The November 19th prompt in The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, by Kelli Russell Agodon & Martha Silano, is to ‘[w]rite a poem that has more multisyllabic [sic] words than single syllabic [sic] words’. Apparently, the following is what happens when I purposely try to increase the syllable count…

Threatening defiant (in)action
malcontent congressmen
hamper substantive progress
at every junction

The turkey-necked tortoise
swaddles the congressional crybaby
until their rabid constituents
clamor for succor

Media moguls and backroom bosses conspire
to manufacture crises
to instigate distractions
for angry voters

Protesters versus policemen
Pickets versus pepper spray
‘Liberals’ versus ‘teabaggers’
The destined versus the destitute

Democracy becomes the lonesome loser
looted by lobbyists
leveraged by ‘leaders’
trafficked for commerce
neglected for convenience
disfigured and left for dead

(19 November 2014)