Category Archives: Humor

Paper Shoes

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Paper Shoes

I’m folding me some paper shoes
so I can walk away the blues.
The love poems I cannot recall
I’ll scuff off as I pass the mall.
Someone will find my words all shredded—
how you wooed and won and bedded
one so young and so naive
that she could not help but believe
words pilfered from a Hallmark store
that you had often used before.

All those lovelorn lines obscured.
All that loneliness endured.
On Main Street I will shed my heart—
that part of me you tore apart.
All the lines I wrote about it,
all the times I grew to doubt it.
Your words the heel, my words the sole,
the sidewalks will consume them whole.

All the futile poetry
that passed once between you and me
ground into the pavement where
perhaps two lovers will find it there—
the words like seeds that hung around
hoping for more fertile ground.
Love sprouted from a used-up word
might strike some others as absurd,

But I like to think perhaps
our use of them was just a lapse.
Repeated by those other voices
who choose to live by other choices,
all those words that we now rue
might work for lovers who are new.

The prompt word today is paper. (Image from internet, photographer unknown.)

Loop de loop

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Thought I’d have to do this job myself, but Pasiano took over immediately and did a beautiful job.

Loop de Loop

Every little hole drilled, every little loop
helps attach the walls for—our new kitty coop.
They’re tired of the inside. They want to get out.
They’ve got cabin fever—I’ve not any doubt.

They’ve taken over all my house—bathroom, sala, kitchen.
So many handy spots to hide while they’re mama-ditchin’.
They pulled down all my CD’s and ate my bird’s nest too.
So many great high perches. Always something new.

But mama’s running out of time. She has too much to do
to spend all of her time running this temporary (?) zoo.
Some outside time is what we need—these 4 kittens and me—
a little outside running place will set all of us free.

So Pasiano’s attaching walls over the side gate bars
to protect the kitties from dogs and speeding cars.
Although escape to the big world I’m sure they’d find sublime,
we hope the napa palms are too slippery to climb.

The particle board is all installed.  The kittens in fresh air
leap and climb and hide and play. They find it lovely there.
They don’t answer to their names, their naming is so new;
They are Kukla, Fran and Ollie and the white girl we call Roo.

Will the big cat come to visit, or perhaps a frog or two?
That would give them other interesting things to do.
As for me, I finally have some time to do some writing
with nothing climbing up my leg—scratching, mewing, biting.

Kittens are so precious, a constant fun delight;
but I can’t be petting kittens every hour—day and night.
They had two inside places. Now they have an outside other.
No one can tell who likes it most—the kittens or their mother!

 

Olie and Roo have a wonderful time rolling in the dirt, playing with palm fronds and trying to climb the slippery trunks of the trees. So do Kukla and Fran for a half hour or so, but . . .

soon I could hear their piping little “mew mew mew”s.  They’d climbed between the bars and were begging for me to open the sliding screen to let them in.  Within minutes, they were curled up in separate drawers in the bathroom, as was Ollie. Soon, only Roo remained outside, asleep in the sun, where she still is two hours later!

I would have shown you many more photos, but alas, my computer drive is full again and I can’t download any.

 

The prompt today was loop.

Sinning Lessons

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Sinning Lessons

I am a paragon of virtue. I have no other choice.
I do not have a figure.  I have no sultry voice.
I’ve no talent at kissing. The boys leave me alone.
I have no lovers calling me nightly on the phone.

I get my thrills from scripture. I embroider and I tat.
The creature that I cuddle with is an old grey cat.
Sometimes virtue’s chosen, but it isn’t so with me.
I’d rather spend my weekend nights on some feller’s knee.

But it isn’t in the cards. It’s just my Ma and me.
I guess I’ll just be buttoned up instead of brash and free.
My ma found a new hired man. He isn’t very tall.
A moustache but no muscles. Not swashbuckling at all.

But he has a good strong back. He carries water for me.
And for reasons I can’t fathom, he seems to adore me.
It’s one morning in the cow barn, milking Bossie, that I miss
the bucket with the milk stream when the hired man plants a kiss

on my neck as I bend over. It makes that old cat’s day.
He opens up his mouth and drinks as I just dream and sway
then turn to open my mouth, too, and see how kisses feel
when they are given mouth-to-mouth. It makes me almost reel.

But Hank the hired man catches me, sets me straight again,
and that’s the starting of my life as a paragon of sin!
Sinning’s not so bad at all. You can’t believe the preacher.
And it’s not so hard to do when you have a teacher.

Lessons started in the milking barn but ended in the loft.
The hired man got handsomer as he took his clothing off.
I think he liked me better, too, when I was in the buff 
for no matter how much more I showed, it never seemed enough.

We had a lovely time up there, the hired man and me.
As testament, now seven kids cluster round my knee.
The hired man’s beside me. As I sit and hold his hand,
he runs his fingers back and forth across my wedding band.

The old gray cat’s still happy, for sometimes he still gets lucky
when I’m distracted in the milking ’cause my husband’s feeling plucky.
Married life is lovely. We’re happy, him and me.
We are paragons of loving for perpetuity. 

