Category Archives: Humor

Cat and Mouse

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Cat and Mouse

My cat is feeling obdurate and that is no surprise.
I see it in extended claws. I see it in his eyes.
His back is hunched into an arc. His hair all stands on end.
His lips are stretched back in a hiss, his teeth ready to rend.

When he lets go a loud remark, it sounds more like a chatter.
I look up from my magazine to see what is the matter.
The prism on the windowsill reflects a flashing gleam
and he springs into action to try to catch its beam.

Like an arrow, straight and sure, he shoots across the room,
but when he does, his target’s gone. Vanished in the gloom.
It seems his prey has vanished. It’s nowhere to be found.
He’s wasted all his energy: his speed, his stealth, his bound.

The cat door closes with a swish. He’s off to other pleasures.
Out in the sultry cloud-swathed world, he’ll resort to other measures.
He saunters by the hen house, hungry, but it’s no use
He still bears the scars of the rooster’s last abuse.

While the men are busy milking, he’ll crouch there in the dirt
hoping if he’s lucky to receive a friendly squirt.
He’ll troll the barn for mice and rats, then comb the prairie grass
for game that’s more digestible than prey that’s made of glass.

Prompt words for today are prism, scream, sultry, obdurate, letting go and cat.

Better Off Friends

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Better Off Friends

A study of your phenotype reveals that something’s missing—
a fact that I have noticed in our hugging and our kissing.
You seem not to be happy while following desire.
If you were a crematorium, they’d have to stoke your fire.
So although you are not lacking in gaiety or fun,
when it comes to sex appeal, I fear, my dear, you’ve none.

Prompt words for today are phenotype, study, crematorium, gaiety and following desire.

 

 

the set of observable characteristics of an indiv. resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment

On a Bench in the Park on Sadie Hawkins Day

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On a Bench in the Park on Sadie Hawkins Day

It seems there is a plethora of libidinous misses,
and with one on either side, it is a rivalry of kisses.
Their exuberance is catching. He’s handling it well,
This type of encounter is one where he’ll excel.

So many social interchanges don’t go far enough.
They’re simply superficial or blustering and bluff.
But he knew this one was different. He knew it from the start.
Communication’s different when created from the heart.

Prompt words for the day are handle, rivalry, catching, excel and creating from your heart.

Martyred by The Camino de Santiago

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Martyred by The Camino de Santiago

I’m jabbed by thorns and scratched by hay, and we have barely started.
I must say this hike you planned is not for the fainted-hearted.
I never was a nature girl, in spite of what you think.
With just this amount of moving, I’m already at the brink.

It isn’t even noon yet, and we began at dawn.
“We’ll laugh about this later,” you say as I trudge on.
As we approach the cliff face,  I worry about falling.
This mountain-climbing business is simply not my calling.

You say it’s a mere hillock, but to my exhausted eyes,
a hillock’s just a mountain in another guise.
Are we coming back this way? I ask, hoping the best,
thinking I’ll just wait here as the others mount the crest.

But alas, my hopes don’t gel. This trail leads to another.
Inside, I swear a bloody streak. Aloud, I mutter, “brother,”
as I lift my pack again and leave my comfy rock
to walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk and walk.

When the day is finally done and in my bed I’m lying,
I am not laughing much at all, in fact, my dear, I’m crying!
I’ve grown blisters on my blisters and bruises on my bruises.
You can have your damn “Camino.” In the future, I’ll take cruises!!!

 

Word prompts for the day are: moving, laugh, jab, trudge, falling and hay.

Travel Fatigue Amnesia

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Travel Fatigue Amnesia

After ten hours of driving, he felt the car swerve
as his eyelids got heavy and he lost his verve.
With an accident imminent, he pulled off the road
to turn into a Starbucks for sleep’s antipode—
a double espresso with foam and a scone.
His purchase completed, he departed alone,
but fifty miles later, he’s been heard to confess
a thought popped into mind that caused much distress.
He did a fast U turn, feeling like a louse,
and drove back to the Starbucks to retrieve his spouse.

