Category Archives: Humor

Unlikely Pairing, for Classic Material

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Unlikely Pairing

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Unlikely Pairing

One ungainly orphan elephant, wandering and uncertain
of where his journey’s leading him, comes upon a curtain
of mist that rises from the plain, shimmering, evanescent.
The stars now muted overhead, the moon a fuzzy crescent.
He splits the curtain, comes upon a lone and lost impala
split off from the herd during some wild stampeding gala.
They form a duo and plod on, each looking for a herd.
Such an unlikely couple. Impossibly absurd.
And yet they struck a certain chord, each one with the other.
She was the sister that he lacked, and he her missing brother.
One thing led to another. She fit him like a glove,
and before they knew it, the two were fast in love.
When the baby came, it looked a bit like a nyala,
a bit like a rhinoceros––an elephantiala!!

“Mame” for dVersePoets

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Mame

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Version 2

Mame

Compose a ballad for Auntie Mame,
famous of body and of name,
and make the music slow and sad
as we revere the moves she had;
for all those parts she chose to wiggle
eventually began to jiggle.

Those shocking movements that won her fame
were finally ones she had to tame,
and all the fellows who once came
to see her at her sexy game
seem to have vanished, to have flown
once her parts moved on their own.

No matter that she lived by art—
how wide her fame, how big her heart—
once revered parts began to swing,
I fear her peeping Toms took wing.
What wives saw as depravity,
I fear she lost to gravity.

Yet years that held her in their sway
could not take her spirit away.
In some assisted living facility,
she still displays agility.
Her movements, true, may be much slower
and certain displayed parts much lower.

Her scarves are larger and tightly wrapped
where once they fluttered and they flapped,
but still admirers hoot and holler
and grace her g string with a dollar.
So sing her praises far and wide.
She’s still the tart she was inside.

Mame..for dVerse Poets

Classic Material from Aug 11, 2018 Breaking Her Diet

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Breaking Her Diet

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Breaking Her Diet

I measure her cat food with care from the vat,
but she has such an aptitude, my little cat
for flushing out lizards and others like that.
With delicate paw thrusts, she gives them a bat
’til they barely know where it is that they’re at,
then unleashes her claws for a more severe pat.

Be it lizard or bird or scorpion or rat,
she defeats it as though it were merely a gnat
and lays it out nicely on my front door mat:
one scorpion sting less or a feather for my hat,
then returns to the stool where she formerly sat,
licking her chops, and that’s why she’s so fat!!!

Jumping Jack Flash for Quadrille 353

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Jumping Jack Flash

Jumping Jimminy, Jumping Jack.
It really seems like there’s no lack
of “jump” in our vocabulary.
Jump a car? Constabulary
will be there within a flash
if you’ve decided to earn cash
to add to your illegal gain
by jumping on the felon train!

For dVerse Poets

Fibs for Friday, Aug 7, 2026

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For Fibbing Friday, the words to define are:

1.  Aurora A loud shout of excitement upon the discovery of gold in them thar hills!
2. Argument  Words of disagreement between pirates.
3. Blessing  The sound that snake with a speech impediment is making.
4. Smack What’s the best fast food hamburger? 
5.  Embarrassment The state of a woman taking a bathroom break in the wild.
6.  Prickle An oriental sour cucumber
7.  Bloat What you are supposed to do to candles on a birthday cake.
8.  Coalition Loud applause when the fuel delivery is made for your fossil-fuel furnace.
9.  Barrel A small lounge that sells alcohol.
10. Zeal Ze aquatic animal most talented at balancing objects on its nose.

 

 

 

“Lazy Bones” for Friday Writings

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Lazy Bones

The greater portion of the day
had already passed away
by the time she raised her head
and deigned to quit her lonely bed.
She fed the cat and fed the dog,
then hit the button and fed her blog.
The words poured out like kibble, then
she went back to bed again!
It’s true she is a lazy bones,
ignoring doorbells, texts and phones
until it is her choice to rise
to face the possible surprise
that the night might still present—
wondering where the daylight went.
‘”Here sleeps,” her epitaph  will say,
“one who slept her life away.”

In case you are wondering,

(This is not me. I’m up at eight
to answer pounding on my gate.
It is my alter-ego, perhaps—
that side of me that I let lapse—
that draws me into daylight naps
and tempts me to ignore the phone.
That asks for afternoons alone.)

For Poets & Storytellers United, the prompt was “Bones.”

