Category Archives: Humor

Ode to the Las Vegas Buffet

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Ode to the Las Vegas Buffet

After some poker and roulette and craps,
we return to our rooms for some well-deserved naps.
The gambler in me has been curbed at a cost.
One poker chip memento, and the rest has been lost.

As I sink into bed, worries float away,
heavenward-bound as I doze in the hay.
Tomorrow’s buffet—that iconic repast
will insure our regrets over losses won’t last.

We’ll pile our plates, then come back for more
until we pop out of the clothes that we wore.
We’ll recoup our losses, for the assets we left
we’ll take home again in our bodily heft!

 

Prompt words today are float, gambler, memento, repast, heavenward and iconic. Images by Aidan Howe and Kenny Eliason

The Real Dirt, for dVerse Poets

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The Real Dirt

Dirt has had, since its inception,
an unfair place in our conception—
a thing for us to rail against
and throw the laundry pail against.

Dirty thoughts are seen as rude,
and yet dirt grows our daily food.
Without it, we would flail and totter.
Impossible to walk on water!

 

Just had to repost this poem from four years ago for the dVerse Poets prompt.  You can find it here:  dVerse Poets
To read other poems on this topic, go HERE.

Dietary Doldrums

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Dietary Doldrums

Her eating habits, luckily, were found to be most corrigible,
for her personality was found to still be porridgeable.
Oatmeal formed her breakfast and salads formed her lunch
as she foresook the bad foods on which she used to munch.

Buttery popcorn banished as an unhealthy mistake,
she snacked instead on kale chips for her figure’s sake.
Rare steak was  soon banished, for she relished it no more
once she foresook flesh meats, shuddering at their gore.

Her electric grinder ground chickpeas up instead
and this was the protein upon which she fed.
Healthy ever after once her war with food was won,
meals sugarless and greaseless, alas, were not much fun.

 

\Prompt words today are buttery, personality, gore, corrigible, Steak and electric. Image by Deryn Macey on Unsplash. 

Strappy Stilettos

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Strappy Stilettos

I languish in these pointy shoes with their flimsy straps.
My ankles teeter with their height, I poke out through their gaps.
I don’t appreciate the fact that they’re the current style.
You try walking in such shoes mile after mile!

The material that forms them is so sparing and so meager
that I’ll be darned if I can figure out why gals are eager
to teeter down the street in them or wear them out to dance.
Trying to walk on shoes like this is taking quite a chance!

The truth lies in the fact that shoes like this must be the fashion
of men for whom the look of things is their only passion.
Safety and walkability cannot be their goal,
for feet were not created to balance on a pole

held in by straps that mean the heels can slide from side to side,
prompting a proclivity to stumble and to slide.
Mr. Choo and Ferragamo, if they ever tried to wear them
might have found their shoes inclined to torture and to scare them.

There should be a special Hell made for designers who maintain
that for the sake of passion one must succumb to the pain
of shoes that are a torture. They should have to walk a mile in them
and while they are in agony, be forced to feign a smile in them!!!!

 

Prompt words today are: pointy shoes, languish, lie, meager, appreciate and flimsy. Image by Femme Spirit @Unsplash.

Disposing of Grandma (In Accordance with Her Wishes)

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The Vacant Lot

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The Vacant Lot

The vapors of a morning mist rise from the vacant lot.
It is a tract forgotten— our neighborhood’s biggest blot.
Each person’s in denial as to their distribution
of building rubble and garbage that’s their daily contribution

to this precarious tumble of rubble, junk and weeds
that every year grows higher and in whose jumble breeds
mosquitoes, rats and killer bees that invade my yard
making neighborly coexistence exceptionally hard.

Good fences make good neighbors I’ve found to be a myth.
To see the truth of this old adage, we must strip it to its pith.
For the stone wall that borders it, alas, has been infested
by a million angry worker bees whose well-being’s invested

in invading all their neighbors, driving dogs and human folks
back into their houses to avoid their neighbors’ pokes.
A precarious situation, at best, dear reader, for,
there is a dilemma present at its core.

If we want to eat their honey must we put up with their stings?
Must we coincide with every danger nature brings?
For the ending of the story, if you care, you now must wait.
For I will recite it at a later date.

Today’s prompt words are vapor, precarious, myth, tract, denial and vacant lot.

Morning Cuppas

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Cup of Java?
Cuppa Tea?

Cups of Java or Cups of Tea? Me, I just need my:

Morning Couplets

Every single day for years, my morning’s not replete
until my poem is published—polished and complete.

I meander through my sentences until I think they’re done,
and then I herd them into shape—each metaphor and pun.

My need is pathological to get them all just right.
I love words’ sensuality, their pathos and their bite.

Though some have a reluctance to show up when I call them,
there’s a satisfaction when I finally recall them.

What would I do with mornings if I had no words to play with?
There’d be nothing else for me to find to fill my day with!

Prompts for today are meander, sentence, pathological, replete, reluctance.

Rules of Order

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Rules of Order
(Mom’s Note Taped up on The Fridge)

I have a part time passion for things in their right place.
Shoes go in the closet. A nose goes on a face.
An Oxford comma bothers me when placed before an “and.”
An apostrophe in a plural word? Something I can’t stand!

“Me and her,” though common in modern print and speech,
is a solecism that I must beseech
you not to make. The use of it is bound to cause a screech.
Such errors unforgivable—a gross grammatical breach.

When issued from an errant tongue, it’s sure to cause a rise
in my pulse and blood pressure and pitchforks in my eyes!!!!
When I was a teacher, I’d put squiggles through a word
like “awesome” for its overuse was one I found absurd.

In striking out such errors, I felt most justified,
to save its proper usage for times more bonafide.
Right things in right places just somehow soothe my soul.
Sorting out the universe is my heartfelt goal.

Forks all on the left side, spoons and knives all on the right.
Bowls all stacked up on a shelf are a lovely sight.
Ants all neatly marching in their single rows.
Orderly arrangements? Even Nature knows

are the proper way for all the world to go,
and now that I’ve informed you, even you must know
enough to know that order makes me a happy camper,
so after this, please put your dirty socks into the hamper!!!

 

 

Prompts today are part time, passion, striking, solecism (a grammatical mistake in speech or writing), rise and squiggles. Photo by jdb

A “Golden Years” Rebuttal

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A “Golden Years” Rebuttal

Those who call these “Golden Years “deserve my blunt oration,
for getting older, you should know, ain’t no free vacation!
The abundant pains of aging for sure are not a bonus,
for to suffer silently seems to be our onus.

Our skin’s variegations you may think are bad tattoos,
but what you see as sub-par art, alas, is just a bruise
from taking our blood thinners. Every blot and every dot
is a new reminder of a bumping that we got.

When you bring us nuts and caramel, we thank you for your ventures,
but we do not mention we can’t eat them with our dentures!
“Old age ain’t for sissies,” is an adage often told,
so I am not the first to bemoan this getting old.

 

(Just kidding, Dolly.) Prompt words today are caramel, abundant, oration, variegation, and golden. Retablo and photo by jdb.

Preparing for Summer

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Preparing for Summer

When your appetite starts knocking and you crave a light repast,
even though the time since your last meal seems too vast,
tie your cravings to a stanchion and curb their niggling prompt.
Do some calisthenics or take a forest romp.
Defenestrate those Oreos. Resist that peanut brittle.
It takes a lot of will power to make yourself more little.
Dieting’s not easy. Resolution is the pits,
but it will all be worth it when your favorite swimsuit fits!!!!

 

Prompts for today are: knocking, vast, defenestrate, stanchion, forest and peanut brittle.