Category Archives: Humor

Enough

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Enough

At six o’clock, glib comments start to fill the air.
We’re hungry for frittata, but the table’s bare.
Darkness fills the kitchen, for mama’s gone on strike.
She’s gone off to the city. Alone, on papa’s bike.

It’s dicey whether she’ll return. She says she’s tired of cooking.
She’s in need of a vacation and so she made a booking
at a posh hotel that has its own cafe
where she will dine on coq au vin followed by crème brûlée.

For once, serving the rest of us will not be her fate.
Someone else will  wait on her and she’ll just sit and wait.
In the morning she will order service in her room
where she’ll not even make her bed or wield dust cloth or broom.

Her note says then she might come home, or she might just wait
and find a nice seaside resort where she can cogitate
for another day or two. She says we shouldn’t worry.
The pizza place delivers if we’re not in a hurry.

Her recipe book’s on the shelf. The stove is  under it.
Her apron’s in the closet and she’s sure that it will fit
each and every one of us while she is on vacation.
She says that fending for ourselves will be an education.

She says to wash the dishes even though it is a bore,
for if she sees a messy kitchen when she walks in the door,
she’s going to walk right out again until we prove we’ve learned
that things will be real different after Mama has returned!

 

 

 

 

Prompts for today are six, glib, frittata, dicey and darkness.

Just Desserts

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Just Desserts

Was my brother ornery or was he merely dumb?
Once he told me rubber bands were a new sort of gum
that didn’t blow good bubbles, but at least you could rechew it,
saving you the money of having to renew it.

Given any option, he was bound to choose the crazy one,
and if the choice involved some work, sure to choose the lazy one.
He always had ideas about how to do work faster,
and without exception, they resulted in disaster.

Like the time he used Dad’s blowtorch to trim all of our trees,
not taking into full account the briskness of the breeze
and set the house on fire, slightly singing the outside,
and when the firetrucks arrived, he asked them for a ride!

Once when men came to fix the roof, I heard the kitty mewing
and knew at once there was a chance that more mischief was brewing.
Whatever put it in his head to waterproof the cat
by dipping it from tail to neck in the tarring vat?

He’d do things like putting red ants inside my skirt,
and when my folks weren’t watching, he’d spit on my dessert,
then eat the rest himself when I asked to leave the table.
He found ways to torment me whenever he was able.

Entertainment such as this was what amused my brother,
giving ulcers to my dad and white hairs to my mother.
But growing up with brother turned out fortunate for me,
for he gave a clear pattern of what I shouldn’t be.

And now that I have kids myself to tend and love and cook for,
I have a sure advantage, for I know just what to look for.
I see things with my brother’s eye and remove such temptations
that might lead to misdirections in their moral educations.

And as for my brother’s childhood deportment flaws,
just desserts were finally served. I know this because
fate dished out the punishment for his childhood errors
by giving him two sons that I hear are holy terrors!

Prompt words today are waterproof, idea, head, ornery and option.

Special Delivery

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Special Delivery

Fetch the doctor and bring him home.
I’m giving birth to a new poem.
If he gives you the runaround,
I guess I’ll be hospital-bound,
for I’ve got fever, cramps and chills
that can’t be cured by any pills.

I’m falling into a big pit
and I can’t get rid of it.
The lacuna waits for me.
It is the well of poetry
that I’ll fall into if no saint
comes to rid me of the taint
of words that rhyme or words that don’t.
 I fear that if the doctor won’t,
surely I’ll be ripped apart
by narratives that must depart.

They’ve been gestating so long
that I fear something will go wrong.
So call the doctor. Tell the fellow
that my fingers have gone yellow
from the words that can’t get out.
I’m getting rheumatism, gout.

I’ve got a mass within my heart
and I don’t know how best to start
to free the words that must be born—
that from my body must be torn.
Womb and brain and heart and spleen
stuffed full but yearning to be lean.

Emptied of words, stripped to the core,
then I”ll have room to sprout some more.
For though I grow the poems right well
and have fine stories I can tell—
although I’m bursting with the stuff,
I know that words are not enough.
For years they have been telling me
it’s all in the delivery.

 

 

Prompt words are fetch, runaround, chills, yellow and lacuna.
Photo by Freestocks on Unsplash.

Gardening in the Rain

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Gardening in the Rain

It started with a gentle tug
to trim a succulent from a jug
stuffed full with hardy hens and chicks
but tugs turned into pulls and picks
Until the pockets of my pants
and both my hands were full of plants.

By then, I was already soaked,
for as I pushed and pulled and poked,
the storm that had been gentle  drops,
turned into pelts and then to plops.
Since cool rain was a respite from
days of heat and glaring sun,

I loitered some along the way
to see what new additions lay
along the path that stretched between
the lower garden where I’d been
and the house far up above—
that toasty place—that cushy glove.