Stubborn as a . . . . for “Classic Material” Prompt

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This blog was published on Aug 6 ten years ago.


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Stubborn as a . . . .

I must admit I’m stubborn, argumentative and such.
All these adverse qualities have me in their clutch.
But my mother’s from Missouri and my dad’s family is Dutch,
so they’re  the ones to blame for it, thank you very much!

If you call it tenacity it ends up sounding better.
I go from being mulish to being a go-getter,
and my stubborn tendencies cease to be a fetter.
They serve me as an asset instead of as a debtor.

As dogged as a pit bull,  determined as a cat.
A bull can be most bullish, you can’t argue much with that.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,
and nothing’s stubborn as a pig, no matter what you think.

So if you say I’m mulish, it’s neither here nor there.
Stubborn is one quality that’s not so very rare.
And when you point a finger and say I’m being rancorous,
the animal you’re channeling might be just as cantankerous!

“Unscheduled Visitor ” for : Cracking Open the Content Time Capsule for Aug 5

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This blog was posted  on this date (Aug 55) in 2017. I am reposting it for the prompt,”Cracking Open the Content Time Capsule.”

 

Unscheduled Visitor

I hear a rapid rapping and I’m wondering, “Who is it?”
It’s too early in the morning for a casual drop-in visit.
I’m still in my pajamas and the dogs and cats aren’t fed.
How can company be calling while I’m still here in bed?

The knocking is insistent but I have no way to spy
upon whatever passer-by refuses to pass by.
My intercom is broken, so I call out from the door,
“Who is it?” but it’s obvious they aren’t there anymore.

I wander back to bed again, feeling somewhat tense.
Only when I’m sleeping does the knocking recommence.
“Who is it?” I scream out again, accenting every vowel.
The dogs sense my frustration and they begin to howl.

My bedroom sliders are open, so my voice soars over the wall.
Any passerby could hear if they could hear at all.
But still nobody answers. This Saturday morning’s still.
There are no other noises up here on my hill.

No car horns and no dog barks. No children’s noisy play.
No birdcalls. No construction to mar this quiet day.
Except for my invectives as the rappings start again—
louder, oh much louder than they have ever been.

As I charge out of my front door, I grab for an umbrella—
in case I need a weapon to fight off some unknown fella
intent on ruining my day, but when I turn the key
and open wide my front wall gate, there’s no one there but me!

I roar in my frustration. The whole town must hear my wails.
I throw that damn umbrella. Over the wall it sails.
I stalk back to my room and pull the covers over my head,
praying for more silence, but what I get instead

is the steady rat-tat-tatting that now upon reflection
seems to emanate from a different direction.
I draw aside my bedroom drapes and wonder, “What the heck?”
sweeping my sight across my yard, I finally crane my neck

and see it far up in a palm—an industrious woodpecker
whose ruthless drilling is the thing that’s been my sleep-in wrecker!
I cannot throw a shoe at him for I can’t throw that far.
If I tried to knock a golf ball up, I’d be far over par.

At last I view with humor this ridiculous affair,
and so I pull on Levis and smooth my ruffled hair.
I shuffle off to feed the dogs, the kittens and the cat
and just accept as music this rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

 

The prompt today is casual.

12 comments
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    I Love this! Beautiful writing!!!
    

    

    

    

    

    

    

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    lifelessons
    

    

    lifelessons
    

    

    

    

    

    Thanks so much. After I finished the poem he/she continued his knocking into the afternoon.
    

    

    

    

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    Christine Goodnough
    

    

    Christine Goodnough
    

    

    

    

    

    One morning a woodpecker aroused me from my comfy recliner by hammering intermittently on the steel chimney cap of our wood stove. I thought someone was banging on the pipes!
    

    

    

    

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    slmret
    

    

    slmret
    

    

    

    

    

    It’s a long time since I’ve heard a woodpecker! This is a wonderful poem, and a great photo of your visitor!
    

    

    

    

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				“I (Don’t) Pardon Your French” for Word of the Day
			

										

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I (Don’t) Pardon Your French


I’m a hayseed sort of girl. I don’t believe in fancy.

To me, anything foreign is likely to be chancy.

I don’t eat things like escargot. I shudder at foie gras.

I buy my shoes in canvas, but never peau de soie.

When folks speak French to order food, I find it most pretentious,

and when they draw me into it, I’ll likely grow contentious.

I don’t like words that prettify. I view them angrily.

