Category Archives: humorous poem

Playing with Fire

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Playing with Fire

In the circles she lives in, she’s queen of the realm.
Wherever she goes, she must be at the helm.
They call her the Admiral, head of the fleet.
She’ll hear no debate and she’ll bear no defeat.

When she is challenged, she’s ready to fight.
Incadescent with anger, she’ll insist that she’s right.
Once her rage is incited, she could drive you to drink.
Your role is to follow. Her role is to think.

When you rub her together with one of her kind,
they’re bound to express a difference of mind,
and since neither can bear an opposing notion,
it’s bound to lead to explosive emotion.

Rub them together and they’re sure to fight.
Like sulphur on sandpaper, they will ignite.
So keep them apart, these glorious dames,
or one or the other will go up in flames.

 

 

Prompts today are in the circle, realm, incadescent, fleet and drink.
Image by Olga Bast on Unsplash.

Yesterday’s Cars

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Yesterday’s Cars

Yesterday’s cars slanted down where they should
have had fins at the tail, and were square at the hood.
Some required a stepstool to enter the door,
then had a big bump centered there in the floor

The grandfathers of cars weren’t for the faint-hearted.
They required you crank them before they got  started,
and inevitably, when the tires went flat,
a service station wasn’t where you were at.

With no Triple A, the onus was on you
to figure out what you had to do.
The jacks were all manual. Tubes needed air,
so many the driver gave up in despair.

With Mom in the front seat and kids in the rumble,
dad  would pump and unscrew and blather and bumble,
then put out his thumb to beg for a ride
in a car that was passing that had room inside.

He was not feinting his look of distress,
and neither was mom, although I confess
it was an adventure for sister and me
who watched the procedure giggling with glee

as inevitably, he would hoof it to town
and we’d open the car doors, jump happily down
and cavort in a field, searching out hidden treasure
and picking up cockleburs in equal measure.

Then when dad caught a ride back with a fixed wheel,
we’d drive on to a diner for a well-deserved meal,
then be on our way, trouble-free and much faster
for the rest of our trip that was free from disaster.

 

And HERE are another two special photos of Model A’s you won’t want to miss.

Prompt words today are yesterday’s cars, slope, require, feint and inevitable. Image by Philip Schroeder on Unsplash. 

I must admit that this particular situation is fiction, although the predicament certainly must have been reenacted many times in an era earlier than mine.

Fourth of July 2021––Wordle 508

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Fourth of July

The sky’s effervescent with bubbles of fire
rising ferociously higher and higher.
With a new surprise every minute or so,
where are the cowering animals to go?

The dogs bark their distress and squirrels in their trees
burrow down deeper into the debris
of nut shells and pine needles, avoiding the grief
of loud explosions, seeking relief.

Meanwhile, on the borders between land and skies,
children look on with wide saucer eyes,
waiting for each pyrotechnic surprise,
ooohing and ahhing as rockets arise.

The patterns they make as they rise ever higher
are finery formed from gunpowder and fire.
Their beauty paid for by distress to the ears,
first from the explosions and then from the cheers.

Forget the poor animals. Have your loud fun,
but my days of fireworks I fear are now done.
Snap me some photos and send me a card.—
I’m spending the Fourth right here in my backyard.

 

Wordle Prompt Words: fire, poor, surprise, rising, card, finery, sky, form, , effervescent, border, ferocious.

For theJuly 4, 2021 Wordle Prompt.

Different Strokes

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Different Strokes

I believe I’ve lost my juju. I’m throwing in the towel.
If I were a mason, I’d be throwing in the trowel.
I’m too light on pragmatic and strong on fanciful.
I’m not achieving much but my life is never dull.
I’m terrible at numbers, organizationally lax—
a non-controversial drawback when it comes to paying tax.

I have a different point of view based on imagination
which works for writing poems but does not work for pagination
where “one” must always lead to “two” and “nine” must follow “eight.”
If I were timekeeper, the whole cosmos would run late.
The fact that I’m disorganized cannot be debated,
but it’s going way too far to say I’m addlepated.

