Category Archives: humorous poem

Modern Bride

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Modern Bride

The groom’s family was titled and a bit anachronistic.
So when they saw the bride, I fear they went a bit ballistic.
Instead of white she wore a dress of scarlet oddly draped.
The mother of the groom grew faint. Her husband merely gaped.
She wore something archaic instead of merely old—
her grandma’s feather boa—a bridal statement bold.
Around her neck, a python, and her arms were densely bangled.
Her veil pinned to a tractor hat of satin, oddly-angled.
The brim turned back as though she were an umpire at a game.
In short, the bride’s ensemble was anything but lame.

As she hip-hopped down the aisle to a tune by Kanye West,
the groom stood fondly watching her in morning coat and vest.
Her lipstick blue, her bustier was borrowed and conditional
on return to its owner in a manner most traditional.
To complete her fashion statement, her combat boots were blue,
and if you’ve paid attention, you could guess that they were new!
Her bouquet was fresh dandelions bound up with some chives.
She held it in one hand and with the other, gave high fives
to friends all up the aisle as she jerked her way on by.
The groom’s mom gave a shudder and his father gave a sigh.

So did this modern wedding  forsake the antiquated
with customs much less stuffy, less predictable and dated.
The wedding fare was tacos, Cuban sandwiches and chips,
jelly beans and donuts, crudites and dips.
No caviar or salmon. Just ribs and Tater Tots.
The toasts to bride and groom were made with jello shots.
The wedding cake was chocolate with custard between layers.
Good wishes  voiced by ministers, gurus and namaste’ers.
In place of rice the bride and groom were showered with quinoa.
In short, it was a wedding to rival mardi gras!

 

The prompt today is archaic.

Guilty as Charged

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Guilty As Charged

Yes, I’m guilty of all charges. I fear I must confess.
It’s true I bought a purse and shoes, then bought the matching dress.
What credit card I charged them on, I can only guess,
but I know what I have spent. Sort of. More or less.
It does no good haranguing me. It does not help to press,
asking if I’ve found the bills, hoping I’ll say yes.

You’re making me feel guilty. Inflicting much duress.
Would it make you happier if I went fashionless?
It’s not like I bought golf clubs, a sports car or a yacht.
Just these paltry fashions are all that I have got.
Yes, the dress is Vera Wang. The shoes are Jimmy Choo.
The diamond bangles matched so well, I really needed two.

When the clerk at Tiffany’s asked what he should do,
charge them on my credit card or just charge them to you,
I asked to see your charge account, and, dear, it was a shock
to see the balance on it. That must have been some rock
you purchased just last fortnight. Might I suggest cash-and-carry
the next time that you buy a gift for your secretary?

 

The WordPress prompt today is guilty.

Disappearing Act

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SheSleeps

Generally, I have no desire to disappear.  Given my choice, you’d have me around forever.  The only exception is when I am ill.  In that case, I just want to draw into my shell and disappear.  This poem written three years ago chronicles such a time:

Skedaddle!

Bring me vitamins and soup,
but please don’t camp upon my stoop.
For when I have the ague or flu,
I’d rather not commune with you!
I’d rather sink into my gloom
sealed up lonely in my room.
Sleep as much as I am able,
use my stomach as a table.

Leave liquids here beside my bed,
but please don’t hover overhead.
An angel is appreciated
if, once immediate needs are sated,
they disappear and leave me to
my soggy Kleenex and the loo!

 

The prompt word today is disappear.

Highchair Fashionista

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Enlarge all photos by clicking on any one.

 

Highchair Fashionista

Her mania for haute couture
came a little premature
when she first crawled across the floor,
wanting to see Grandma’s Dior.
When she took her first steps and fell,
it was reaching for Auntie’s Chanel.
The words she learned at Mama’s knee
were Calvin Klein and Givenchy.

Her alphabet from A to V
(from Armani up to Versace)
she learned in closets of her kin
dreaming of how she’d look in
Louis Vitton, Laurent, Bill Blass.
She’d be the best-dressed in her class
of other girls in cut-off jeans
and dresses made by mere machines.

Thus are fashionistas made.
As other children sell lemonade
or waste their days in hide-and-seek,
they are fingering La Fabrique
and looking at the fold and drape
of a model’s evening cape.
To each their own, we’re given to say,
and yet I’m prone to saying “Nay,
childhood might be better spent
in pastimes of another bent.”

I’d hope that kids from zero to twelve
might be more encouraged to delve
into comics or games or nature
with no stylish nomenclature.
Let kids be freakish, free and nerdy.
Let their clothes get torn and dirty.
Time enough for fashion cults
later, when they’re grown adults.

 

The prompt today was premature.

Green Brownies

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Green Brownies

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(This poem evolved from notes that I scribbled into the margin
of our Mexican Train score sheet while visiting my friend Gloria.)

Green Brownies

The brownie that she serves me
crumbles when I try to break it in half.
Her sense of humor allows it and so I tease her.
“Gloria, this looks like the kind of food
my grandmother tried to pawn off on us—
weeks old and crusty from the refrigerator.”

