X for ABC Wednesday

ABC Wednesday prompts with the letter X


X is for Xanax and Xystus

Xanax might be necessary to bring me down from an escalating desire created during the recent season.

While visiting with family over the holidays, we played Wii and used a wireless keyboard to surf the Internet through that console. How much magic is THAT?

THEN they gifted me with a new flat screen TV to replace my old 12" crt type and I've begun to think of replacing my original Nintendo console with the new Wii to turn my living room into a xystus (covered walkway for exercise) with my own Wii stuff. You know, like Fitness Plus and...and...and...

Maybe a nap will restore my good sense. I hope not. Are you a Wii-er?

Wishing a Healthy, Happy and Prosperous 2011 to Everyone!

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Poem for Big Tent Poetry

Big Tent Poetry offers a wordle for prompt: 

topple, swift, immerse, squeeze, disloyal, hoarse, vanish, ropes, slight, basement, engine, performance




Once Upon a Waterfront

a disloyal performance
like any child can plan
with blocks and stackables
build it up to watch it fall

ropes have no use when
stilts dismantle upper floors
with squeeze, a sigh and sob
hoarse cries immerse all hope

its name a dead giveaway
Washaway land vanishes
when each rain drops
cliffs topple swiftly to the sea

News: http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/sea/coast/erosion/washaway.html

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W for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: Wassail on our Wednesday

Waffle.
A pancake-like concoction constructed with syrup-trapping squares and enough tread to keep whipped cream from slipping off (don't check Wikipedia for this because I made it up).

I can't find my waffle maker and probably wouldn't use it anyway so I've chosen 'waffle' to mean riding the fence while trying not to warp off the wrong side.

At this strange time in life, I've found it wiser to avoid decision-making in the widest sense of the word and to allow myself to waffle along in the moment, no matter that wisdom might dictate otherwise.

Whose side are you on? Do you ever have to take sides? Would you prefer to waffle?

 

Royalty Free Clip Art

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Stillness for OSI

One Single Impression: Prompt 147: Stillness

moon's eclipse

on the longest night

...track-free snow

Image created on Bamboo Fun Tablet.

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Dead Woman Dance for Big Tent Poetry

Big Tent Poetry prompts: Write a “dead man” poem springboarding from Marvin Bell

Dead Woman Dance

she tap-danced her dreams
triggering them on smoke and glass
watched the futures come and go
like Escher stairs on lies of past

a global bonfire
took her down that lonesome road
where puissance splintered legacies
lost existence to the eclipse

a new dark took the land apart
to relearn how to make a wheel
she beheld her dreams
collapse and smolder on the pyre

 
 

A Fractal Image

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Haiku for Magpie Tales #45

Magpie Tales #45  Each week, Willow offers an enigmatic photo to prompt the imagination.

love's icon

clouds embrace the sky

waving flag

 
 

Image by Willow

 

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V for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: V is for.......very nice to be here!


Vigia is a nautical term for a navigational hazard marked on a chart although its existence and nature has not been confirmed  (from Spanish vigía reef, from Latin vigilāre to keep watch) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/vigia

It's no wonder my house is dusty, windows are smeary and snow remains unshoveled. When I found this word, I spent hours and hours looking for the representative icon and am nonplussed to say that I've been unable to uncover it. I haven't given up but I've also quit holding my breath. Surely, it'll show up soon.

Last week I posted a link for unwords, this week I found a word warning for maybe hazards. Is there a message there? Do you know where the vigia icon is hiding?

Fractal Image.

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win for OSI

One Single Impression: Prompt 146: Win

win

solstice looms
layers dark and light
winter's heart

 
 

Digital Photo.

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Moon and Man for Big Tent Poetry

Big Tent Poetry prompts: Write a poem inspired by work at Referential Magazine

I went to:

My Turn Out of the Box
Poem by Felicia Mitchell
Artwork by Melanie Faith
Abandoned by angels we wait our turn out of the box from Scott Owen's poem 13 Angels

and wrote this:

Moon and Man



the dark of moon
lightens her veil
between then and now

his headstrong hand
holds a scratchy pen
fiery as a butane torch

fine feathery veins
leak crimson lines
into the flames

word by word
smoke curls beyond today
toward December's moon

Not a dark of the moon photo.

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Senryu for Magpie Tales 44

Magpie Tales   Every week, Willow offers a thoughtful image destined to stir your mind.

slippery

down the older side

~ speed of light

 
 

Image by Willow

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U for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: ABC Wednesday - U

U might stand for under or un-things.


Under snow - I don't remember what was under the November snowfall that broke the 1955 record. AKA ~ under the weather.

