Category Archives: Humor

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.

 

Interlopers

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Click on first photo to enlarge all.

“I don’t know that there are real ghosts and goblins, but there are always more trick-or-treaters than neighborhood kids.”     —Robert Brault

Interlopers

They watch the clock, waiting for dark,
impatient for their All-souls lark.
Small ghosts and goblins screech and moan,
their ghastly act to finely hone.
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,”
Mother prompts, as off they jog—
little witches in Walmart capes
with itchy tags upon their napes.

Meanwhile, other ghastly things
soar in on brooms, flap in on wings.
They’ve found that yearly secret door
under the earth, under the floor,
and creaked it open. Joining the flood
who lust for treats, they lust for blood.
Who among us might ace the task
of sorting countenance from mask?

That little vampire, newly gone—
was his blood real or painted on?
“Double double toil and trouble,
cauldron boil and cauldron bubble.”
Were those lines recently rehearsed
or are these witches instead well-versed
in brewing up a recipe
of wing of gnat and eye of bee?

Which ghoulies real and which ones playing?
Which ones begging? Which ones preying?
What other night of any year
do we open doors, devoid of fear
for such strange beings? Who thinks of this—
Hershey’s kisses or vampire’s kiss?
A silly poem. When small ghosts boo, they
offer no real threat. Or do they?

 

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Prompts for today are the secret door, adage, screech, treat and clock. Since one of the prompt words was “adage,” rather than use the actual word in the poem, I used a quote (an adage of sorts) by Robert Brault as inspiration for this poem.

Karma

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Screen Shot 2019-10-25 at 9.22.14 AM.pngphoto by Darren Halstea, Unsplash. Used w/ permission

Karma

Can we extricate ourselves from all the evil we may we do,
or once we meet our maker will fate drop the other shoe
and will the evil we have done be visited on us?
On our journey to Nirvana, will we have missed the bus?

Will we be held accountable for all that we have done?
Once our life is over, will atonement have its fun?
Will there just be the help for us that we’ve given to others,
so our lack of mercy toward enemies and brothers
will be visited upon us, in spite of all our pleas—
past cruelties unfurled on us as we beg on our knees?

How many lifetimes will it take to extricate our being
from the fate we’ve set in motion? How long ’til we’ll be seeing
that the future ills we suffer are the ills we’ve done the world,
and in each evil act, our own future was unfurled.

Prompts this week are accountable, total, Karma, extricate and help.

If You Remember the Sixties, You Probably Weren’t Really Around at the Time

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Indulgent Parents at the DMV

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Indulgent Parents at the DMV

You’ve studied so hard and we’re screamingly proud.
You’ve done everything perfect, for crying out loud.

You’ve conquered the manual, drive in the dark,
avoiding pedestrians. Parallel park.

You knew all the signals for stopping and turning.
Looked perfectly calm, though your stomach was churning.

It’s such a travesty  you didn’t pass.
That inspector was prejudiced, ornery and crass.

Your driving test was perfect. Almost.
Anyone could have missed seeing that post!

 

Prompts today are travesty, scream, manual, loud and almost.