Category Archives: poems

Black Sheep

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Black Sheep

Your baseball cap conspicuous among the Easter hats,
you intersperse beatitudes with sounds of batting stats,
and when you are not muttering, you whistle or you hum.
Everywhere we’ve gone, you have stuck out like a sore thumb.

I try to introduce you to acquaintances or friends,
but your chatter never ceases. Your prattle never ends.
These one-end conversations are getting rather dry.
We cannot get a word in, so in time we do not try.

Last year you kidnapped Grandpa and took him to a bar,
then left him in an upstairs room—teeth floating in a jar.
Once we had reclaimed him, we gave thanks that you had vanished,
and this note is just to tell you we’ve decided you are banished.

You’ve embarrassed us at Christmases, at Easters and Thanksgivings,
so we have decided that we have certain misgivings
regarding future visits. In short, we hope you’ll never
seek to reattach past family ties we hereby sever!

Prompt words today are sound, carriage, conspicuous and baseball.

Escape from the Day Spa

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Photo by Adrian Motroc on Unsplash, used with permission

Escape from the Day Spa

Our hair is neatly coiffed and our fingernails are lacquered,
but they’ve been at us for hours and, frankly, I am knackered.
They’ve elevated eyebrows and plucked chin hairs at random.
Two people worked an hour, massaging me in tandem.

This day trip to the beauty spa once seemed a good idea,
but I’ve found it as annoying as a junket to Ikea.
Everything goes on and on. There simply is too much.
First there’s this and this and this and then there’s such and such.

And though it’s meant to calm me, I find I’m feeling goaded.
When it comes to things and services, I’m simply overloaded.
“I know” I tell my friend, “I should be finding it relaxing,
but I feel the opposite. I find the process taxing!”

I need to steer us out of here before she finds another
way for them to soak us or to pluck or curl or smother.
Before this spa day started, she’d assured me it was fun,
but now its time for me to declare that it is done!!!

I need a gin and tonic and perhaps a wild dance
to loosen all the hairpins and give my hair a chance
to escape the close confinement of gel and goop and spray.
I’m tense with relaxation. I need wildness in my day!

Give me a seedy roadhouse and some honky tonk guitar.
Some cowboys with their cowboy boots propped up against the bar.
Some line dances and two-steps to work up a little sweat,
and I’ll be about as relaxed as I’m ever going to get.

IMG_1017jdb photo of the Mint Bar, Sheridan, Wyoming

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Prompt words today are trip, knackered, random, elevate and steer.

Interlopers

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Click on first photo to enlarge all.

“I don’t know that there are real ghosts and goblins, but there are always more trick-or-treaters than neighborhood kids.”     —Robert Brault

Interlopers

They watch the clock, waiting for dark,
impatient for their All-souls lark.
Small ghosts and goblins screech and moan,
their ghastly act to finely hone.
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,”
Mother prompts, as off they jog—
little witches in Walmart capes
with itchy tags upon their napes.

Meanwhile, other ghastly things
soar in on brooms, flap in on wings.
They’ve found that yearly secret door
under the earth, under the floor,
and creaked it open. Joining the flood
who lust for treats, they lust for blood.
Who among us might ace the task
of sorting countenance from mask?

That little vampire, newly gone—
was his blood real or painted on?
“Double double toil and trouble,
cauldron boil and cauldron bubble.”
Were those lines recently rehearsed
or are these witches instead well-versed
in brewing up a recipe
of wing of gnat and eye of bee?

Which ghoulies real and which ones playing?
Which ones begging? Which ones preying?
What other night of any year
do we open doors, devoid of fear
for such strange beings? Who thinks of this—
Hershey’s kisses or vampire’s kiss?
A silly poem. When small ghosts boo, they
offer no real threat. Or do they?

 

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Prompts for today are the secret door, adage, screech, treat and clock. Since one of the prompt words was “adage,” rather than use the actual word in the poem, I used a quote (an adage of sorts) by Robert Brault as inspiration for this poem.

And Now, Live from the White House—

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And Now, Live from the White House!!!

Of all the fake reality shows that fill our brains these days,
not one equals the White House for ridiculous displays.
They’re threatening to serialize his perpetual tweets—
his petty little comments, his braying and his bleats.
For when it comes to ludicrous, I’d say he fills the bill.
No other words more petty have been issued from the hill
in two hundred forty-three years since our country first began.
No other leader so foolish. No other leader so tan.
Perhaps those tanning rays have permanently fried his brain.
That serves as a solution for these comments so inane.
Now when it comes to comedy, it seems the whole world’s watching
to see how long we’ll put up with his blathering and botching.
They find it most amazing that his show has run so long
without somebody finding the nerve to ring the gong!!!