Underwater - comes with the thaw.

Underthings - unmentionable.

Unknown - a huge category.

Unwords: a delightful site full of unwords can be found here http://www.unwords.com/alpha/U/0.html or can be purchased here: The Unword Dictionary: 1,000 Words For Things You Didn't Think Had Words! (How America Speaks series)

Image by Escape Motions  

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Enough for Big Tent Poetry

Big Tent Poetry offers a simple prompt this week: write to enough, be it not enough, more than enough, just enough.

Something set me off. Don't remember what it was but as soon as I saw enough, this jumped out, wrote itself and went straight back into hiding. So there. :)

Enough.

it's not what it is
it's not all good
it's broken things blowing

and the tap tap tapping
of a thousand nightjars
pecking life to death

a house of cards
the easiest target
of a wraparound wind

rent by greed and fear
it's like being pecked to death
by a thousand rabid birds

 


                                                                         

Altered Fractal.

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Senryu for Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales #43. Willow offers a weekly image prompt. Come play along ~ it's always a challenge!

beds for snow angels

downy soft and goodness white

tracks left overnight

Digital image by Willow

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T for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: ABC Wednesday - T!

Tasseography is the art of reading tea leaves. 

Wikipedia has this to say. "Tasseography (also known as tasseomancy or tassology) is a divination or fortune-telling method that interprets patterns in tea leaves, coffee grounds, or wine sediments. The terms derive from the French word tasse (cup), which in turn derives from the cognate Arabic word tassa, and the Greek suffixes -graph (writing), -logy (study of), and -mancy (divination)."

I'll open a bag of Bigelow Chamomile Mango tea and steep the leaves. No. I have a small tin of ChocoMint Green Tea gifted to me by my oldest granddaughter and I'll use it since that taste fits this frigid Tuesday perfectly.

Now I'm not sure what these leaves say. Do you know?

Today I think telekinesis would be good. I could move snow without touching it and that would make me smile.

Digital Photo.

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Meld for One Single Impression

One Single Impression: Prompt 144: Meld


Swirlwind

wind shakes
the snowflake quilt
down flies

landscape
melds with white

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Hanging Hieroglyphs for Big Tent Poetry

Big Tent Poetry offers a wordle with the following: hung, ash-pit, forklifted, boiler, nib, clunk,  hand, awake, resurfaced, passed, lush, cupped

Hanging Hieroglyphs

the myth of ages
passed on by writers' nib

wrinkled hands and quills
resurface a willing globe

awakened near the ash-pit
of lush recollection and

cupped by hunky boilers
forklifts clunk and roil

arousing age-old myths
that never were

This Blog Post is #1000.

 A fractal.

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Senryu for Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales               Every week, Willow offers an imaginative and enigmatic image for prompt.





cup of memory

elixir stirred and measured

glass replays the tune

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Banner watercolor by Sue. Digital photo by Willow.

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S for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: S is for sizzling sausages!



'Shroom is a stretch but the letter S is stretchable.

Imagine my surprise when I opened a basket of 'shrooms and found this one branded by its shadowy doppelganger. Shutter clicked and the photo was sent to several who roared with laughter and said, 'Did you try to sell this 'shroom on e-Bay?'

Unfortunately, I'd already sauteed and consumed it so I  may have swallowed all chances for small wealth. Sob.

What would you have done?

Digital Photo Unprocessed.

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Senryu for One Single Impression

One Single Impression: Prompt 143: Apprentice

naive embers fueled

by mendacity and greed

fear's apprentices

 
 
 
 



 

Escape Motion Image

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Swing for Big Tent Poetry

Big Tent Poetry prompt: Write a cascade poem.




Recipe for a Swing



one high chain shackles
connects two tree trunk cores
loopback rope makes circles

to catch the wooden seat
for pleasure pumping lift
one high chain shackles

stretching toward the sky
in a long smooth swoop
connects two tree trunk cores

she sings the key of happy
riding the rising swing
loopback rope makes circles

A Fractal.

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Master Number for Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales #41     Willow offers an enigmatic image prompt every week. Now:

tempura parchment

sky blue pane and earthly sand

~ one master number

 

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R for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: THE LETTER "R"



Resting

and

Relaxing

R & R

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Pocket Full of Titles for Big Tent

Big Tent Poetry offers the following prompt: Choose a title from the NYT Best Sellers List and use it as you see fit to form a poem. But I just kept gathering titles...