But then there was that empty pot
(whose jade plant we’d moved to the lot)
where there was dirt but plants were not
and all those cuttings I’d just got
stuffing my pockets, filling hands.
Can you see how the plot expands?

Thus it went that for an hour
I stood there in the soaking shower
restoring beauty to the pot 
where formerly beauty was not.
Then, dripping in my sopping clothes,
I used my sleeve to swipe my nose

and shed my clothes all at the door,
tracked wet prints across the floor,
hung up wet clothes and dried my skin,
then used the towel to wrap me in,
and meant to dress and have a meal,
but couldn’t help it, had to steal

to the window for one look more,
then opened up the sliding door,
and, one hand clasping tight the towel,
I headed out with garden trowel
to add if needs be one plant more
to the pot planted before.

I love gardening in the rain.
and see no reason to abstain.
With no sun to scorch my skin,
no reason to remain within.
And since I loved where i had been,
What I did once, I did again.

 

(Click on photos to enlarge and read captions to hear the rest of the story.)

Then I spotted those hen and chicks
and other overgrown pots of succulents.
but that didn’t stop my collecting,
It was then that I remembered the empty flower pot on the boulder near the pool.
Nearby was a large-leaf jade plant I’d been meaning to trim back
and a number of offshoots from a plant beside the sidewalk
And before I knew it, the empty planter was empty no more.
Four hours later, my blouse is almost dry.

 

Nature Lesson (A Discourse with Bee and Hummingbird)

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Nature Lesson
(A Discourse with Bee and Hummingbird)

It has a beauty most divine,
that flower swinging from the vine,
and yet the hummingbird and bee
come not to ogle but to dine.

The flower swinging from the vine
has a nectar sweet as wine
with a savor most divine.

And yet the hummingbird and bee
must know that it belongs to me—
theirs not to savor but just to see.

Come not to ogle but to dine?
It seems the lesson learned is mine.
What nature’s given is also thine.

 

For the dVerse Poets Trimeric Prompt

To read other poems to this prompt or to post your own, go HERE.

Feeding Frenzy

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Feeding Frenzy

When I hear footsteps on the roof I do not ever worry,
even though they’re rapid as though someone’s in a hurry,
there is no burglar kneeling there waiting to rob my vault.
If there are noises overhead, it is my kitty’s fault.

The loot she seeks is kibble. She cannot stand the fact
that I am so heedless and have so little tact
that I feed dogs before the cats, and yet she doesn’t dare
venture into the backyard, for canines quarter there.

 


The fact of my investment in the solid gate
that keeps dogs from the cats’ domain does not expiate
the sin that I have chosen to feed the doggies first.
Of all my pet decisions, she thinks this is the worst.

 


So from the rooftop far above where dog types cannot reach,
the girl cat feels the need to stand there daily to impeach
my decision, once again, and let me know her wishes
for soft cat food and dry cat food in their separate dishes.

And once the dogs are fed, we race—her up there, me below,
and however quickly I happen to go,
she always beats me in the race to get to the back door
where I rip one food pouch open and she meows for more.

 


While her brother digs into juicy tuna souffle,
grateful for just one dish of this easy prey,
she looks up accusingly from her feline crouch,
and now and then I heed her plea and yield the extra pouch.

 

 

 

Prompts today are on the roof, fault, loot, kneel and investment.

Whirlwind

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Whirlwind

Cookie crumbs, pumpkin seeds pepper the floor
beneath the stool of this child I adore—
a slovenly child who is perfectly able
to spill half her milk on the floor near the table.
As she sits cutting paper dolls, paper bits flutter
down from the piles of snippets and clutter

she amasses around her in  any room where
I’ve worked half the morning just to prepare
for the meeting with friends that occurs in an hour.
The sofa cushions she spread in a tower
are ringing the sofa back, placed in a mound
to catch mountaineer Barbie should she fall to the ground.

Covered by green napkins, the pillows now pass
for a fantasy hillside all covered in grass.
I scoop up the clutter and then the small miss,
ransom the cookies for a small kiss,
then hurry to try to clean up the room.
Locate new napkins, then brandish the broom,

sweeping up crumbs and paper and things
left in her wake just before the bell rings
and the first guest enters, surveying the scene
now cleared of the mess. Perfectly serene.
“I don’t know how you do it, with work and a kid,”
my friend says, not knowing the stuff that I hid

just two minutes ago behind the hall door
that once only held coats but now holds a lot more:
Barbie dolls, crayons and scissors and scraps
as well as neat rows of sweaters and wraps.
Family secrets that we’ll never tell
that every mommy knows all too well.

