For Our Friends in Illinois

Posted for a variety of prompts:

Catchwords (Baldwin quote – below)

Easy Street Prompts (“flush” and “living the postcard”)

Heads or Tails ("watch")

Meme Express (“fruitcake”)

Simply Snickers (“wave,” “wild” and “wing”)

Sunday Scribblings (“I believe”)

Weekend Wordsmith (“pinstripes”)

For Our Friends in Illinois

This limerick series is particularly suited for our friends and loved ones in Illinois, where Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested on charges of attempting to market President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder. Blagojevich faces multiple bribery charges as well. Obama denies any link to the scandal. We are certainly watching.

Take a Seat, Guv-nor -

A Poetic Handle on an Illinois Scandal

(On the Rod Blagojevich Scramble to Sell Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate Seat)

“The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling

is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.”

(James Baldwin, American author)

Dear Guv-nor, a cruel twist of fate,

Does place you on justice’s slate.

By dipping the till,

Your coffers to fill,

You’ll learn to make new license plates.

Your pinstripes, you’ll trade for new stripes

For mingling with wilder types.

You’ll wave through the door

In wing forty-four

While banging your speeches on pipes.

By selling Obama’s old seat,

You now brand-new contacts will meet.

They’ll shout, “I believe

You tried to deceive,”

As crow and stale fruitcake you’ll eat.

You’re living the postcard and more,

Sad chapter in Illinois lore –

The piper you’ll pay,

As you’ll go away

For hosting a Senate price war.

And yet, voters might offer grace,

If you would your guilt not erase.

Come clean in a flush,

And put down your brush.

Perhaps you’ll outlive your disgrace.

Love poetry? Check out Simply Snickers, a brand-new weekly poetry prompt. Try your hand with weekly prompts! Or, look into The Meme Express for daily blogging prompts.

Click here to visit Linda Ann Nickerson’s poetry and humor blog, Nickers and Ink.

Throughout 2009, please join us at The Heart of a Ready Writer, a Bible reading and devotional blog, as we read through the entire Bible in chronological order.

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Christmas Greetings

Happy Birthday, Dear Son

Posted for a variety of prompts:

Easy Street Prompts (“refurbished patriarch”)

Friday Flash-55 (55 words)

Mad Kane (“Dear Son”)

Meme Express (“winter wonderland” or “Friday Freedom”)

One Single Impression (“distractions”)

Simply Snickers (“gold,” “green” and “red”)

Weekend Wordsmith (“ripple”)

Writer’s Island (“slipped through my fingers”)

Happy Birthday, Dear Son

“Anbetung der Hirten,” by Gerard van Honthorst

"Let's go to Bethlehem

and see this thing that has happened,

which the Lord has told us about."

(Luke 2:15a, NIV)

Dear Son Divine of Christmas Time –

A Limericked Call to Give Our All

Between my fingers, spirit slips,

Like long-ago forgotten scripts.

Distractions: green and gold and red

Do ripple through my weary head

The truest Christmas to eclipse.

We echo carols, bon remark,

And pray to find a place to park.

Lord, focus us upon Your birth;

Your gift to recreate our worth,

Not some refurbished patriarch.

“When we were children,

we were grateful to those

who filled our stockings

at Christmas time.

Why are we not grateful

to God

for filling our stockings with legs?”
Gilbert K. Chesterton

British author

(1874 – 1936)

Love poetry? Check out Simply Snickers, a brand-new weekly poetry prompt. Try your hand with weekly prompts! Or, look into The Meme Express for daily blogging prompts.

Click here to visit Linda Ann Nickerson’s poetry and humor blog, Nickers and Ink.

Click here to subscribe to an RSS feed for this writer's helpful Helium content. If you wish, click here for a free subscription to this author's online AC content, so you won't miss a single post!

A Hybrid Pleads for Holiness

Posted for a variety of prompts:

Easy Street Prompts (“fitting in”)

Meme Express (“city lights”)

One Single Impression (“doodles”)

Simply Snickers (“just” and “joy”)

Sunday Scribblings (“I knew instantly …”)

Weekend Wordsmith (“chimera”)

Writer’s Island (“most amazing experience”)

A Hybrid Pleads for Holiness

“I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. . . . A memory of yesterday’s pleasures, a fear of tomorrow’s dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in prayer.”

John Donne

(1572 – 1631)

Oration at the Funeral of Sir William Cokayne

LXXX Sermons

The Chimera’s Calling –

A Poetic Gazing at an Experience Most Amazing

I’ve never aimed at fitting in,

As instantly I knew.

My doodles darted out and in,

As inspiration grew.

Still, joy surprises past all rights,

Incongruous, it grows.

Beyond the city lights and sights,

It sheds a gladsome glow.

As a chimera, hybrid born,

‘Twixt feral, fine and fair,

I will not utter words of scorn

For Him who meets me there.

Though fiercest frenzies shout my name,

Inviting me to ire,

An inner calling draws its claim

And calls me ever higher.

Love poetry? Check out Simply Snickers, a brand-new weekly poetry prompt. Try your hand with weekly prompts! Or, look into The Meme Express for daily blogging prompts.

Click here to visit Linda Ann Nickerson’s poetry and humor blog, Nickers and Ink.

Click here to subscribe to an RSS feed for this writer's helpful Helium content. If you wish, click here for a free subscription to this author's online AC content, so you won't miss a single post!