Like au courant, je ne sais quoi, pardon or vis-á -vis.

Why don’t folks just eat and say what comes naturally?

I think it’s done to irritate simple gals like me!


The Word of the Day is Pardon. Illustration created making use of AI.

					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Cast in Potato Salad, Carved in Stone for “Great Minds Think”
			

										

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Nothing beats the immortality  of having one’s image cast in stone, but certainly,  being rendered in potato salad beats it for originality. Unlikely? Read on.






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Cast in Potato Salad, Carved in Stone


The last thing I ever thought I would do would be to pose for a nude sculpture, but when I married a sculptor, I guess it was inevitable.  Since I never had children, this probably marked the longest period in my life that I ever lay nude being observed by a second party.  I remembered having no reservations about doing so, in spite of the fact that I am really rather modest––that is about revealing myself physically. Words are another matter all together.


My husband first sculpted me in plasticine clay. (No, not the ubiquitous Sculpey, but a very dense artist’s clay used to make the originals for bronze sculpting.) He then made a plaster mold followed by a rubber reverse mold that would enable him to make further plaster molds once he destroyed the plasticine original so he could reuse the plasticine.  After mastering the intricacies of wood carving, bronze casting, welding, clay, sandblasting, paper making and stone carving, he was in a difficult spot.  A tool junkie, he had already purchased or made every tool necessary for working in these media. How could he justify buying any more tools or building another studio addition to add to the seven studios he had already set up?


The answer came when our artist friend Diana moved to town.  Her medium was cast glass and Bob soon became fascinated with the process.  Of course, this necessitated the purchase of dozens of large jars of different colored glass casting pellets as well as books, chemicals and other supplies necessary for the process. Unfortunately, we already owned a large kiln, so he couldn’t justify buying a new pristine kiln to be used only for the melting of glass.  True, some molecules of clay might permeate the glass castings, but he decided at least for his first project, to use our existing kiln.


I can’t remember what his first few castings were, but after a few experiments, he decided that his first large glass project would be–ta da–a glass casting of his recumbent nude wife!


The thing was, this necessitated ordering a good deal more glass, and in the meantime, he had this wonderful rubber mold just sitting there unused!  He tried to busy himself with carving stone and wood, but meanwhile that mold beckoned!  Enter fate in the guise of the next show at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center, where we were both members.  And the next show was––Edible Art!  In addition to food-centered art themes, there was to be a cookbook of artist’s favorite recipes and the piece de resistance was an edible category, to be consumed at the reception!!!  Thus it was that I came to be cast in potato salad––first molded in “the” well-washed and disinfected rubber mold  and then fine-sculpted by Bob’s hands.


I must admit I felt some trepidation about first being viewed nude, then being consumed by my fellow artists and friends.  This smacked of the Donner party or some sort of sixties orgy, but how we suffer for our art.  I requested Bob not reveal who his model was and all went well.  Later, the judge told us that he would have won first place for edible art if I had not forgotten and used some of the water I used to boil the eggs to add moisture to the potato salad. I had forgotten that I always put a half cup of salt in the water to seal the eggs in case they cracked during the boiling process and that addition made the potato salad totally inedible.  The judges could do nothing but award his sculpture fourth place prize in place of first, right ahead of a jellybean mosaic in the Byzantine style, but behind my third place for my “Garden of Earthly delights” salad.


Yes, the glass grains did arrive and yes he cast the sculpture, but what happened during the further fiasco of my chain of nude effigies must be left to another time and post lest this one grow too long to read.    Suffice it to say that once cast in potato salad, twice in glass, it seems only appropriate that my grave be marked by my magnificent if inedible body rendered into stone!!!  It will be the sensation of my little town, I can promise you.


My post is in response to this  intriguing prompt for Great Minds Think:


















In a world where anyone can be famous, and even the most seemingly commonplace life can become the next bestseller or blockbuster, you enter the spotlight.So how do you want to be immortalized? Is a Tony-winning musical the best medium for your life? An eight episode Netflix or Apple TV documentary or biopic? A comedy sitcom? If any of the above, who would play you? Or are you instead going the OG route and writing your own autobiography or letting another person tell your story? Are you inspirational or a cautionary tale? An epic poem which gives Homer a run for his money, or a limerick? A song played on the radio and sung at karaoke bars?I t comes down to this: If you were to be immortalized for future generations, what form would it take, and what aspects of your life do you think you would want people to know about you? Take any form you want, but try to have fun with it.