Category Archives: Humor

Knees

14 Replies

IMG_0266

Knees

Knees, knees, folks have knees
from Katmandu down to Belize.
In Peru, where they ride llamas
they still have knees in their pajamas.
Further north, up where it freezes,
even Polar bears have kneezes.

Knees, knees, folks have knees
to ogle, fondle, pet and squeeze.
(It’s easy when they’re under kilts.)
Some knees on roller skates or stilts
are scabbed and scaly, skinned and sore
but still they know what they are for.

Knees are great to bounce a baby,
to kick a soccer ball, or maybe
to bend in prayer when they’re in church,
or form a perfect sort of perch
for swains who fall on bended knee
to say, ‘I’d like to marry thee.’

Knees, knees, folks have knees.
In sun they burn, in snow they freeze.
Yet  knees can cross and knees can knock.
Knees can jog you round the block.
Knees are handy and dependable.
And aren’t we glad that knees are bendable?

 

The Daily Addictions prompt today is convenient.  I ask you.  What is more convenient than knees?

In Search of Kerfuffles

8 Replies

Chances are one of these photos depicts a kerfuffle. Click on first photo to enlarge all and view as a slide series.


In Search of Kerfuffles

What, I must ask you, is a kerfuffle?
Is it a soufflé or perhaps a ruffle?
Is it that fuzz that hides under beds
or those stubborn snarls at the back of our heads?
Perhaps they are tasty and come with whipped cream—
a dieter’s nightmare, a sweet tooth’s fine dream.
Do kerfuffles have feathers and beaks on their noses 
to fly overhead and poop on our clotheses?
Does one have to walk them or clean up their messes?
I’m no closer to knowing, in spite of these guesses.
Guess I’ll quit my job and pack up a duffle,
set off in the world to find a kerfuffle.
And when I discover it, I’ll bring it home
and finally be able to finish this poem.

The Ragtag prompt today was kerfuffle.

Blind Date

24 Replies

 

Blind Date

With an air of abandon, she threw off her clothes,
rolled up her hair and night creamed her nose.
She was sure she’d see no one ’til morning at work,
so she removed her bridge with a tug and a jerk.
She peeled off her eyelashes, creamed off her blush.
Did all  this slowly with no need to rush.
A natural girl now, her face put away
for her to reclaim the very next day.

She’s snugged up in flannel, propped up in her bed.
By the end of this evening, her book will be read.
The large bowl of chili that rests on the table
right by the bed, she’ll devour when she’s able.
In between page turns, she’ll take a big bite.
She’ll feast and she’ll read ’til she puts out the light.

Until the night’s silence is shattered by ringing.
The strum of guitars and some romantic singing
completes all the ruckus occurring outside
as she pulls up the covers to cower and hide.
For she has remembered, alas and too late
that this was the night that she had a blind date.
She springs to the bathroom to try to redo
all that she’s lately hastened to undo.

“Just a minute!” she calls, and she hears his reply.
Her beauty procedures are done on the fly.
She rips out her curlers, unwinding, unfurling
the locks she’d just put there for overnight curling.
The mascara wand flies. Rouge is rapidly swiped
across the same cheeks she has recently wiped.
She throws on her clothes, grabs her phone and her purse.
No more time to prepare, and no time to rehearse.

She opens the door to survey her date.
He has a nice face and a shiny bald pate.
She consults her watch and she scolds, “You are late!”
Her side of the tale, she’ll neglect to relate.
They’ll have a fine evening and he will take care
not to mention the curler in back of her hair.
Some things best unspoken are things her date knows—
like her one missing eyebrow and cream on her nose.
These slight imperfections he took in his stride
Which is why one year later she wound up his bride.

.

The Daily Addictions prompt is abandon.

Pied Beauty II

8 Replies

 

 

Today’s prompt being “spoof,” I decided to resurrect this parody of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poem “Pied Beauty,” one of my first blogs ever back in 2014:

Pied Beauty II

Thanks be to Sara Lee for appled things—
For pies, for apple fritters and for thin-rolled strudel crust;
For pastries of the fruit of Eve and sauce it swims within;
Fresh-cooked in ovens, how their sweet juice sings;
The sugar clotted and pierced— place it on plate we must;
And all taste, for how can tackling it be such a sin?

