Category Archives: humorous poetry

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.

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.

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.

The Taste of Love: NaPoWriMo 2018, Day 19

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The Taste of Love

What we feasted on
in those first stages
of internet romance—
when nine hours was too short a conversation—
was words.

We passed on to the next stage of computer dating:
our first dinner date.
He watched on his desktop computer as I prepared a salad.
This was a long and lengthy process
I recorded as closely  as was possible
using the camera from my laptop.

A prisoner of his large unmovable console computer,
I watched his empty desk chair
as he repaired to the kitchen to prepare his meal,
hearing sound effects but little else.

When he returned to the living room and his computer,
he laid his meal in front of his computer.
I had yet to see it as I, in turn, placed my salad in front of me
and took my first bite,
watching closely my technique according to my Skype image.
I chewed politely and then smiled,
revealing the lack of lettuce shards on my front teeth.
I looked up. He was watching me as lovingly as usual.
Now, it was his turn.

What are you eating? I asked.
Ham, he said.
He lifted a huge hunk of ham on his fork, taking a dainty bite
and chewing happily.
What else? I asked?
Just ham, he answered.
And so he demolished the entire pound or two of thick ham steak,
now and then washing it down with a healthy swig of rum and Coke.

Rum and Coke.
It had been one of our bonding experiences
to find that the drink of choice of each was not only rum and Coke,
but Bacardi Rum with Caffeine-Free Diet Coke.
How could this not be a romance made in heaven?

Culinary compatibility,
from 2,000 miles away
seemed to be less of a problem than it would be three months later,
when we first made physical contact.

Well, there was a resolution.
He started munching on carrots
and I had no objection to ham.
We both found a like mania for potato chips,
but true romance bloomed
when I found the full bar of Hershey’s Chocolate
atop his refrigerator.
Who says we need to concentrate on our differences?
Hershey’s Chocolate?
Yes. Our first true taste of love.

 

NaPoWriMo Prompt for the day: write a paragraph that briefly recounts a story, describes the scene outside your window, or even gives directions from your house to the grocery store. Now try erasing words from this paragraph to create a poem or, alternatively, use the words of your paragraph to build a new poem.

Sport Retort

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Sport Retort

When faced with talk of games and sport,
I seldom have cause to retort.
For dribbling, sparring, touching  down
raise no emotions but a frown.
The games I play are just of mind
Less physically taxing and more kind.

Using tongues and brains to spar,
I am more likely  under par
than when I hit a pock-marked ball
off of the course to hit a wall,
bounce off and into someone’s car
to be transported to regions far.

I have not thought to scream out, “Fore!”
My terminology’s as poor,
I fear, as my coordination,
I will not, ever, stun the nation
with my prowess with balls or bats,
parallel bars, hurdles or mats.

Likewise, I have no interest in
watching others skate and spin,
touch balls down or thrust a fist.
When it comes to sports, I must insist
when the tube depicts each bout,
I am forgiven for running out!!!

This is a reblog of a piece I wrote three years ago. The Prompt today was parallel.

A Dreaming Vocabulary: NaPoWriMo, Apr 14, 2018

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A Dreaming Vocabulary

When you’re sleeping soundly in your nightie or pajammers
and you happen to be dreaming of teacups, sharks and hammers,
if the hammer pounds the teacup, spilling tea and cream
to soak the wobbly table that is also in your dream,
you might think good fortune has cruelly run out,
but that still does not explain what the shark’s about.

A dentist in a rowboat comes rowing quickly by.
He fixes that circling shark securely with his eye,
grabs him in a deadlock and pulls him o’er the side,
doses him with novocaine, then just drifts with the tide
as he extracts the teeth that he might use to chew
on anything that he encounters: fish or squid or you!

And just as he is finishing this grisly operation,
the shark begins a session of intense regurgitation.
First a full-grown seagull, then a pink silk ballet slipper
with the ballet dancer still attached, alive but not too chipper.
The shark is still recovering so toothless and so numb it
knows not that if it wants a meal, hereafter, it must gum it.

The whole group now returns to shore. The dancer dances off.
The seagull sits in shock and the shark begins to cough.
A mariachi hits the sand, complete with his guitar.
All of them a bit in shock, wondering where they are.
And to you, caught there  in dreamland, what message does this send?
Perhaps, my dear,  that everything comes out right in the end!

 

The Day 14 prompt is: Pick one (or more) of the following words, and write about what it means to dream of these things: Teacup, Hammer, Seagull, Ballet slipper, Shark, Wobbly table, Dentist, Rowboat.

Rush

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Rush

Get a leg on. Hurry hurry.
Life is just a daily flurry.
Feed the cat and feed the dog.
Take your pills and write your blog.
Company’s coming. Make a curry.
Lately, life is getting blurry
from all there is I have to do:
write and clean and cook and glue.
Things pile up but I’ve no time.
Days had more hours in my prime.
But now I’m always in a rush,
caught within the daily crush.
My “to do” list has me trapped.
I crave a life that is less mapped.
I fear my rushing won’t be over
until I’m pushing up the clover!!!