 

Prompt words today are seed, flutter, grounds, sloven and milk.

He Said, She Said

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He Said, She Said

When she questioned his fidelity, he said she was a loser,
though he was the real lowlife—a bully and a bruiser.
“We’re not a pair,” he snapped at her. “I never took an oath
that I would be true to you, in fact, I’m rather loath
to say that when I married you, it wasn’t a mistake.
The only thing I liked about it was the wedding cake!

I’d had a few too many the day that we were hitched
and ever since we had the kids, you have bitched and bitched.
You like to snap my head off If I partake with the boys
and come home after midnight. If I make the slightest noise
and if I wake the kids up, well, so what? They’re my kids, too.
Perhaps they’d like to spend some time with me instead of you.

So what if it is 3 a.m.? Tomorrow we’ll sleep in.
You’d think that playing with your kids past midnight is a sin!!!!
The way to keep your man is to practice your felicity.
Instead of gripes, I’d like to see some wifely elasticity.
I always was a party guy. I always was a rover.
If you expect much more of me, my time with you is over.”

To Which She Answered:

The kids are at my mother’s, your packed bag in the garage.
Almost from the beginning, our marriage was a mirage.
I’ve called the man to change the locks. I’ve closed our bank account.
There’s money in your suitcase—a very small amount.
My father bought our house and my salary, at best,
is what was in the bank account. You drank up all the rest.

So what if it is 3 a.m.? You’re used to nighttime games.
Check your little black book. It’s sure to yield some names.
If you’ve had too much to drink, it’s best you don’t drive far,
but I’m sure that you’ll be comfy sleeping in the car.
I’ve decided to withdraw from marital complicity,
and that will bring you what you want. In short, your wife’s felicity!!

Prompts today are “not a pair,” snap, partake, felicity and loser. Photo by Elvis Bekmanis on Unsplash, used with permission.

Random Orders

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Random Orders

When our builder said that “It’s terribly good“
as he showed us the shipment of rainforest wood,
I, for one, uttered a silent scream,
for how could I okay this endangered beam?

In like manner, when he presented the door
of yew, it elicited a quiet roar.
So instead, he then showed us a genuine fake—
some laminate made for ecology’s sake

out of plastic and sawdust fused by black light.
Okay, I’m confused. Is night day and day night?
When we asked him for details and asked him to give
us a price for this place we were hoping to live,

he gave us one total, then he gave us a few.
An exact estimate seemed the best he could do.
As if, in his string of incessant banality,
all he could offer was ultimate reality.

my husband and I are both loyal opponents
of phrases with contradictory components.
So his exact estimate clearly confused.
It was plain that the language was being abused.

When our sawyer tried selling us a smaller half
of a board for our wall shelf, I gave a small laugh.
with passive aggression, I played the wise fool.
Was this our only choice? For this was not cool.

At first just amused, in the end we were sad,
for these oxymorons were driving us mad.
Surely these word games were only a fad.
Kids in cliques may mean good when they say it is bad,

but we were adults here and now on the brink
of retiring somewhere to have a stiff drink.
A close distance away was a favorite bar
with a mean martini served in a jar.

We gave random orders for olives and gin,
telling the barkeep what shape we were in.
Then, heads swimming with opposites, we didn’t scrimp.
We told the waiter to bring jumbo shrimp!

Word prompts today are sawyer, clique, oxymoron, fad and give. In case it wasn’t obvious, I took the prompt word “oxymoron” to excess. All of the highlighted words are oxymorons (self-contradictory phrases.)

Fixer-Upper

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Fixer-Upper

I am a fixer-upper. My joints are caving in.
My parts are getting even with a long life lived in sin.
Way too many hamburgers, fries and Hershey bars.
Too little time spent jogging — too much time spent in cars.
The fact I’ve been degraded, I admit is not disputable,
for since my early teens my shape has been too often mutable.

I tried to stage a victory over this decline
sometime in my thirties, but somewhere down the line
my resolve grew weaker and I gave up on pilates.
It was too degrading competing with the hotties 
who clinched their little derrieres and flexed their perfect arms.
I simply could not stand the comparison of charms.

I’ll never flip this body. I can’t touch neck to heel.
How can I execute “down dog” when I can barely kneel?
In spite of diligent efforts now and then throughout my life,
with starts and futile endings my biography is rife,
I came up with excuses, I “hee”d and “haw”ed and “hem”med.
Then finally had to admit, this property is condemned!

 

Prompts today are fixer-upper, diligent, victory, mutable and degraded. Photo by Basil Anas on Unsplash, used with permission.