Category Archives: humorous poem

The Archbishop Gets Forgetful

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The Archbishop Gets Forgetful

Priests in town know when the archbishop is about,
he’s bound to have a new batch of indulgences to tout.
And though he’s their head honcho so they must all be respectful,
when they see him coming they get super-genuflectful.
“Please dear Lord, don’t make us sell the pardons that he has!”
These days that sort of fund-raising carries no pizazz.
Paying their bills as he suggests has no appeal at all.
They’d really rather make do with St. Vincent de Paul.
Yet no one wants to tell him that selling the way to heaven
was outlawed by the church way back in fifteen sixty-seven!

Prompt words for today are honcho, pizzazz, respectful, tout and bill.

 

If Things Should Return to Normal

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If Things Should Return to Normal

Just in case the world we know ever returns to normal,
I feel we’ll need reminders for behavior less informal.
So, let me reacquaint you with the former art of dressing.
Introducing color-matching, underwear and pressing.
It’s been a number of months now—five, to be precise—
since there was the necessity to put on something nice
and face the maze of traffic to go to an event.
So before you visit places where you once often went,
you may require reminders, lest in trips to spots exalted
you could find your entry may otherwise be halted.
Entrance to most restaurants requires shirt and shoes,
along with all your other clothes. Forget this, and you’ll lose
precious hours driving home to remedy the fact
that you’ve forgotten basics of how you used to act.
Out there in the real world, genteel folks do not dare
to go about half-dressed and it’s good to cut your hair.
Put on a little lipstick and tweeze hairs from your chin.
Do not gobble down your food and do not slurp your gin.
When the world returns to normal and you go out once more,
just in case, please pin this little check-list to your door.
Though reminders may be premature, be glad that you have gotten them,
for by the time they’re needed, I’ll most likely have forgotten them.

Prompt words today are maze, precious, introducing, exalt and dress.

Who Needs an Election?

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Who Needs an Election?

Our perfunctory president is not in any hurry
to pack his suitcase.  He’s a rat that’s unequipped to scurry.
Unready to give up his throne., he thinks we are in need
of his gross incompetence, his racism and greed.
How could his teeming vassals unseat their liege-lord now?
How dare his noble lackeys desert their sacred cow?
Are they in their right minds, seeking to end his power?
Must he desert his White House and make do with his tower?

His orange countenance grows pale. His comb-over descends.
He thought that he would rule our world ’til he was in Depends!
If he could only change the rules, how great that it would be
to play his “Trump,” enabling him to found a dynasty.
First Junior, then Ivanka could inherit his domain.
What other tyrant is equipped to take over his reign?
This liberty these fools taut can’t hold a candle to him.
His light is needed now the torch of liberty’s gone dim.

No need for an election. The world’s too dire for that.
He’ll gladly serve another term growing sleek and fat.
He’ll sack Social Security and supplement the riches
of all the moneyed classes. Never mind the foreign bitches
who have swarmed into the congress. Send those tawny women home—
the sacred halls of governance better suit a gnome
who carries golf clubs as his scepters and overlooks derision
to fuck the whole damn world according to his crazy vision.

“Heil Trump,”  his swastika’d supporters chant. “And damn the Jews!”
“Crucify the liberals,” is shouted from the pews
of those for whom religion is being blindly led,
forsaking what is written in favor of what’s said.
As lambs led to the slaughter, let us bleat and blindly scamper
after all the rich men that we were born to pamper.
We do not need good health care, let alone good food or shelter.
Long Live Trump! Who cares if the whole world goes “Helter Skelter?”

 

Prompt words are unready, perfunctory, racism,  scurry and suitcase. Image  from Unsplash, used with permission.

 

Snapped

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Snapped

My nails are often inky or besmirched by dirt or paint.
Perfect rounded ovals are often what they ain’t.
You can always ascertain what project I’ve at hand,
be it cooking, painting or digging in the land,
simply by observing the shape my nails are in:
paint bespeckled, ringed with dirt, ragged, chipped and thin.

There’s usually no saving them. I use each as a tool.
When I trim the pergola or scrape mold from the pool,
my nails bear the brunt of it. They are no pretty sight.
There is no manicure on earth that could put them right.
So a month or two ago, imagine my surprise
when ten perfect white-edged nails appeared before my eyes.

I located the orange stick, the cuticles to shape.
I rounded off the tips of them and couldn’t help but gape
at hands equipped with fingernails for once all the same length!
I admit it. I admired them—their whiteness, shape and strength. 
I decided I would polish them. The first time in a year.
First a coat of fleshy peach, and then a coat of clear.

