Category Archives: Humor

Talking Turkey

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Talking Turkey

(A Thanksgiving Invitation Guaranteed to Encourage Friends to Insist
on Having Thanksgiving at Their House This Year!)

Feeling grungy, out-of-tempo, out-of-sorts and kinda mean.
Need a new Thanksgiving turkey, ‘cuz last year’s is turning green.
Can’t avouch for what would happen if I tried to serve it now,
but perhaps I’ll scrape the mold off and try to serve it anyhow?

Come to think, it’s penicillin, so how  dangerous can it be?
It might just be beneficial, so let’s try it and we can see.
I’ll whip up some new potatoes, open cans of cranberries.
Don’t forget to bring the pies. I await your RSVP’s!!!!

Prompts today are grunge, tempo, turkey, avouch and green.

The Rocky Road to Maturity

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The Rocky Road to Maturity

A state of ataraxia is simply not the norm
when a particular condition has taken you by storm.
It makes you feel ungainly and your customary grace
seems to gather syllables and turn into disgrace.

Moodiness and hormones and pimples and the rest
of the ills that mark this state don’t put you at your best,
and there’s a bigger problem once you survive your pubescence,
for it is just a prelude to the state of adolescence!

 

Word prompts today are customary, ungainly, prelude, ataraxia (tranquility) and particular.

Protected Zone

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Protected Zone

Our new pet’s experimental—
its domain an environmental
zone that’s been declared protected
ever since the kids detected
the cobweb that is stretched out there
between the wall and etagere.

The spider that constructed it—
every gossamer sticky bit—
and its process of mastication
is the object of much fascination.
Though I’d like to be done with it,
the kids have too much fun with it.

The spider, finished with its knitting,
spends the rest of its time sitting
surveying new bugs caught in it,
then eating what they’ve got in it.
And though I find this plot most grim,
it seems it’s more than just a whim.

We’ve been told we’re not to maul it
since Sis found a name to call it.
And that is why we’ve been adjusting
areas that we’ve been dusting,
and the web that’s stretched from shelf to picture
has become a permanent fixture.

Prompt words today are cobwebs, experimental, maul and picture.

Also, for dVerse Poets Open Link.

The Afterlife

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The Afterlife

When it comes to thinking about the afterlife,
differing opinions are likely to run rife.
Norse warriors were rewarded by a ticket to Valhalla.
Muslims aspire to Jannah after judgement day by Allah.
In order to prepare for it, a Catholic confesses,
hoping to atone in time for all his Earthly messes.

A protestant believes in heaven but not in confessing.
He deals with sins within his prayers and leaves his preacher guessing
about what he’s been up to, storing misdeeds in his head,
atoning for his weaknesses in private, before bed.
He fears if he’s a sinner or a selfish reprobate,
access might be denied to him at the pearly gate.

Atheists are cavalier, not needing a solution
to the ills they do on Earth, fearing no retribution.
The good they do in life is not for heavenly reward.
The charity they practice, done of their own accord.
Whether there’s an afterlife, they don’t pretend to know.
Comminatory actions limited to life below.

Afterlife or not, however, animals don’t worry.
They graze and swim and procreate, swim and fly and scurry,
unaware there’s anything wrong in what they do.
They do not pray on bended knee nor frequent any pew.
They live the lives they’re given, just following their nature,
not fretting over afterlives of any nomenclature.

 

Prompts today are afterlife, cavalier, coalesce, comminatory and weakness.

Beggars Can’t Be Choosers

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Beggars Can’t Be Choosers

My disgruntled spouse surveyed the plum,
then squeezed its flesh beneath his thumb,
saw that there were plenty more
in the tree that grew next door,
and though the crop was most abundant,
he merely saw it as redundant.

There were no grapes for him to filch.
Bananas? It had proffered zilch.
No oranges or apples to
seed and peel and slice and chew.
No limes or lemons to produce
a glass of fresh-squeezed zesty juice.

It made him sad and rather glum
to see plum after purple plum
hung on the tree. Could I dispute
his  claim that we’d have to commute
to steal instead various fruit?
I felt his argument was moot.

One must make do with what might come.
The progeny of plum was plum.
If he required figs or berries,
peaches, kiwi fruit or cherries,
he’d have to head out to the store
or plant a a dozen trees or more.

He’d have to mulch and trim and spray,
water every other day,
and wait for years for fruit to grow,
but he was hungry now and so
he went outside and picked him some
plum after plum and plum and plum.

 


Prompt words today are glum, commute, zilch and abundant. Images thanks to Marius Karotkis and Kelly Neil on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Writer’s Block

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Writer’s Block

Rip up your notebook and throw it away.
At heart, you know you have nothing to say.
The cadre of writers who came on before you
wrote legions of words guaranteed not to bore you.
They composed solid volumes of bountiful wit.
Their number of sales will verify it.
The drivel you write is mere uninspired lore,
so better you read what they wrote than write more.

 

Prompt words today are notebook,solid, bountiful, cadre and number.

Bedbound

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Bedbound

I have pain in my back and water on my knee
and not one single friend has expressed sympathy!
I’ve called every doctor in town to explain
my aches and my ills, but it’s all been in vain.

Not one can discover what it is that ails me.
Each remedy that I’ve sought out simply fails me.
The sun hurts my eyes and the rain brings depression.
It hurts when I walk but bed rest brings compression

that freezes my spine so I’m forced to just lie here,
seeking assistance from all who walk by here.
And although I’ve no appetite, still I must eat,
so there’s one request that I have to repeat.

If you’re going to town, could you help me out, please,
and bring me a pizza? Sausage. Extra cheese.
Because I’m so thin, the doctor prescribes beer.
and since there’s a Quik Stop that’s really quite near,

could you pick up a six-pack, some ice cream and chips?
For I simply must add some flesh to my hips.
My bones are protruding so far that they hurt
from the weight of the sheets and the thinnest night shirt.

I’m under the weather, headachy and  thin.
I cannot convey the bad shape that I’m in.
My offspring don’t care and my spouse says I’m making it
hard to stay with me because I’m just faking it.

I have to complain because I must confess it
is impossible when one is ill to repress it.
Although all my friends say I’ve bats in my attic,
these ills you can’t see are not psychosomatic!

Prompts today are under the weather, offspring, flush, repress and stay.

Zombie Ball

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Zombie Ball

Slice of liver, ooze of spleen—
add them to the soup tureen.
See all the pallid corpses preen?
They seek to woo the zombie queen.
Complexions chalky white or green
through the haunted house careen,
much rowdier on Halloween
than all the holidays between.

 

For dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Careen

 

Wheeler Dealer

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Wheeler Dealer

Our precocious daughter, swathed in leather, first tattoo
in view below her crop top, reached out and grabbed a few
peanuts from the table and demanded, “Amirite?”
Crumbled off the peanut shells and took a hungry bite.

She had argued that a motorbike was the best solution
to getting her to school with minimum pollution.
(Our driving her to school, consuming so much gas,
creates carbon monoxide at a level that’s most crass.)

“Umitebee” said her father, and I nodded my accord.
As her sole benefactors, just what we could afford
influenced our decision, and instead of motorbike,
we simply told our daughter to go and take a hike!

Prompt words are benefactor, leather, precocious, and amirite,

am·i·rite: exclamation ,INFORMAL, US  am I right? (used to invite confirmation or assert that one’s previous statement is correct) “not much point to it now, amirite?”

Web

15 Replies

 


Web

Please do not procrastinate when walking ‘neath these wires,
for one who does so may not get that for which he aspires.
Trick or Treat acquires more meaning . Must I even mention
that straying too close to this web may bring unsought detention?
Heed well my warning for tonight what seems to be is not.
As you look for treats you seek tonight, you also may be sought. 
This spooky spider is not fake, in fact it is too real.
It will abet your progress and make of you a meal.

 

This spider, viewed in my friends Beck and Lach’s yard, was HUGE. It’s body alone was three inches long. Just in time for Halloween. No need for other decorations.

Prompt words today are procrastinate, trick, spooky, abet and detention.