Category Archives: Humor

Second Thoughts

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Second Thoughts

We’ve brought your breakfast tray for we know that you’ve been restive,
but now we’d like to urge you to try to feel more festive.
Will you remain forever, questioning and forlorn
because you could not go downstairs on your wedding morn?
You cannot stay much longer in this sealed-off room.
The wedding guests are gathering. It’s time to jump the broom.

Jumping the broom is a time-honored wedding tradition in which the bride and groom jump over a broom during the ceremony. The act symbolizes a new beginning and a sweeping away of the past, and can also signify the joining of two families or offer a respectful nod to family ancestors.

Prompts today are wedding, stairs, urge, tray and festive.

Overdressed

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Overdressed

“So, I reckon you’re naked under all them clothes?”

It was either the dumbest or cleverest pick-up line she had ever heard. Everyone else seemed in a state of shock over what she was wearing, and already one person had tried to oust her, but she could see no signs that actually said “Nude Beach,” so she was sticking her ground.

No one on this earth was going to tell her what she should (or in this case, shouldn’t) be wearing. Next week she intended on entering everyone’s favorite coffee shop with no shoes, no shirt. That should balance things out a bit.

Prompts for today are reckoning, either, naked, oust and state.

Belated Wishes

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Belated Wishes

My greetings on your birthday, I admit are most belated,
but I hope my guilt in this can be expiated.
I toiled to construct a card, wording it in rhyme,
and then invoked winged Mercury to present it in time.
(I’d addressed it with a flourish and signed it in gold ink.
The card was of a purple hue. The envelope was pink.)

But I fear this faithful messenger shows the effects of gout
which has curtailed the usual speed with which he gets about.
He had to take a taxi, which developed a flat.
So then he had to hitchhike to get to where you’re at.
Your doorbell is defective and your neighbor wasn’t in,
and by then I fear that his resolve was growing  thin.

He sat upon your doorstep, but it seems you never came.
So it is your own tardiness, it seems, that is to blame.
As the midnight hour approached he finally gave up.
He found a little pub where he thought that he would sup.
He put your card upon the counter. It was there that he misplaced it
along with the good wishes with which this friend had graced it.

By the time he had informed me of his failure at this task,
I fear your day had ended, so what I now must ask
is that you don’t feel slighted by your real card’s surrogate—
the fact that it is Hallmark and the fact that it is late.
This card can’t compete with the first one I created,
but you share the guilt, friend, for the fact that it’s belated!!!

Prompts today are flourish, address, belated, invoke and speed.

Feed the Birds?

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Feed the Birds

I‘ve always preferred to see birds feeding off natural sources in my garden: flowers, trees, plants—(please click on first photo below to enlarge the photos and to read the rest of this tale🙂

Then, my next brainstorm was that the somewhat leafless plumeria tree next to it would be a great place for a hummingbird feeder. I had one that generous housesitters had bought a few years ago but that I rarely filled, so the first step in this plan was to fill and hang the hummingbird feeder,
then to go buy bird seed for my alternate two ton bird feeder!
Morrie was the first to express interest in the project.
Something in that bag of seed interested him,
and he even offered to help me open the bag.
I scattered the seed and retreated to my desk, hoping to see the first birds descend.
Then there was Morrie,luckily, to join our family, for a few years later, Frida passed away..
First a sniff,
then a taste, during which he brushed a few sunflower seeds off onto the stones of the deck.
then found he had no problem at all reaching the seed up on its original level and soon both seemed to be grazing on bird food!!!
Side view of felon
all too soon, they had exhausted the supply of bird food
as quickly as they had scarfed down their own food fifteen minutes before.
But when I returned to the house, the scavengers returned, hoping I’d left more provender.
Morrie, a stubborn little guy, returned to his former feeding place.
I watched from inside the house as Morrie discovered a new potential source of nourishment–the hummingbird feeder! Luckily, it is just out of his reach, but I doubt any hummingbirds will investigate it too closely with him as watchman.
Not quite the feeding frenzy I had expected to watch. Definitely a new species of bird. The End.

In a nutshell: the little dog stands on his hind legs to examine the high stone slab sculpture for evidence of seeds. I’d put them out the morning before for the birds, thinking the three-foot-high stone sculpture placed 20 feet away, but directly in front of my computer table, would be perfect for observing birds. Wrong! Within ten minutes, every single seed was gone–completely eradicated by the vacuum cleaner tongues of Diego and Morrie. On to the next plan! I try again, after having fed the dogs. This is the result. (If you click on the first photo, you can see the photos in a larger form and read the entire story.)

 

 

Big Hair and Histamines

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Big Hair and Histamines

“These Kleenex are too flagrant, they always make me sneeze,” she said as she added yet another wadded puff to the pile in the trash can beside her bed. “Why in the world would they add perfume to something people with allergies blow their noses into?”

“Yes, it’s a fragrant abuse of medical logic,” I said, but she didn’t get the joke. She was too miserable and so I just let her malapropism slide by as I had so many times in our long friendship.

The air in this season of new growth was full of pollen. We indulged our roommate by keeping the windows of our college quad closed at all times and we had long ago relegated all our perfume to bottom drawers or trash cans. In those long-ago days of “big hair” when there was no such thing as unscented anything, we took the calculated risk of using hair spray, but only by climbing out onto the fire escape, pulling the window shut behind us and waiting a good five minutes before entering the room again. And this only if our allergy-prone friend was not in the room.

Occasionally, she caught a whiff of us as we passed in the game room or dining room, but she didn’t mention it. We knew that look, though. Only vanity won out over our need not to irritate the nasal fibers of our good friend. No one would miss our perfume, but in terms of hair, no girl dared to defy the norm. Bubbly, big, smooth and helmet-solid—that was the hair-fashion decree of the sixties.

Prompt words today are flagrant, indulged, quad, calculate and air.

On Display

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On Display

He’s so ostentatious. He turns up his nose
at other folks’ houses, vehicles and clothes.
He only wears Lagerfeld, Lauren or Kors.
His decor is elegant, but he hates yours!

Your neighborhood barbecue starting at twilight
will never be his calendar’s highlight.
Picnics to him are truly the pits.
He dines at Spagos. Slums it at the Ritz.

In his microcosm, he reigns as the king
of all refinement. Each exquisite thing
that resides in his house is an objet d’art,
but, concerning your taste? Darling, don’t start.

When it comes to decor you have no idea.
He buys antiques in Paris. You shop at IKEA.
Of his sense of design, you know not one iota.
Do you need further proof? You drive a Toyota!

 

The prompt words today are microcosm, barbecue, twilight, ostentatious and nose. Photo by Kevin Bhagat on Unsplash

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.