All things made of flour and Crisco and of apples sweet;
(How can they by nutritionists be so sorely cussed
With words professing they won’t make us thin?)
With their tart flavor are sure our lips to meet;
And meet again.

—Judy Dykstra-Brown

 

And now, the original:

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

The Ragtag prompt is spoof.

Slashin’ Fashion

45 Replies

 

Slashin’ Fashion

We used to think that what we wore in public really mattered.
No one wanted to appear in clothing ripped and tattered.
But now it seems the custom is to vintage-up our fashion
like it has been ripped apart in the throes of passion.

Everywhere we go, bare skin is brashly popping out
as though we can’t afford new jeans and it’s a thing to flout.
When we gain weight we do not have to buy a bigger jean,
we simply use our scissors to augment the space between!

Old men shake their heads in shock and nearly lose their dentures,
and yet these wanton ladies draw their looks as well as censures,
for when they rouge their cheeks, they do not deal with only two.
Now they have to prep  four cheeks for the world to view.

 

I worked on this poem for over an hour and when I tried to add an illustration, I lost it all!  Nowhere to be found. Nowhere in drafts.  Yes, a bit of cussing. I don’t know about you, but after I’ve written something, I forget it completely, so I had to start out again from scratch.  This time it went more quickly, though, and although it is generally the same idea, you know what they say about the one that got away!

This time I’m copying it into my sticky notes before I try to save and illustrate it.  This is the first time I haven’t done so in a long time and now I remember why I always did so! Image found on the internet.  No credits given.

The Daily Addictions prompt is augment.
The Ragtag prompt is vintage.

Hooyah!!!

9 Replies

IMG_1476 2

This may be the silliest poem I ever wrote.  It is what happens when you discover an overlooked prompt at 3:42 in the morning!!!

 

Word from Your Mentors

When you are a bad boy, we are going to have to boo ya,
and when you make no sense at all, we’re gonna ballyhoo ya.
When you are confused, we will for sure be trying to clue ya
in on what is happening, and then we’ll have to queue ya
up for music lessons where we’ll one ya and we’ll two ya,
making you so musical the girls will want to woo ya,
and all the other boys in town will really want to sue ya
‘cuz all the girls that turn their heads only want to do ya!
But never mind those other guys who hiss at and eschew ya.
As you walk down the aisle, we will shout out hallelujah,
for though the other guys may pine over your bride and rue ya,
seeing you in wedded bliss, the rest of us say, “Hooyah!!!”

Ragtag gave a bonus prompt yesterday and since I find myself awake at 3:42 a.m. with nothing better to do, I guess I’ll play along.  The word is Hooyah!

Vocabulary Lesson

14 Replies

 

 Vocabulary Lesson

She was more than irritated. Pissed, really, as she thumbed through the dictionary in search of the word.  Any word that needed to be looked up didn’t belong in a “Dear Jane” letter anyway–as though to the very end he was trying to demonstrate his superiority—her inferiority.

Fuck! She slammed the dictionary to the floor, picked up the half-smoked cigar he’d left in the ashtray, relit it, took a drag and surveyed the new paper cut on her index finger. Just one more of his shenanigans, she thought. Right after he’d cold-cocked her with the news that he and she were finished—that he was leaving her FOR HER MOTHER!!!!!!, he’d lit up his Cubano for one more puff before grinding it out and handing her this letter, telling her not to open it until he’d gone.

His finish had been pretty much like their beginning—with him ending up on the floor. But this time she was standing over him rather than lying in a frail heap below him. Idly, she flicked an ash into his open mouth, hitting him squarely on his tongue. The sun-dried blood on his lip looked like the smudge of a lover’s lipstick. Around his head were the remains of the crystal candlestick her mother had given them for their wedding.  She darted her tongue out to nurse first the paper cut, then the gash across her palm that she had gotten from a shard of the candlestick that had taken a far smaller part out of her than it had out of him.