“Those chocolate chips were like that when I bought them!”
she insists, even before I question their green tinge.
I think that this is even worse than the alternative,
and say so and we both laugh as she eats her brownie
and I reduce mine to dust. Not a hard task, as it turns out.

She’s had a bad infection for a week or more.
“I’m not contagious,” she insists each time she coughs
a long low rasping rumble that threatens to avalanche.
“Now stop!” she tells the sounds that explode
without permission from her chest.

“Perhaps,” I say, “These brownies are a godsend
and that’s penicillin growing on the chocolate chips.”
Then her deep coughs transform into
gasps of laughter that echo mine.

The young man there to rake the garden
looks up at us and shakes his head
at two old ladies drinking rum and
eating something chocolate,
and it occurs to me that perhaps
what the world sees as senility
is simply evolution
out of adulthood
to a higher
stage.

 

 

Are you feeling a sense of deja vu? This is a reblog of a piece I wrote four years ago. The WordPress prompt word today was infect.

Mongrel Maven

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Mongrel Maven

My bloodline’s scattered here and there—
a genealogist’s nightmare.
Racially, I’m broadly mixed.
The KKK would have me fixed.
My lineage being under-par,
I cannot join the D.A.R.
I have no claims to royalty,
so my name is title-free.
Who I am is merely me.
For this I need no pedigree!

 

The prompt word today is pedigree.

Rebel Without A Clause

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These ladies and young ladies are certainly not without causes or clauses! The same is not true of me today.  Mental lapse.  

Rebel Without a Clause

I forgot to write my post today. It simply slipped my mind.
It was not done on purpose, for I’m not the rebel kind.
I do not flaunt convention. I do not break the rules.
I am polite to everyone. I gladly suffer fools.
So I don’t know the reason why it slipped my mind today
to look the daily prompt up and then to have my say.
So since I have not written, no poem exists because
I guess you’d have to say I am a rebel without a clause!

Phew! Just in the nick of time. If I hadn’t realized 15 minutes ago that I’d forgotten to write to the WordPress daily prompt, it would have been the first time in four years that I hadn’t done so!  Thanks to forgottenman for finding an appropriate photo to post with it.  The prompt today was rebel.

Make it a Double (A Cywydd Llosgyrnog Poem)

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A Cywydd Llosgyrnog Poem is a syllabic-based Welsh form with both end and internal rhymes. Here’s the structure of this six-line form (with the letters acting as syllables and the a’s, b’s, and c’s signifying rhymes:

1-xxxxxxxa
2-xxxxxxxa
3-xxxaxxb
4-xxxxxxxc
5-xxxxxxxc
6-xxxcxxb

So lines 1, 2, 4, and 5 are 8 syllables in length with lines 1 and 2 rhyming as well as lines 4 and 5. Lines 3 and 6 have 7 syllables and rhyme with each other; plus, line 3 has an internal rhyme with lines 1 and 2 while line 6 has an internal rhyme with lines 4 and 5. Phew!!! There are no further rules for subject matter or meter. (I think they have rules enough, don’t you?

Here is my poem.  Poets in the crowd, may I invite you to try out this challenging form as well? Don’t forget that internal rhyme as well as the end rhymes!

Make it a Double

I must admit that chocolate
is still my favorite ice cream, but
when asked what I’d like to lick,
pistachio  is very good
and so it’s likely (if I could)
some of each would be my pick.

 

(I found the prompt HERE on the Writer’s Digest website.)

Pariah

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Pariah

His classmates found him bookish and his siblings found him odd.
There were no other similar peas within his pod.
Nobody understood him—not his parents, not his teacher.
He found no ally in his doctor nor his preacher.
Oftentimes the acts for which they should have been astonished
were the ones for which he had only been admonished.
They flunked him out of chemistry for blowing up the table
by concocting an explosive that was something less than stable.
They called him just a “ne’er do well.” It seemed he wasn’t able
to do what other kids could do and so he earned the label
of klutz and geek and doofus. He could do nothing right.
He couldn’t chug a beer down. He couldn’t win a fight.
He never ever dressed right. He was fond of oddball hats.
Other people shunned him. His best friends were his cats.
Even as an adult, bad luck didn’t abate.
He remained a pariah. He couldn’t get a date.
He failed at conversation and he was a lousy dancer.
His single social skill was that he found a cure for cancer!

The WordPress prompt today was astonish.

Past Prime

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Past Prime

She stamps her little foot down. A tantrum, I would guess.
She will not put these panties on. She will not wear this dress.
She doesn’t want to brush her teeth. Tangles swathe her head.
She doesn’t want her breakfast. She doesn’t want her bed.
Her grandma shuts the door on her. She’ll wait until she’s grown.
She used up all her patience on kids who were her own!!!

 

With tongue in cheek, I’d like to dedicate this blog to Karen over at her Momshieb blog. You might want to read her link as well!  She’s crazy about her grandkids but even grandmas have their limits. The WordPress prompt word today is tantrum.