My mom becaused me when I whyed I think I drove her bonkers Her dementia was NOT payback Because, you know, love conquers
I really didn’t how alot I whyed and whyed and whyed Now I who and date-of-birth And where do you reside
My employer moneys me It’s not my motivation And when I nice those in my office It’s for more than information
I love when people story me Their travels far and near And when older farmers farmer me And tell of their John Deere
But let me backtrack to the whying It’s just something that I do — Other moves towards friendship The more I understand you
This is my response to the W3 prompt this week. The prompt involved verbing words like “because”. Melissa provided a list of words and we could choose five.
I used: because, how, money, nice, and farmer (which I know now was a misread — it’s actually former).
Iain thought, Yeah, and are you a tourist, by chance?
Aloud he replied, “Aye,” and continued playing his mandolin.
“You know, I’ve had this question for a long time. What IS the Scottish national anthem?” the man asked.
Iain didn’t look up, but started strumming Flower of Scotland.
The man started singing, “O, flower of Scotland, when will we see your like again…” His voice was amazing. “That was the first one I thought of! I was right!”
But Iain smoothly switched to Loch Lomond.
The man joined in singing when he got to the chorus, “O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road.” His inflection was spot on. And, oh, what a voice!
“So Loch Lomond is the anthem?” the man asked.
Iain didn’t answer. He started playing Caledonia.
Sure enough, the man joined him at the chorus, “Let me tell you that I love you and I think about you all the time.”
His tenor was impeccable. People were starting to gather.
The man said, “I thought it should be Scotland the Brave. I love to hear pipes playing it.”
Iain started strumming Scotland the Brave and the man sang, “Hark when the night is falling…”
He knew every word. When he finished the chorus, “…Land of my heart forever, Scotland the brave,” the gathered crowd burst into applause.
And it wasn’t for Iain.
This is my submission to the Unicorn Challenge. It’s a simple challenge: Write no more than 250 words based on the photo prompt.
True story — politics are making me bonkers and, like an idiot, I keep listening to the news.
So the other day, instead of news, I looked up a now-retired podcast called “Thistle Do Nicely” because I knew that listening to Rory, Chris, and Jonny would make me laugh. Really, it has to be my favorite podcast ever. Listening to Thistle Do Nicely is like sitting in a pub and listening to three Scottish guys sitting at the next table talking and laughing. They’re funny. A little crude. A little off-color. So much better than politics.
And, in truth, that wasn’t the episode I listened to this week. I’m relying on faulty memory regarding the National Anthem episode. Last week I actually listened to a Christmas episode because I just wanted to hear their voices.
I was walking home, lost in thought. These streets are so familiar — yes, I could walk them with my eyes closed.
Or in the dark.
October days keep getting shorter. Now I walk beneath the light of the moon and the occasional streetlight.
So I was walking home and there was my old friend John, emerging from the alley.
“John O’Reilly!” I said. “I was just thinking about you! It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Karen?” he said, studying my face. “It HAS been years.”
“Just yesterday,” I said, “I was thinking about that day that we skipped school together. That was probably 15 years ago. It’s funny, isn’t it? How you think of someone and then there they are!”
He laughed. Well, it was more of a snort, but that’s how he laughs. Even that sound brought back a host of memories.
“Remember how we ducked out after getting off the bus? We didn’t go into the school — we just headed down to the river.”
“I think that was the last time I was barefoot,” he said.
“That’s what made me think of it!” I said. “Yesterday I cut my hand washing dishes and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. You gashed your foot on something in the river, remember? Broken glass? But you bled like bejeebers and it wouldn’t stop.”
His silence was deafening. I looked up at him, seeing him beyond my fog of memory.
His hands were covered with blood.
This is my submission to the Unicorn Challenge. The challenge is quite simple: write no more that 250 words and use the photo as a prompt.
Two cats share an old chair by the woodstove An orange tabby and a calico They stretch and bask, sometimes paws interwove One wakes and grooms the other, licking slow
They eat their food together from a bowl Or crouch together watching some poor bird Sometimes they argue ’bout who gets the mole Mostly they don’t care who gets the last word
Companions would be an inadequate Description for this cat-relationship So bonded in a way that’s not clearcut Expressing joy wtih purr and lick and nip
They are true friends — someone with whom they can Just be themselves without ulterior plan
This is my submission for the W3 prompt this week: write a sonnet on the theme of friendship.
“Just hold out the grass on the palm of your hand,” Mom said, demonstrating the open palm to Iain.
Timidly he did it, taking baby steps forward until the heifer snuffled her warm wet snout onto his hand, licking the grass off. He laughed at the sensation: the smooth snout, the strong rough tongue.