The prompt today is rush.

Naughty Little Pleasures: NaPoWriMo, April 1, 2018

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Naughty LIttle Pleasures

Naughty little pleasures, secret little games—
they are our private treasures, these solitary shames.
We never can admit them to family or friends,
for fear that doing so would  bring about their ends.
Childhood is when our private pleasure starts—
not stifling our sneezes or holding back our farts.
Eating the last cupcake or hiding Grandpa’s teeth.
Watching skirts on windy days to see what’s underneath.
Torturing sister’s Barbie Dolls and kidnapping her bears.
Reading Daddy’s magazines underneath the stairs.
Guzzling ice cream from the carton and milk right from the spout.
Opening sister’s love letters to see what they’re about.
Telling mom you’ll help her because she’s running late,
then licking all the cookies you’re putting on the plate.
If being perfect were more fun, then probably we would,
but there’s little pleasure in always being good.

For your listening pleasure, my friend Christine Anfossie added music to the poem and sent me a copy to share with you. Listen to it here: 

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt: write a poem that is based on a secret shame, or a secret pleasure.

Outsmarting My Smart TV

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My TV is Smarter Than I Am

My TV is smarter than I am, springing to life on a whim.
When my  Jack-of-all-trades comes to work here, I think she is flirting with him.
She flicks on and then off in a second, just like she has given a wink.
Or perhaps registers disapproval by shutting us off with a blink.

I know she has much to complain of since I purchased her two years ago.
I’ve never connected to cable or dish, so she doesn’t have too much to show.
Although she connects to computers, my Apple igores that she’s here.
That I haven’t read the instructions? I know it’s exceedingly queer.

She’s equipped to show movies in 3D, but my housekeeper threw out the glasses.
So if I want movies to jump out at me, I must go view them out with the masses
and not in the privacy of my own home with my cat or myself or my friends.
I haven’t checked out buying more on the Web, and for this I must soon make amends.

My computer is usually my viewer of choice when my friend sends me movies by Skype.
The films that he sends are amazing. He knows the best subjects and type
of videos that I like viewing. They are smart and they’re funny and Indie.
He doesn’t send action/adventure or slapstick or horror or Hindi.

 But I never watch them on my Smart screen, preferring my laptop to it.
I set it right there at my poolside and watch as I try to get fit
doing my pool aerobics for an hour and a half, maybe two.
My workouts just seem to last longer whenever I’ve something to view.

 My TV can see out the window that I’m faithful to screens that are small
and I’m sure that I’ve given a complex to my big gal I don’t watch at all.
So I started a “Last Sunday” film night where I can share films that I savor
We eat and we drink and we talk and we laugh as we all view the movies I favor.

For one night a month, my TV springs to life when I plug in the little thumb drive.
Her face flushes up in an enormous blush, for she sees that I know she’s alive.
The eyes of all eight of us fix upon her. She’s the center of all our attention.
We laugh at her jokes and cry at her pathos. Respond to her mysteries with tension.

But the rest of the month her expression is blank, sitting alone in her corner
looking so sad and so lacking in life that I feel that perhaps I should mourn her.
The first time she lit up when I entered the room to say she didn’t recognize me,
I realized with shock for the very first time that my TV could both talk and see!

I hadn’t quite realized the extent of her powers when I bought her at Costco that day.
My old TV weighed in at five hundred pounds—more than a TV should weigh.
I’d inherited it from my mom when she died so I had a personal attachment,
but to move it alone, one risked heart attack or at least a vertebral detachment.

And so I gave in to cajoling by friends that it was time to buy another.
and I gave away the monster TV that I had acquired from my mother.
But guilt has suffused me ever after that day, for I really don’t need a TV,
and this smart girl is lacking in challenges, just wasting her talents on me.

She’s recently started to turn herself on (something that girls alone do)
and talking to me when I enter the room and enter her angle of view.
Finally I just unplugged her—an act of most selfish defiance.
I haven’t the time in my life just to chat—especially to an appliance!

 

Hate to admit this poem is an edited version of one written over three years ago and I still flounder around trying to work this TV. The world has evolved beyond me.  I should be the one blushing! The prompt today is blush.

Donald’s World (POTUS-Speak)

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Donald’s World

It seems reality’s been hacked.
The dice are loaded. Cards are stacked.
Truth is no longer so exact.
Actuality’s been cracked
and reason pilloried and racked.

Verisimilitude is yacked
and common sense has long been sacked,
along with logic, reason, tact.
So what’s been rumored, gossiped, quacked
is now more true than proven fact!

 

The prompt word today is fact.