Category Archives: Humor

A Recap of the Last Three Weeks by James Tabeek

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Thanks to the “anonymous” reader who just let me know who wrote this. I had tried to track the person down who wrote this but there had been 2,000 shares from the source where I saw it by the time it got to me–evidently all without attribution. I now see that there have been approximately 8,000 more from his own Facebook siteI hate to print anything without attribution, but this was just too good not share, so I’m glad to now remedy this. Here is his Facebook site. Brilliant: https://www.facebook.com/james.tabeek

A RECAP OF THE LAST THREE WEEKS*

AMERICA: Oh my god! Coronavirus! What should we do?

CALIFORNIA: Shut down your state.

AMERICA: Wait… what? Why?

CALIFORNIA: Because 40 million people live here and we did it early, and it’s working.

NEBRASKA: Whoa… whoa… let’s not be hasty now. The President said that this whole coronavirus thing is a Democratic hoax.

CALIFORNIA: He also said that windmills cause cancer. Shut down your state.

TEXAS: But the President said that we only have 15 cases and soon it’ll be zero.

CALIFORNIA: The President can’t count to fifteen nor even spell it. Shut down your state.

NEW JERSEY: Us too?

CALIFORNIA: Yes, you guys too. Just like when Christie shut down the bridge, but it’s your whole state.

FLORIDA: But what about all these kids here on spring break?? They spend a lot of money here!

CALIFORNIA: Those kids invented the Tide pod challenge. Shut down your state.

LOUISIANA: But wait let’s have Mardi Gras first. It entertains people.

CALIFORNIA: It also kills them. Shut it down.

GEORGIA: Ok well how about we keep the state open for all of our mega churches? Maybe we can all pray really hard until the coronavirus just goes away!

CALIFORNIA: Which is working like a charm for mass shootings. Jesus told us to tell you to shut down your state.

OKLAHOMA: What about the tigers?

CALIFORNIA: What about a dentist. Shut it down.

WYOMING: Hold up, maybe we should go county by county like the president said.

CALIFORNIA: Stop acting like there are counties in Wyoming. There are no counties in Wyoming. Wyoming is a county. Shut it down.

PENNSYLVANIA: But big coal.

CALIFORNIA: But big death. Shut it.

WEST VIRGINIA: But we were the last state to get coronavirus!

CALIFORNIA: And don’t make us explain to you why that was. Shut it down.

NORTH CAROLINA: But the Republican National Convention is coming here!

CALIFORNIA: SHUT… OK, fine, do what you want.

Morning Ritual

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Morning Ritual

For NaPoWriMo Day three we are to do pretty much what I’ve been doing every day for the past six years, so I’m combining it with my usual five prompt sites, whose words of the day are: online, lackluster, help, haze and wonder. (When I tried to add five more words to use this for the NaPoWriMo prompt as well, my computer went crazy and the editor turned everything pink and started flashing off and on and erased the first line of the poem, so I guess  WP doesn’t want me to combine prompts, but I’m going to try again. I’ll pick 5 more words at random from sheets of paper scattered on my desk: beginners, solving, developed, warm and milk. Instead of using the rhyming dictionary, I’ll use the one in my head, which works better for me. Okay, here I go again…..)

If your online life’s lackluster, let me help to clear the haze.
It’s no wonder that beginners might feel somewhat in a daze.
Solving all these NaPoWriMo prompts can be a chore.
You develop one poem and next day, must write one more!
Warm wishes I send out to you and others of your ilk.
If I were your mommy, there’d be cookies and warm milk,
but, alas, I’m miles away and locked up in seclusion,
dealing on my own with this confusing ten-word fusion!

online √
lackluster √
help √
haze √
wonder √
beginners √
solving √
develop √
warm √
milk √

 

Childhood Games Revisited: NaPoWriMo Day 1

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Childhood Games Revisited

Hide and seek, hide and seek.
I set them down and then I peek
here and there, in purse and pocket.
Find my keys and grandma’s locket
but I do not find my glasses
even after countless passes
over tables, desks and floors.
Opening cupboards, searching drawers.
My life is like that childhood game,
but it’s hardly just the same,
For unlike others seeking me,
what I’m seeking I cannot see.

 

The first NaPoWriMo prompt this year is to write a poem wherein our life is described in terms of a metaphor that is an action. I am comparing my life to playing hide and seek. More literal than figurative, I fear.

