Category Archives: Humor

School Field Trip

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School Field Trip

Youth days at the aquarium are inimical to fishes,
for students feed the goldfish far beyond our wishes.
They agitate the sharks and rays by knocking on the glass.
They irritate the piranhas and terrorize the bass.
Scientific discovery is great for teens and tots,
but part of education is discovering the “nots.”
I think we’ll bring an ending to this day at the aquarium,
and for your next school outing would you please choose the terrarium?

Prompt words today were discovery, aquarium, youth and inimical.

Bloggers

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And no fair switching to your other keyboard!!!

 

 

 

 


Bloggers

We volley bandishments about, exchanging back and forth
words sent on the Internet from east, west, south and north.
We cajole and we wheedle as we trade behests.
From district one to district two, we answer all requests.
Janet wants a recipe that Dolly can provide.
Lydia posts Trump travesties that she cannot abide.

Angloswiss , VJ and Cee and Bob from far Australia,
trading photographs of houses, flowers and regalia.
Fashion blogs and flower blogs and fantasy and news.
We write of  our journeys, our fetes and family dos.
Poems about our handbags, our fashion and our shoes,
answering each other’s queries, cancelling each other’s blues.

Derrick tells of travels and the highlights of his dinners.
Regina writes of travel life and family and sinners.
We all have our favorite schticks from India to Nome.
Marilyn writes of birds and dogs and Manja writes of Rome.
Me? I merely write the poems that the prompts demand,
and be they dumb or heart-wrenching, pedestrian or grand,
abject apologies offered if you find them bland.

Prompt words today were shoe, district, volley and abject.
There were a dozen other bloggers I would have liked to include, but I had to be ready and on the road by 9 this morning so I was rushed in getting this out. To all the other blogs I regularly follow, you know who you are.

Friendly Advice

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Friendly Advice

If I’m not mistaken, you are caught there in your bubble
in your torn old housecoat with your legs covered in stubble.
Your pupils are dilated and your eyes are blank and glassy.
The air in this closed room has turned stale and dank and gassy.

I’m going to turn the light on now. You’ve been here in the dark
too long, so I am taking you outside to the park.
You’ve mourned enough. It’s time that you returned to the living.
It’s true years take away, but it’s also true they’re giving.

We’ll buy pistachio ice cream, feed your favorite duck
and talk about how fortunate we are to have such luck
to be alive and free and here in this glorious place
with ice cream in our tummies and sunlight on our face.

Go and take a shower and put on your best duds.
Wipe away your dolor with water and with suds.
Blow dry your hair until it looks casual and sporty.
I think that even you can survive this turning forty!!

 

Prompt words today were pupil, bubble, dark and mistaken.

Celebration for Two

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Celebration for Two

The radiator’s sputtering and crumbs of birthday cake
fly out from the thrown back sheet and spread out in your wake.
Red wine from toppled glasses forms a little lake
so perhaps staging the party in our bed was a mistake!

 

Prompt words today are sputter, manage,, mistake.
Word of the Day didn’t publish a word today.

Lover’s Spat

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Lover’s Spat.

When I said I didn’t miss you, I admit that I lied.
I didn’t get enough of you. I left unsatisfied.
If you, too, detect a movement in your stone cold heart,
perhaps you could begin with a phone call as a start.

I didn’t mean to say it. You didn’t mean to scream.
I’m willing to atone for it by any means you deem.
Breaking up is hard to do but staying mad is harder.
I spend way too much time in bed, too much time in my larder.

I’m gaining weight and losing hair, burst into tears repeatedly.
I fly off the handle and insult my friends most heatedly.
So I propose our meeting via taxi, boat or plane.
Our last tryst was insufficient. It didn’t heal the pain.

If you’ll come out of hiding, then I will do the same.
If you’ll agree to meet with me, I’ll even take the blame.
You’ll be right and I’ll be wrong. I’ll take the higher road.
The digs that I once took at you will produce the motherlode.

Prompt words for today were taxi, movement, propose and hide.