Pocket Full of Titles


when stories had sharp teeth
while the world was flat
a confession came to light

horror was the smirking chimp
decision points were pointless
when nothing was worth dying for

the american assassin
became the lost symbol
of llama llama holiday drama

tatted girls kicked and played
spat flame from hornets' nests
back when the world was flat

Watercolor by Sue.

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Tracking Time for Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales #40  Willow prompts weekly with an image. This week:

Tracking Time


an elliptic of stars
gentles near the center
rich with texture
and with ancient animus

the shape of myth
cosies from a flashing tail
wrinkled fabric
dribbles the string of all things

and wide along its crest
fire from ageless dragons
licks the frayed outer edge
of an elliptic of stars

 

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Q for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: The Letter Q                     

Quoz: off beat, and out of time, serendipitous discoveries


I was talking on the cell phone to a daughter and mentioned that a black sweater top (which I didn't have) worn with a multi-colored broom skirt of abstract design (which I did have) would be perfect for an upcoming family party.

She immediately used her cell phone camera to photograph and send an image of the black top she was seeing at that moment in a local clothing store.

'Oh, that's just what I meant,' I said. She purchased it and in short order I held in my hands an idea now manifested in real time.

Technology often wins but it takes good real-time people to wrap it up in a perfect package!

Do you think that quoz worked okay? Do you kind of like quoz?

 
 

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Wanderer for Big Tent

Big Tent Poetry offers this prompt: Pilfer a pearl from the many which were posted and use it as a springboard to a new poem.

I chose Barbara's line (in italics below)





Wanderer

mounds of goldenrod
studded with ironweed
dry as shredded wheat
stare black at the new moon

...she folds into the shadow
plays with pieces of the past
while leftover tears
refresh her secret garden

...whispers of autumn
move among the leaves
to tell the story of the road
she's come to wander

Digital photo.

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Senryu for Magpie Tales 39

Magpie Tales #39. Willow offers the following image for the weekly prompt.

wall deco

governs the hen house

...righteous eye

 
 
 
 
 

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P for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: P is for...

Phoeniceous.

This old word denotes a bright scarlet-red color and has been assigned as a secondary descriptive to a variety of flowers and birds.

Phoeniceous, the single word, is difficult to find and yet it glows with possibilities and potential which are reminiscent of the great Phoenix. It must be as red as that great fire. It sounds like that, doesn't it?

I'd like to learn more about the word, but it's a time consuming chore and I'm a procrastinator. Now there's a P word I understand!

Digital Photos

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Incoming for BigTent Poetry

Big Tent Poetry offers the following prompt:  Sketch a picture of your house, free write what you learn and create a poem from those words...

Incoming


mirrors and windows
low-slung eaves
bait the southbound sun

cold seeks out cracks
jack frost lichen
etches kitchen glass

shifting times bring
a hunt for oddball hints
to hold a patch of warm

fresh bubblewrap
clings to windows
creates an abstract light

prevents a frigid cup
of air from inbound creep
beneath the low-slung eaves

Digital Photo.

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Broken for Magpie Tales

Willow of Magpie Tales offers the following image for the weekly prompt!


Broken

one moonless night
the train of her dream
crosses a thin threshold

without warning
tracks to the rim of space ~
steams into the wrinkle

puffs of powder
sigh from the broken shape
of collapsing worlds

the clouds grow quiet
under the moody chords
of the mourning dove

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O for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: O is for...

Oh!

I love shapely O's that reflect oddball minutes, oviforms that overpower with humor and surprise that shoots out through ostium.

Oh, let's hear it for the O!

A couple of fractals and a couple of digitally filmed kiddOs.

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N for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: N is for Nice

Numb, NaNoWriMo and Netherworld

Numbness of the mind is not a novel thing, it happens more often than I'd like.

November is a novel month and draws near with NaNoWriMo in tow. Oh. No. Already?

Each of the past four years, I've penned a novel during the thirty days hath November but now my muse seems to have dropped into the netherworld and I have trouble putting three sentences together.

Could I write another 50,000 words in November? Can you?

An Apophysis Fractal

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Doll for Big Tent Poetry

The Big Tent Poetry site offers the following Wordle words:
hook gourd purple kiss drooping staircase muddy bitter doll glossy extract pluck



Doll

the muddy river of no return
kisses the bank
where bitter gourds grow

a blow-away bride
tumbling down
a loose rock staircase

hooked by a drooping vine
her glossy purple eyes
and come-hither moue

plead to be plucked
from that vine near
the muddy river of no return

 
 

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Into the Dusk for Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales #36 - the image prompt by Willow.

Into the Dusk


geese stitch
the falling dusk
to leaves of quilts

summer birds craft
sweet clear sounds
of southbound song

pressing into cooling air
she hums refrain...the
melody of Persephone

 
 
 

A Willow Image.

