Category Archives: humorous poem

Tending the Zoo

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Tending the Zoo

Grooming tasks inside the the zoo seem to go on forever
with so many body parts to clean or trim or sever,
but when it comes to manicures, one group must be exempted,
for when it comes to ungulates, the groomers are not tempted
to attempt to trim the hooves of rhino or of elephant.
Even the most burliest of manicurists find they can’t!!!

And in respect to dentistry, though elephants are easy,
when it comes to giraffes, zoo dentists are most queasy.
Giraffes are not unruly, capricious or uncouth.
The problem is the distance between the turf and tooth.
And thinning out a lion’s mane simply can’t be done.
Relinquishing their hairs? They won’t part with even one.

And every time the groomers’ van goes into parking gear,
far up in the shady green, the monkeys disappear.
For though every mosquito, every flea and every tick
that invades their body may itch or make them sick,
inter-monkey grooming is a method sure to please
better than the insect sprays, which only make them sneeze!

 

Prompt words today are green, ungulate, relinquish, capricious, shady and exempt. Image by Thomas Oxford on Unsplash.

Reading Challenged

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Reading Challenged

Diana Gabaldon’s romances are way too historic.
Koolkosherkitchen‘s recipes? Delicious, but caloric.
Mo Willems counts on pigeons to chase away the blues,
but I’d never volunteer to fill any pigeon’s shoes
due to my fear of flying, so even in a pinch,
to read of being  airborne causes me to flinch.

Can’t read Cormac McCarthy or Murakami either.
When violence erupts in books, I have to take a breather.
Harlequin romances are too mushily romantic,
for I prefer my novels less sexually pedantic.
All-in-all you might have guessed I’ve little left to read
and so instead I write all day to satisfy my need

to hang out with a word or two that has not been written
by writers such as those above by whom I’ve not been smitten.
And though my poems aren’t edible or sexually explicit,
violent or airborne, I feel it is implicit
that I need an appointment with my therapist to see
if I can even stomach silly verses penned by me!

Prompt words are pinch, historic, appointment, volunteer, and flying. Image by Brendan Stephens on Unsplash.

Escargot

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Escargot

I am an ally of the truth, which lives the whole world over,
hiding beneath leaves of grass or hyacinths or clover.

A tiny snail detective, sliding slowly with no sound,
scoping out a food source over every edge and mound—

with its single jaw at work, nature’s innovation
cleans up all her messes with its constant mastication.

Cutter ants march by like time, disposing hour by hour,
of beauty we aren’t finished with, flower after flower,

but the snail goes gliding by, almost beyond detection,
eating everything in sight—less picky in selection.

From animal waste to fungus, and even other snails,
the appetite of gastropods seemingly never fails.

And then, ludicrous humans, knowing not what they do,
themselves devour these creatures who deign to dine on poo!

 

Prompt words today are snail,  innovation, detective, march, ally and clover.

Process of Elimination

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Process of Elimination

The child asked her grandpa to teach her how to spell,
and he could not deny her, though he knew good and well
that spelling class for him had been a different sort of Hell.

They had not been his forte, the chalk board and the book,
and so this was a challenge he timorously took. 
He had to find a method to help, by hook or crook!

He said to make a menu of all the words she sought
and he would make a list of all the spellings they were not—
a reverse teaching method that, thankfully, she bought! 

So, she gave her assent to all his ballyhoo,
discounting his misspellings of “tuthbrush”  “taribul” “hoo,”
on her route to finding  spellings that were new.

Thus she learned to overlook solutions that he sold her
in the loving ill-contrived way he sought to mold her
and used the dictionary, ruling out spellings he’d told her. 

Prompts today are: timorous, toothbrush, ballyhoo, assent, spell and menu.

Improving on the Masters

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Improving on the Masters

Surreptitiously, I raise the quill to make a thin gray line
to festoon the drawing that is not even mine,
then tuck my small utensil securely in my purse.
Nightly I make this journey, and nightly I rehearse

what I will say if caught at last, imagining the worse.

The art museum’s climate—chill and dry and dark
gives way to summer’s damp heat as I hurry through the park,
find my car and drive away, speeding ever faster
lest I be finally detected, improving on a master.