Finally, all the nails except just one were done.
I saved it for the last because it was my favorite one.
It had the nicest shape of all, in fact it was the longest.
According to my reasoning, it was likely the strongest.
So imagine my displeasure. Try to feel my sense of loss
when I reached out for the nail polish and broke it clean across!

Cruel fate has ways of testing our will and sanity,
sometimes by means of toying with our silly vanity.

 

Prompts for the day are fingernail, pergola, inky, ascertain and savings.

 

Lazy Day Resolution

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Lazy Day Resolution

I do not want to write a thing. I don’t want to design.
When it comes to creativity, I’m ready to resign.
My efficacy’s at an end. I have no further drive.
No further motivation to prove that I’m alive.

I’m going to eat chocolates in front of the TV.
No schedules to live up to. Now all my time is free.
I have no excuses. Your aid is not required.
To end this conversation, I will just say I’m retired!

 

Prompt words today are design, aid, conversation, efficacy and excuses.

Overgrowth

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Version 2

Overgrowth

My once magical garden is less discrete
with two-foot-high plants growing under my feet.
My beautiful fescue is obscured by weeds,
my succulent sun rose and tall slender reeds
choked out by visitors never invited.
I cajole my gardener. This must be righted!
This situation has grown to be dire.
The driving rain has prodded them higher.
If you want to come over to see how high
my rainy season weeds are, please bring a scythe!!!

Prompt words today are magical, cajole, driving, discrete and beautiful.

Ha! When I went down to take photos of the spare lot I am trying to convert into a garden, Pasiano was in fact down there with a weed-whacker, working diligently, so this poem was obsolete even before I posted it.

The Makeover

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The Makeover

She was a timid little thing, wedded to lace and wicker.
Although she had a wicked wit if it were only quicker.
With her friends it’s true that she was faster to respond.
They were a modern sort of crowd–a regular beau monde.

They devised a plot to bring her out, to shatter her reserve.
They knew she had the talent but lacked the will and nerve.
They made it their year’s project to extract her from her shell.
They knew it wouldn’t be easy, for they knew her well.

But their decision was not arbitrary. They were all intent.
Of her reclusive habits, she was going to repent!!!
By what methods they inspired her, I fear we’ll ne’er discover.
Let it suffice for us to say they brought her from her cover.

By the next social season, she was fashionably buff.
Her reparté was clever, her rejoinders up to snuff.
And all the local bachelors, formerly prone to snickering
were lined up before the lady, groveling and smickering.

 

 

Words for the day are project, arbitrary, smicker, reserve and respond.

Definition of smicker from Merriam Webster Dictionary:

archaic: to ogle and smile amorously 

People Talk

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People Talk

“Precocious,” said the neighbor lady, talking about me.
And so I grabbed the dictionary, perched it on my knee,
intent upon my purpose, concentrating on my need
to know the meaning of the word, although I couldn’t read.

At three years old, another neighbor said that I was sweet.
I licked my arm, thinking that I might be good to eat,
but I tasted of my modeling clay, and I began to choke.
I figured out his comment was something of a joke.

My crazy older brother used to call me “out of sight”
when at the dinner table—in daylight, not at night.
The space between us was not much. Why couldn’t he see
this person in her rightful place was obviously me?

At four years old, I know a lot: numbers, letters, words.
What to call the insects. The names for all the birds.
I listen when they talk to me from grass or tree or fence.
It’s only human animals that often don’t make sense!

Prompt words for today are space, precocious, sweet, rightful and purpose.

Heart of the Matter

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Heart of the Matter

My family’s only easygoing when it isn’t moody,
and dealing with the moody times seems to be my duty.
If I were only liberated and in better shape,
I’d clamber out the window and down the fire escape
and find some other people easier to bear,
investigate the wider world and see how I would fare.
The solution to this problem you are likely to construe
if you interview my family, but I hope you never do,
for the truth is that the discord that you otherwise might see
is likely to have vanished when they’re not dealing with me!

Word prompts today are easygoing, construe, moody, liberate and escape. photo by Alev Takil on Unsplash, used with permission.

The Advantages of Social Distancing

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The Advantages of Social Distancing

My salad is mouthwatering, the ambience is fine.
The numbers in my dining room below what laws define.
I am amply distanced as I am all alone,
the friend that I am dining with connecting via phone.

The cake I baked four days ago obliterated in three,
insures my tonight’s dinner will be dessert-free.
How do I compensate for that when dining all alone?
I have my entertaining quirks for which I won’t atone.

My friend is in her very best—her Klein and De la Renta.
While I slurp up my soup, she slowly savors her polenta.
To not dress in my best as well I feel she would find rude,
so I will not reveal from the waist down, I’m dining nude!

Prompt words are mouthwatering, ambience, cake, obliterate and number.