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M for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: M is for.....

Mudra

While reading Q's Corner at http://q-corner.blogspot.com// (an especially wonderful blog), I noticed a book entitled Mudras: Yoga in Your Hands.Mudras: Yoga in Your Hands Because I credit yoga for much of my flexibility, I found mudras interesting enough to read several articles online and to watch various programs which further illuminated this method of movement.

According to the ubiquitous Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudra: A brain research paper published in the National Academy of Sciences in November 2009, demonstrated that hand gestures stimulate the same regions of the brain as language.

I ordered the book and expect it show up mid-week in time to add spice to the gray days to come. Do you know mudras?

M created in Escape Motions

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Faulty Map for Big Tent

Big Tent Poetry prompts: borrow one line from a poet’s poem and use that line as a springboard.

My poem was prompted by Joy Harjo A Map to the Next World which can be found at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179781

Faulty Map

forgetfulness takes inbound steps
alongside the walk-about
drops petite crumbs for comfort

a nip of silk scarf peeks
from a drawer of woolen socks
a can of peas crowds the shoes

thin lines of ink doodle lists
tasks that must be done
until they double up and fade

afraid to move, or read ink,
she huddles in quiet and struggles
to recall where she left the crumbs

 
 

A Fractal Image.

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October for Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales offers the following image as prompt.

October


Retrograde Mercury
crosses the sky
triggers an Ichabod night

pines tease their taproots
my trousers cuff at curling leaves
churned by corkscrew winds

one brave star dots the lonely dark
retreats behind boiling wings
sweeping black the sky

tomorrow the sun will rise
above the ides of night
and calm will claim the day

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Gogyohka for 3WW

Three Word Wednesday offers the prompt words: hint, lust, sheen

one hint arrives
by stellar sign
a lustful sheen
wraps the night
in a promise map

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A Fractal and a Gogyohka Poem.

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L for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: L

Leaf of Summer

a loose leaf

lifted by the wind

landed on the pond

caught by camera lens...

lightly treading water

 
This gogyohka poetry form is explained at http://www.fivelinepoetry.com/ I'm quite fond of short and easy poetry like captured snippets of thoughts.
 
 
 

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When Orange is Gone for BTP

Big Tent Poetry prompts:  Step outside your house.

When Orange is Gone

the pond is buried
swathed by winter's shroud

against the dying time

naked trees stand down
against a battleship sky
shooting pellets of cold

bones bared by the rake
pop up in unlikely spots
a warning not to plan ~

to wait it out and see
if spring bursts with life
and ends another dying time

 
 
I'm a spring/summer person and find the color of autumn to be a forecast of white, white, white and bitter cold. It takes me a bit to acclimate, so this was the first impression of a recent morning. I'll probably be okay next week. :)

A digital photo.

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Senryu for Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales #34  The following image was posted by Willow on her site for the weekly prompt.





fiery reflections
echo the fragile chimney                    
a still life painting
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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K for ABC Wednesday

ABC WEDNESDAY ROUND 7: K is for.....

kickie-wickie


The Oxford English Dictionary defines kickie-wickie as: 'a jocular or ludicrous term for a wife.'

This silly-willy word was used by Shakespeare in All's Well That Ends Well, so it isn't a johnny-come-lately to linguistic ludicrosity.

Mark Peters, lexicographer and humorist, is a contributor of language posts at MSN and you can find his articles at http://www.good.is/community/MarkPeters  and at http://www.good.is/post/whoo-hoo-linguistic-reduplication/

I must admit that I am not a wife but have heard few funnier substitutions. I can hardly imagine the word being used. Can you?
 
 
 
 

K image created in Escape Motions

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Haiku for OSI

One Single Impression: Prompt 135: Monument



double dark

scribed from emptiness               
marble slate

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

An Apophysis fractal image.

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Haibun for Big Tent Poetry

Big Tent Poetry prompts: write about travel (real or imagined) using the haibun form




Archer's Target

A red, orange and yellow swirl of curl soothes the restless sky where Archer hides while soaring colors dance and wave with thermal loops.

linen string

with bright baited tail

bound to earth

The bobbin spins meters of freedom before gravity gives in and the swirl continues its final flight.

sand footprints
plaster of paris
trail of tears

 
 

A fractal image.

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A Fib for Magpie Tales

Magpie Tales Willow offers this image as the prompt.

sneeze
sneeze
old scent
parmesan
sneaks past the sniffer
sprays gold and green toilet water

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A jestful fibonacci. 

 

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