Category Archives: humorous poem

A Lonely Widow’s Lament

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A Lonely Widow’s Lament

She advertised for company and put it on the web.
Discouraged with the “no response,” she felt her patience ebb.
She pined so much for conference and knew that it was wrong,
and yet she vowed she’d make do with whatever came along.

She promised she’d be tranquil, not expect a fast response.
She relaxed and did some weaving, there beneath the garden sconce.
The comfort of the sunlight helped her not to worry.
She’d give a little leeway, no need for any hurry.

A gentle breeze assisted  her in sinking into dreaming.
It didn’t help a widow to spend her day in scheming.
And, soon enough a jerky movement set her heart to beating.
A fly caught in her cobweb meant that she would soon be eating!

Although I have the perfect photo to illustrate this poem, I didn’t want to give away the ending, so I’m leaving it unillustrated. To see the illustration for it, go  HERE.

Prompt words today are conference, assist, cobweb, leeway and comfort.

Dental Discourse: dVerse Poets Compound Word Verse

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Dental Discourse

She could not stand the sad sad sight
of his horrendous overbite.
She arranged to take him to a
dentist, thinking he could do a
makeover.

She asked the doc what he would charge
to make his overhang less large.
The price he set to make each tooth less
was, I fear, greedy and ruthless
overkill.

Thus began their drawn-out dicker
that I think would have gone quicker
if his teeth had been less icky,
and the job a much less tricky 
overhaul.

After much talk, they struck a deal,
both thinking that they’d made a steal.
But then with little else to do,
 she said  if he attempted to
overcharge,

she would have his license lifted
no matter how bloody gifted
he might have been (when this all ends)
at cutting down her toothy friend’s
hangover.

 

 

For dVerse Poets prompt: Compound Word Verse Image by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

This form consists of 5  five-line stanzas with aabb rhyme schemes, each containing 8 syllables and each stanza concluding with a three-syllable compound word that had one element the same as all other compound words in the final lines of the stanzas. Phew!

The Bishop’s Latest Miracle

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The Bishop’s Usual Cap

The Bishop’s  Latest Miracle

Although his past proclivity was to regurgitate,
allow me to encapsulate the bishop’s present state.
He’s rickety and yet he has no tendency to brood.
In fact, against all reason, he’s in a euphoric mood.

And lest you think nobility has anything to do with it,
when he eats, he has a brand new medicine to chew with it.
Since they’ve added magic mushrooms to his omelets of late,
 he’s finishing his breakfast and licking clean the plate.

He’s ordered a new upper plate and hopes that what he’ll do with it
is to exercise his jaws by learning how to chew with it.
Then he’ll have special omelets morning, noon and night
and justify it, saying he’s practicing his bite.

 

The Bishop’s New Cap

Today’s prompt words are encapsulate, euphoria, rickety, noble and regurgitate,

Casting Out Lines with Tina

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Casting Out Lines with Tina

Night has come to my great sorrow,
Light won’t be here ‘til tomorrow.
Can’t go fishin‘ ‘til the morning,
but I’m wishin’ that the warning
that dad made could be forgotten
and these fish were caught, not boughten!

Night has come to my great sorrow.
Light won’t be here ‘til tomorrow.

Still we will rise before day dawns,
rub sleep from eyes and stifle yawns.
There’s time left to grant our wishes,
bait our hooks and catch those fishes!

This is the trickiest prompt that I’ve seen in a looooong time. Tina’s Zigzag Rhyme rules are the quirkiest and I think I’ve followed them to a “T.” (In no place does she say that it’s not legal to end every line in a rhyme–just that you must do so in lines 5, 6, 11 and 12, so I rhymed every couplet. Words that must be rhymed by Tina’s rules are underlined in my poem, just to make your checking up on me easier. No, that’s not Tina pictured with me. That’s my big sister Patti. I’m pretending to have caught all those fish she’s holding.

Tina’s Zigzag Rhyme is a form created by Christina R Jussaume and found at Poetry Styles (site no longer accessible.)

  • It starts with a sestet, refrain, quatrain and then another refrain and quatrain if you wish.
  • It must be uplifting subject.
  • Rhyme in first two lines is at left,
  • next rhyme is center in lines 3 and 4,
  • and rhyme in lines 5 and 6 is an end rhyme.
  • Refrain is first two lines of poem.
  • After refrain , in the quatrain you use center rhyme, then end rhyme.
  • It is an 8 syllable per line poem. No limit to stanzas but must have,at least one sestet, refrain, and quatrain.
  • Thanks to David at Skeptic’s Kadish for sharing this form. See his poem at his link HERE.

The Astronauts are Called In From Vacation: Wordle 523

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The Astronauts are Called In From Vacation

The time’s drawing near for our next big space mission,
so there’s no more time for beaches or fishin’,
Be speedy in putting your sail boats away
and wrap them up tightly so they won’t decay
in the salty sea air while you are in space,
murdering miles at a furious pace.

There’s much to be found as you leave Earth behind.
for far beyond the usual grind,
no weapons are needed and there’s less debris.
No tickets or tollroads, for passage is free
except for the millions to set off our rockets,
but the rich can be sure it comes out of the pockets

of everyday men like the plumbers and teachers
and waitresses, cowboys, bus drivers and preachers.
And when you get home, your boats will be waiting.
There’ll be no delay and there’ll be no debating.
Whether fishing for stars or starfish or krill,
Joe Public will be there to pick up the bill.

