Category Archives: Humor

White Knight

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photo by Moss on Unsplash. Used with permission

White Knight

His choice of her as wife must clear enough betoken
that he has a predilection for the damaged and the broken.
When they met, ’twas clear she was a maiden in distress.
She’d tipped a cocktail over and ruined her favorite dress.
He furnished first a hanky, and when it proved ineffective,
he replaced the sodden garment with a new one less defective.

She seemed to have no talent save for partying and shopping.
Her credit cards were all maxed out, but still she wasn’t stopping.
Prada, Hermes, Target, Ross—she loved to shop them all.
After Amazon, her favorite was, of course, the mall.
She never checked the price tags. Didn’t money grow on trees?
But she had a fatal beauty that brought him to his knees.

Enchanted by her problems, he sought to solve them all.
He’d demonstrate his prowess. He’d get right on the ball.
He fixed her dripping kitchen sink and jacked up her foundation,
solved her termite problem and her rodent infestation.
And once her house was perfect, his role clear as her savior,
he settled in to trying to solve her bad behavior.

Language lessons, charm school, manicures and waxing.
It’s clear she found these self-improvement strategies most taxing.
She flunked out of the classes and grew back all the hair.
And yet he felt no let-down. He was feeling debonaire
as he came up before her and sank down on one knee,
produced a six-carat diamond and a “Will you marry me?”

The advent of their wedding found his family full of wrath.
They prayed she’d trip upon the stairs or drown within her bath.
But fate did not oblige them, and soon there was a wedding—
the showers and the ceremony, honeymoon and bedding.
He had bought a bride as though purchasing a house.
A little money down and the rest when she was spouse.

She brought her problems with her and once he’d paid her debts—
her bills and parking tickets—then there were the pets.
A cockatoo, a cobra, a Saint Bernard, a kitten.
They filled his living room, his den, and yet he was still smitten.
After a month, his house in tatters, patience growing thin,
her extended family started moving in.

Her father was a gambler, her mother fond of gin.
Her little brother played the drums, which set up quite the din.
Yet not a friend felt sorry for these things that disconcerted him.
His servants soon gave notice and his family deserted him.
They’d all given their warnings—advice he hadn’t heeded,
yet he marveled over where friends went when they were really needed!

The moral never occurs at the start, where it is needed,
probably because it knows that it won’t be heeded.
Experience works better than any threat or warning
to curb initial excitement in favor of deep mourning.
The end is most predictable. The marriage didn’t last,
and with no prenuptial, the lot was surely cast.

They split his fortune down the middle. She made off with half,
but she had to take her family, so he had the last laugh.
The animals went to a zoo. The drums went with her brother.
He packed up all her cousins and her father and her mother
and left them on the doorstep of the mansion that she’d bought.
And so ends our story with its moral clearly taught.

All dragons were slain long ago and white knights are passé,
so solving maidens’ problems is clearly déclassé.
If you wish to save the world, try starting a foundation.
Send needy kids to summer camp or fund their education.
Chivalry, I fear is dead, so don’t try to revive it.
For as I’ve demonstrated, there’s a chance you won’t survive it!

 

Prompt words for today are enchanted, damage, advent, predilection and bath.

Fortieth Anniversary Addendum

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Fortieth Anniversary Addendum

Although you pull the conversation back to matters topical,
I sense my feelings for you are becoming much more tropical.
Bounteous jungles teem with orchids sensual and clinging.
As you ponder politics, my hormones begin zinging.
I can sense you’ve zero interest, yet I ponder what
it might take for me to get you pulled out of your rut.
It’s true that we were married forty years ago today,
and it seems we should do something more to celebrate the day.

Dinner out and flowers have come to be the norm,
but I’ve planned a celebration that’s a bit more warm.
Champagne in a bucket on the bedroom floor
might, if all my plans go well, lead to a little more
than a heavy meal and flower petals falling to the rug.
A remembered twinkle in the eye? A heartstring’s gentle tug?
Of politics and prime rib, I’ve had my yearly ration.
Now I’d prefer to celebrate with a bit of passion!

 

Prompt words today are ponder, inflict, zero, bounteous and tropical.

Remembering Grandma at the Thirtieth School Reunion

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Remembering Grandma at the Thirtieth School Reunion

When children guessed her age, I guess they might have guessed a million,
for her skin was fried and wrinkled and her manner most reptilian.
Her humor was peculiar—ribald, clever, sly.
Her whiskered chin was wobbly. She was rheumy in one eye.
When she talked about the old days and when people really listened,
her face seemed somehow younger and her eyes sparkled and glistened,

but she sputtered over S’s and dribbled when she talked.
She listed, lurched and wobbled. She zigzagged when she walked.
She loved her old blue tennis shoes with laces hanging down—
the only shoes she wore when she chose to go to town.
Still, her corns rubbed and her toes hurt. She preferred feet that were bare,
so she very rarely moved about once planted in her chair.

