Category Archives: Humor

The Perfect Squelch: Spare Tire

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Remember when the Saturday Evening Post had a feature entitled “The Perfect Squelch” that featured a different perfect comeback every issue?  Well, then, you must be as old as I am.

 

Spare Tire

My blind date worked out most sublimely.
First of all, it was most timely,
for my ex had told me he
would be there with another she.
I waltzed in regally well-armed
with date both handsome, rich and charmed.
His tux immaculate, his dental
work just out-shined by his mental
acumen. He quoted Proust!
So when my ex came up to roost
on a chair next to the mirror where
I was perusing my form and hair
and said we made a lovely pair;
I answered, “Him? He’s just a spare.”
He poked my middle, then tweaked my nose.
“Well then, when your spare tire blows,
they’ll come in handy, all those guys.
Or, you could simply exercise.”

 

 

“Timely” is the prompt word today.

Work Week

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IMG_3604Work Week

Monday

The day’s become unravelled. The night’s begun to fall,
yet I’ve not accomplished anything. I’ve done nothing at all
except cooking a curry and writing several drafts
of poems still uncompleted–they’re bobbing here like rafts
afloat upon my consciousness but have nowhere to go.
The words all came so quickly, but their gelling has come slow.
They want to group together in concrete communities,
but instead they’re fluttering like moths and landing where they please.

Tuesday

I’m a syllable collector, a hoarder of each word
without a purpose for them. It’s come to be absurd.
Verbs are piled up on shelves, adjectives under foot.
The gerunds hang like spiderwebs. I have no place to put
The adverbs and the articles. They leak out of my head.
When I nudge them into lumpy piles, they hide beneath the bed.
I’m going to have a housecleaning of consonants and vowels.
Collect them up in buckets and wipe them up with towels.

Wednesday

I’ll sort out all the lovely words. The ones I like, I’ll hoard,
then pile the others in tidy stacks and tie them up in cord.
I’ll keep the good ones by my desk to sort through when they’re needed.
Bad words go in the basement, unsorted and unheeded.
Then I’ll have a yard sale of unused words like “pickle”
and sell them in unsorted lots—a handful for a nickel.
Then perhaps I can make room for words more orderly
that come to me in sentences that make more sense to me.

Thursday

My muse is hyperactive, I need to tame her down.
Instead of resting close to me, she runs all over town
collecting words at random— funky words like “phat”—
so when I really need her, I don’t know where she’s at.
Then when I am sleeping, she unloads word after word
until there’s no room left for them. It has become absurd.
They’re piling up around me. They’ve reached my nose and ear.
I cannot swim my way through them. I’m smothering, I fear.

Friday

That’s why I’m calling poets, every novelist or bard
to have a drive-by of my house and stop here at my yard.
Bring a bucket and a rake. Take all the words you please,
for now they’re raining down like leaves falling from my trees.
Just gather them in armloads. I won’t find it queer. 
Better bring a wheelbarrow if you cannot park near.
You do not need to pay for them. Today they’re yours for free.
If you don’t help I fear that words will be the end of me!

Saturday

YARD SALE
Take what you wish. Please do not disturb occupant.

 

P.S. If you’d like to take any words or phrases or lines from this poem to prompt your own poem, please do.  But please, please send your poem as a comment here–or send a link.

The prompt today was unravel. The link to NaPoWriMo Day 11 is HERE.

Purple Passion

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Purple Passion

My days of purple passion regrettably are over—
all those desktop gropings and rollings in the clover.
His need to perform publicly an act that should have been
romantically private? I was reluctant to back then.
But now that passion seems to be on permanent vacation.
We old gals get excitement by our over-lunch relation
of bygone tales of passion, in fact it is a blast
trading juicy tidbits as we share a light repast.
It seems that we get pleasure in sharing just a few
public recitations of what we were loath to do.

.

The prompt word today was purple.

Take Ordinary Caution

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Take Ordinary Caution

As pallbearer for my friend Larry,
I heard these deaths were ordinary
and if a fellow wished to  parry
his own demise, he should be wary
of our town apothecary.

For each he saves, there’s one they bury.
That is why I’m sorta wary,
and why I find his sign so scary
and ironically cautionary
when I read it’s “Cash and Carry.”

The prompt word today was ordinary.

Back Seat Driver

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Back Seat Driver

You are a lovely woman, Kate—
enough to cause my breath to bate,
enough to stun and addlepate—
but if we stop to ruminate
each time we reach another gate,
it is my fear that we’ll be late.
Why not let me cogitate
when forward progress to abate?
If necessary, I vow to wait
as we wage a long debate
on whether to go left or straight
as we approach the interstate,
but each time you excoriate,
criticise or agitate
for route changes, I rue my fate
the day I set up this blind date!!!