Far away in the kitchen, the phone rang and rang. Probably her mother. Well, let her get her knickers in a bunch waiting for him. Let her think (for as long as she could put off coming to investigate) that her daughter had reclaimed her property. She was in possession for now and everyone knew possession was 9/10ths of the law. She took another long draw before examining her wounds again.

Then, her curiosity getting the better of her, she moved back to the dictionary to thumb through the e’s. When she’d found the word, “eschatology,” she chuckled and looked back at her lost love. In the letter he had meant for her to read after he had left, he had revealed that their night class in eschatology had led her mother and him to the decision that they must abandon their present lives to join an ashram in India and examine their final destinies. Ironically, she had found that answer for him, at least. She looked up one of the other big words he had used in her “Dear Jane” letter.  “Heuristic: a practical method for solving a problem that is not optimal or perfect but sufficient for the immediate goals.”  He had hit the nail on the head with that one. It was definitely a word that applied to her present situation, if no longer to his!

 

This is a rewrite of an essay from three years ago that I had totally forgotten.  I’ve altered it to meet today’s three prompt words.  A heuristic solution, no?

Fandango’s prompt is lesson.
The Daily Addiction prompt is frail.
The Ragtag prompt is dart.

 

The Clew of the “Tapa Rojo.”

11 Replies

IMG_1644

The Mystery of the Vanishing Red Tennis Ball Lids!!!!

My small dog is a fetcher, but oh, at what a cost.
I swear for every twenty balls I throw, one shows up lost.
I’ve been buying  tubes of tennis balls for many years,
yet within a few months, our supply is in arrears.
I go to buy another lot that vanishes the same.
Where are these balls? What eats them? What ambitious tree’s to blame
for hoarding them like fruit up high in assorted branches
where they are invisible, thwarting all our chances
to retrieve the orbs that are so vital for my throwing,
and in his pursuit of them, for Morrie’s come and going?

There is another mystery surrounding this adventure—
one that is more serious, occasioning my censure.
These tubes of tennis balls that come packaged in neat threes
so I can loft them from the pool to reside in trees,
happen to have covers that I find indispensible
and when you know the reason why, I’ll think you’ll find it sensible
that I hoard them like diamonds, a utilitarian treasure—
for it just so happens that they fit, measure for measure
my cans of open cat food, and dog food, too, precisely.
No tops bought for this purpose can seal the cans so nicely.

Since I feed seven animals two times every day,
there are always half-full cans I have to put away.
They have four different diets, and for every one I feed
I need a different can of food, so you can see my need
for those red tops that seal them up, free from any smell
that makes a fridge with human food smell like cat food Hell!
For my odor-free fridges, I’m fast in Wilson’s debt,
for I’ve had Morrie for four years and in that time, I bet 
I’ve purchased 15 tubes of balls for him to chase and chew.
So I should have 15 red tops. Still, I have only two!
Where can these tops be going? Is my dog-walker purloining them
to sell on the black market? And have tennis balls been joining them?

Are they being used as Frisbees by some child of a friend
who snatches them when I am not there to apprehend
this purloiner of cat food lids, this wily thief of tops,
knowing that no sane person would dare to call the cops
over a piece of plastic, no matter how securely
it hugs the tops of dog food cans–so snuggly and so purely?
Are dogs stealing and chewing them and burying them after?
Have the cats purloined them and stowed them in some rafter?
I’ve questioned sweet Yolanda who must think that I am crazy.
She only shakes her head at me, looking somewhat hazy.
“Donde estan mis tapas rojas?” Pasiano, on a breather,
does not seem to have a single clue of what I’m saying, either.

They point out other pet food lids. I’ve purchased quite a few,
but not one fits securely. Only tennis ball lids will do.
Each life contains its mysteries—mundane or scintillating—
concerning who put dents in cars or whom our kids are dating.
Things break, get lost or vanish by means less than pernicious,
and yet the regularity of my thefts is suspicious!
These valueless little objects to me are indispensible
and so I find the loss of them especially reprehensible!
Roll on the floor and laugh at me. Deride me if you must,
but I still view these petty thefts to be vile and unjust.
I’d like to solve the mystery. Stop the crime spree.  Put the skids on it,
so I can solve the crime and literally put the lids on it!

