Category: Uncategorized

W3 – Halloween

by rugby843, posted in Uncategorized
***

About Halloween

Put your foot in the park

Where goblins are seen

Because it’s so dark

Other ghoulish happenings

Occur on this night

Despite jack-o’-lanterns glaring

Mouths crooked and wide

Possible eyes from scarecrows

Sitting high on their pikes

Children abound with candy they like.

***

W3 Prompt #131: Wea’ve Written Weekly

Writing Prompts

by rugby843, posted in Uncategorized
***

It might have been the usual

A few drinks, a bed, some fun

Admittedly sounds tawdry

But no harm done

We opened the door

After kisses not light

Then fireworks came

I tried to fight, because

This wasn’t right

I’m free, untethered

My modus operandi

No strings for me

Comes in handy

He surrounded me softly

I wasn’t used to that

And the fireworks

Might be costly

I was the love ‘em leave ‘em type

Now realizing all that hype

Wasn’t…

this.

***

Writing Prompts

NPR Excerpt – Do you have friends who are teachers?

by rugby843, posted in Uncategorized

“Trump has promised that if he is elected president he will deport millions of people. There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. And Trump has said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the president to detain and deport non-citizens from an enemy nation during wartime.

🎧 NPR’s Jasmine Garsd says Trump is interested in utilizing local police for immigration enforcement. However, the president cannot legally compel police departments to cooperate with such efforts. During his presidency, Trump attempted to force police to collaborate with immigration enforcement, but it was deemed unconstitutional. Civil rights groups are prepared to challenge Trump’s proposals, including his plan to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy troops to the Southwest border. Some states are working to implement their own immigration enforcement measures. And under a Trump presidency, those efforts are likely to intensify, with his Justice Department likely to support them.
The Biden administration is working to address the low wages of teachers in the federal Head Start preschool program by implementing a new rule. Many Head Start centers have struggled to hire enough staff to keep their classrooms open due to these low pay rates. Nationally, the average salary for Head Start teachers is around $41,000. In perspective, a public school-based preschool teacher earns around $53,000 on average.

🎧 The pay at Head Start, a program meant to help children living in poverty, is so low it forces its staff to live in poverty, NPR’s Cody Turner says. The pay has resulted in, nationally, nearly one in five Head Start teachers quitting last year, according to the Biden-Harris Administration. The rule the administration has created would require these teachers to receive a pay bump of as much as $10,000 per person. The problem is that without new funding from Congress, local programs would have to cover the cost of the pay increases, possibly leading to some programs cutting services.”

***

https://rugby843.blog

Friday Fictioneers

by rugby843, posted in Uncategorized
***

One lonely seagull, late to the feast, strolls along the water’s edge looking for any leftover snacks from beach parties. Most nights there are bonfires; humans drink and eat and there are always bits of food it can scavenge. It looks back to the blackened wood standing, still triumphant, even though burned. A few other wooden figures left, abandoned to be broken down and cleaned up by the seaside garbage truck. It’s a sad, but usual sight, the seagull thinks, humans use and discard everything, probably mindless of the tragedy of it all. It spies some crumbs and moves on.

***

100 words

1 November 2024

dVerse Poetics

by rugby843, posted in Uncategorized
***

Irregular Ode to Arthritic Confectioners

🥧🍵🍛🍲🍰🥙🥗🧁

you already know of my cooking woes

tried no bake cheesecake next

had ingredients, lemons, garden hose

a grater, with a sharp knife, I’m vexed

can of sweetened condensed milk

everything combined should look like silk

–

trouble started when I squeezed the juice

added lots of zest no flavor to lose

the bowl of these hard wrought two

flew off the counter, I’m not amused

ever tried to pick up lemon zest from the floor?

it took a while, had to replace it with more

–

so again with the grater and hard to get juice

lucky I had more lemons to use

thank heavens I had a crumby crust

not sure I have crumbing actions I trust

remembered to cover the bowl

while whipping the mixture, making it whole

–

delighted the finished pie looked normal and fine

it’s the cleaning of all the messes that is the crime.

***

Poetics: Satiating the Soul

Racist comics and jokes

by rugby843, posted in Uncategorized

Claytoonz excerpt: https://open.substack.com/pub/claytoonz/p/rotten-republicans?r=482oha&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

“It’s easy for a white guy to say people shouldn’t be offended by racist jokes and we should just get over it. That’s what Trump’s running mate, JD Vance said, after the brouhaha over the racist jokes told at Trump’s Madison Garden Nazi rally. 

JD lied, saying he hasn’t heard it because he believe America wants a vice president who lives in a bubble. JD said, “Maybe it’s a stupid, racist joke, as you said; maybe it’s not. I haven’t seen it. I’m not gonna comment on the specificity of the joke … but I think that we have to stop getting offended at every little thing in the United States of America, I’m just so over it.”

Even if it’s a racist joke, JD thinks we should just blow it off, or maybe wait until after election day to be offended.”

***

Vance reminds me of a song from “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” https://youtu.be/AALREbJZEZk?si=uVrajisfp_MJyXwX

***

I wish he and Trump would be “over it” in a galaxy, far far away…

https://rugby843.blog