 

(If you don’t know what the Gong Show was, click below to find out:)

 

Prompt words for the day are threat, serialize, perpetual and bill.

Double Identity

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IMG_3308Double Identity

Sometimes she’s  an angel. At other times a witch.
There is no way to know when her personae’s going to switch.
When an angel, she’s gregarious, obedient and sexy,
but during her more bitchy days, she’s silent, dark and hexy.
No x-ray can determine which one she’s going to be.
There is no test to indicate which one she’s going to see
when she wakes up each morning and stumbles to the mirror
to see which one she’ll be today–the feared one or the dearer.
I’m always the first one to see what side of her will win,
for each day the face she chooses is the one that I’ll be in!

 

Prompt words for today are switch, gregarious, obedient, indicate and x-ray.

Having Friends Over for Dinner

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Having Friends Over for Dinner

I very nearly missed out on her graceful zigzag gig
beneath my bougainvillea, suspended from a twig.

Behold the nimble spider, spinning out her floss
determined that no insect will turn out to be her loss.

See her web’s tenacity, holding fast her prey—
those delicious visitors who rarely get away.

She sucks out their elixirs with minimal delay,
having guests for dinner every single day.

 

Prompt words today are web, tenacity, nearly, nimble and delicious.

A Stroll in the Park is not What it Used to Be

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A Stroll in the Park is not What It Used to Be

This park is overrated. It is not my zone of choice.
One cannot be heard here unless you raise your voice.
The signs are not well-written. They’re curt and brash and rude.
One gets pebbles in one’s shoes when fashionably shoed.
Little dogs are walked here that irritate my nose,
and I don’t approve of the scanty jogging clothes.
If the Queen were walking here, I think she would be shocked,
for not one single passer-by is stockinged, gloved and frocked!
All-in-all, a walk here is not what it once was.
I only visit here because the ice cream vendor does!

Prompt words today are pebble, written, zone, overrated and choice.

Ode to the Shipboard Buffet

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Ode to the Shipboard Buffet

In the hierarchy of buffets, spaghetti is the king
no matter what competing dishes they may bring
to grace the laden, groaning boards: rich soups and shrimp and cheeses.
They advocate for salads, but somehow no Caesar pleases
half as much as pasta, well-laden with rich sauce:
ground beef, basil and parmesan, tinged with just a toss
of fennel and oregano. It simply has no peer.
We gobble it with cabernet, chianti or a beer.
We leave the smorgasbord serene, replete and full and sated.
Our emptiness has been fulfilled, our appetites abated.
No hunger pangs outlast thin noodles topped with smashed tomatoes.
Spaghetti beats out hamburgers and crisp French fried potatoes.
It beats out cured Virginia  ham. It beats filet mignon.
It beats twice-baked potatoes and things put thereupon.
I’m sorely tempted by ice cream and pastries, cookies, tarts,
but such things aren’t exclusive of main courses that are starts.
A plate piled with spaghetti deserves a proper ending.
Just plan when loading up your plate. Dessert is also pending!

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Words for the day are serene, advocate, hierarchy, outlast and spaghetti.

Unlikely Pairing

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Unlikely Pairing

One ungainly orphan elephant, wandering and uncertain
of where his journey’s leading him, comes upon a curtain
of mist that rises from the plain, shimmering, evanescent.
The stars now muted overhead, the moon a fuzzy crescent.
He splits the curtain, comes upon a lone and lost impala
split off from the herd during some wild stampeding gala.
They form a duo and plod on, each looking for a herd.
Such an unlikely couple. Impossibly absurd.
And yet they struck a certain chord, each one with the other.
She was the sister that he lacked, and he her missing brother.
One thing led to another. She fit him like a glove,
and before they knew it, the two were fast in love.
When the baby came, it looked a bit like a nyala,
a bit like a rhinoceros––an elephantiala!!

Prompts today are intent, orphan, elephant (good grief) and evanescent. Add this one, too: curtain.

Saint Donald

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image from Twitter

Saint Donald

They’re pious and as pure as snow viewed from any angle.
They do not cuss or drink or swear. They have no sins to wrangle.
Untempted by debauchery, they have no ills to speak of.
It’s a sanctimonious ardor that they reek of.
The patron saint they’ve mounted atop an oil pump
waiting to be canonized, of course, is Donald Trump!

 

The prompts today are angle and pious.