The world needs many opposites to balance out each other.
For every north there is a south, for every dad a mother.
Sober’s stirred by silly and warm thaws out the cold.
Calm smooths out the erratic and meek balances the bold.
So if I tend toward fanciful, don’t issue an indictment.
There’s way too much reality. We need some more excitement.

 

Prompt words today are pragmatic, terrible, controversy, juju and towel.

Enough

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Enough

At six o’clock, glib comments start to fill the air.
We’re hungry for frittata, but the table’s bare.
Darkness fills the kitchen, for mama’s gone on strike.
She’s gone off to the city. Alone, on papa’s bike.

It’s dicey whether she’ll return. She says she’s tired of cooking.
She’s in need of a vacation and so she made a booking
at a posh hotel that has its own cafe
where she will dine on coq au vin followed by crème brûlée.

For once, serving the rest of us will not be her fate.
Someone else will  wait on her and she’ll just sit and wait.
In the morning she will order service in her room
where she’ll not even make her bed or wield dust cloth or broom.

Her note says then she might come home, or she might just wait
and find a nice seaside resort where she can cogitate
for another day or two. She says we shouldn’t worry.
The pizza place delivers if we’re not in a hurry.

Her recipe book’s on the shelf. The stove is  under it.
Her apron’s in the closet and she’s sure that it will fit
each and every one of us while she is on vacation.
She says that fending for ourselves will be an education.

She says to wash the dishes even though it is a bore,
for if she sees a messy kitchen when she walks in the door,
she’s going to walk right out again until we prove we’ve learned
that things will be real different after Mama has returned!

 

 

 

 

Prompts for today are six, glib, frittata, dicey and darkness.

Just Desserts

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Just Desserts

Was my brother ornery or was he merely dumb?
Once he told me rubber bands were a new sort of gum
that didn’t blow good bubbles, but at least you could rechew it,
saving you the money of having to renew it.

Given any option, he was bound to choose the crazy one,
and if the choice involved some work, sure to choose the lazy one.
He always had ideas about how to do work faster,
and without exception, they resulted in disaster.

Like the time he used Dad’s blowtorch to trim all of our trees,
not taking into full account the briskness of the breeze
and set the house on fire, slightly singing the outside,
and when the firetrucks arrived, he asked them for a ride!

Once when men came to fix the roof, I heard the kitty mewing
and knew at once there was a chance that more mischief was brewing.
Whatever put it in his head to waterproof the cat
by dipping it from tail to neck in the tarring vat?

He’d do things like putting red ants inside my skirt,
and when my folks weren’t watching, he’d spit on my dessert,
then eat the rest himself when I asked to leave the table.
He found ways to torment me whenever he was able.

Entertainment such as this was what amused my brother,
giving ulcers to my dad and white hairs to my mother.
But growing up with brother turned out fortunate for me,
for he gave a clear pattern of what I shouldn’t be.

And now that I have kids myself to tend and love and cook for,
I have a sure advantage, for I know just what to look for.
I see things with my brother’s eye and remove such temptations
that might lead to misdirections in their moral educations.

And as for my brother’s childhood deportment flaws,
just desserts were finally served. I know this because
fate dished out the punishment for his childhood errors
by giving him two sons that I hear are holy terrors!

Prompt words today are waterproof, idea, head, ornery and option.

Special Delivery

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Special Delivery

Fetch the doctor and bring him home.
I’m giving birth to a new poem.
If he gives you the runaround,
I guess I’ll be hospital-bound,
for I’ve got fever, cramps and chills
that can’t be cured by any pills.

I’m falling into a big pit
and I can’t get rid of it.
The lacuna waits for me.
It is the well of poetry
that I’ll fall into if no saint
comes to rid me of the taint
of words that rhyme or words that don’t.
 I fear that if the doctor won’t,
surely I’ll be ripped apart
by narratives that must depart.

