Advice for Novice Parents
You’re supporting and loving. Efficient? Well, maybe.
Most times you can locate that elusive baby.
You’re parents with character—sometimes too much of it.
(A quirk functions better with only a touch of it.)
When you pause in your diapering for a martini,
your baby may wage a protest with his weenie.
Better you party when parenting’s done
so baby’s not there to dampen your fun!
Prompt words today are pause, character, supporting, elusive and baby.
I actually wrote two poems to the prompts today. This was one I wrote in a notebook while waiting in the dentist’s office. I decided it was sort of a downer in a time of too many downers, so I wrote another, but it called out from the notebook sitting on my desk beside my computer, so here it is with all its warts.
Campused
It’s a kind of surviving, this new life we share.
We rarely leave home and we don’t cut our hair.
We mainly commune with our kids and our spouses
and cover our faces when we must leave our houses.
We maintain a distance of six feet away.
We deterge our hands countless times every day.
A soupcon of hand sanitizer’s our goal
when touching a surface not in our control.
Not a world of our choice and not one by design,
so we sulk and we protest. We pout and we whine.
Yet we are not blameless, for it’s the result
of the short-sighted goals of the consumer cult.
Parents respond when kids get out of hand.
So, too, Mother Nature must take a stand.
She’s decided to send each of us to our room
lest we mess up her world, thus sealing its doom.
If we won’t behave, she must take a firm hand.
We’ve not followed her rules, so we have been banned.
Prompts today are surviving, design, soupcon, deterge and kind. And also, for dVerse Poets
Click on photos to enlarge.
I was at my favorite beach–La Manzanilla, in Mexico, minding my own business, enjoying a wonderful sunset, when I came upon this man sitting in a chair out in the surf–sipping a margarita! I made a passing remark as I passed, and the next thing I knew, he was leaving his chair, pulling me over to it, sitting me down and handing me his margarita. “Give me your camera,” he said. “I’ll take your photo.” As he did, I didn’t really notice the woman out in the surf, but by the time he’d snapped a couple of photos, she had made her appearance–and, yup, bombed my photo! She gave us a back view, too, but figured none of the guys would want to see it.
For Friday Fun-Beach
Designer Diets
I’m in need of a diet in front and behind,
yet I cannot survive on such food as the kind
that dieting gurus decree I must chew
like all of the reigning glamor queens do.
Designer lettuce and parsley and kale
with a soupcon of dressing is what they inhale.
They do not eat Oreos, bon bons or gummies.
They deterge their colons and staple their tummies.
No carbohydrates of any kind
will they order in diners, even in a bind.
And so they go hungry, albeit they’re svelte,
but I think I would rather just loosen my belt.
Prompts today are surviving, design, soupcon, deterge and kind.
Retribution
I swallow screams for dinner,
hold my tongue the whole meal through.
I’m told I’ll have to eat my words
if I let slip a few.
I’m choking back the clever things
that I want to tell,
but all my smart rejoinders
simply will not jell.
“Better seen than heard,” they say,
and yet they do not see me.
If I’m not allowed to speak,
how will I ever be me?
When I grow up, I’ll talk and talk.
Never will I be quiet.
If someone tries to shut me up,
I simply will not buy it.
By then my folks will be real old.
To shush me? They won’t dare.
If they do, I’ll shush them back,
and put them in a chair.
I’ll make them face the corner
and tell them to be quiet.
And if they say to eat my words?
I’ll say I’m on a diet!!!
For Poets and Storytellers United. Swallow Screams
Final Rights
The legacy our mother left seems to have something missing.
Is it just coincidence I think I saw you kissing
her lawyer shortly after her funeral today?
It reminded me of earlier behavior, I must say.
Your high school English teacher whom you later held at bay
only after he had raised your grade from F to A.
Do I mean to insinuate it may have been a factor
in the raising of your grade that you’re such a primo actor?
Feigning school girl crushes until you’ve achieved your aim
and seducing gullible lawyers? Do I think that’s your game?
I must admit this codicil that you have lately found
gives rise to questions. You should realize that we are bound
to question her late change of mind, leaving the bulk to you
when all the time that she was ill you never were in view.
The lawyer swears it’s aboveboard. These were our mother’s wishes.
Did she forget those countless times you would not do the dishes
but left the job to me as you hurried out the door?
The times you defied curfew, tracked up her just-mopped floor?
Because I was her favorite, was it, then, her guilt
that made her deed to only you the house that Grandpa built?
Sister dear, your goose is cooked, for just a month ago
Mom fired the lawyer you seduced and hired one you don’t know.
He filed a new will signing the house over to me.
Mom foresaw your shenanigans and said they would not be.
Your lawyer’s response to your wiles? A small sin of omission.
Who could blame him for collecting his amorous commission?
Prompt words today are legacy, missing, reminded, insinuate and factor. Although the poem is fiction, this is actually the house I grew up in.
Loose Lips
I hear my new assistant is a great man at a party
which may be the reason why he is so often tardy.
Describing my proboscis is his favorite party schtick.
Plus, speculating over what makes his bossman tick.
He thinks I’m ancient in my forties and lists all that I lack?
He can tick “spineless” off of his list when I give him the sack!
Prompt words for today are party, ancient, proboscis, describe and assistant.
I’ve been remiss in posting the daily funnies lately. It took me a minute to “get” this one. I’m dedicating it to Forgottenman who in his prime had pi memorized to 51 significant digits. Phew.
