Category Archives: humorous poem

Pick a Pickled Pepper

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Pick a Pickled Pepper

Some girls lick on lollipops, but I never will.
I prefer the piquant taste of vinegar and dill.
Pickle up some peppers  and shove them in a jar.
Put a label on it to show them who you are.
If a cute boy eats one, he will pucker up,
and perhaps you’ll plant a kiss where he deigned to sup.

Pick a cherry pepper, press it to your lips,
and that spicy boy might want to steal some sips.
Do not tell your mother. Do not tell your dad,
or that might be the only pepper that you ever had.
Lollipops are sweet but just a little coy.
Pickles work much better for picking out your boy.

 

The prompt today was lollipop. Strangely enough, the song “Lollipop, Lollipop” has been going through my mind for the past few days.  I even made up different lyrics to the tune of it to sing to Annie, my 15-year-old ill cat,  as I drove her (meowing all the way) home from the vet the other day. The men who stand in the road to wave people into the fish restaurants near San Juan Cosala must have wondered at me as I hollered out the strange song at the top of my lungs, just like my dad used to do to startle a howling baby into silence.  Ah well.  We get odder as we get older but have more of an excuse for it!

Prattle Practice

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DSC09337Whenever my older sister’s friend Karen came over to spend the night with her, she’d bring her Bonnie Braids doll to sleep with me.  It kept me out of their hair and gave me someone to talk to.  Perhaps it established a precedent? When I went to visit her in Minneapolis 60 years later, she still had Bonnie.  Here, we reminisce. She still lets me do all the talking.

Prattle Practice

I don’t have any roommates since I lost my spouse,
so I chew the fat with animals and objects in my house.
“How did you get way over there?” I mumble to a spoon.
I converse with my potted plants, complete with off-key tune.
Sometimes I jolt myself awake, talking in my dreams.
What I have to say at least I want to hear, it seems.
I’ve had a conversation with the sidewalk, face-to-face.
I’ll have another talk with it once they remove this brace.

I hold my kittens in a trance by talking in their ears,
and though they do not answer in the manner of my peers,
they have their personal language of meows and purrs and squeaks.
While I speak back in high-pitched tones like baby talk for freaks!
I hope the neighbors have not heard as I advise the trees
 to only shed their debris on their own lawns, if they please. 
I sometimes gripe to flowers that they are too soon dying
and to potatoes in the pan that are too slowly frying.

I grumble to my router and cold water from the tap.
Soundly, I upbraid them in my own domestic rap.
I talk to nestlings from below as they cheep from their nest,
but, dive-bombed by the mother bird, I give our chat a rest.
When I prattle to the furniture, the cook pots and the cactus
in lieu of human company, in fact it is just practice.
All my other blatherings just keep me there on track
for when I meet with human folks who no doubt will talk back!

 

Don’t know where else this photo of the Bonnie/Judy reunion would ever fit in so here it goes into fun photos, along with the poem I wrote to go with it.

Sleight of Knees

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IMG_7755doll by Louie Gann, jdbphoto

Sleight of Knees

When the circus clown was lauded,
marveled at, praised and applauded
for hanging from the high trapeze
for 24 hours by his knees,
though he was admired for his moxie,
it turns out it was just epoxy!

 

The prompt today was moxie.

Silly Words

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Silly Words

Bumbershoots and pollywogs, gorp and whirlybird—
Why are the words we choose to coin sometimes so absurd?

Why does one word sound sillier than others we might use?
Why are some sounds more serious while others just amuse?

Why do some get tummy ache blocking their digestion,
while others simply get the flu? It is a puzzling question.

One names the problem. That is all. No words that might confuse.
Whereas the other says the same in words that might defuse

the worry that plain words might cause–a silly sort of way it
is possible to ease the news by the way we say it.

So if the day dawns cold and drear, don coats and scarves and boots
and if dark clouds float overhead, grab your bumbershoots.