They’ve been gestating so long
that I fear something will go wrong.
So call the doctor. Tell the fellow
that my fingers have gone yellow
from the words that can’t get out.
I’m getting rheumatism, gout.

I’ve got a mass within my heart
and I don’t know how best to start
to free the words that must be born—
that from my body must be torn.
Womb and brain and heart and spleen
stuffed full but yearning to be lean.

Emptied of words, stripped to the core,
then I”ll have room to sprout some more.
For though I grow the poems right well
and have fine stories I can tell—
although I’m bursting with the stuff,
I know that words are not enough.
For years they have been telling me
it’s all in the delivery.

 

 

Prompt words are fetch, runaround, chills, yellow and lacuna.
Photo by Freestocks on Unsplash.

Nature Lesson (A Discourse with Bee and Hummingbird)

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Nature Lesson
(A Discourse with Bee and Hummingbird)

It has a beauty most divine,
that flower swinging from the vine,
and yet the hummingbird and bee
come not to ogle but to dine.

The flower swinging from the vine
has a nectar sweet as wine
with a savor most divine.

And yet the hummingbird and bee
must know that it belongs to me—
theirs not to savor but just to see.

Come not to ogle but to dine?
It seems the lesson learned is mine.
What nature’s given is also thine.

 

For the dVerse Poets Trimeric Prompt

To read other poems to this prompt or to post your own, go HERE.

Feeding Frenzy

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Feeding Frenzy

When I hear footsteps on the roof I do not ever worry,
even though they’re rapid as though someone’s in a hurry,
there is no burglar kneeling there waiting to rob my vault.
If there are noises overhead, it is my kitty’s fault.

The loot she seeks is kibble. She cannot stand the fact
that I am so heedless and have so little tact
that I feed dogs before the cats, and yet she doesn’t dare
venture into the backyard, for canines quarter there.

 


The fact of my investment in the solid gate
that keeps dogs from the cats’ domain does not expiate
the sin that I have chosen to feed the doggies first.
Of all my pet decisions, she thinks this is the worst.

 


So from the rooftop far above where dog types cannot reach,
the girl cat feels the need to stand there daily to impeach
my decision, once again, and let me know her wishes
for soft cat food and dry cat food in their separate dishes.

And once the dogs are fed, we race—her up there, me below,
and however quickly I happen to go,
she always beats me in the race to get to the back door
where I rip one food pouch open and she meows for more.

 


While her brother digs into juicy tuna souffle,
grateful for just one dish of this easy prey,
she looks up accusingly from her feline crouch,
and now and then I heed her plea and yield the extra pouch.

 

 

 

Prompts today are on the roof, fault, loot, kneel and investment.

Whirlwind

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Whirlwind

Cookie crumbs, pumpkin seeds pepper the floor
beneath the stool of this child I adore—
a slovenly child who is perfectly able
to spill half her milk on the floor near the table.
As she sits cutting paper dolls, paper bits flutter
down from the piles of snippets and clutter

she amasses around her in  any room where
I’ve worked half the morning just to prepare
for the meeting with friends that occurs in an hour.
The sofa cushions she spread in a tower
are ringing the sofa back, placed in a mound
to catch mountaineer Barbie should she fall to the ground.

Covered by green napkins, the pillows now pass
for a fantasy hillside all covered in grass.
I scoop up the clutter and then the small miss,
ransom the cookies for a small kiss,
then hurry to try to clean up the room.
Locate new napkins, then brandish the broom,

sweeping up crumbs and paper and things
left in her wake just before the bell rings
and the first guest enters, surveying the scene
now cleared of the mess. Perfectly serene.
“I don’t know how you do it, with work and a kid,”
my friend says, not knowing the stuff that I hid

just two minutes ago behind the hall door
that once only held coats but now holds a lot more:
Barbie dolls, crayons and scissors and scraps
as well as neat rows of sweaters and wraps.
Family secrets that we’ll never tell
that every mommy knows all too well.

 

Prompt words today are seed, flutter, grounds, sloven and milk.