Category Archives: misbehaving children

Selfie Generation

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I sat in the food court at the mall yesterday and watched an eight or nine-year-old girl and her baby sister, who couldn’t have been more than three, posing for selfies at a table, the smaller girl mimicking her “older” sister’s every pouty, hopefully sensual grimace. They finally became aware of the fact that I was photographing them photographing themselves and they shifted chairs, turning their backs to me, but went on for another few minutes, determining the face they wanted to turn to the world by what they saw reflected in the older sister’s phone.

Selfie Generation

I like a crinkly sort of smile
that lacks a single trace of guile.
Smiles sinister are not my thing,
nor are the polar chills they bring.

Selfies contain In their morass 
little I might label class.
Sexy smiles, much composed
of postured puckers, planned and posed.

Babies imitate their sisters,
miming come-ons to strange misters
who might stumble on their page
that online might become the rage.

They learn the lingo and the walk.
Mime the postures, talk the talk.
Mindful of how they come and go,
everything done for the show.

Prompt words today are morass, sinister, crinkle, polar, talk and come.

Tin Soldier

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Tin Soldier

Petulant child, in a bit of a snit,
pooches his lips out. He’s having a fit.
He sets up tin soldiers in orderly rows.
Where they will be fighting, not even he knows.

Fast through the air, his tweets swiftly whistle,
delivering threats like an ICBM missile.
He casts insults northwards and south over borders
to Mexico, Canada and other quarters.

He’s saving his friendships for other bad boys.
With each fawning message his keyboard deploys,
he wishes their power were his for the taking.
Korea and Russia—what plots in the making.

His attention span just long enough for his tweeting,
he blusters his way through each conference and meeting.
Many are gap-jawed, yet nothing gets done
concerning disarming this smoking gun.

He’s expressing his own sort of odd concentration
by impounding children, expressing elation
that this will now curb illegal immigration.
How long will we let this man screw up our nation?

Daily Addiction’s prompt today is Gasp!  What better to cause us to gasp in the news today than our self-serving president’s recent horrendous action?

Update: okcforgottenman commented and added this video, which feels appropriate to this post.

If you want to hear testimony of those who have witnessed this separation process and to hear the voices and reactions of children as they are being taken from their parents at the border, then to be taken through a process by which you can easily reach congresspeople who can do something about it, go HERE.

Cold Weather and the Subtle Art of Wooing

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Cold Weather and the Subtle Art of Wooing

A frozen little nose and frigid little toes
plague my teeny-bopper everywhere she goes,
for she does not cover tender little parts
when the winter comes and when the snowing starts.

Flip-flops on her feet, face naked to the air—
she seems to need to show us everything that’s there.
Little mini-skirts and a tiny cotton blouse
with nary a parka as she journeys house-to-house.

She says the weather’s nothing. She says she isn’t cold,
and she will not listen. She simply won’t be told
by her mother or her father that she should bundle up.
We try to give her mittens, hot cocoa in a cup.

Now once again she’s out of here with a new boyfriend
but without a coat or sweater to protect against the wind.
But then I see her logic. for when she subtly sneezes,
he drapes an arm around her to shield her from the breezes. 

So even though my daughter might seem naive and daft
not taking due precautions against the cold and draft,
there’s a method to her madness. She knows what she is doing.
Instead of dressing for the weather she is dressing for the wooing.

 

The WordPress prompt today is frigid.

Small Fry

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Small Fry

We were small fry in a grown up world,
our dresses starched, our hair tight-curled
on a candlestick by mothers
who scrubbed the faces of small brothers
with fingers they had spit upon
to purge the dirt they’d lit upon.

We had no choice in any of this.
Nor in the neighbor lady’s kiss.
Sour and moldy though she might smell,
we pretended we loved it well.
So went the life in days gone by
so long as you were just small fry.

Now children pose for selfies and diss
the thought of an old lady’s kiss.
They refuse to  run through traces.
Don’t allow spit-scrubbed-at faces.
Skirts go unstarched, hair goes uncurled
now that children rule the world!