“I grew up next to a dairy farm,” Mom said. “It’s where that housing development is now.”
“You were so lucky,” Iain said. “Why do we have to live in a city?”
“Your father has a good job there,” his mother replied.
“Are they [tipping his head toward the heifers] really where we get our milk?” he asked.
“Yup,” she replied.
“But I don’t see the thing they squeeze to get the milk out,” he said.
“These are heifers,” she explained, “young cows that haven’t had their own calf yet. They don’t have full udders until after they calve.”
He puzzled on it and bent his head sideways to try to look underneath. Sure enough, there were teats but no udder.
“Where’s the dad?” he asked. “We learned at school about babies. It takes a mom and a dad, right?”
“Bulls are dangerous,” she explained. “They use AI.”
“ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?!?” he said incredulously. “Like aliens??”
She laughed. “No! Artificial insemination.”
“What’s that?” he asked. “How does it work?”
She gulped and reddened. “A picture would be easier,” she said.
Back home, she looked up the following picture on her computer.
“Ewwww!” he said.
This is my submission for the Unicorn Challenge. Just write no more than 250 words based on the photo prompt.
Several years ago, I wrote a poem about growing up next to a dairy farm and the experience we had when our pet heifer wandered over. Here’s the poem:
When my parents bought the farm (literally) Pa Jackson was over the hill (euphemistically and literally)
He milked the cows by hand While the barn cats tumbled in the hay (euphemistically and literally) I watched with wide eyes (the milking, not the euphemistic tumbling)
The Jacksons had a bull To do the job of the artificial inseminator And when our pet heifer, Sock-it-to-me-Sunshine, Wandered over To get to know the Jacksons’ cows (literally) The bull also got to know her (euphemistically)
Then, our heifer Was in the family way (euphemistically) She was loaded on a truck And sent to a home For unwed cows
The next summer The Jackson’s cows Were also loaded onto trucks And sent to auction Because Pa Jackson was Extremely Over the hill (euphemistically)
A few years later We read in the newspaper That he had bought the farm. (euphemistically)
And here’s the pet heifer with one of my brothers.
The howling Ah-rooyip, yip (no growling) Wakes me. Or does it? So near! Hear?
And owling hoo-HOO hoo-HOO (no growling) Out my window, I hear life Rife
With wildness Foxes scream – WRAAAAGH! – no mildness (Or growling) Look at the dark! Hark!
It’s early But day is alive, surly Lonely, looking, using sound Found
In darkness Life not visible, starkness Yet teeming, streaming. New day — Yay!
This is my response to this week’s W3. POW Lesley Scoble challenged us to: Create a poetic scene, based on this imagery: It is early morning. You get out of bed and go to the window.
Here’s the thing, though — I go to work at 5 AM, so I get up at 3:30 AM. When I get out of bed and look out the window, I’m mostly looking at darkness. Or the moon. I have written a poem or two about the moon.
For this, though, my getting-out-of-bed moments of late are full of sounds, so I wrote about them.
The coyotes have been so active and loud. And the owls. Fortunately, I don’t heard the fox scream often, but I did the other morning, as I lay in bed thinking about getting up.
Morning — even early early morning when it is still dark — is my favorite time of day.
The poetic form is an unpronounceable Irish form: Deibide Baise Fri Toin. Quatrains. 3-7-7-1 syllables. Rhyme scheme aabb: lines 1 and 2 rhyme on two syllables, lines 3 and 4 rhyme on one.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I (I should be telling this with a sigh) Stood at that fork and took it Hey Yogi! Hey Raffi! Look it! Look it! Look it! You know what came next? (What came next?) A knife and spoon! (clink, clink) So I kept on walking down the road With a fork-knife-spoon as my load
On Saturday I was supposed to go to a poetry reading. Mind you, I have done that only once before in my life and it was a terrifying experience. Thankfully an excuse presented itself and I bowed out. The friend who had invited me offered to read my poems for me. I gave her two — neither of which had been the poem I planned to read.
She messaged me later, telling me that the poems were well-received, that I was a rare talent.
To prove her wrong, I’m going to go ahead and publish last week’s tripe, my response to the W3 prompt. The POW gave a lovely challenge: to use 1-2 lines from Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”
Unfortunately Yogi Berra infiltrated my brain regarding that poem. Yogi once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” It’s one of many Yogi-isms for which he is famous. Like, “It ain’t over, ’til it’s over,” and “You can observe a lot by watching.”
