Category Archives: Humor

On Strike (At Odds With The Prompts)

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On Strike

(Prompt words today are glass, never, hectic, tyro (novice) and rebirth. For the NaPoWriMo Prompt “Past and Future.” we are challenged  to write a poem using at least one word/concept/idea from each of two specialty dictionaries: Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary and the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction.)

I am not in the mood to write about glass.
My mood of the moment? Belligerent sass!
The prompt words are silly and way too eclectic.
They leave me feeling frustrated and hectic,
as though I’m a tyro at trying to rhyme—
in need of a rebirth in iambic time.
I’ll never complete the task as assigned,
but I’m sure that my readers will not even mind.
Aren’t you tired of my inane ill-rhymed verse?
If I added the classical, it would be worse.
Then sci-fi allusions? Just bring on the hearse!
Sometimes these prompts can end up as a curse.

 

Image by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash. Used with permission

“To Do” List for a New Roommate (NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 9 and Daily Prompts)

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“To Do” List for a New Roommate

*If you value this abode,
please plan to shoulder half the load
to keep it lovely, clean and neat.
This rule, I will not repeat.

*Underwear should not be seen
on chair or floor or in-between.
(To insure I’m a happy camper,
dirty clothes go in the hamper.)

*If, on occasion, you feel you might
have a lover spend the night,
lest my ire you might incite,
please have him leave by morning light.

*No mongrels, kittens, fish or birds
or other denizens of herds
may cross my doorway, now or ever.
In short, are pets allowed? No. Never!!!

*If personal details you recite,
please insure they are not trite,
for next to messiness and snoring,
I most dread roommates who are boring.

* Don’t steal my cookies or my chips.
My food should never pass your lips.
Don’t steal my leftover knishes,
and when you cook, do your own dishes.

*If these requests you can’t abide,
just pack your bags and move outside!
Follow my rules, or it’s your loss,
for in this house, I am the boss!

 

Prompt words today are shoulder, underwear, mongrel, trite and love.  Image by Sincerely Media on Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Also, for NaPoWriMo, Day 9, Make a To-Do List

Keeping Abreast

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Keeping Abreast

If I were made the ruler of
this universe I rue and love,
the one thing I would not let “be”
is the force of gravity
in respect to just one issue.
Namely––my mammary tissue!

For, though you may feel dubious,
each year, I grow more boobious!
I do not like them hanging there
where once they used to thrust the air.
Where once each strained against its cup,
It seems like now  they’ve given up.

Listless and flat, downward they droop.
Sad Sack replaces Betty Boop.
They have no personality.
They’ve lost elasticality!
The result is truly tragic,
so this is why I need some magic.

Please, gods of nature, give a cure.
There must be some way to inure
my breasts from force of gravity.
Now that I rule, hear my plea!
Tell gravity that it is best
to loose its hold upon each breast

so they are perky once again,
thrusting out below my chin
instead of hanging in two vees
somewhere down around my knees!
Restore my pride. Dispel my frown.
I want them hanging out, not down!

 

For dVerse Poets: Body Parts

 

Is it cheating that this is a poem I wrote six years ago? More true now than then!!!!

“Don’t” NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 7

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Don’t

Who can love
a bit of sweetness
so lacking
at its heart
that it’s more not there than there?
A donut lover!

The prompt for Day 7 of NaPoWriMo is to write a shadorma. Image by Matt Walsh on Unsplash, used with permission.

The shadorma is a six-line, 26-syllable poem. The syllable count by line is 3/5/3/3/7/5. So, like the haiku, the lines are relatively short.

 

Line of Reasoning

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Line of Reasoning

His baleful eye and mawkish grin
reveal the sort of state he’s in.
Anybody can see he wields
an attitude that never yields
to any view different from his.
He’s up on everybody’s biz.
On world matters bacterial
and all things managerial
he knows more than the experts do
and gladly shares his point of view
with doctor, scientist or crew.
He’ll educate them all anew
by sharing truths that only he
in his superiority
has figured out. He is so clever
that even though, in truth, he never
went to university,
still, surely, all the world can see
it’s simply common sense that how
he sees things is a sacred cow.
In fact, you need not go to school.
Just listen to this puffed-up fool
to hear how science has it wrong.
He’s known the true facts all along.
How much more proof is there to get?
He heard it on the Internet!

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people’s inability to recognize their lack of ability.

Prompt words today are bacterial, crew, mawkish, wield and anybody. Image by brandi ibraho on Unsplash. Used with permission.

 

Safety in Numbers

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Safety in Numbers

It might beseem the patriarch to forego actions radical,
forsaking them for pastimes more blandly mathematical.
Discourse over Pi and coffee a safer course, by far,
than plotting revolution at a local bar.
That there’s safety in numbers is a much-repeated platitude
much favored over taking risks with a subversive attitude.