Fry is the WP prompt today.

Other People’s Children

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Other People’s Children

Rowdy jostlers—twisters, hoppers.
Shouting loudly, upsetting shoppers,
they run up aisles and spar with hangers.
Turn shopping cart races into bangers.

They bark our shins, assault our ears,
yet no one stops these mannerless dears;
for the behavior others find so irksome,
the parents merely view as quirksome.

The prompt word today was “irksome.”

An Ode to Dog Companions

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The Prompt: Literate for a Day—Someone or something you can’t communicate with through writing  can understand every single word you write today, for one day only. What do you tell them?

An Ode to Dog Companions

Darling little Frida, dearest Diego, too.
I have a little something I have to say to you.
If you’d like to go out walking every single day,
you have to start responding when I shout out, “Hey!”

That word means “Pay attention!” Its volume says “Right now!”
It doesn’t mean to take off after every passing cow
pulling me right after you, cause it is two to one,
and since my last foot surgery, I don’t much like to run!

Another little something I’d really like to tell
is that it was all your fault the last time that I fell.
When one of you runs toward the lake, the other towards the town,
your leashes wrap around me and the way I go is down!

Please don’t jump up on the screen whenever mealtime’s near.
I’ve had it mended more than once—a dozen times, I fear.
If you sit there quietly, your meal will be served fast.
I tell this to you each day, but my words don’t seem to last.

Another little something that needs badly to be said
is that it would be lovely if you’d shit behind the shed
instead of on the footpath or all over the grass,
for pooping over everything is really rather crass.

You don’t have to answer that dog across the street,
for he sets a barking record that you don’t have to beat.
The fighting cocks can crow without your high accompaniment.
(Albeit that your howls are growing quite magnificent.)

The hound of the Baskervilles was acting on a curse
and now that you have matched him, there’s no need to rehearse.
The owl will hoot hoot every night no matter what you do.
Ignore him, please. This is your mother begging it of you!

The dog food is for you dogs, and the cat food is for cats.
If you keep forgetting this, it’s going to drive me bats!
It does no good to try to knock cat dishes from the wall.
Those antics will not ever get you anywhere at all!

Diego, when I get home, please don’t drive Frida away!
You won’t believe there’s love enough, no matter what I say.
I have one hand for each of you, so let her have her share.
You are a dog and not a pig, so gluttony’s not fair.

Please don’t eat the cat bed and please don’t chase the cat.
Bullying’s not an answer. I will have none of that!
You found me on the street and did all that you could do
to make me bring you home with me to join my motley crew.

I am allergic to you dogs, and also to each cat,
although I know that you cannot be cognizant of that.
And so you want to sleep real near and have me stroke you often.
But when I do, it ends in itching, nose-blowing and coughin’.

Your species is a puzzle to which I don’t have a key.
Though it was at your insistence that I brought you home with me,
why is it every single time an open gate you see,
you’re through it, running down the street, so anxious to be free?

(for a similar prose answer to this prompt, go Here)

HALLOW E’EN

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The Prompt: Trick or Trick—It’s Halloween, & you just ran out of candy. If the neighborhood kids (or anyone else, really) were to truly scare you, what trick would they have to subject you to?

Hallow E’en

They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall.
One climbs a tree to peer within. I hope he doesn’t fall.
I cower here within my house. Perhaps they’ll go away.
Though I am not religious, eventually I pray.

Their little voices raise a pitch. They start to bay and howl.
There’s a flutter in my heart region, a clutching in my bowel.
I purchased Reese’s Pieces and miniature Kit Kats
just for all these masked and costumed little brats.

My motives were unselfish. The candy was for them,
for I don’t eat much candy in efforts to grow slim.
And yet that bag of Reese’s, those small Kit Kats and such
called to me from where they were sequestered in my hutch.

It started with a whisper, hissing out their wish:
“We would look so pretty laid out on a dish!”
I knew that they were evil. I knew it was a trap.
I tried hard to resist them, my hands clenched in my lap.

