he'd a curious affinity for explosive inventions
and, mingled, this duo of inherited traits
created a splash of unequaled dimensions.

This weeks words: Affinity, fidget, mention.

Three Word Wednesday Draws a Blank

Here it is--Thursday--
and I can't come up with anything for the Three Word Wednesday prompt,
not even a juicy bit of gossip to share. My mind is blank.
I figure it's just the stress of having a couple of full time jobs.
Oh well, maybe next week.










This week's words:

Figure; noun: A written or printed symbol representing something other than a letter, especially a number; an indistinct object or shape; an indistinct object or shape.

Juicy; adjective: Full of juice; succulent; richly interesting; racy; titillating.

Stress; noun: Importance, significance, or emphasis placed on something; a state of extreme difficulty, pressure, or strain; to place emphasis on or prominence to.

Home on the Strange

While drivin' around
and surveyin' the ground
for interesting barrows and hills,
I chanced on a sign
as it hung on a line
of old barbed wire. (kind of gave me the chills).

No huntin' it said
Then, painted in red,
This land has already been leased
I looked to my right
And there in full sight
Hung a hapless, but trespassin' beast

And wouldn't you know,
There hung a whole row
Of varmints caught chasin' the cattle
And sort of alone
On a post of his own
A porcupine caught in the battle

 I looked for a gun,
and didn't see one,
but I stayed in my car just the same
A calf might start bawlin',
that farmer come callin'
And see an occasion for blame

I didn't want to quit
taking pictures a bit,
but this time I knew that I must



The warm western skies
Shone bright in my eyes
And I blinked as I drove just ahead of the dust

I took these pictures yesterday in the nick of time for this three word Wednesday.
I had to take liberties with the definition of kind, but I'll kindly forgive myself for that.

Blink; verb: to open and close the eye, especially involuntarily; wink rapidly and repeatedly.

Kind; adjective: of a good or benevolent nature or disposition.

Occasion; noun: a particular time, especially as marked by certain circumstances or occurrences.

Deeds of Daring Don't

Inside I'm a dreamer, it's true
But the dreams that I dream, I don't do
Lost caverns are deep
High mountains are steep
Those conquests I've left up to you*


*The impracticality of the project is always the essence of my argument.

ABC Wednesday Prompt was D and

Our Three Word Wednesday Prompt was:

Dare; verb: Have the courage to do something or defy or challenge (someone) to do something.

Essence; noun: The intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, which determines its character.

Practical; adjective: Of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas.

Slang Three-Word-Wednesday

She needed a place to sit
But no one would scooch down a bit
Since her temper was janky
She became rather cranky
And tossed a conniption fit.











conniption: noun: a bad tantrum. One has a conniption or conniption fit.
janky: adjective: broken or functioning poorly or improperly; messed up.
scooch: verb: to move over, or to scoot. 

Descent

Slow, surreal, spirals
They slide in a long descent
Toward the killing fields

Toward the killing fields
In a long descent they slide
Spirals: slow, surreal

Our three words were: descent, kill, surreal

Willingly Suspending Disbelief

In the Ozarks? Now can ya believe it?
She goes to a fancy, dress ball?
And the plot? Well what in tarnation?
T'aint likely or plausible at all!







Our Three Word Wednesday prompt was:
willingly, taint, plausible

buckle, evade, wedge

The more he evaded the truth,
the tighter his testimony
became wedged between the incredulous and the ludicrous.
Finally, it buckled--right there in the witness stand.
And he was left entangled in the wreckage of his own deceit.

Educate, Object, Silence

They say that as the twig is bent, so grows the tree...
and I have seen it--crooked little saplings forced to cower.
They wrench their twisted limbs and drop their flying seeds haphazardly to scavenge midst hard roots. Their boughs are educated to bend low and make no answer.
Yet I have heard them shriek--an awkward, unbecoming, and completely futile objection to certain fierce storms--before they droop to seethe in distorted silence.

Lean, Dabble, Utter

Hush! The lean Cassius
Dabbles in a regicide
Unutterable!

Above the Steeple

A shimmering pink
effect of the sun on an
immense evening sky

This sky greeted us when we stepped out of church last Sunday evening. I went running to get my camera and met Claye, my daughter, who had already anticipated that action and was bringing it...snapping pictures all the way. At first, the color was more of a tangerine but it soon gave way to this. Within a few minutes, it was gone to gray. This lavish beauty splashed out randomly in the sky overwhelms me some times. What an artist!

Kenesaw Mountain

Time has erased
the blood in this place,
No trace of the brothers
Who fought one another...
shooting from anonymous
lines of smoke.

The gray morning
Turned blue.
but they never knew it.



Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia, 1864

Our three words: Erase, Trace, Meadow.

Noble Intentions

Long he worked in golden fields
while gems bloomed beside the fences,
and in his sweat, he dreamed of hidden treasure:

Ancient secrets, sacred writings,
silver fountains, long since silent.
Just the thought of his ambition brought him pleasure.

But the sun each year was hot; rain was scarce; the tractor faltered; prices tumbled every time the yield was rich.

There was just enough to raise the kids, enough to pay the taxes,
So his left his dreams of treasure in the ditch.

Now he sits and quietly listens to the memories of their laughter--
as his children come, concerned, to hover around him.

And he never roamed the world,
never dove for a single pearl,
never panned a stream...
but somehow treasure found him.

In Theory

In theory...
They are ambitious--
Ambling over high Andes
Nimble on narrow corridors of clay that were
fired by a thousand hoofs and time.

In theory...
They are disdainfully defensive
Spitting on strangers who come to photograph the flock
or simply stop to watch the sheep as a diversion
from an early morning walk.

In theory, that is...
I couldn't get this fellow to budge!





Three word Wednesday--theory, nimble, budge

Abandon, Gradual, Precise

With gleeful abandon, she sang
A gradual crescendo maintained
Each note as precise
As a crack in the ice.
Applause was a torrent of rain.

depart, ignite, rotten

Today, I'll compose a poem, I think,
and depart from the usual prose
remembering conventions, yet not forgetting
to weave in the three words you chose.
They prime the creation of countless responses
Ignite the imagination
And cause several wanna-be poets to say:
"This is rotten!" and give up in frustration.