 

Prompt words for the day are froth, imminent, purchase and verve .

Verbless

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Prompt words today are unperturbed, antipathy, quixotic and trophy.
(And, sadly, for the third day now, no prompt from The Daily Spur.)

Verbless

Today I am anything but unperturbed,
for the prompt words, I find, seem to be under-verbed.
We’re over-adjectived and over-nouned,
but is there a single verb to be found?

It’s hard to accept this sudden antipathy
displayed by prompt-sites’ crass lack of empathy
in shunning action words. I find a line
that is lacking in verbs, overly supine—

just lying there motionless, lacking in verve—
a mere trophy sentence, no guts and no nerve!
Perhaps if the Daily Spur came out of hiding,
heeding this gentle but most sincere chiding,

together, the prompt sites could conspire to curb
their Quixotic attitude towards that lost verb.
But, in the meantime, can anyone curb
my agitation by suggesting a verb????

 Image by Matt Walsh on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Melania’s Revenge

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Teenvogue.com photo
Sun Photo

Teen Vogue and Sun Photos

Melania’s Revenge

As he descends the air stairs, his waving hand waving,
his wife walks beside him as though she is braving
the air that’s around her. She seems to be craving
release from a torment, but she is behaving
because of a settlement scored when he won—
more money for her and more for her son.

But they can’t make her smile a believable smile—
one that masks her boredom and covers her bile.
His hand swatted away, she walks on her own
due to numerous deeds for which he must atone.
The hole in her soul must be so hard to fill,
for living with a jerk is the bitterest pill.

Even she has her pride. It’s an act of sedition
expressing her angst for four years of perdition—
a vehement act that expresses her pride
that though docile outside, she’s a rebel inside.
Some say she’s a dreamer, as though in the dreaming
she escapes a life over which she’d be screaming

if she really cared —but she doesn’t, you know.
If it weren’t for the valium and all of that dough—
she’d no doubt go crazy. Stark raving mad,
over having to spend her whole life with this cad,
but the latest new fashions and a life on the lazy
make up for a husband certifiably crazy!

And as for the people who make her life hell?
She’ll just crook her pinkie and ring her small bell
and tell them to rip out the damnable roses
and then flaunt her power in all of their noses,
by creating a garden—a dull boring park
that will prove that Melania’s at last left her mark.

courtesy #Getty and @marycjordan

Prompt words today are hole, vehement, wave, sedition and dreamer.

A Way Out

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A Way Out

He thinks he is inexorable, but he’s only temporary.
His expiration date reveals that he is just contemporary.
He’ll go down as a buffoon in the annals of our nation,
and his exit from the White House will bring great jubilation.
When greed combines with vanity and thirst for power and fame,
then achieves the oval office, the whole nation is to blame.
Would that he’s vivified our populace from living room to coffice
to get their butts out and to vote this charlatan from office!
May justice thus be vivified and liberty brought home,
and a sense of the rational be restored to the dome.

I’VE VOTED. HAVE YOU, OR WILL YOU????

Word prompts today are exit, inexorable, collide, vivify and temporary.

Stay of Execution

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Pardon by Way of a Higher Power

There was  a stay of execution, and the prisoner was relieved.
The executioner, in a turmoil, was sorely aggrieved.
If he couldn’t fire incessantly, it put him off his game.
And yet he couldn’t argue with the one who was to blame.
Sometimes it was the law that won, and sometimes the sinner.
He cut his prisoner free and then shuffled off to dinner.
“Does Jimmy want to stay to eat?” his mom was heard to say,
“I can call his mom to ask her, if he wants to stay.”
But the sheriff told his mom that since he wasn’t ichthyophagous,
a tuna sandwich wouldn’t make it past his friend’s esophagus!

Prompt words today are stay, incessant, ichthyophagous, turmoil and game. What travesties of plot these prompts sometimes force upon us!!!

Halloween Is 47 Days Away!!

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I must reblog this hilarious illustration by A.M. Moscoso at “My Enduring Bones.”