Umbrellas block the rain out and keep your shoulders dry,
but bumbershoots are bound to add a sparkle to your eye.

 

The prompt word today is bumble.

Unsolitary Confinement

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Unsolitary Confinement

When I’m walking down the street, my bracelets jingle jangle,
executing dialogues—bangle against bangle.
Calling up to earrings that answer as they dangle,
warning errant necklaces not to twist and strangle.
Every little moving piece—every single spangle
creates a  cacophony that’s more than I can wrangle.
Just a little peace and quiet’s all I hope to wangle
as, thrown into my jewelry box, they’re silenced by the tangle.
They’re driven by their fear that their proximity will mangle
if they even try to move to aim for a new angle.

 

 

The prompt today is jangle.

Paper Shoes

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Paper Shoes

I’m folding me some paper shoes
so I can walk away the blues.
The love poems I cannot recall
I’ll scuff off as I pass the mall.
Someone will find my words all shredded—
how you wooed and won and bedded
one so young and so naive
that she could not help but believe
words pilfered from a Hallmark store
that you had often used before.

All those lovelorn lines obscured.
All that loneliness endured.
On Main Street I will shed my heart—
that part of me you tore apart.
All the lines I wrote about it,
all the times I grew to doubt it.
Your words the heel, my words the sole,
the sidewalks will consume them whole.

All the futile poetry
that passed once between you and me
ground into the pavement where
perhaps two lovers will find it there—
the words like seeds that hung around
hoping for more fertile ground.
Love sprouted from a used-up word
might strike some others as absurd,
But I like to think perhaps
our use of them was just a lapse.
Repeated by those other voices
who choose to live by other choices,
all those words that we now rue
might work for lovers who are new.

 

 

The prompt word today is paper. (Image from internet, photographer unknown.)

Loop de loop

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Thought I’d have to do this job myself, but Pasiano took over immediately and did a beautiful job.

Loop de Loop

Every little hole drilled, every little loop
helps attach the walls for—our new kitty coop.
They’re tired of the inside. They want to get out.
They’ve got cabin fever—I’ve not any doubt.

They’ve taken over all my house—bathroom, sala, kitchen.
So many handy places to hide while they’re mama-ditchin’.
They pulled down all my CD’s and ate my bird’s nest too.
So many great high perches. Always something new.

But mama’s running out of time. She has too much to do
to spend all of her time running this temporary (?) zoo.
Some outside time is what we need—these 4 kittens and me—
a little outside running place will set all of us free.

So Pasiano’s attaching walls over the side gate bars
to protect the kitties from dogs and speeding cars.
Although escape to the big world I’m sure they’d find sublime,
we hope the napa palms are too slippery to climb.

The particle board is installed.  The kittens in fresh air
leap and climb and hide and play. They find it lovely there.
They don’t answer to their names, their naming is so new;
They are Kukla, Fran and Ollie and the white girl we call Roo.

Will the big cat come to visit, or perhaps a frog or two?
That would give them other interesting things to do.
As for me, I finally have some time to do some writing
with nothing climbing up my leg—scratching, mewing, biting.

Kittens are so precious, a constant fun delight;
but I can’t be petting kittens every hour—day and night.
They had two inside places. Now they have an outside other.
No one can tell who likes it most—the kittens or their mother!

 

Olie and Roo have a wonderful time rolling in the dirt, playing with palm fronds and trying to climb the slippery trunks of the trees. So do Kukla and Fran for a half hour or so, but . . .

soon I could hear their piping little “mew mew mew”s.  They’d climbed between the bars and were begging for me to open the sliding screen to let them in.  Within minutes, they were curled up in separate drawers in the bathroom, as was Ollie. Soon, only Roo remained outside, asleep in the sun, where she still is two hours later!

I would have shown you many more photos, but alas, my computer drive is full again and I can’t download any.

 

The prompt today was loop.