Category Archives: Humor

Dear Joan (Note Found Pinned to a Husband Left at the Curbside)

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Dear Joan
(Note Found Pinned to a Husband Left at the Curbside )

We’ve been friends for forever, but I fear that we are through.
I have no further patience for the awful things you do.
Pretending to be humble, but not shouldering  the blame,
you’re just a kindred spirit in appearance and in name.
There’s no need for thanksgiving for you are that crafty kind
who is an ally when it’s easy but vanish in a bind.
Your friendship is fair weather, for you suddenly get busy
when good times are over and my life is in a tizzy.

I find myself alone in most times of perturbation.
Then you reappear when it is time for celebration.
Our need for help’s not only when we’re rolling in the clover,
so when it comes to friendship, I think our time is over.
A real friend should be one who also shares in all your sorrows
instead of all that sharing that happens when she borrows
appliances and money, your clothes and then  your house.
Then before you notice it, she’s borrowing your spouse.

So I must insist that you find a different friend.
There is really nothing new left for me to lend.
You’ll need a better job now that you have my honey,
for I am the one, my dear, who’s always had the money.
You’ll be needing to support him in his accustomed manner.
He needs a proper tailor and a booth to make him tanner.
He prefers the Riviera, Monte Carlo for the gambling,
a Lear jet for his weekends, Maseratis for his rambling. 

He was whining like a puppy—a most pitiful yelp—
when I dumped him at your walk-up, so I hope that you can help
him carry all his baggage up to your third-floor flat.
I fear he’s not accustomed to labor such as that.
Feed him three square meals a day. He fancies caviar.
But watch him like a hawk. I wouldn’t trust him very far.
You might survey your friends again and find one who is plucky
who will take him off your hands for you if you are really lucky!!!

 

Prompt words today are humble, shoulder, kindred, thanksgiving and kind. Photo by 俊逸 余 on Unsplash, used with permission.

 

Love Song of a Pessimistic Spouse

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Photo by Andrii Leonov on Unsplash, used with permission.

Love Song of a Pessimistic Spouse

Look before you leap. Run with scissors pointed down.
Stay away from drafts, dear, when in your dressing gown.

Careful on the the stairs, don’t hasten your descent.
Don’t turn on the gas without opening the vent.

Put alcohol on cuts and scrapes, mercurochrome on splinters.
Drive slowly during rainstorms and use chains during winters.

Death is always lurking and I fear that you are jaded
thinking life’s perpetual when in fact it’s dated.

There are way too many dangers to sweep us from our feet,
so always look both ways when you cross a busy street.

Remember, dear, you’re not alone. Your “I” turned into “we”
the day that we were married for perpetuity.

Life is a roulette wheel. Take care not to spin it.
Life wouldn’t be much fun, dear, if you were not in it.

 

Prompt words for today are splinter, jaded, death, descent and look.

Gremlins: A Teenage Mythology

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Gremlins: A Teenage Mythology

A sneeze is how a poltergeist gets outside of you.
At night a different stinky elf sleeps inside each shoe.

Every creaking rafter supports its resident ghost,
and it’s little gremlins who make you burn the toast.

Each night those tricky fairies put snarls in your hair,
while pixies in your sock drawer unsort every pair.

Midnight curtain billows are caused by banshee whistles.
Vampires use your toothbrush and put cooties in its bristles.

Truths all come in singles. It’s lies that come in pairs.
That’s a zombie, not a teenager, sneaking up the stairs.

 

This poem is posted for: The Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest

Canned Cantos

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Canned Cantos

Behold the simple can of soup.
Outside it’s hard. Inside it’s goop.
Cream of mushroom, turkey noodle—
kids adore the whole kaboodle.

Crass men raid the chicken coop
to gather poultry for our soup.
They chop up onions, slice potatoes,
murder mushrooms, slay tomatoes.

Must Warhol then immortalize
this canned concoction I despise?
The world agreed. He must. He should.
They called his canned art very good.

Yet this icon that he chose
to paint and to overexpose,
I could easily view myself
lined up on my kitchen shelf.

Why pay a thousand bucks or more
for something that each day I pour
into a pan and then ingest?
I think, friends, that it was a test

to see how gullible we are.
As we made this elf a star,
fanned his fame, increased his rank,
he laughed his way right to the bank.

For dVerse Poets Andy Warhol prompt.

And Now, Live from the White House—

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Screen Shot 2019-09-25 at 7.30.26 AM

And Now, Live from the White House!!!

Of all the fake reality shows that fill our brains these days,
not one equals the White House for ridiculous displays.
They’re threatening to serialize his perpetual tweets—
his petty little comments, his braying and his bleats.
For when it comes to ludicrous, I’d say he fills the bill.
No other words more petty have been issued from the hill
in two hundred forty-three years since our country first began.
No other leader so foolish. No other leader so tan.
Perhaps those tanning rays have permanently fried his brain.
That serves as a solution for these comments so inane.
Now when it comes to comedy, it seems the whole world’s watching
to see how long we’ll put up with his blathering and botching.
They find it most amazing that his show has run so long
without somebody finding the nerve to ring the gong!!!

 

(If you don’t know what the Gong Show was, click below to find out:)

 

Prompt words for the day are threat, serialize, perpetual and bill.

How Come the Thumb?

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How Come the Thumb?

Yum.
Your thumb
looks so delicious I can almost taste it.
And I can see that you’re not going to waste it.
But, after you have had a few more sips from it,
do you suppose you could remove your tongue and lips from it
so I can see your face
without the thumb in place?
No?
I thought so.

