Cracking Open the Content Time Capsule: Vice Detection, Aug 30, 2016 Replay

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Vice Detection

Don’t you have to love the fellow
with ice cream on his diet Jell-O?

And the friend with heart of gold
who likes her painkiller freshly rolled,

or that occasional slip of tongue
that tells us how her husband’s hung?

This little “fuck,” that little “damn,”
the door that’s pulled closed with a slam––

the flaw that nearly escapes detection
that proves that no one is perfection?

The truth is, that though friends revere us,
faults are what really endear us.

Although piety is nice,
I’ll take my goodness spiced with vice!

For the What/When/ Where We Watch CFFC Challenge

In a restauraunt, at the beach,
our camera’s always within reach.
Sky or water, heads or tails,
not a single photo fails
to tell a story, be it true
or some untruth once told to you.
I care not if it’s false or true
–what its inhabitants might do.
Just pick a picture, then tell me
whatever story you may see.

For the What/When/ Where We Watch CFFC Challenge

Compulsion to Rhyme II

Thanks, Mom, for all of those early rhyming sessions

Compulsion to Rhyme II

By now you’ve read my oeuvre once or twice before.
It’s bulging out of file cases, stacked upon the floor.
It’s quickly filling up my blog and straying to the media.
Soon I fear I must compose my own encyclopedia.
It started out a habit but soon became compulsion.
My housecleaner surveys my poems with undisguised revulsion.
Spiders live within the files, cats use them for their beds,
so they serve grander purposes than cluttering up heads.
Perhaps someone could stop me with a cudgel or a gun,
but lacking that, I fear that when my final poem is done,
my heirs will have to market my oeuvre by the ton.

For Blast from the BlogII. A ryhme from Aug 29 in 2018.

A Different Perspective

A Different Perspective

Still standing close,
each on our own side of this terrible rending,
how can we see things so differently?
This little flap of skin
you keep pulling open
wants to close.

This is how cancers start—
this worrying and worrying of an old injury.
My darling. Leave it alone
and let us heal.
This is only a biopsy
of our changed love affair.

If it is cut out of us,
it will be by your decision;
and no number of late-night arguments
will ever change that fact.
What you need to remember
the next morning,
you will remember.

If it were up to me,
we would still be friends,
but if you need an enemy
to console you in your actions,
I guess I must be that too.
I always was a figment
of your imagination.
Believe that
if it makes this easier for you.

For Poets & Storytellers United: Perspective

For Fibbing Friday, Aug 28, 2026

For Fibbing Friday his week, the assignment is:

1. What is a puggle: A tiny fart released by accident when one giggles.
2. What is an hibiscus? A short period of hibernation.
3. What is a concertina? The drapery around a jail cell. 
4. What is a dipstick? The sound a potato chip makes coming out of the chip dip.
5. What would you use a feeler gauge for? To measure your feeler, of course. Duh!
6. What is a vernier caliper? The verniest caliper of all.
7. Where would you use a lopper? About three minutes in to what promises to be a very long and boring story.
8. What is meant by ‘wabbit’? A wabbit is a wascally Lagomorph.
9. What is a ratoon? The mixed-blood progeny of a racoon and a rat.
10. What is meant by borborygm? An excessively lengthly and boring story.

Fact or Fiction?

Fact or Fiction?

wars, tsunamis
murdered mommies
global warming
cancers forming
mad religions and heretics
engineering our genetics
drug cartels
emptying wells
mounting debt
nuclear threat

I hate to say it
but every day it
is getting worse
this global curse
and human capers
in all the papers
so all in all
it’s an easy call
I find less friction
in reading fiction!

For Fact or Fiction?

Thursday Doors, Aug 27, 2026

 

Off for a walk with our new roomie, Julie, who is living with us for a few months while she writes her new book. For Thursday Doors.

Dining Out, for “Classic Material circa 2016”

Witness

 

Version 2

Dining Out


When I’m in a public place
talking to friends, face-to-face,
and my secrets I choose to tell
to those I’ve known both long and well;

when I swear them to secrecy,
I need to also remind me
that of two actions I have the choice.
Watch what I say or lower my voice.

What nearby tables say and do,
I’m sometimes silent witness to.
The realization I may lack
is that perhaps they’re listening back!

 

Post navigation

For Cracking Open the Content Time Capsule

Mother and Daughter, Hibiscus: FOTD Aug 25, 2020

For Cracking Open the Content Time Capsule

Blast from the Blog for Aug 24, 2017

Why I Dine Alone at Burger King

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Why I Dine Alone at Burger King

I’d like a single cheeseburger with pickles on the side,
cheese but no tomato—a fruit I can’t abide.
Be sure there is no pink to see. I like my burgers brown.
You can also skip the cardboard hat. I do not need a crown.

Grilled onions on the cheeseburger and easy on the goo.
Give me a diet Coke with that. I’d like some French fries, too.
I sit down at a booth to wait, my number on the table,
but if I could, I’d supervise—that is, if I were able.

My sandwich comes. I have a bite. I see no pink or red.
I start to take a drink of Coke but have a fry instead.
It’s hot and oh so crispy. Redolent of grease.
I feel a surge of appetite. My hunger pangs increase.

I alternate the bites I take between the fries and meat.
As regular as clockwork. I do not miss a beat.
For when it comes to fast food, I do not equivocate.
My ratio of fries-to-burger I must calibrate.

I plan it down to the last fry. I don’t allow for glitches,
and woe to folks who borrow one. I do not abide snitches.
If you want a French fry, please buy some of your own.
I have plans for all of mine. I am not sharing-prone.

With one more bite of burger and only two more fries,
the ratio is one-to-two. I plan to synchronize.
I have it all planned out, my friend, so if you’re chancing by,
keep your fingers off my French fries, or somebody’s gonna die!