Random Orders

15 Replies

Random Orders

When our builder said that “It’s terribly good“
as he showed us the shipment of rainforest wood,
I, for one, uttered a silent scream,
for how could I okay this endangered beam?

In like manner, when he presented the door
of yew, it elicited a quiet roar.
So instead, he then showed us a genuine fake—
some laminate made for ecology’s sake

out of plastic and sawdust fused by black light.
Okay, I’m confused. Is night day and day night?
When we asked him for details and asked him to give
us a price for this place we were hoping to live,

he gave us one total, then he gave us a few.
An exact estimate seemed the best he could do.
As if, in his string of incessant banality,
all he could offer was ultimate reality.

my husband and I are both loyal opponents
of phrases with contradictory components.
So his exact estimate clearly confused.
It was plain that the language was being abused.

When our sawyer tried selling us a smaller half
of a board for our wall shelf, I gave a small laugh.
with passive aggression, I played the wise fool.
Was this our only choice? For this was not cool.

At first just amused, in the end we were sad,
for these oxymorons were driving us mad.
Surely these word games were only a fad.
Kids in cliques may mean good when they say it is bad,

but we were adults here and now on the brink
of retiring somewhere to have a stiff drink.
A close distance away was a favorite bar
with a mean martini served in a jar.

We gave random orders for olives and gin,
telling the barkeep what shape we were in.
Then, heads swimming with opposites, we didn’t scrimp.
We told the waiter to bring jumbo shrimp!

Word prompts today are sawyer, clique, oxymoron, fad and give. In case it wasn’t obvious, I took the prompt word “oxymoron” to excess. All of the highlighted words are oxymorons (self-contradictory phrases.)

15 thoughts on “Random Orders”

  5. Lou Carreras's avatarLou Carreras

    Jumbo Shrimp huh? There have been some arguments and misestimations regarding what constitutes jumbo recently. At least everyone remains certain about the shrimp part; for now.

    Like

    Reply ↓
  6. SAM VOELKER's avatarMarion Couvillion

    WELL DONE, and so true~! I will make a reply to both subjects you cover here in a separate post due to the my interest and being it being too long to bother you with. Must go outside while the (new) maids attack my house…..Let’s call it: “JD-B reply”.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply ↓

Leave a comment