Category Archives: Daily Post

Mismatched

12 Replies

IMG_2514

Mismatched

You seem to dwell, dear, in the main
securely down in the inane.
If only you could just refrain
from loudly voicing your disdain.
Astrology you find a pain,
consider ESP insane,
while astral travel is the bane
of your existence and you’re fain
to scratch your head and shake your mane,
swearing you’ll open a vein
if I don’t try to put a rein
on my attempts to reach you where
you constantly refuse to fare.
Meditation’s out with you,
and you’ll have nothing to do
with Ouija boards or the I Ching.
You do not “Ohm” or chant or sing
to anyone or anything.
In short, you’re firmly planted here
on the earth, so dour and drear.
While my mind dwells in the stars,
yours hangs out in lowlife bars.
This love match has not scored a win.
Match.Com has erred again.
And so, my dear, ta-ta, adieu.
I guess I’m breaking up with you.
I fear that I have tried in vain
to find you on the astral plane.

The prompt today is astral.

Dad’s Makeover

16 Replies

 

Dad’s Makeover

OMG, you guys.  Daddy slept all morning so I made a fast run to the house to find his reading glasses and pick up some clean underwear.  Hold onto your hats, because I have big news. Our old Dad has really cleaned up his act!  He got rid of all the empty paper bags and National Geographics. There is space between objects in the refrigerator. You can see the hall walls again. No countless stacks of empty jelly glasses and yogurt cups.  No drawers full of used twist ties and rubber bands streaked with carbon from newspapers thrown twenty years ago.

All of the flowerpots with dry cracked soil and the ossified skeletons of plants? Gone, along with their friends the stacks of empty pizza boxes and  six packs of beer bottles.No cupboard full of clam chowder.  No year’s supply of ketchup stockpiled in the pantry. In the bathroom drawer, just one tube of toothpaste squeezed from the end. No ranks of out-of-date prescription bottles.  No shriveled tubes of Preparation H.

Mama’s clothes are finally gone from the closet. Her dusty doilies, vanished from every surface in the house. No mismatched socks and wrenches in his bedroom drawers.

How did this come about? Impossible to say as he still hasn’t come to after his surgery, but if I were to assay the probabilities, I’d say a woman might be involved.  There is a vase of flowers in his hospital room and a container of homemade soup in the little fridge beside his bed.  His hair looks newly cut and his nostril hairs are not in evidence.  All presentable underwear in the valise  I packed for him and sis, his jockeys are in shades of maroon, navy blue and rust brown!!!  No more untidy whities.  No more undershirts with holes in them. It’s like they operated on his whole life, not just his appendix.  Removed every dusty, tattered, useless, outgrown part of him and plopped down a new father in his place.

Oops.. gotta run soon.  The nurse just said he has another visitor. Not a family member, but the one who admitted him to the hospital last night at midnight. The one who left the key to his house for me.  They say only one visitor at a time, so guess I’ll have to leave when she gets here.  Door opening. She’s coming in the door! I’ll call you from the car.

(After a ten minute lapse, the phone rings again.)

Okay. You guys? Are you all there?  Sit down, will you? All sitting down? A slight modification. Make that a he who came in the door!

The prompt word today is assay.

No Longer in the Present

13 Replies

jdbphoto

No Longer in the Present

Seated around the table in our favorite cafe,
attention to each other has come to be passé
We are not present here and now. We’re all in other places
as we stare at tiny screens, intent on other faces.

The friends we have around us will simply have to wait
for our interest in the world-at-large to finally abate.
The news that’s happening elsewhere is simply more amusing
than what might be happening in this space our body’s using.

Other friends are funnier in their “selfie” poses—
pooching out their lips at us and scrunching up their noses.
It won’t do to look natural, we have to look unique
in the selfsame pose that all selfie-flashers seek.

So if your friends are boring, not half so chic as you,
you always have the option to make a Tweet or two.
Check out the latest fashions available from China.
They’ll only take three months to reach you here in Carolina.

Check out the weather in Tibet and give YouTube a glance.
Companions won’t distract you if you don’t give them a chance.
Living one life at a time no longer has to do
so long as you remember to have your phone with you!

So if you’ve dropped a French fry and spilled ketchup down your dress,
you needn’t be embarrassed. It couldn’t matter less.
Intent on Twitter, Instagram, Facetiming and Facebooking,
the friends with you won’t notice, for nobody is looking.

The prompt word is present.

Costume

6 Replies

IMG_8641

Costume

I want to be an artist, a writer and a wife—
juggling all these masks with just a minimum of strife.
A lover, mother, daughter, cousin, sister-in-law, sister.
A friend to every woman and a temptress to each mister.
A master to my canine friends and slave to all my cats.
A pal to all my blogger friends, not just to swell my stats.
As well as to some Facebook friends and email friends and Skype.
(I no longer use snail mail—I’m simply not the type!)
So, if I were being truthful and I didn’t give a fig
about what others thought of me, I’d dress up like a pig.
Why the porcine costume? The tail curled in a ring?
Because in my life choices—I want everything!

The prompt today was costume.

Mnemonic Phonics

26 Replies

 

 

 

Mnemonic Phonics

Babies use clues amniotic
to deal with stimuli chaotic,
but later, memory gets thick.
In short,  it’s anything but quick.

Age slows us down and trims our wick,
fogs our recall,  slows our pick.
So I resort to many a trick
to give my mind a little kick.