When her children brought her meals to her, they couldn’t linger long.
She couldn’t quite remember what it was that she’d done wrong.
Her grandkids liked her better and endured her bitter wit.
She taught them Chinese Checkers and some of them to knit,
but as they aged they visited less and less and less.
They didn’t like the odors. They didn’t like the mess.

And finally, as youngest, only I was able
to bear sitting with Grandma at her Chinese checkers table.
Only I could stand all the complaints and labored sighs—
all of the self-pity that shone out of her eyes.
But later, as a teen-ager, my visits, too, grew less.
Busy with my friends and school and other things, I guess.

And for all the years after she died, I thought about the years
when even I deserted her and I was brought to tears,
until my thirtieth class reunion, when a classmate I’d not seen
since we graduated, and for all the years between,
told a tale I’d never heard that made me realize
that there was more to life than what met my ears and eyes.

When television, new to town, kept Grandma company,
wild cats from her old henhouse came to sit upon her knee,
and the kids from the next corner also came to see,
for with ten kids in the family, they didn’t have TV.
It grew into a ritual. When they saw the sheen
emanating from the light of her TV screen,

they’d all drop in to see her and they’d stay until their pop
walked down from their house to bring their viewing to a stop.
Only the oldest daughter got to stay there until ten,
watching shows with Grandma—pretty ladies, handsome men,
cowboy shows and orchestras, adventure and romance.
They watched their favorite characters shoot and kiss and dance.

“We kids all called her Grandma,” my old classmate  confessed.
That she’d had this second family, our family hadn’t guessed.
So all those nights I thought that she’d been sitting all alone,
she’d been surrounded by her minions, like a queen upon her throne.
It seems the true facts of our past by memory can’t be gauged,
for sometimes history is rewritten and our consciences assuaged.

Prompt words today are reptilian, plant, ribald, peculiar and fried.

Femme Fatale

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Image by Thiago Barletta on Unsplash used with permission

Femme Fatale

I must say the dress  she wore—that sexy little number
did much to rouse the bench sitters from their usual slumber.

They rooted and they murmured. Some stood to lift their caps
at the revealing nature of her dress—especially its gaps.

She did as much to ameliorate the boredom of their day
as all the other passersby who passed along the way,

causing some widening of some eyes, some laboring for breath,
but it is only rumor that she caused one codger’s death.

Some say they’d seen him earlier clutching at his chest,
so a contributing factor was what she was at best.

Prompt words today are rouse, root, labor, ameliorate and number.

Black Sheep

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Black Sheep

Your baseball cap conspicuous among the Easter hats,
you intersperse beatitudes with sounds of batting stats,
and when you are not muttering, you whistle or you hum.
Everywhere we’ve gone, you have stuck out like a sore thumb.

I try to introduce you to acquaintances or friends,
but your chatter never ceases. Your prattle never ends.
These one-end conversations are getting rather dry.
We cannot get a word in, so in time we do not try.

Last year you kidnapped Grandpa and took him to a bar,
then left him in an upstairs room—teeth floating in a jar.
Once we had reclaimed him, we gave thanks that you had vanished,
and this note is just to tell you we’ve decided you are banished.

You’ve embarrassed us at Christmases, at Easters and Thanksgivings,
so we have decided that we have certain misgivings
regarding future visits. In short, we hope you’ll never
seek to reattach past family ties we hereby sever!

Prompt words today are sound, carriage, conspicuous and baseball.

Escape from the Day Spa

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Photo by Adrian Motroc on Unsplash, used with permission

Escape from the Day Spa

Our hair is neatly coiffed and our fingernails are lacquered,
but they’ve been at us for hours and, frankly, I am knackered.
They’ve elevated eyebrows and plucked chin hairs at random.
Two people worked an hour, massaging me in tandem.

This day trip to the beauty spa once seemed a good idea,
but I’ve found it as annoying as a junket to Ikea.
Everything goes on and on. There simply is too much.
First there’s this and this and this and then there’s such and such.

And though it’s meant to calm me, I find I’m feeling goaded.
When it comes to things and services, I’m simply overloaded.
“I know” I tell my friend, “I should be finding it relaxing,
but I feel the opposite. I find the process taxing!”

I need to steer us out of here before she finds another
way for them to soak us or to pluck or curl or smother.
Before this spa day started, she’d assured me it was fun,
but now its time for me to declare that it is done!!!