(If you’re not familiar, NaPoWriMo – the National Poetry Writing Month – happens every April, an offshoot of NaNoWriMo. Back in 2013 I joined the movement, and I’ve been writing poems daily ever since. If you’re curious, HERE is my first NaPoWriMo poem!)

Coronavirus Reflections

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Coronavirus Reflections

I’m exploring my options now that I’m alone,
my only distraction my blog and my phone.
Well, sure, I have dogs and cats I can tickle.
to ease, if you will, this sequestering pickle.

Yet I’m a pariah to humans I know,
so my social life is a little bit slow.
That it’s undeserved may be undisputed.
Nonetheless, unless I show up Hasmat suited,

none of my friends want to hug or shake hands, 
and when I explore, not anyone stands
closer than ten feet away from my hips.
Even my lover forgoes my hot lips!

Slick politicians may emphasize how
our social distancing affects the Dow,
saying, perhaps the stock market is mendable
so long as we declare seniors expendable.

This chain of reason sounds bogus to me.
I’d like to remain on my family tree
labeled as living for as long as possible.
I soundly reject being labeled as tossable!

Prompt words today are slick, tickle, undeserved, explore and chain.

Pluto’s Perspective on CoronaVirus

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Piscine Phobia

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Piscine Phobia

I don’t eat salmon, don’t eat flounder.
I prefer my protein rounder—
chicken, roasts or food like that.
Fish is too fishy and too flat.

Tuna mixed with soup and noodle,
I despise kit and caboodle!
Nothing could persuade me that
I should eat food fit for a cat.

I won’t eat food grown in a swamp,
so crabs and clams I never chomp.
No protein caught by motor boat
will ever pass my teeth and throat.

When dinner parties serve up chowder,
I’m likely to just take a powder.
I simply can’t take the suspense
of what fish lurks in soup so dense.

So if you want to plan a treat
that I will find the nerve to eat,
once again, I must repeat,
forget the lobster. Give me meat!!

Words for today are flounder, suspense, nothing, swamped and motor.

More Advice Regarding the Coronavirus

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More Advice Regarding the Coronavirus

With the coronavirus, it’s been given to debate
whether it’s advisable for people to conflate.
Though Pence may okay shaking hands, doctors disagree.
I’d listen to the experts if it were up to me!

Cheek-kisses were delightful in eras non-pandemic,
but lately people fear that they might start an epidemic.
So we’d better kick the habit and make do with a tweet—
just clicking our affection to everyone we meet.

Let safety be our anchor as we all isolate—
our crowded barrooms giving way to the cyber date.
Bitcoins replacing money, for it doesn’t carry germs.
Wearing masks and hazmat suits as we come to terms

with what our esteemed president once tried to pass off
as no major problem—a mere temperature and cough.
Tweeting like a dervish, he still gets such a kick
spreading disinformation as more and more get sick.

But I have a solution for one thing that we could do
to try to stem the factors spreading this dreadful flu—
a mandatory gag and a mandatory mask
for POTUS and Vice-POTUS is what we all should ask.

Prompts for today are delightful, conflate, kick, anchor and money.

The Taste of Love in a Time of Cyber Romance

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photo snapped on Mar. 12, 2020 by okcforgottenman, in direct response to Judy’s post.

The Taste of Love in a Time of Cyber Romance

We met on OK Cupid. I was in Mexico, he in Missouri, 1600 miles away. What we feasted on in those first stages when nine hours was too short a conversation was words.  Thanks to Skype, these words could be either written or spoken and could be accompanied by sight of each other.  The rigors of wearing makeup 24 hours a day were nothing compared to the agony of not talking for from 4 to 9 hours a day. He later admitted he couldn’t tell the difference between me in makeup and me without, but I had to admit this made little difference, for it is a peculiarity of Skype that the other person can’t see you unless you are seeing yourself, and to see myself in the pure unadulterated natural cramped my style. How could I be a vixen when I didn’t look like one? He granted the point. Why shouldn’t he, if he couldn’t tell the difference, anyway?

This point taken care of, we passed on to the next stage of computer dating: our first dinner date. He watched on his desktop computer as I prepared a salad. This was a long and lengthy process followed as closely as was possible using the camera from my laptop. He had not yet purchased a laptop, so when he repaired to the kitchen to prepare his meal, I heard sound effects but little else. When he returned to his desk in the living room, he laid his meal in front of his computer. I had yet to see it as I, in turn, placed my salad in front of me and proceeded to take my first bite, watching closely my technique according to my Skype image. I chewed politely and then smiled, revealing the lack of lettuce shards on my front teeth. I looked up. He was watching me as lovingly as usual. Now, it was his turn. 