This loss of memory’s demonic
and leads to fits most histrionic,
so I depend on clues mnemonic
for memory that’s supersonic:

(Can you guess what the below mnemonic devices help me to remember?)

Neither leisured foreigner
seized or forfeited the weird heights.

Every good boy does fine.
Good boys do fine always.

My very excellent mother just spewed up nine plums.

How about you?  What mnemonic devices do you use?

 

The prompt word is mnemonic.

Tending House

19 Replies

 

Diego supervises as Pasiano “tends.”  jdb photo

Tending House

In no place I have ever lived do so many people seem to be necessary to maintain one house. On any given day, in addition to my efforts, it is likely two or more of the following caretakers will be present: housekeeper, gardener, plumber, locksmith, bricklayer, tree-trimmer, cistern-cleaner, fumigator, carpenter or appliance-repairer. Do things really break more frequently in Mexico? Do locks jam more or garage openers go on the blink with greater regularity? Do more brick pathways need to be laid? More roof tiles slide down and go boom? More solar water heaters spring more leaks? Do pools develop cracks more easily and pipes pop open just for the fun of it? Do houses cry out to be added onto? In my sixteen years of living here, it certainly seems so. I especially remember the day described in THIS POEM as being one where the entire world seemed to be directed toward the care of my house. It was the monarch. We were its slaves.

The prompt today was tend.

I think this photo also qualifies for the Thursday Doors prompt!

The Persistent Suitor

19 Replies

IMG_2115

The Persistent Suitor

He has no right to loiter here, has no permit to tarry.
He looks no more familiar than  Tom or Dick or Harry.
And yet he is persistent, as though it’s his profession.
He gives no apology and renders no confession.

One day he carries chocolates, another a bouquet,
yet they do not grant him access. They do not pave the way.
Then one day he’s missing.  He doesn’t grace her door.
She hears no insistent knocking. There are no offerings more.

All day, she thinks of him and where he might have chosen to wander.
It seems perhaps that once again, absence has led to fonder
reflections on the part of one who’s playing hard-to-get.
(She is noted for her skill at it among the party set.)

One more day he’s absent. She claims she doesn’t care.
It’s easier to leave her house without a suitor there.
Yet when he finally comes again, she opens up her door
flushed with her power to attract. Victorious to the core!

“Yes?” she says, one eyebrow lifted in disdain,
as though another suitor is an aggravating pain.
And the confidence of her suitor seems never to have swerved.
As he handed her an envelope and said, “Ma’am, you’ve been served!”

 

 

The prompt today was permit.

The Inkling

11 Replies

IMG_0107

The Inkling

I haven’t an inkling what I ought to do
about that weird spot on the tongue of my shoe.
Don’t know how it got there, don’t know what its made of.
And such a strange color! I don’t know the shade of
odd pigment that it might be properly called—
somewhere between baby pig and grandpa-bald?

What color is pink to end up on your shoe?
With pink on his toe, what’s a fellow to do?
If there were a shoe wash, I’d go in a blink,
but since there is no sort of place, then the sink
is the place I will go to to wash off this matter—
this slimy soft substance that looks like a batter.

You may think I’m silly to make such a fuss,
to blather and worry and mumble and cuss,
but these shoes are brand new and my favorites, at that—
undeserving of refuse left by the cat.
Now the cat’s in the barn and the shoe is restored.
Almost. Must that shadow just be ignored?

I’ve dined out on this story ’till friends are all bored.
As they approach me, I hear them say, “Lord,
protect us from more boring talk of his shoe.
Please let him not mention that gloppy pink goo.”
They may call me a heel, these folks I’m among
as I tell them once more how the cat got my tongue.

But I can’t abandon those images that
that mess on my shoe was left by the cat.
On what innocent creature might she have dined—
its tiny pink corpse so sadly reclined
on the tongue of my perfectly saddle-soaped shoe?
My friends will not listen, so I’m telling you!!

 

The prompt today was inkling.

 

Behaving French

9 Replies

Version 3

Behaving French

Today I find it suitable
to practice my inscrutable.
It’s part of my act femme fatale
that men can’t fathom me at all.

They’re wiles my mother taught to me
back when I was only three,
and I admit it’s served me well
putting bon vivants through hell.

When situations new astound me,
I wrap my femme fatale around me.
I use it everywhere I go,
’cause it’s the only French I know!

The prompt today is inscrutable.

Happy Ending

8 Replies

IMG_8769
Happy Ending

He was a follower, a grunt
who married a lass dominant.
She led, he followed in their dance.
He wore an apron, she the pants.
It was a perfect unity
if folks had only let them be;
but, alas, the other blokes
had to make the usual jokes.

They called him pussy-whipped and meek—
berated him as timid, weak—
and so, simply to please his mates,
to end their jeering cruel debates,
he went against his true love’s wishes
and refused to do the dishes.

The facts, there’s no need to imbue.
Both words and dinner plates, they flew.
He could not match her swift invective
of ways in which he was defective,
and so he simply stood and waited
until her fury was abated,
then asked this cyclone he had wed
if she would like to go to bed.

Their skirmish ended in romance.
He shed his apron, she her pants.
A worn-out lover well-behooves
a meeker husband in his moves,
and nothing like a little tiff
to make a timid fellow stiff.
Now that her angst had flared and passed,
he got to be on top, at last.

The prompt today is dominant.