Suddenly, too, while writing, I was doing battle with Raffi, who kept singing at me (in my head) about a time he went for a walk.
Sheesh.
Sometimes the muses either just aren’t there or are a couple of clowns.
Earlier today, I had had a conversation with someone who remarked how he still remembered and leaned on that rule.
“Kind of weird,” I said.
He didn’t get it.
Weird is such a great word — and it’s weird that it doesn’t follow the rule, even when the rhyme is completed — “or when sounded ay as in neighbor and weigh.” We don’t pronounce it wayrd. Weird.
I looked the rule up to make sure I was saying it right. There is funny stuff out in internetland.
How about this one: “I before E unless you leisurely deceive eight overweight heirs to forfeit their sovereign conceits.”
Weird, right?
Ooh, ooh! Here’s another: “I before E except when your foreign neighbors Keith and Heidi receive eight counterfeit beigh sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters. Weird.”
I had to look up the word beigh: a provincial governor in the Ottoman empire. I suppose an alternate spelling to Bey.
Or maybe they meant beige.
Or maybe I misread it — I am, after all, trying to do stream-of-consciousness writing, not look-up-funny-things-and-copy-them writing.
Good golly, there are a lot of them. They refer to overweight reindeer and beige sleighs involved in heists.
I kind of stream-of-consciously wrote this last night and meant to post it, but I fell asleep.
“Boys, Mrs. Feola invited us over for dinner,” Mom said.
“Who’s that?” asked Johnny.
“She’s the lady that drove her pig around town on a bike,” said Michael.
Mom nodded. “That’s right! She had that special bike made so she could give it rides around town.”
“It had that big platform on it,” said Michael.
“Remember how she huffed and puffed going up the hill?” Johnny imitated the heavy breathing of the exhausted bike rider.
“Remember the time the pig fell off and she chased it into our yard? We trapped it by the fence for her,” said Michael. “That’s when I learned her name.”
“I was so busy scratching Piggy’s chin that I didn’t pay attention,” Johnny said. “That pig really liked when I did that.” He smiled remembering. “Under the chin. Behind the ears. That was one happy pig.”
“I haven’t seen her lately,” said Michael.
“What do you think happened to the pig?” Johnny wondered.
“We can ask her tonight at dinner,” Mom said.
That evening as they sat around the table beautifully set with linens, china, and candles, they ate their dinner.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I invited you here,” Mrs. Feola said. “I wanted to thank you for the time you helped me catch my pig.”
The boys looked at each other and smiled. “We were wondering what happened to that pig. We haven’t see you out with it lately,” Michael asked.
She smiled at them, fork in hand. “This is it,” she said.
250 words exactly.
This is my submission for this week’s Unicorn Challenge. The rules are simple: no more than 250 words based on the photo.
Years ago, my brother gave a piglet to my sons. It lived in the pig sty with the other pigs he was raising, but we would bring table scraps and whatnot to feed the pig. They may have even named it.
Anyhow, one day some cousins were visiting and the family was brought out to see the pig. Their aunt looked at it and asked my boys what were they going to do with a pig?
Very matter-of-factly my oldest son answered. “We’re going to kill it and we’re going to eat it.”
It went to a butcher eventually and we DID eat it, but I’ll never get over the horrified expression on my sister-in-law’s face.
“Somebody isn’t doing their job,” he growled, staring out the window.
“Sir?” she said.
“That is the black and white lot,” he said, jabbing his finger in the direction of the parking lot below them. “Black. And. White. Blackandwhite.”
She looked at him and blinked her eyes.
He continued. “I only allow black and white cars to be parked in that lot. I conceded to allow gray. THIS is too much, though.”
“But sir –” she started to say.
He interrupted. “It’s MY lot. I make the rules. Black and white. That’s it.”
“But –“
“No buts. Get those red cars towed out of there. And that stupid yellow car should just get crushed.”
She stared at him, unsure what to do next.
“CALL THE DAMN TOWING COMPANY. Do I make myself clear?” he barked.
An hour later, he watched with a satisfied smile as the final red car was towed away.
“I do like black and white,” he said to himself, looking around his office suite with its white walls and black-and-white tiled floors.
He heard a brisk knock on the door and turned to see a well-dressed woman enter. Her jet-black hair was pulled up and held in place with shiny black combs. Her dress bore black and white geometric designs.
“Darling,” she said. “Look who came to visit! My mother and her sisters. I told them they could park in the lot while we had lunch together.”
His face went white as three women entered wearing red dresses.
This is my response to the Unicorn Challenge. The simplicity of the challenge is deceiving: write a story of no more than 250 words based on the photo prompt.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 