Over-automation

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Over-automation

The multifarious uses of all of her devices
led to manifold laziness and other slothful vices.
She never had to scramble to remember anything.
She only pushed a button and her troubles all took wing.
She had no special training. She eschewed an education,
for Alexa solved all problems with her handy automation—
turning on the TV set and opening the doors,
setting off the cleaning robots, expelling the boors,
reminding of vacations and birthdays and appointments,
disciplining naughty kids for lapses in deportments.
Alexa went to work for her and mapped out all her spreadsheets,
polished all her silverware and ironed out her bedsheets.
There was literally nothing that Alexa couldn’t do.
She cooked her children’s breakfasts and took them to the zoo.
Yet still she was suffused by fatigue and wan and thin.
No one could imagine the stress that she was in.
More and more she wound up with her stomach in a knot.
remembering the uses for devices that she’d got!

Prompt words today are knot, scramble, vacation and multifarious.

Full Makeup

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Full Makeup

As each wispy object she attaches to her face,
these extraneous objects seem somewhat out of place.
They flutter  from her eyelids like moths before the flame—
just the opening number in her makeup game.

As she smooths on her concealer, then powders over all,
she does not see me watching her out here in the hall.
Never does she hesitate. Brushes grow ever finer
as she patiently applies shadow and eye liner.

She does it all so expertly with such consistent flair,
then carefully begins to work to rearrange her hair.
A little mousse to set the curls, a little spray of mist
and she’s prepared a face that is ready to be kissed.

When she comes home, the hair is mussed, one eyelash is askew.
One eyelid seems to be of a slightly lighter hue.
Although her hairdo’s fallen, still her mood seems somewhat lighter.
Her lipstick gone, and yet somehow her color seems much brighter.

One little word transforms a girl to another realm.
Makes an unsure teenager the captain at the helm.
Just change “make up” to “make out” and her heart takes wing.
And woe to any parent who notices a thing!

Prompt words today were flair, hesitate, spray and extraneous.

 

Pilot Error

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Pilot Error

His vulgarity made her bashful,
his irreverence drew tears.
He had inadequate finesse
to soothe away her fears.
So though he wished to woo her,
in the end he failed.
When he tried to fly her to the moon,
his passenger just bailed.

Prompt words today are finesse, irreverent, vulgar and bashful.

Boomerang Boy: New Syndrome Defined––Grown-up Kids Who Won’t Leave Home

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Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on unsplash. Used with permission.

“In many countries, the phenomenon is so widespread that new terms have developed to describe it: bamboccioni [literally, big babies] in Italy, “hotel mama” in Germany, boomerang children in Australia, parasaito shinguru [single parasite] in Japan. These young men and women don’t leave home and don’t get married, because they only want to buy brand names and enjoy themselves and to live, as an ideology, at their parents’ expense. It’s nothing less than a pandemic.” https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-new-syndrome-grown-up-kids-who-stay-home-1.5336944

Boomerang Boy

If more interest charges he wishes to defray,
he needs to find a paying job without further delay.
He should at once take heed of my excellent advice
and give up on his former full-time job of shooting dice.

He might become a rose vendor, a troubadour or chef
or become the famous author of a roman a clef.
if only he would get a job, his parents would rejoice,
but, alas, sheer laziness is his career of choice,

The prompts today were rose, delay  and sacrifice.

A Duck Tale

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Duck Tale

He sits there on his little tail
maintaining he does not inhale,
but every time he deigns to speak
the smoke that issues from his beak
is not all that he’s taken in.
We tell him it’s a double sin
to fill his lungs with acrid smoke
and then to lie to all the folk.
We all know Little Duck’s too young
to mess with trachea and lung.
Those who take gambles respiratory
wind up with a tragic story.
But no duck I have ever known
will listen to his parents’ drone.
We take his privileges away,
but still he chooses to puff away.
We hide his fags and hide his lighter,
now and then pull an all-nighter
making sure he doesn’t smoke,
but once we’re gone, he takes a toke.
No matter what our perturbation,
we cannot stem his inhalation!

 

(If you’re not familiar with Little Duck, HERE is some backstory.)

The prompt word today is inhale.