Well, that’s okay. I’m used to seeing little kids with gums
around their thumbs.
In fact, I’ve never seen a little kid from North or South
Who could keep a thumb as good as yours out of his mouth.
Thumbs need comfort too, I realize.
And a mouth’s the perfect size
for a thumb to hide
inside.
In fact, a tongue
is strung
just right for chewing it,
so I’m not blaming you for doing it.
Bigger kids have learned how not to suck their thumbs like that.
But you’re too young for that.

Anyway, I think your thumb is great. I wouldn’t want to knock it.
I just thought, perhaps, you’d like to store it in your pocket
for awhile. Of course, in there it’s sure to get fuzz stuck on it,
which might affect your further plans to suck on it.
So, you would have to find things for your mouth to do
while there’s no thumb in you.

For instance, maybe you could hum
or chew some gum
and blow a bubble big enough to stretch from here to here
(from ear to ear.)
Or, if you could learn to purse your lips,
we could rehearse your lips
to teach them how to whistle the same song
all day long.
Which is guaranteed to irritate your dad and mum
as least as much as sucking thumb.

I’ve got to tell you, though, you can’t get any songs or gum in
with that thumb in.
So, why not jerk that thumb from in between your lips?
You’ll free your mouth for sips,
for lollipops and jawbreakers.
Why not just let your thumbs be paw shakers?
Develop a grip. Shake hands with friends.
They’ll love your handshakes with no soggy fingers at the ends.

Now I don’t want for you to take this wrong.
You wouldn’t have to take it out for long.
But if you’d pull that thumb out for a while,
Just long enough to show your smile,
I’d love to see your face for once with nothing in it.
Of course that’s hard for little kids––Hey, wait a minute.
Just what are those
two pink things there beneath your nose?
Are those your lips without a thumb in them?
And filled with just the teeth that come in them?

Is that your thumb so dry and pink?
I think
it’s feeling better out in open space
than it has ever felt there in your face.
You must have had that mouth with not a finger in it
for at least a minute.
And you are looking very debonair
without those fingers waving in the air.
In fact, since you have ceased to suckle
on your knuckle,
you’re acting so much bolder,
that you are looking older.

So, now my only question is, how come
you never thought before to give up chewing thumb?

 

For dVerse Poets Pub. Somehow, these two Kafka quotes below wound up leading to the children’s book/verse above:
“I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.” from Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors
“Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.” from The Trial

Birthday Preferences of an Aging Starlet

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Birthday Preferences of an Aging Starlet

Buy me no presents, bake me no cake.
Hang no reminders for my sake.
All these attempts to jubilate me
simply serve to aggravate me.

Let birthday banners remain furled.
Share not the knowledge with the world
that I, alas, am one year older.
Strike it from my bio folder.

This trend of aging gracefully
does not work for dames like me
who strut our stuff upon the stage,
for starlets aren’t allowed to age.

In lieu of throwing me a bash,
why not simply give me cash?
I’ll put the money to good use
obscuring aging’s cruel abuse.

Advancing years require rebuttal,
so I prefer to be more subtle.
I need a simple tuck of face
ere I approach the casting place.

I won’t allow youth to defy me.
while I have means to petrify me.
So spare me cards soulful or funny
I prefer you give me money!!

Prompt words today are subtle, cash, knowledge, jubilate and bake.

 

 

Double Identity

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IMG_3308Double Identity

Sometimes she’s  an angel. At other times a witch.
There is no way to know when her personae’s going to switch.
When an angel, she’s gregarious, obedient and sexy,
but during her more bitchy days, she’s silent, dark and hexy.
No x-ray can determine which one she’s going to be.
There is no test to indicate which one she’s going to see
when she wakes up each morning and stumbles to the mirror
to see which one she’ll be today–the feared one or the dearer.
I’m always the first one to see what side of her will win,
for each day the face she chooses is the one that I’ll be in!

 

Prompt words for today are switch, gregarious, obedient, indicate and x-ray.

Dental Intermissions

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Image from Pinterest.

Dental Intermissions                                  

There’s nothing quite so fundamental
when it comes to matters dental
as the fact that teeth gone missing
mar the esthetics of kissing.

It’s doubtful that a dental gap
would land a lass upon the lap
of any lad whose reminiscing
will be done with s’s hissing.

Potential lovers tend to hate
suitors of the toothless state.
Better they should duplicate
those teeth that happened to vacate

those facial places deep inside
the mouths wherein they should reside.
Teeth should be natives of the jaws
that reside within the maws

of suitors that might deign to woo—
to hug and kiss and bill and coo.
In short, what lass does less than censure
a suitor who forgets his denture?

 

Prompt words today are missing, duplicate, native, fundamental and doubtful.

Old Lovers

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Old Lovers

We meet in the kitchen,
your face slightly blue
in the light from the refrigerator.
Left-over shepherd’s pie in one hand,
a half-gallon of Costco vanilla ice cream in the other,
you seem suspended in a middle land
between repletion and guilt.

Being here for the same purpose,
I offer absolution,
and we talk about the future,
sitting with forks and spoons aloft,
eating from the same bowl and carton.
It is part of our sensuality,
this culinary communication at 2 a.m.

Wishing to go deeper,
we seek out chocolate
in that place
where you have hidden it
for years––on top of the refrigerator.
Knowing all your secrets,
I am the one who retrieves it this time.

This is what might happen
if we were not divided by miles,
you in your country,
me in mine. As it is,
you feast on ribs from Dexter Barbecue,
I eat the ice cream with a single spoon—
these mid-night fantasies
reality enough for old lovers
building new communions.

 

 

 

Prompt words today are talk, middle, sensual, future and kitchen.