IMG_0218

Ragtag’s word of the day is clew.
Fandango’s word of the day is scintillating.
And, the Daily Addiction’s prompt is ambition.

Coffee with No Ceremony

10 Replies

daily life color014

Coffee With No Ceremony

I lived in Addis Ababa adjoining Mexico Square.
I ate injera every day. Had cornrows in my hair.
I thought I knew it all, and though my language skills were poor,
I knew enough Amharic to get by in any store.

Seated in a circle, on low stools around a flame,
We watched Demekech fan the fire—this ritual the same
in every house and every village all throughout the land.
The thick and sludgy coffee was always ground by hand.

Boiled in a clay carafe, then set aside to brew
as in another little pot, some corn kernels she threw.
The popcorn taken from the flame, the colo nuts were next.
Except—we found that we had none, and we were sorely vexed.

The coffee jug was sealed up with a fresh-wound plug of grass
ready for the pouring, but one aspect of our mass
was missing, so I said I’d go to buy some at the souk,
lest our hospitality give reason for rebuke.

These little shops were many, lining both sides of the street;
and at each one, I knew the custom—always did I greet
the owner with proper respect, and always, he said, “Yes!”
when I asked if he had colo, but I couldn’t guess

why no one ever seemed to want to sell any to me.
Always the same reaction—first the shock and then the glee.
So, finally, I walked back home. My failure I admitted.
Departing, I had felt so smart, but now I felt half-witted.

What had I done wrong? I knew that every shop had colo.
The problem must have been that I had gone to get them solo!
Returning empty-handed, I felt I was to blame.
Coffee without colo was a pity and a shame.

But my roommate and our guests and cook were really most surprised.
I must have asked for something else than colo, they surmised.
What did I ask for? When I told them, they dissolved in laughter.
They said that I was lucky not to get what I asked after.

For colo had two meanings, depending on the stress
put on the first syllable, and I had made a mess.
Instead of nuts, they told me (and this was just between us,)
I had asked each souk owner—if he had a penis!

(This is a true story of only one of the gaffes I became famous for in the year and a half I taught and traveled in Ethiopia in the period leading up to the revolution that deposed Haile Selassie.) I published this four years ago but I think few were around then to read it, so here it comes again as I think it is a good example of how far I’m willing to go to extend a little hospitality.

 

 

 

 

The Ragtag prompt today is hospitable.

Wednesday in the Hammock with Morrie

28 Replies

There is a commentary that goes with these photos.  To see it and to enlarge them all, click on the first photo. The arrow on the right of the photo will take you to the next photo.  Have fun! Morrie and I want to share our afternoon with you. He’s narrating.

She enjoyed looking at the lawn Pasiano had just mowed that morning. I tried to help by nipping at his heels, but he got a bit testy, so I retired to my bed in the doggie domain.
She then saw Ganesha staring at her from across the way. He’s the patron of writers, which reminded her she had a book to read.
So she read a few lines before. . . .
In spite of Diego’s best efforts to win me away from Morrie, Morrie had the advantage of being small enough to lie in the hammock with me. Once he tried to jump up with us, which created a lot of excitement.
For once, although he is twice my size, I have the upper hand. I taunt him with my smile!
Once we are settled, mom gives up trying to read and we have another look around.
We see a little sprout growing from the tarred area where the men cut off the big limb when they cut back the pistachio tree.
Some of the foliage is starting to come back
One of the limbs had a little decoration hanging from it, so they left just enough of it to support the wire it was hanging from. Mom kind of had a laugh at that.
We could see the birds and butterflies still alighting in the tabachine tree.
A cardinal perched on the top of a cactus for such a short time that Mom couldn’t focus fast enough, so she didn’t get a very good shot.
Mom had a massage today and I saw him rubbing her feet.
But she didn’t get the hint.
So I settled back to take it easty.