Category Archives: humorous poem

Wordless

Prompt words for today are Wow, amplify, squabble, ferocious and vulnerability.

Wordless

I wish that I could wow you with putting prompts to rhyme,
but I seem not to be able to do so at this time.
“Amplify’s” been silenced and “squabble’s” fighting back,
while their potential author is revealed as just a hack.

It seems my old acuity at making words behave
has somehow deserted me, branding me a knave.
The truth that I am lacking in *vocabular agility
has left me slightly flummoxed with a new vulnerability.

(*For all I know, some lexicographer’s already dissed
my coinage of a brand new word the dictionaries missed.)
This poet, once ferocious, has been worn down by time.
and I’m thinking in my next life I might come back as a mime.


Prompt words for today are Wow, amplify, squabble, ferocious and vulnerability.

Last Dance

Last Dance

It’s taxing my limits, this spirited dance.
I’d like to sit down if he’d give me a chance.
If I were more candid I’d say it’s enough,
but finding an opening to do so is tough.

He spins me and whirls me and then grabs my hips
as though he is plotting some aerial flips.
Ensconced in the music, he hasn’t a clue
that my hair’s come undone and I’ve only one shoe.

He seems not to notice that I’ve grown more frantic
as each new maneuver grows more corybantic.
I’m so exhausted, I fear I might drop,
and I pray for the band to finally stop.

I’m tired of following, tired of dips.
I can take no more swirls, no maneuvers or flips.
When I land on my feet, I bolt from the floor,
I retrieve my shoe and I make for the door.

I sprint down the street, and when I find my ride,
I lock all the doors once I’m safely inside.
And since that day, I’m relieved to report,
I’ve vowed to make dancing a spectator sport!

 

Prompt words for the day are tax, ensconced, corybantic and candid.

Travel Fatigue Amnesia

Travel Fatigue Amnesia

After ten hours of driving, he felt the car swerve
as his eyelids got heavy and he lost his verve.
With an accident imminent, he pulled off the road
to turn into a Starbucks for sleep’s antipode—
a double espresso with foam and a scone.
His purchase completed, he departed alone,
but fifty miles later, he’s been heard to confess
a thought popped into mind that caused much distress.
He did a fast U turn, feeling like a louse,
and drove back to the Starbucks to retrieve his spouse.

 

Prompt words for the day are froth, imminent, purchase and verve .

Verbless

Prompt words today are unperturbed, antipathy, quixotic and trophy.
(And, sadly, for the third day now, no prompt from The Daily Spur.)

Verbless

Today I am anything but unperturbed,
for the prompt words, I find, seem to be under-verbed.
We’re over-adjectived and over-nouned,
but is there a single verb to be found?

It’s hard to accept this sudden antipathy
displayed by prompt-sites’ crass lack of empathy
in shunning action words. I find a line
that is lacking in verbs, overly supine—

just lying there motionless, lacking in verve—
a mere trophy sentence, no guts and no nerve!
Perhaps if the Daily Spur came out of hiding,
heeding this gentle but most sincere chiding,

together, the prompt sites could conspire to curb
their Quixotic attitude towards that lost verb.
But, in the meantime, can anyone curb
my agitation by suggesting a verb????

 Image by Matt Walsh on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Melania’s Revenge

Teen Vogue and Sun Photos

Melania’s Revenge

As he descends the air stairs, his waving hand waving,
his wife walks beside him as though she is braving
the air that’s around her. She seems to be craving
release from a torment, but she is behaving
because of a settlement scored when he won—
more money for her and more for her son.

But they can’t make her smile a believable smile—
one that masks her boredom and covers her bile.
His hand swatted away, she walks on her own
due to numerous deeds for which he must atone.
The hole in her soul must be so hard to fill,
for living with a jerk is the bitterest pill.

Even she has her pride. It’s an act of sedition
expressing her angst for four years of perdition—
a vehement act that expresses her pride
that though docile outside, she’s a rebel inside.
Some say she’s a dreamer, as though in the dreaming
she escapes a life over which she’d be screaming

if she really cared —but she doesn’t, you know.
If it weren’t for the valium and all of that dough—
she’d no doubt go crazy. Stark raving mad,
over having to spend her whole life with this cad,
but the latest new fashions and a life on the lazy
make up for a husband certifiably crazy!