 

Prompt words today are festoon, surreptitiously, quill, utensil, thin, climate.

Turn About

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Turn About

His love is intransitive with no particular focus.
He finds marriage an oddity, monogamy hocus pocus.
He follows neither law nor norm and constantly reminds
her that he’ll make no love troth that promises or binds.

Carving out a life with him would be no easy task
and so she neither taunts nor begs. Doesn’t suggest or ask
for any oaths of loyalty or fealty or marriage.
For them, no orange blossoms and no baby carriage.

They’ll simply wander on through life standing slightly apart,
with no soulful joining of property or heart.
But it hasn’t occurred to him that any night or day
she might be the one who decides to slip away.

Prompt words are intransitive, carve, oddity, taunt, remind and law.  Image by Elliot Reyna on Unsplash.

Unsolicited Advice

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Unsolicited Advice

With buckets of advice and a blizzard of suggestions,
and prolific answers to all of life’s great questions,
he blusters and pontificates and tells us how to live
with advice he never follows, but which, nonetheless, he gives.

He imparts his wisdom to everyone he meets:
from how to run your business to your life between the sheets.
Advice on morals, love and sex (all in his domain)
make even brief encounters such a royal pain.

You know he’ll scratch his whiskers and open up his yap
and once again you will be caught in his vocal trap.
And so you’ve found that at first sight, you must avoid detection
by altering your footsteps to an alternate direction.

Prompt words today are whiskers, sheet, prolific, bluster, bucket and blizzard. Image by Roberto Quezada on Unsplash.

Kudzu

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Kudzu

By the statue of the satyr where the kudzu is the thickest,
I toil pulling roots out, and I swear I am the quickest.
Every place I see the vine, I vow that I will best it.
I remove  it from the soil, conquering it lest it
cover all my property from here up to the sea,
knowing if it had its way, that it would cover me!!!

Prompt words today are satyr, place, kudzu, toil, root and me.

Bugbear

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Bugbear

My bugbear really is a bear, but it does more than bug me.
When I take a walk in woods, I fear that one will hug me.
I shake in terror every time I hear a dry branch crack,
afraid that I might have a bear descend upon my back.
My footsteps are deliberate. I do not want attention,
fearing that a grizzly bear will demand my detention.

At church camp I stayed with the group as we walked to chapel,
imagining a black bear with his sharp claws like a scalpel
ripping through my backpack and shredding through my tee,
getting down to business. Getting down to me.
When father saw something was wrong as he heard my confession,
he said that i could tell him all, that it was his profession

to listen to the foibles and the fears of kids like me.
Whatever worries I might have, he could set me free.
And so I told everything—my excessive worry
that I might encounter something clawed and toothed and furry.
Then he disqualified my fears and did it in a hurry,
by saying that God put no bears in central Missouri!!!!

 

Prompts today are bugbear, profession, disqualified, deliberate, shake, chapel. Image by Mana on Unsplash.

Computer Updates

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Computer Updates

Modern life is a rigmarole, day after day.
It radiates chaos for which you must pay.
If you’re hindered by change, then this isn’t your world.
Week after week, more updates are hurled
that change the position of all that you do.
How do I find “send?” I haven’t a clue!

They make no provision for those who are old
who have to remember instructions they’re told.
And just when they’ve memorized everything new,
all the things that they need have been placed out of view.
I find it uncouth that the programmers make
change after change just for change’s sake.

What is the purpose of transforming a word
into a symbol? I find it absurd.
Then putting it somewhere we don’t think to look
so we have to survey every corner and nook
just to perform a task we once found easy?
It makes us confused and a little bit queasy

that computer techs constantly accelerate
change so we’re always just out of date!!!!
Does it give them a lift and make them feel jolly
that they’re making their predecessors melancholy
for the old times when all the things found yesterday
were in the same place when looked for today????

Does anyone else keep getting the “Exchange Password Required” message dozens of times a day from Microsoft??? It is driving me crazy!!!!

Prompts for the day are radiate, hinder, rigmarole, couth, provision and melancholy. Click on the links to see what websites have provided the prompts.