 

Here are the Wordle prompts for Oct 17, 2021:  mission, murder, beaches, time, tight, boat, speedy, weapon, space, found, air, drawing. Image by Spacex on Unsplash.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle Prompt

The Confessions of a Halloween Candy Hoarder

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The Confessions of a Halloween Candy Hoarder

I do not accept your recent accusal
as anything but an attempt to bamboozle
me out of the vestiges of my collection
of Halloween candy that’s skipped your detection.

I’m thankful that I’m neither trustful nor dumb
enough to be functioning under your thumb,
for I find repugnant your plans to abscond
with all of the candy with which I’ve grown fond.

For though you gobbled your candy down quickly,
going through all of it lickety-splickly,
I like to keep my candy yield near
and eat one piece a day for the rest of the year!

When days are balmy, butterscotch is nice.
I save all my chocolate for snow days and ice.
And when the campfire sparkles and flickers,
I like to devour my Halloween Snickers.

If it annoys you, you’ll have to make do
with a few M&M’s that I hid in my shoe.
The rest of my candy is where I have hidden it,
to be consumed when only I’ve bidden it.

Prompts for the day are vestige, repugnant, bamboozle, balmy and thankful.

Darjeeling, Lockjaw and Delayed Gratification

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Darjeeling, Lockjaw and Delayed Gratification

I’d make conversation but my upper plate
seems to be grinding my lower of late.
I fear there’s a fissure that’s preventing their matching
and somehow my back teeth just seem to be catching
and locking which creates a problem in chewing,
so eating’s another thing I won’t be doing.

I’m bungling everything done by my jaws.
At talking and eating I’m taking a pause.
For now I’ll just listen and watch you eat pie.
If you give me a straw, I’ll simply get by
by sipping my tea and nodding my head
in avid agreement with everything said.

I could have stayed home and stared at the wall,
but I couldn’t face not seeing y’all,
so I will just sit here and soak in the news,
forsaking my own chance to thrill and amuse.
Until I’ve seen my dentist, you’ll just have to wait
for the juicy story I was going to relate!

Prompts today are conversation, fissure, matching, bungle and upper.

Well-Spoken

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Well-Spoken

Grandmother was a lexophile, erudite and bossy.
She said that I was malapert when she meant I was saucy.
She sat astride her horse for she was loath to simply straddle it,
and she “installed her pillion.” She didn’t merely saddle it!

Every sentence that we spoke required mediation.
Nothing was radioactive. It “emitted radiation!”
Cannibals weren’t maneaters, but rather “anthropophages,”
and prom dates brought us sprays of roses, not merely corsages!

Her mania for polite words was nothing less than ludicrous.
When dealing with the birds and bees, “womb” subbed for the word uterus.
Gentlemen had “members,” for their penises were banished—
“boobs” and “knockers” terms for bosoms that somehow had vanished.

It seems she put small value in words that spoke directly,
for it was more important that we chose words correctly.
Dictionaries were her Bibles, and they had the final word
when we used terminology that Grandma found absurd.

 

Prompt words for the day are straddle, radioactive, ludicrous, contumely and maneater.

Cooked Goose

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Cooked Goose

As I face her contumely with stoic restraint,
I may seem cavalier, but really I ain’t.
I’ve grown used to her holiday gloom and depressions
when she is exposed to these family sessions.

After so many years, I’m attuned to the drill,
though I must admit that I’ve had my fill
of her bigoted grandpa, her silly vain mom,
her brother whose jokes are always a bomb.

Her sister who views our clothes with derision,
the grandmother who cannot reach a decision
on what kind of pie—pumpkin, chocolate or peach?
So she always ends up with a little of each.

Her nieces and nephews all stupid and spoiled,
and the Christmas goose that always tastes boiled.
Why do we attend each new family blast
when we always go home feeling slightly aghast?

I must say their whole group has failed at the game,
for a family should be far more than a name.
We swear every holiday will be our last,
but I fear nonetheless that our lot has been cast.

We’ll continue to dread every Christmas and Easter—
every occasion to become a feaster
on gummy plum pudding and cold slimy fowl,
for though we curse and  grumble  and growl,

for birthdays and weddings, we’ll load up the car
and drive those long miles to come from afar
repeating this ritual year after year,
for this is the family that we hold dear!

 

 

Prompt words are holiday, cavalier, stoic, contumely and passage. Fiction, folks, fiction. Written from the point of view of a long-suffering male spouse. My husband did not feel this way about my family, really.

Tomboy

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Tomboy

She ate all her spinach, devoured all her kale.
She lifted weights and cussed and spit, and still she wasn’t male.
She wanted to be Popeye, but instead was Olive Oyl.
Nothing that she ever did made her less a goil.

She wished on every rainbow, unequivocally,
did her affirmations and squeezed her rosary,
praying for delivery from this female form.
Because she had three brothers, she felt it not the norm.

But when she reached her teenage years, something slowly changed.
Somehow she felt more normal and slightly less deranged.
And though it took a little time, finally she did confess
shyly, to her mother, that she’d like to buy a dress.

She put her hair in curlers and scrubbed her scaly knees,
spent more time upon the phone and less time climbing trees.
Flirted with her brothers’ friends whom formerly she wrestled.
Wound up at the movies, very comfortably nestled

up against the shoulder of a guy named Paul
and found that somehow she felt great. She didn’t mind at all
that she had not been born a boy, because then she’d have missed
that feeling that she felt the very first time she was kissed.

Prompt words today are indeed, equivocal, female, rainbow and squeeze.