From: Your very competent driver, Nate


The prompt today was ruminate.

Mame

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Version 2

Mame

Compose a ballad for Auntie Mame,
famous of body and of name,
and make the music slow and sad
as we revere the moves she had;
for all those parts she chose to wiggle
eventually began to jiggle.

Those shocking movements that won her fame
were finally ones she had to tame,
and all the fellows who once came
to see her at her sexy game
seem to have vanished, to have flown
once her parts moved on their own.

No matter that she lived by art—
how wide her fame, how big her heart—
once revered parts began to swing,
I fear her peeping Toms took wing.
What wives saw as depravity,
I fear she lost to gravity.

Yet years that held her in their sway
could not take her spirit away.
In some assisted living facility,
she still displays agility.
Her movements, true, may be much slower
and certain displayed parts much lower.

Her scarves are larger and tightly wrapped
where once they fluttered and they flapped,
but still admirers hoot and holler
and grace her g string with a dollar.
So sing her praises far and wide.
She’s still the tart she was inside.

The prompt was jiggle.

Read the Signs

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Read the Signs

Are you possibly aware
from your vantage over there,
so well-shod and so well-clad,
that you are overdressed a tad?
In fact, it would be hard for you
no matter what garment or shoe
you might have chosen to wear instead.
I fear that you have been misled.
You’d still be overdressed, you see—
you’re in a nudist colony!

The prompt today was “aware.”

Relax Redux: Empty Nest

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Tonight, one of my favorite blogs, written by Carol and titled “Relax,” published a poem that begins with the lines:

Tonight, I am missing
all half-grown kissing
–oh! I meant kittens—
an orange one, Mittens,

(HERE is a link to her entire poem.)

I, however, loved the original typo (or contrived typo) and challenged her to make a poem starting from it and remaining with that idea.  I promised to do so myself, and have, hoping she won’t mind my stealing my version of her first line.  Here is mine:

Empty Nest

I’ve been missing
that half-grown kissing
that lasts a minute
with chocolate in it.
Runny noses.
Heads of roses
picked off stems
like rarest gems
presented in
a tuna tin.
Priceless treasure
for my pleasure.

My life lacks
these loving smacks––
even a quickie,
albeit sticky
with peanut butter.
A parting stutter,
and then they’re gone
and off upon
adventures new,
away from you,
taking their kisses
to other misses.

I’m awaiting hers.  Are you up to meeting the challenge, Carol?

Nativity

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Nativity

It was some day, that day when light came into my world.
Reaching out my arms and legs as they came uncurled,
so many lovely colors bursting into sight.
All this brilliant pigment where formerly was night.

All the parts familiar still attached to me—
my ankle and my navel, my elbow and my knee.
But no longer together, curled into one tight ball.
I never knew that I could be so wide and tall.

Stretching out to fill this square I wonder when
I will be forgetting the curved world I’ve been in.
My mother now beside me instead of all around.
At other times she’s simply nowhere to be found.

My father’s arms around me—arms brand new to me.
All the other others coming to see what I may be.
Scratchy things now touch me—dry things and things with fluff.
Everything a new thing until I’ve had enough.

Then I find my power and make some kind of noise.
Soon I’m joined by other infant girls and boys,
and the whole room fills with sounds of our distress.
Very satisfying, I fear I must confess.

The nurses all come running, the fathers and the sisters.
The orderlies and doctors, the misses and the misters.
And when they lift us up, each one in different arms,
all our cries desist as they cater to our charms.

“Some day,” they’ve been saying, and now we are all here—
a fresh new crop of humans arrived for them to rear.
Once more we exercise our lungs and make each father cower.
Fresh to this new world, we have already found our power.

The prompt today was someday.

Call to Arms

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Things That Cling


Call to Arms

Sweaters do it, slips do it.
Even crackers and clam dips do it.
Let’s do it. I want to cling!!!

Saran wrap was made for it.
Lonely hearts first lust then fade for it.
Just put your arms in a ring.

Hold me and squeeze with them.
I’m the thing that you should seize with them.
Want all the hugs you can bring.

Monkeys in trees do it,
pointer fingers when you sneeze do it.
Let’s do it. Let’s do that thing.

Don’t hesitate o’er it.
Gotta tell you that I adore it.
Let’s do it.  Let’s have a fling!!!

The prompt word today is “cling.”