I turned up my computer, listening to “The Voice.”
Those candy bars would not be seen till Halloween—my choice!
My willpower was solid. No candy ruled me.
(If that were true, no kids would now be climbing up my tree.)

Yes, it is true I weakened. I listened to their nags.
I took the candy from the shelf and opened up the bags.
Their wrappers looked so pretty put out for display
in one big bowl so colorful, lying this-a-way

and that-a-way, all mixed and jumbled up together.
No danger of their melting in this cooler weather.
I put them on the table, then put them on a shelf,
so I would not be tempted to have one for myself.

When people came to visit, I put them by my bed.
Lest they misunderstand and eat them all instead.
Then when I was sleeping, one tumbled off the top.
I heard it landing with a rustle and a little “plop.”

I opened up one eye and saw it lying there
just one inch from where I lay, tangled in my hair.
Its wrapper was so pretty—foiled and multi-hued.
Some evil force took over as I opened it and chewed!

This started a small avalanche of wrappers on the floor
as I ripped & stuffed & chewed & swallowed more & more & more!
This story is not pretty but has to be confessed.
My only explanation is that I was possessed.

They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall,
but I have no candy for them. No treat for them at all.
Surrounded by the wrappers, bare bowl upon my lap,
I think I’ll just ignore them and take a little nap.

I hear them spilling o’er my wall and dropping down inside.
I try to think of what to do. Consider suicide.
They’re coming in to get me. Beating down my door.
They are intent on blood-letting—the Devil’s evil spore.

I guess it’s not the worst death a gal could ever get.
I’ve heard of much worse endings than death by chocolate!

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In the Motel Breakfast Room: Poetry by Prescription

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In the Motel Breakfast Room

That little boy
is screaming and mad.
At eight in the morning,
he’s already bad!

He tasted his waffle
and doesn’t want more.
He just dumped his Fruit Loops
all over the floor.

His mom didn’t see
from her side of the room.
The attendant was swift
with her dustpan and broom.

She removed all the cereal
dumped at my feet
by the brattiest child
I ever did meet.

I came to this place
for some coffee and quiet.
I didn’t expect
to encounter a riot.

He’s having a tantrum.
He will not sit down.
His voice at screech level,
his mouth set on frown.

Does he want to go back
to the room? asks his mother
as she struggles to feed
both his sister and brother.

At this breakfast bar set up
for all of the guests,
regrettably, no sign says,
“We don’t serve pests.”

Last night when my friend
went to get us some ice,
“Excuse me, Excuse me,”
the desk clerk said twice

as he ran down the hall
in a manner uncool
heading straight for the door
that leads into the pool.

Now I can imagine this
terrible kid
pushing some button.
(I bet that he did!)

that signaled “Emergency
Call 911!”
watching the panic
and calling it fun.

The manager thinking
“perhaps a cracked head!”
but encountering only
this bad boy instead.

Now this morning my coffee
was ruined by his cries.
This early-day tantrum
a rite I despise.

I started to gather
my coffee and fruit,
then grabbed a few
creamers and sweeteners to boot.

When from my eye’s corner
before I could stand,
at the edge of my table
I saw a small hand.

I looked up to encounter
a smile ear-to-ear.
That horrible child
looked ever so dear!

He flashed me the smile,
for a moment stood near,
then departed the room
nevermore to appear.

When I looked at the table,
an astonishing sight.
He’d left me one Fruit Loop
right there in plain sight.

That child’s behavior
now leaves me in doubt
whether I should remember
the smile or pout.

Was my disapproval
so plain to see
that this tiny child
could see right through me?

And had he the wisdom
to do what he did
simply to remind me
a kid is a kid?

 

Note: The event described in this poem actually happened on May 24 at a motel in Des Moines, IA, where I was attending my nephew’s h.s. graduation party. And yes, this is “the” Fruit Loop, which I still have.  The subject was prescribed by Duckie, who, when I told him what had just happened, said, “You gotta write about this.”  Poetry by Prescription. You suggest the topic.  I will write about it.