Category Archives: Humor

Kids’ Tribunal

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Kids’ Tribunal

When wind howls like a banshee to fill the dark night air
and monsters lurk in closets or in creakings up the stair,
when your brother knows they’re out there––these creatures he can’t see,
when nightmares wake you up at night and you have to pee
but daren’t leave your bed in fear those creatures will come “getcha”
(all those night-born monsters that come out at night to fetch ya,)
or when sister wets the bed again and seeks a drier nest,
for lying on her soggy sheets, she knows she’ll never rest––
it’s times like these when all the kids form a small tribunal
and determine that their parents’ bed should be declared communal.

 

The prompt word today is communal.

Calling Uncle Duckie

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Picture 24 copySometimes I suspect I drive Uncle Duckie to drink. (Photo a selfie by okcforgottenman)

Calling Uncle Duckie

I can’t get my link established. Guess I’m just unlucky.
Luckily, I have a fix. I just call Uncle Duckie!
He can fix most anything from formatting to routers;
but you’ve got to stay real calm. He doesn’t work with pouters!

“Uncle Duckie, dear,” I say via email or on Skype.
“I want to post my post now, but I have a little gripe.
I can’t get my poem to post in single space, my dear.
It looks too long when double-spaced, and I have a fear

no one will read a two-paged poem. Long postings are no fun.
Is there any way that I can get it down to one?”
“Hit shift-return at ends of lines,” he tells me really pronto.
On my blog he wears the mask. And me? I’m merely Tonto!!!! **

** Note: In Spanish, “Tonto” means stupid. In other words, if viewed in Guadalajara, our favorite childhood program would be called, “The Lone Ranger and Stupid!”

If you’ve been perusing my blog for over three years, you’ve read this before.  Time you read it again as Uncle Duckie, also known as OKCforgottenman is still the one I turn to whenever there is a problem and in-between problems as well. This is a perfect chance to thank him again. The prompt today was calling.

Feeding Love: Haute Cuisine

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Haute Cuisine

It seemed a meager portion for such a pricey place––
three peas, a single escargot. Potatoes? not a trace.
They’d spilled some brown stuff on the plate and dabbed a bit of green.
No wonder other diners all looked so very lean.

Two bites and the first course was gone, the plates all whisked away,
replaced by a sparse salad little more than mounds of hay.
A tiny slivered mass of yellow with seeds sprinkled over,
a spray of oil, some flower petals and a sprig of clover.

I looked my first date in the eye to see what he might think.
As he lifted a forkful, he gave a little wink.
We consumed their tiny lamb chops, complete with ruffled cuff
and scarfed the spoonful of dessert that wasn’t near enough.

He paid the bill, retrieved our coats and walked me to his car.
“I have another treat for you,” he said. “It isn’t far.”
He pulled up to McDonalds and ordered two big macs,
large French fries and two sodas and handed me the sacks.

Afterwards, at Dairy Queen, we sealed this new romance
with Butterfinger Blizzards and then a smoldering glance.
I accepted the next course with lips and arms most eager.
And what he served me next, my dear, was anything but meager.

I do not like posh restaurants with their nouvelle cuisine.
I find their foam and slivers and seeds and piles obscene.
Their single little vegetables hung on tiny racks?
I prefer larger portions and calories served in sacks!

And that is how we bonded, your Uncle Joe and I,
over Colonel Sanders, Taco Bell and carryout Thai.
Others may impress their dates with pricey gourmet suppers,
but my true love seduced with feasts of fast food filler-uppers!

The prompt today was meager.

Three Hundred Words in Search Of a Meaning

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15 Minute Timed Writing
(300 Words in Search of a Meaning)

One-a-minute two-a-minute three-a-minute four—
big bad minute police waiting at my door.
If I take a minute more, I know they’ll somehow know.
so thinking about what I say is gonna bring me low!