Prompt words today are radical, patriarch, beseem and coffee. Image by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash, used with permission.
And for NaPoWriMo, Day 5

NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 2 The Road Less Taken in a Modern Age

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The farther up the mountain we went, the smaller the road became. I was on the outiside and for most of the way the drop was severe–with no siderails or walls or shoulders. Vertigo? Yes.

The Road Less Taken in a Modern Age

Who wanders for pleasure, wanders alone
marking no boundary, barrier, zone.
The earth has no limits and time has no chime,
my steps undetermined by schedule or clime.

This used to be my modus operandi—
travel my sweet tooth and freedom my candy.
No email or Google, no iPad or phone,
without Internet service, I rolled like a stone.

But today I am traveling from town to town
with heavier luggage–more weighted down.
And though I go singly, I’m never alone
thanks to my computer, my Kindle and phone.

Right now I’m imprisoned and my progress is bound
by the cords of my ear buds confusingly wound
round my camera charger and Ethernet connector.
My GPS determines my vector.

No more do I travel unfettered and free.
Cell tower to tower is where I must be;
so every person that I’ve ever met
has me perpetually in their debt.

Birthdays to remember and twitters to answer,
queries of grandchildren, hip sockets, cancer.
Traveling with this extra weight is not pleasant.
I much prefer traveling just in the present

unfettered by email, phone calls or that voice
calling instructions at every choice
of northwards or southwards or eastward or west.
Yes, I know GPS directions are best,

but if I’m never lost and never alone,
I’d best just stay home and talk on the phone,
for most of adventure has come when I’m lost
from all of my past, whatever the cost.

Still the ways of the present make planning much easier,
finding my next destination much breezier.
These tricky freeways have changed in past years
and I find my memory much in arrears.

So perhaps for today I’ll turn on GPS
so I won’t get so lost and I won’t have to guess
which freeway to take: eight-oh-eight? Eight-oh-six?
Getting myself in a terrible fix.

Tomorrow’s the time to become vagabond,
using personal radar and my fairy wand
to maneuver through life by the skin of my pants.
Just for today, I won’t take the chance!

for NaPoWriMo 2021 Day 2

Bella Shuns the Tube

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Bella Shuns the Tube

Bella never takes mass transit. She walks another path.
She hitchhikes every day to work from Chippenham to Bath.
For years, it’s true that she has harbored quite a misconception.
I know because I happened to be there at its inception.

She was just a little girl when her father Rube
drove her by the underground and labeled it “the tube,”
She had visions of sink drains, sucking people down
from somewhere in the country to disgorge them in the town.

As a father teaches, so a daughter will be taught.
A plethora of worries overcame her at the thought.
So, as to travelling in the tube? Unlikely that our Bella might.
for when it comes to subways, I fear she is a thelemite!

 

Prompt words today are misconception, plethora, thelemite (one who does as he or she pleases,) transit and path. Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Gross Yield

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Gross Yield

Hardly a paradisiac setting, he met her at the dumpster.
She was a free spirit and, alas, he was a Trumpster.
He thought that she looked nifty in spite of her dreadlocks.
She thought he was her nemesis. Just look! Argyle socks!!!!
He lifted up the lid so she could throw in all her junk.
She didn’t pay attention. She liked her lovers punk.

But he wooed her every garbage day. A regular Lochinvar,
he insisted she not lift the bags, declaring it too far
from her doorway to the dumpster and offered his assist.
In the end, she always let him, though she did try to resist!
I could draw out this long story. There were dates, flowers and candy.
They wed, and though he bored her, his gross income came in handy!

Prompts for today are junk, nemesis, paradisiac, nifty and income. Photo by Yannes Kiefer on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Pawn

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Pawn

Like a lamb led to the slaughter in this burgeoning situation,
I’ll load me up into my car and head out toward the station
of a drive-up clinic to allow a medic guy
to stick a Q-tip up my nose to see if I can fly.

Just another fun-filled day in a year of situations
that have not included gatherings or tropical vacations.
But now I find I’m breaking this year of solitary
to fly up to the states for shots, and am I worried? Very.

Nonetheless, my lot is cast, my sis purchased my ticket
and though I have a hunch it is the proverbial sticky wicket,
I’m flying off to Phoenix to spend a month or so,
even though a part of me says I shouldn’t go.

Yet another part of me says it will be fun
to see my sister once again. When all is said and done,
One choice or the other, they both have pros and cons,
and once again I feel that we’re fate’s complicit pawns.

 

Prompt words today are lamb, solitary, statue, burgeon and situation.