And as for the people who make her life hell?
She’ll just crook her pinkie and ring her small bell
and tell them to rip out the damnable roses
and then flaunt her power in all of their noses,
by creating a garden—a dull boring park
that will prove that Melania’s at last left her mark.

courtesy #Getty and @marycjordan

Prompt words today are hole, vehement, wave, sedition and dreamer.

Deadly Pick

 

Deadly Pick

His coat size has been swelling as his fame keeps shrinking down.

His goal of being lionized has not earned him a crown.
His attempts at speech are aggravating, branding him a fool.
The “facts” he states extraneous, and fiction, as a rule.
He proved to have no budding talent, in fact he’s never bloomed.
From the day they picked him, our country has been doomed.
The seeds he’s spread are poisonous, the ground they fall on blighted,
but hopefully we’ll see the light and his wrongs will be righted.
The seeds of fairness sown again. Our course once more set straight.
And all the horrors he’s planted will wither and abate.

 

Images by Deviant Art and GoodEarth Plants.  Prompt words today are bud, extraneous, aggravate, lionize and coat.

A Way Out

A Way Out

He thinks he is inexorable, but he’s only temporary.
His expiration date reveals that he is just contemporary.
He’ll go down as a buffoon in the annals of our nation,
and his exit from the White House will bring great jubilation.
When greed combines with vanity and thirst for power and fame,
then achieves the oval office, the whole nation is to blame.
Would that he’s vivified our populace from living room to coffice
to get their butts out and to vote this charlatan from office!
May justice thus be vivified and liberty brought home,
and a sense of the rational be restored to the dome.

I’VE VOTED. HAVE YOU, OR WILL YOU????

Word prompts today are exit, inexorable, collide, vivify and temporary.

On the Road

Remember many years ago when roads were just two-lane
and strings of Wally Byamers would drive across the plain,
swarms of silver trailers, in a never-ending chain
that made passing all of them a headache and a pain?
With oncoming traffic to take into account,
It was an endless chore of weaving in and out.

As a little girl, I’d stand beside the highway,
watching all the traffic whizzing by my tiny byway.
And once I saw a cherry top wave a trailer down
that was leading a whole caravan of airstreams through our town.
“Yada yada yada,” said their leader to the cop
when he gave the orders for their caravan to stop.

What was their infraction? They’d done not done one thing wrong!
The problem was their caravan, the cop said, “It’s too long.”
Thirty airstreams in a row was courting a disaster.
Couldn’t half of them just try to drive a little faster
to create a distance, giving other cars a break.
A little space between them before they overtake

another clump of traffic that will have them in-and-outing,
rolling down their windows and gesturing and shouting?
But, proud as any Samurai, the leader shouted, “No!”
“Without me here to lead them, they won’t know where to go!”
And that’s why thirty airstreams are parked in our back field,
waiting for their leader, who has refused to yield.

He’s camped out in our jailhouse, relieved if truth will tell—
rescued from constant wandering and cozy in his cell.

Word prompts for the day are yada yada yada, only, caravan, proud and samurai.

Do-It-Yourself!

Executing

Do-It-Yourself!

He’d written the definitive how-to-do-it guide,
but needed a good editor, so I had applied.

He was a woodsy sort of bloke, self-confident and curious,
but once I got to know him, I found him to be spurious.

Though he seemed independent, when I asked him to replace
a light bulb in its socket, he did a turn-of-face.

He balked and had a certain emergency of bladder
when asked if he would simply climb up on a ladder!

It seems the very sort of jobs he taught us to be doing,
due to his acrophobia, were ones he was eschewing!

When it came to home improvement, he was words upon a shelf,
giving literal meaning to the term “do-it-yourself!”

Prompt words today are woodsy, replace, independent, editor and spurious.

Framed

Framed

When I’m tired of television, my digestive tract
draws me to the kitchen and there we make a pact.
Shoe by shoe, approach the fridge and though the hour is late,
We stuff ourselves with what’s inside ’til appetites abate.

Making sorties on the fridge with just my own collusion?
The thought I’ll get away with it it’s merely an illusion.
They’re bound to miss that half a pie, but then the plot will thicken
when they  note the absence of half a tub of chicken.

I leave the fridge a bit ajar, the Colonel’s box in front of it,
hoping when it’s time to blame that I won’t take the brunt of it.
I put the pie plate on the floor, increasing the odds that
if I spread bones around it, perhaps they’ll blame the cat!

Prompt words today are illusion, television, late, tract and shoe.