 

The prompt today is “paragon.”

Miss(ed) Popularity

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Miss(ed) Popularity

Her inflated ego received its puncture
just precisely at the juncture
of her ego colliding with
the truth that contradicted myth.

That she was hot was not debated—
just whether she was educated,
for it was clear to any fool
mere heat does not determine cool.

 

The prompt today was “punctured.”

About that picture. I was walking along the shore and saw a man sitting in this chair drinking a margarita.  “That’s the life,” I said to him and at this point he got up, offered the chair to me and gave me his margarita.  With the other hand he took the camera from me to snap this photo.  As he did, this woman came out of the ocean and posed in front of me.  I swear this was not set up–at least by me!!!

There is a rear view I will spare your from.  Well, what the heck.  Why spare you from anything?

 

Attracting Notice

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Attracting Notice

Where she should  bulge, she seems to taper,
so when her tailor sought to drape her,
he had to stuff with rags and paper
in an attempt to reshape her.
But alas, this futile caper
ended with not a singe gaper.

The word prompt today was taper.

Dressed to Kill

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Dressed to Kill

Ladies have loved a uniform
since writing was in cuniform.
They’ve flirted with each man they’ve met
with shoulders garbed in epaulet.
No telling what the reason may be
why every serviceman they see
with stripes and bars upon his chest
is the man they like the best.

A Scottish guardsman who’s well-built
may show his legs off in a kilt,
whereas an Arab man who’s urban
struts his stuff beneath a turban.
Cops on their beats and Maitre d’s
have all the ladies that they please
when they don the prescribed clothes
in which they are assigned to pose.

Some women even make a grab
for guys they see in olive drab.
Ushers in jackets and in gloves
have been known to find new loves
in their darkened theater aisles
as they exercise their wiles
escorting with a liveried arm
those special ladies they seek to charm.

German gents who seek attention,
it’s hardly necessary to mention,
when they’re wanting to be chosen,
don a pair of lederhosen.
And sailors find they rarely lose out 
when they get their navy blues out.
It’s true a full-regalia’d guy
is sure to catch the feminine eye.

Be it a robe or regimental,
there’s simply something elemental
about a man who’s dressed to kill—
for women cannot get their fill
of a gentleman in monkey suit.
Unsuited men just can’t refute
that they suffer real regrets
that that man in epaulets
gets all the women that he gets!

The prompt today was “uniform.”  (image of Barney Fife from internet.)

Outspoken

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Outspoken

When you tell your truths en masse,
what you may choose to see as brass
others might perceive as crass.
You may think you’re just a truthful lassie,
but what to you is cute and sassy,
the rest of us consider gassy!
Sometimes, just let the impulse pass.
You’ll be less of a horse’s ass!

 

 

The prompt word today was “brassy.”

The Reveal

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The Reveal

Even when she’s in the buff,
he feels she’s not revealed enough.
He wants to know her heart and soul—
to know her entire being, his goal.
But, alas, she cannot do it.
If she does, she knows she’ll rue it.
Much as she loves a certain sir,
there is a certain part of her
that must remain a mystery.
For in this maiden’s history
are other suitors it behooved
to have her secrets all removed.
But when she revealed it all,
one by one, they did not call.
And thus she learned a maiden’s rule:
Men are fickle. Men are cruel.
Lest you be put up on a shelf,
keep parts of you safe in your self.
To keep him interested in your stuff,
Most of you is just enough.

 

 

 

The prompt today was “buff.”

Five Days after the Accident

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This little fella has graced the dash of every car I’ve had in Mexico for the past 16 years. Soon he’ll have a new home.

Five Days after the Accident

I am infused with happiness—the most I’ve felt for days—
and hereby I announce that I have shed my dormant phase.
Since my poor car was murdered, I’ve been in isolation,
but now it seems I’m free again and feeling great elation.

I went five days without a car, just stayed at home to heal
while friends did all my shopping. One even brought a meal!
But now I can get groceries, take Morrie for his grooming,
rested from five days at home. Relaxed from all this wombing.
Now that I’ve got wheels again, I have no need to fret.
Simply alive and mobile is as good as you can get!!!

The prompt today was “infuse.”

Snipped Snafu

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Has this Raquet Club employee watching my car being towed away  been in the pool yet today?  jdbphoto

I can’t imagine the snafus I must be making every time I speak Spanish.  Oftentimes, it is the thing that breaks the ice and opens up the laughter. So it is with this translation of an otherwise unexciting Raquet Club quarterly report to members that I received in an email today.  I quote:

  • Since May 1, club workers are cleaned by the pool. The Board of Directors has noted that this measure has made it possible for the pool to have fewer leaves and less cloudy water. 

What an excellent further use of the pool, but seems like it would create more leaves and cloudier water as surely some soap must be involved as well, don’t you think? And one would think the workers themselves would protest.

Now, please send me your own  “snafus to share” in the comments below: