Rainy Day Doldrums
I’m frenetic with fog, frustrated by rain.
Drop after drop, again and again.
Drumming on roof tiles and gushing in gutters.
Dropping from drain spouts in loud splashing mutters.
Too cold and too dark to chance a meander,
I pull back the drapes to take a small gander.
This poem is a tribute to dryness and sun.
I’ll be glad when the rainy season is done.
I pull back the drapes to have a small ganderPrompts today are fog, frenetic, gander, tribute and glad.
Sticking to the Straight and Narrow
(Mother Superior’s Rejoinder)
Please do not lollygag. There’s no time more.
We’re closing the shutters and locking the door.
Wipe those dreams from your brain, for it is our fear
that your thoughts will diverge from the prim and austere.
Make sure your spirit is pearl white and pure
with no sinful streaks to compete with demure.
Deadly sins number from one up to seven,
and striated souls will not make it to heaven.
Prompt words today are lollygag, austere, brain, striate and lock.
Ludicrous Lore
They say the perpetrators all got off scot-free
by posing as indigenous, but how could that be?
They made a ludicrous trio, emerging from their car.
All wrapped-up like packages, they couldn’t wander far.
They’d been here stealing chickens from White Cloud’s poultry farm
on the reservation, but what could be the harm?
He had so many chickens that he’d never miss the one
or two or three or four or five that they had pinched for fun.
Yet with feathers in their hat bands and blankets held around them,
instead they uttered this excuse when the rangers found them.
They’d done a bit of hunting here on tribal land.
Their leader was Geronimo. He and his loyal band
had shot the deer with arrows, then bound it to their roof
with ropes tied ’round its antlers and then around one hoof.
But driving down the winding road, the driver got too dizzy.
(They said that it was vertigo that put him in a tizzy.)
That’s what caused the accident that spilled them off the road
where they toppled over sideways and lost their struggling load.
The deer ran off into the woods. It seems it wasn’t dead,
but merely stunned when arrows hit it on the head.
(Luckily, the bottle from which they’d all been drinking
had fallen in the water where the car was quickly sinking.)
It’s surprising that the rangers believed their tawdry tale,
and so they didn’t haul these buffoons off to jail.
They simply called a tow truck, which to their consternation
towed the whole bunch down the road to the reservation
where, alas, they found no kin but only laughter met them
as they huddled near the car and phoned for friends to get them.
And after they departed—hungover, sodden, sore,
their whole silly debacle passed into tribal lore.
The time those drunken cowboys with nothing else to do
sneaked onto the tribal lands and tried to pass for Sioux.
Their totaled car they left behind, and here the whole plot thickens.
It now serves as a handy coop for all the tribal chickens.
Today”s prompt words are scot-free, vertigo, indigenous and package. Image by Tyler Mulligan on Unsplash.
Simian Payback
In more ways than one, my new roommate is simious.
Eating bananas, he’s hardly abstemious.
His arms are so long that his fists scrape the ground
and when I am gone, he monkeys around!
When we go out in public, the people all gape.
It doesn’t take science to declare him an ape.
He swings on the curtains and ruins my decor
by pulling the drapes from their rod to the floor.
If you said he’s an ingrate, you wouldn’t be wrong.
When I go to the dentist and he comes along,
he mimes for a freebie—a checkup and cleaning,
then stands at the mirror, inspecting and preening,
never imagining he’s out of line
as I dole out the cash for his cleaning and mine.
Just one thing might mitigate his crazy acts,
so I ask that you temper your scorn with the facts.
He was raised in the jungle, then put in a cage
and only let out when he reached middle age.
So how could I help but assist in his exit
with no one around to thwart it or hex it?
With the key in the lock, I just gave a twist
and gave his jailbreak a needed assist.
But now I admit I was way less than clever,
for I have acquired the worst roommate ever!
What prompted my action? Was I less than smart
when I saw his great need, in playing my part?
I felt that I owed him a really big debt,
for an ape is way more than merely a pet.
If you studied your science and paid good attention,
you could not have missed this pertinent mention:
if there hadn’t been apes, then there wouldn’t be
any of you and there wouldn’t be me!
Prompts today are decor, ingrate, mitigate, abstemious and science. Image by Suzanne Schwartz on Unsplash.
False Endings
His paranoia is one for the books.
He finds disease wherever he looks.
He anguishes over the slightest small sneeze
and the tiniest bump brings him down to his knees.
When his girl left him, the heartbreak he felt
was myocarditis, and the smallest welt
on his neck or his face is cancer for sure,
so he’s off to to Mayo Clinic to look for a cure.
His fixation’s macabre and his acts supercilious
every damn time that he feels a bit bilious,
for he knows better than all of his friends
that he’ll soon meet his maker, so he makes amends
for all his ill deeds and his slights and his snits,
seeing the light when he’s down in the pits.
He should have done better and eaten less pie,
and now he’ll pay for it, for he’s going to die.
And when he gets better, you can bet he’ll be sure
that repentance has brought a miraculous cure.
So goes the story, and though it’s not his ending,
you can be sure that a new plague is pending!
(Note: I know I’ve used this photo at least a few (?) times before but it’s just so appropriate to this poem that I can’t help using it again. )
Prompt words today are: myocarditis, macabre, anguish, supercilious and paranoia.
Bar Stool Bozos and the Predictable Come-on Line
A new potential conquest is seen falling from her stool
in bodily protection from contact with this fool.
He’s a denizen of single bars, a problem to avoid,
for he’s sure to leave you listless, if not, in fact, annoyed.
How many boring platitudes can one bromide spout?
How may time-worn come-on lines are vying to get out
of lips that move unceasingly, spilling into the night
all the obvious clichés that he’s driven to cite?
Of all the gin joints in the world, why did he enter in
into the one where you came to have a quiet gin?
There should be a law passed that you get to vote on who
gets to wander into bars and saunter up to you.
They should have to pass an I.Q. test, then be sorted and tagged,
from “interesting” to “boring,” and the worst should then be gagged
with a small hole for a soda straw so they could go on drinking
without the ones around them having to know what they’re thinking.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”
“We gotta get you outa that wet dress and into a dry martini.”
Prompt words today are bromide, falling, denizen and problem.
Note: Bromide in literary usage means a phrase, cliché, or platitude that is trite or unoriginal. It can be intended to soothe or placate; it can suggest insincerity or a lack of originality in the speaker. Bromide can also mean a commonplace or tiresome person, a bore (a person who speaks in bromides).
New Dress, Two Sizes Too Small
Once I hone my figure, this will fit me like a glove.
Not one curve will be awry. I’ll be in shape for love.
I’ll put myself in training and walk a mile a day.
I’ll pack up all my cake pans and stow them all away.
I’ll give up chips and chocolate and concentrate on kale,
and after just a month or two, be skinny as a rail.
I have such fine convictions. I know I’ll reach my goal,
and to celebrate, I think I’ll have another roll!
Prompt words are awry, hone, train, figure and glove. Dress image by Sharon McCutcheon. Cinnamon roll image by Dilyara Garifullina, both on Unsplash.
New Baby Blues
I rue the day my mom acquired my new baby brother.
I wish that she’d return him and come back with another.
When I first saw him, he was cute and I was rather proud,
but that’s before I knew the fact that he would be so loud.
When he cries, he makes a sort of ear-splitting sharp bleating
all the time Mom’s in the kitchen seeing to the heating
of the bottle used to apportion out his dinner.
You’d think for all the fuss he makes that he was growing thinner,
Yet I swear that day-by-day, to my great disgust
that he’s growing bigger—fatter and more robust!
And when he isn’t sleeping or drinking or deranged,
he is damp or poopie and insisting to be changed.
I think this baby’s broken and I think we need a new one.
I asked if I could go along when they go to view one,
but Mommy says there’s no return because this one is used,
while Daddy uttered not a word—just stood looking amused.
It really isn’t funny, though. In fact, I’m most annoyed
that they have less time for me now that they’re employed
taking care of baby—making sure he’s fed and well
while all this time I’ve been here too, living in baby Hell!
He’s diapered, held and cuddled, sung to and adored
while his older sister sits here feeling bored.
They say that I’ll feel different once he’s more grown up,
but if it were up to me, I’d trade him for a pup!
Prompt words today are proud, heating, apportion, damp and rue.
Air Conditions
Grandma was neither meek nor mild and she was not abused.
The thought of any man ruling her makes me most amused.
But she was parsimonious when it came to waste,
scraping each bit of cookie dough to give us all a taste.
The weather could be sweltering before she used the fan.
“No need to run the light bill up just because I can!”
she’d quip when we expressed our feeble pleas for cool air,
but she allowed no wasteful behavior in her private lair.
Though she was far from venal, one tactic seemed to work,
for along with penny-pinching, my grandma had one quirk.
Her appetite for sugar was beyond compare,
so we’d produce the chocolate and then flip on the air!!!
She’d rifle through the chocolate box for caramels and nuts,
for when it came to favorites, she expressed no ifs or buts.
For summer after summer, this was Grandma’s rule.
So long as supplies lasted, everything was cool.
Prompt words today are sweltering, parsimonious, meek, venal and abused.
Polite Conversation
If you’re looking for activities that are sure to excite us,
best not to show the cat scans of your diverticulitis.
Discussion of this topic is sure to bring unease,
for most folks are oblivious to other folks’ disease.
Illness carries no cachet and should not be repeated.
When bringing up such maladies, you’re sure to feel defeated.
So keep incisions covered and try not to share your woe,
for if you’re hypochondria’s showing, you’ll be labelled as a schmo.
Prompt words today are diverticulitis, oblivious, schmo, cachet and defeated.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 