I need a gin and tonic and perhaps a wild dance
to loosen all the hairpins and give my hair a chance
to escape the close confinement of gel and goop and spray.
I’m tense with relaxation. I need wildness in my day!

Give me a seedy roadhouse and some honky tonk guitar.
Some cowboys with their cowboy boots propped up against the bar.
Some line dances and two-steps to work up a little sweat,
and I’ll be about as relaxed as I’m ever going to get.

IMG_1017jdb photo of the Mint Bar, Sheridan, Wyoming

It

Prompt words today are trip, knackered, random, elevate and steer.

Bail to the Chief

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Photo by Deleece Cook on Unsplash

Bail to the Chief

The prediction is most likely. His surfing days are through.
Lies never imperceptible are sticking now like glue.
His lobbyists don’t have enough cash to hide the fact
that the power they once lauded is folding up its act.

His juggling days are near an end. The balls litter the ground
of the White House where he juggled them. They’re lying all around.
His circus act soon over, those who lauded him must see
that all of his maneuverings were based on trickery.

The wave that brought him into power was fueled by deception
traitorous in its acting out and vile in its conception.
Here’s a chief we want to oust and cannot bear to hail.
The oval office does not suit him. He’d be better off in jail.

Photo by Avalonia on Unsplash.

Prompt words today are imperceptible, lobby, prediction, laud, and surfing.

Broken

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Broken

All of my injuries told with such relish—
all so severe that I need not embellish.
I broke my tibia, tore my meniscus.
My feet pads are swollen. My eyes are non viscous.
My doctor has told me that there is no doubt
that I’m suffering rickets, edema and gout.
My bottom parts swelling, my top drying out.
I guess that the truth is I’m just wearing out.

 

(Hyperbole and humor, folks. I’m fine.)

Prompts today are embellish, doctor, tore.

Comeuppance

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photo by Mari Lezhava on Unsplash, Used with permission

Comeuppance

His behavior was egregious, his actions purely shocking.
With combat boots, upon each leg he wore a nylon stocking.
Never appeared in public totally alone
lest he meet his comeuppance and be asked to atone
for all the calumnies he’d voiced upon the telephone.

Yes, a shocking gossip—slanderous at best.
A million little rumors started at his behest.
Diamonds on his fingers and slander on his tongue,
he had become a legend while he was very young.
How Cher was such a harridan and how Sonny was hung!

Needless to say, he did well there in the Hollywood scene,
his appearance so eccentric, his behavior so obscene.
Until that certain story spread both far and wide
concerning certain juicy bits where he had surely lied
that led to an untimely death—this time from suicide.

He tried his usual posturings, excuses and false proof,
but this time all his public chose to remain aloof.
They pointed at his nylons. They snickered at his boots,
speculated that his rings were diamond substitutes.
He and Donald Trump, they’d heard, were rather in cahoots.

Dropped now from the A list, he barely made the C.
Got tables near the kitchen, his meals no longer free.
His rise to fame so rapid, his fall was just as fast.
He became a pariah, a definite outcast.
Of the victims of his venom, he was the very last.

Prompts for the day are comeuppance, public, alone, egregious and legend.

 

 

Donald Trump Tweets from Hell

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photo thanks to James Lee on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Donald Trump Tweets from Hell

With tardy regrets I come to you, now knowing what is best,
for there are things I simply must get off my chest.
You may wonder at my timing, and you may find it strange
that I should choose the afterlife to make this last exchange.
In life I was a basket case and I too easily yielded
to the influence of cronies and the power that they wielded
to make me go along with what my wealthiest peers wanted.
I blustered and I blathered. I acquired and I flaunted.

But now that I’ve departed, I must say that I’ve regrets.
I should have done the right thing. (I should have hedged my bets.)
For though my life on earth was one of privilege and ease,
I do not find the afterlife all that I might please.
The climate here is much too hot—perpetually baking,
but the greatest agony is that it is of my own making.
It seems that merely proclaiming that I’m on the Christian side
does not actually serve me in saving my own hide.

I realize now that actions must reflect what I profess.
What in life I overlooked, in death I now confess.
I did not serve the common man. I made him pay and pay
by cutting corporate taxes and courting the N.R.A.
I put children in cages, I lusted and I lied.
I turned my back on science as the planet slowly died.
But now  I cannot call fake news all that they accuse
and with no golf courses in Hell,  I finally pay my dues.

PhotPhoto by Jon Tyson on Unsplash. Used with permission.

He may profess to be sorry, but he’s still a rule-breaker. His tweet definitely far exceeds the space limitations of Twitter!

Today’s prompts are: Chest, Basket, Regret, Strange and Yield.