They’re gonna crash my firewall and take me off to jail.
So with no other bloggers here to get me out on bail,
I’ll get on with my writing. Write about anything—
not about-a-nothing, and the words they gotta sing.

Time is of the essence ‘cause there ain’t no other clue.
Topical-type bloggers won’t know what to do.
Don’t know why with time limits I’m lacking all my grammar.
It’s like my words are nails but that I’m lacking any hammer.

With no topic they all lie here, looking for a wall.
There’s no sense to any of it. No. No sense at all.
I’m sure a question’s out there, but nobody’s gonna ask it,
and all these words just roll on by like eggs without a basket.

Purpose keeps eluding me. I know I’ll never find it.
Somehow though I’m running, I stay too far behind it.
I once said that I never know  what I will be writing.
From line to line, I follow words and hope they’ll be inciting

a thought, a theory or a theme somewhere along the way.
I always hope it will be soon, ‘cause I don’t have all day
to do the kind of writing that I like to do,
for when I look, I see the time—9:15:52!

I know that is impossible. I’m sure that there have been
fewer minutes since I started—only nine or ten!
Yet the clock says fifteen minutes and  seconds more as well.
So though I’ve met the challenge, It seems I’ve missed the bell!!

I drew a blank on today’s prompt so this is a rewrite of a poem from three years ago. The prompt today is theory.

A Single English Teacher’s Lament

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A Single English Teacher’s Lament

Two periods of composition
have put me in a bad position.
With class size swelled to 38,
no longer have I time to date,
for teaching all to write a thesis
means my workload never ceases.

Each weekend I take home a pile
to check and grade and reconcile.
To try to sort them out is hard—
each sentence shuffled card by card.
Each comment must be made with tact,
their logic looked at fact by fact.

Each student had to write just one.
Now handed in, their toils are done.
While I have 76 to grade,
and now regret assignments made.
How many more? I have to ask,
imprisoned by this grading task.

I thought when I earned my degree,
that I had finally been set free,
but now I am the guilty one
destroying all my students’ fun.
Yet I’ve  created my own repentance.
I gave myself the thesis sentence!

 

This is a rewrite of a piece written over three years ago, when I first started this blog.  My friend Ann Garcia, a former fellow teacher and friend for life (although we haven’t seen each other for almost thirty years) gave me the prompt to write a poem about an English teacher.  Well, here it is with a stanza added to allow it to meet today’s prompt of  degree as well. Pretty tricky, huh?

Relocation Dreams

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

Relocation Dreams

I’ve so many things that there’s no place to stack them in.
No drawers to hold them, no cupboards to pack them in.
So many things stowed away from detection.
My fireplace houses its own art collection.

My wardrobe suffers from costumes aplenty.
I’ve boxes of sizes from nine up to twenty.
My jewelry box is stuffed to the gills,
my medicine drawer is spilling out pills.

When I try to cull them, they all want to stay.
The only solution’s to just move away
to find a small island with palm trees and sky
where there is simply nothing to buy!

I’ll live in a hut with floors of swept dirt.
One pair of flip flops, a simple grass skirt.
I won’t feel that shopping should be my main duty.
I’ll look out the window if I require beauty.

No buying new paintings whenever I please.
No little nicknacks and no DVD’s.
No drawers of makeup or tea towels or spoons.
No tarot cards, horoscopes, Ouija boards, runes.

I will not need things to determine my fate,
that day I walk out, simply locking my gate,
taking one suitcase, computer and cables,
and scanner and backup drives, printers and tables,

an internet router and energy backup—
just these few items to locate and pack up.
Then I’m off to a life that’s simpler by far
if these bare necessities fit in my car.

 

The prompt today was relocate.

Patina

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The photo above is one of my favorites—a closeup of a copper shower head patinated by water and age.  A few years ago, when I returned to the house I rent on the beach at La Manzanilla, they had replaced it with a shiny new one.  I mourn its absence!

