DAILY PHOTO: Amarin Plaza Phra Phrom Shrine, Bangkok

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Photograph of a Phra Phrom (Brahma) shrine in the Ratchaprasong area of  Bangkok, Thailand.
Amarin Plaza shrine near Chit Lom Metro Station in Bangkok, Thailand.

PROMPT: Unlimited Budget

Daily writing prompt
If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?

I’d buy a round-trip ticket for a place distant and interesting. I’m presuming I could spend money on that day for something the benefit of which would come later (i.e. that nothing turns into pumpkin at the end of the day.) I would not want the inevitable cavity search that would come from buying and flying on the same day.

The Fig Treatment [Free Verse]

Photograph of a Buddha head carving enveloped by Strangler Fig at Wat Mahathat in Ayutthaya, Thailand.
On a scale from
"this is cozy"
to
"my skull is cracking,"
I wonder how the fig tree
at Wat Mahathat treats
the Buddha's head?

Buckingham Palace Limerick

Photograph of the changing of the guard
A randy guard of Buckingham Palace
stood at attention, but so, too, his phallus.
He did his very best -
stock still like all the rest,
but was exposed by tent and hand callus.

Tainted (Free Verse)

Photograph taken at Andersonville National Historic Site in central Georgia.
A gorgeous day:
the sky is blue;
the air is crisp,
and a bird swoops in low
over the field to land
in search of insects.

The sign is kind of a bummer:

It tells me that 13,000
people died here --
most by shitting themselves
into unconsciousness.
(it doesn't use those exact words.)

This is Andersonville --
site of a Civil War prison camp.

Here, I believe in ghosts.
I don't believe in ghosts
when drinking my morning coffee
at my dining room table.
I don't believe in them when I
turn off my bedside lamp.
I don't believe in them anywhere --
anywhere else -- really.

But here they vibrate up
through my boot heals,
and I fear I may
shit myself.

DAILY PHOTO: Ferrys on the Perfume River

Photograph of a docked river ferry on Hue's Perfume River.
Photograph showing two ornate ferries on the Perfume River as it runs through Huế, Vietnam.

PROMPT: Perfect Series Finale

Daily writing prompt
What’s a show that had the perfect series finale?

M*A*S*H

Beekeeper [Limerick]

Photograph of bees taken in the Mekong Delta region south of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City.)
There was an equanimous beekeeper --
so calm he looked like an upright sleeper.
Slow & quiet on task
'til one got in his mask,
and blinded him with stings to each peeper.

DAILY PHOTO: Zambezi River Afternoon

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Photograph of the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe as the sun is getting low.

PROMPT: Any Philosopher

Daily writing prompt
If you could have dinner with any philosopher, who would it be?

Diogenes the Cynic would be a hoot. Alternatively, Zhuangzi (莊子.) Obviously, my tastes run toward a philosopher that could teach me about how to be free, rather than to teach me some sort of rigorous approach to thinking. I’m stocked up on the latter, but in deficit of the former.

(I’m assuming this to be a “living or dead” question scenario. Usually, I prefer to talk to the living, but I don’t think modern academia has been good to the crazy sage philosopher. I might be able to find a Daoist hermit in a cave somewhere or maybe a Tibetan Nyönpa, but I couldn’t say what his or her name would be.)