“What are you eating?” I asked. “Ham,” he said. This said, he lifted a huge hunk of ham on his fork, taking a dainty bite and chewing happily. 

“What else?” I asked.

“Just ham,” he answered. And so he demolished the entire pound of thick ham steak, now and then washing it down with a healthy swig of rum and coke.

Rum and coke. It had been one of our bonding experiences to find that the drink of choice of each was not only Rum and Coke, but Bacardi Rum with Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. How could this not be a romance made in heaven? 

But as for our culinary compatibility? From 1,600 miles away it seemed to be less of a problem than it was three months later, when we first made physical contact.

Well, there was a resolution. He started munching on carrots. We both found a like mania for potato chips, but true romance bloomed when I found the full bar of Hershey’s Chocolate atop his refrigerator. Who says we need to concentrate on our differences? Hershey’s Chocolate? Yes. Our first true taste of love.

 

For fandangos-provocative-question-60: How did you meet your mate or current love interest?

Feast and Famine

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IMG_4563

                     Feast and Famine

 

More is less,
I have heard.
I take another bite of chocolate,
starting more of me.
I keep getting fatter,
tasting delicious
love in my cheeks,
on my tongue.

It nibbles at my teeth.
My dental bills send my dentist to Singapore.
I floss more between my teeth.
I don’t listen
when other people discuss their diets.

It is painful
filling cavities with food.
It gets hard to sit in theaters,
my stomach pressing against my chest.
People ask if I am pregnant.
I say yes.
I am giving birth to more of me.

Meanwhile, I’m a good listener.
People eat my ears up,
take big chunks of them.
I can grow more.
Right now,
this third croissant
is going to my ear.
The next will grow me
more tongue, bigger lips.
When you notice and inquire,
I’m going to tell you stories
that will wind around your skinny waist
like snakes or punk belts,
coil over coil.

This mouth has blistered
in the sun of Africa
in countries now starving.
Well, they were even starving then.
And children sat very close
and learned the words I pointed to.
In the market,
women taught the words
that my mouth needed
to buy their goods.
This is what I bought
in Bati market
on those three hills
where the desert caravans
would wind,
where the high black breasts jutted,
where the scarred faces sought beauty.

In the red dryness,
I bought a silver beaded marriage necklace for myself.
An old woman offered it.
I thought she had done with it, it was such a bargain.
Years later, looking through my photographs,
I saw my necklace on the neck of a young girl––
her bride price purchased for ten dollars.
I never wear it.
It is so beautiful
and I am growing larger
to feel more ashamed.

I bought also:
lemons, string and wooden beads,
embroidered strips to make a belt of,
Lalibela crosses out of brass,
Shawls as thin as gauze,
a bride dress to be packed away,
camel dung chips for my fire.

On the dead television
in the other room,
some nights they show worlds
that are not strange to me.
Things haven’t changed that much,
 though fewer die now than back then.
I’m not insensitive. I send money
I send money
I send money
but it’s never enough.
What I want to send back
is the necklace.

Too late. That young girl is dead,
buried in a woman forty years older.
I eat for her grandchildren.
I imagine their bellies
swelling with the food I eat for them.
I can hardly ever eat enough.

 

daily life color065

Picture taken at Bati Market, Ethiopia, 1973

 

For the dVerse Poets challengeto write about some hidden part of ourselves–something we would ordinarily not talk about.

Practice Makes Perfect

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Practice Makes Perfect

His patience in predicament has become legendary—
a necessary attribute in one so prone to marry.
He tolerated petulance in the child bride
married out of loneliness after his first wife died.
He tried to build her confidence, but finally set her free,
realizing what she needed most was liberty.
His third wife used another means to put him to the test,
running up his credit cards while feathering his nest.
His fourth wife played around, and the kin of number five
turned his peaceful home into a frantic humming hive.
Only in his dotage did he finally meet his prize—
not as stunning in her beauty, but lovely in his eyes.
No grand faults to overlook. No predicaments to fix.
No petulance to deal with. No relatives to nix.
Marriage done at any age can be pleasure or blight,
but  when he married in his eighties, he finally got it right!!

 

Prompts for today are tolerate, predicament, nest, legendary and confidence. Photos by JD Mason on Unsplash, used with permission.