 

 

 

 

The prompt today is patina.

One-Way (Ice Cream Manifesto)

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Ice Cream Manifesto

It’s just a little kiosk in the middle of the street
between two one-way roadways, in the center where they meet.
There aren’t any tables. There isn’t any chair.
You have to stand out in the street to give your order there.

Mango or tequila, tamarind or corn.
As you can see, the flavors don’t agree with any norm.
They’ve ice cream made of purest cream , but they have ices, too,
in so many flavors that I always choose a few.

My favorite? Strawberry ice. Vanilla under it.
I get a cone so I don’t have to wait to plunder it.
I finish it as I drive home, licking all the way.
I give my dogs the empty cone. It always makes their day.

The cone is hard as any bone–sweet and chewy, too.
If I were a better mother, I’d arrange that they had two.
But though I know I’d enjoy two passing o’er my lips,
Later I would not enjoy their presence on my hips.

I love that little ice cream stand. Love it all to heck,
with its lovely homemade ice cream made in Jocotepec.
That pueblo is quite close to me. It’s just five miles or so.
So it isn’t that it is so very far for me to go.

The thing is that for me, ice cream is an impulse buy.
It’s not a major purchase, like a cake or like a pie.
If I just happen to be passing and see that fellow there
waving his ice cream scoops at me, right out in the air,

preordination says that I must stop and have one now–
a bite of crispy wafer cone, adorned with ice of cow.
I do not claim responsibility for decisions of this kind.
It’s a creative impulse, not a matter of the mind.

So if you’re a public servant–an official of this town
looking for new laws to pass, don’t tear this kiosk down.
Fill some potholes in the street or put a speed bump in.
For legislating ice cream bans is sure to be a sin!

 

 

This is an edit of a poem from two years ago. Still at my writer’s retreat with little time to do prompts in the morning and since WordPress messed up and gave an extra prompt on the 26th, I’m just doing prompts in sequence a day behind..hard to explain, but gives me a chance to get the prompt done the night before.Nov 28/29 Daily Post Prompt, One Way.

Underdog

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Cat Woman’s sexy. Batman’s svelt
in cape and leotard and belt.
Superman in colors bright,
looks dashing flying in to fight.
But Underdog’s a lesser sort.
Sorta puny, sorta short.
His uniform? He doesn’t care.
He’s happy in his underwear.

For alternate photos for this prompt, go HERE. The prompt today is underdog.

Stirring the Pot

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Stirring the Pot

Chunks and grains swirl round and round. They form a muddy mass.
I keep my paddle churning them as I turn on the gas.
As all the chunks and  bits melt down, the volume now decreases.
I watch the whole mess carefully. My vigilance increases.
I see it all congealing—an oily inky sludge
that after lengthy stirring finally turns to fudge!
This horrid, bubbling, lumpy goo that appeared so pernicious,
in the end turns into something creamy, rich, delicious.

 

In a recent conversation with a friend who is a scientist, water expert and inspector of water systems and industrial water waste, I learned the interesting fact that there is some hope regarding environmental issues, even in the wake of the Trump administration’s ridiculous easing of standards. He assured me that they’ve had little influence on the industrial systems he inspects as the large companies, first of all, are set up to conform to stricter standards and the restructuring of the system would be so costly that they are not about to alter things to meet new laws that will probably be changed back again anyway and which even they see the dangers of.

Hopefully, one thing that we will learn as a result of this ongoing disaster and embarrassment is that we need to alter the powers of the president, especially regarding his appointment of lifetime judges and his ability to administratively change standards that should be determined by congress or popular vote.  The other changes that must be made are in the electoral college and lobbying rules. Perhaps the only good that will come out of this POTUS “calling trump” on us is that it will stir the pot and bring about much-needed  change. The rules of our democracy did not take into account the possibility of the election of such an ignorant, childish and corrupt leader as Trump has proven to be.

 

The prompt word today is sludge.