Category Archives: Poem

Unwrapped Gift

22 Replies

Unwrapped Gift

You thought life had an itinerary all mapped out and planned?
You thought it was a deck of cards, all dealt out and fanned?
You’d play this card, then that one and win the game with ease?
Fate saw your plan and chuckled and brought you to your knees.

So much for jubilation, for celebration and
your misapprehension you’d been dealt a winning hand.
Humanity is just a part of Nature’s total plan.
Evolution didn’t end when she invented man.

In one hand she holds her sketch pad, in the other an eraser.
One she uses to create herself, the other to efface her.
One creation a success, another a mistake,
Our triumph’s not the only choice that she has to make.

It’s time for the whole human race to eat its humble pie
and align itself with nature, or make the choice to die.
Nature’s not here to conquer. It’s here to show the way.
The truth of that’s the gift that we must learn this Christmas Day.

Prompt words today are humanity, itinerary, celebrate and jubilation.

Dear Santa

16 Replies

Dear Santa

Make the sleigh bells jingle, put leather to the back
of every lazy reindeer. You’ve an extra-heavy pack
to deliver in this year when folks can’t get out shopping
so there’ll be way more presents that you’ll need to be dropping. 

You’ve always been a busy guy every Christmas Eve,
but this year with the extra presents that you’ll have to leave,
you’ll need some extra energy and upon great reflection,
we’ve come up with some special means to show our great affection.

Milk and cookies will not be enough for you this year,
so we’ll leave you a Wassail cup, a porter or a beer
along with a sub sandwich, some cookies and some chips
and some vaseline with glitter to protect your chilblained lips.

May you have sufficient energy. May reindeer find a way
to keep up with the pressure of this extra special day.
And may you be assured while you’re delivering your plenty
that no year in the future will rival 2020!!!

 

 

Prompt words today are glitter, leather, wassail and jingle.

 

Turn About

7 Replies

Turn About

Your claims that you are virtuous are hard to reconcile
with the lurid stories told by victims of your guile.
Each one, in the beginning, considered you sublime,
an assessment always altered when they’d known you for a time.
All your avowed compacts of fidelity and marriage
voiced in times of passion in the backseat of your carriage
never were remembered in the glare of a new day.
Your women were like handkerchiefs—used, then thrown away.
All hope you’ll get your just deserts, with someone doing to you
what you have done to others—to first woo and then eschew you.

 

Prompt words are virtuous, compact, sublime and reconcile.

Sneaky Peeky

25 Replies

Sneaky-Peeky

I’ll admit I’m not exempt
from feelings that are quite verklempt,
for I find it over-pleasant
when opening a Christmas present
to find that object wrapped inside
(the very one you tried to hide,
but in fact, through search and guile
I’ve known about for quite awhile.)

I discovered it a week ago
as I was searching high and low
to see what you had bought for me.
I simply couldn’t wait to see.
Yet see me ahh and oh and ooh,
putting on a show for you?
What you see as over-reacting
is in fact just over-acting.

Prompt words today are joy, guile, present and verklempt.

 

 

One Time Guest

9 Replies

One Time Guest

Adroit in her procrastination, glorious in her folly,
she bombed at being punctual, was great at being jolly.
The life of every party, she was a lively guest.
At entertaining festive folks she was the very best.
And though she ate her mashed potatoes and gobbled up her fishes,
she balked at setting tables and refused to do the dishes.
So, though at entertaining, she surely had the knack,
it’s not at all surprising she was not invited back.

 

Prompt words for today are procrastinate, adroit, bomb and glorious.

Man Child

7 Replies

 

Man Child

He’s a bomb at being serious. He’s jolly, rash and wild.
In essence, he’s never grown up. He’s a perpetual child.
His rustic simplicity is anything but charming,
for he’s redolent of fishing smells and horse riding and farming.

His impetuosity has often brought on trouble,
leading to some barroom brawls and the resulting rubble.
For all these things, he’s won a sort of infamous renown,
and he’s banned from almost all the pubs in his little town.

The local folks have made excuses for him all his life,
but such crass indulgences won’t garner him a wife.
He’d like to have some kids himself–a most unlikely bid
so long as he himself insists on acting like a kid.

Word prompts for today are bomb, jolly,  rustic simplicity, impetuous.

Festive Is

14 Replies

Festive Is

. . . ribbons and candles and holly.
Christmas trees, parties both raucous and jolly.
Confetti in hair and the nerve to kiss boys
beneath the mistletoe, and other joys.

Presents and eggnog and wedding cake, too.
Fireworks. Flags waving red, white and blue.
Easter egg optimism in the hunting,
papel picado and streamers and bunting.

Festive is hearts charged up with the living.
Anticipation and loving and giving.
Remembrance of exploits and births and unitings,
Easter ham slicings and turkey leg bitings.

May baskets on doorsteps. Socks hung in a row.
Eggnog and streamers wherever you go.
Who knows where festivity had its first starts—
Easter egg rolling or Valentine hearts?

Square dances, cloggings and Virginia reelings
end up on the feet but start with warm feelings
that set toes to tapping and make folks so restive
that they have no choice but to end up as festive!

Before presents and food and new decorations
increase credit card debt to new elevations,
perhaps we’ll remember to go back to the start
and return the horse to in front of the cart.

Our kids need to learn that joy can’t be bought,
and it’s up to us that the lesson be taught.
Before it’s too late, we must somehow impart
that there’s no charge for love and no price tag on heart.

Word prompts today are festive, nerve, optimism and charge.

Alfresco Dining Plans

3 Replies

Alfresco Dining Plans

Kitties make the most of serendipity
as they wait for squirrels in the shadow of a tree.
If they’re very silent, the squirrels do not see
and they ooze down to the grass oh so fluidly.

Squirrels have a preference for nuts that may be found
matured on the tree but fallen to the ground—
nourishment the tree has propined for their use,
not accounting for the kittens’ cruel abuse.

So nature feeds on nature every single day,
but it’s a happy ending. The squirrel got away.
The kittens, on the other hand, had no cause to pout.
They merely had to make do with the kibble I dished out!


 

Prompt words for today are kitties, preference, serendipity and propine.

Patent Pending

6 Replies

Image by Jake Pierrelee on Unsplash.

A Modest Proposal

I am applying, here on bent knee,
for you to grant a franchise to me
to be your beloved—your regular guy.
Given that I am awkward and shy,
but I am also one jubilant fellow,
determined in will though my legs are like Jell-o,
who aims to get over his natural bent,
in order to voice, to proclaim and to vent
that my heart will be steadfast and loving and true
If you will grant me a patent on you!

Word prompts today are shy, franchise, jubilant and beloved.

Dog Smarts

11 Replies

 

Dog Smarts

My dog is a rapscallion, ingenious and quick.
I rarely have an ice cream where he doesn’t steal a lick.
Every time I think that It’s not happening this time,
he gets the better of me with his little mime.

First he feigns indifference so I’m caught off my guard,
and then in a mere second, he’s running through the yard,
my cone extending from his jaws as though he is a bird.
So rapid that to try to run and catch him is absurd.

But in my desperation, I do so anyway.
I aimed to teach a lesson that crime doesn’t pay,
so I bought another cone–my second one today,
and took him on a walk with me, licking all the way.

I wouldn’t look the other way. I wouldn’t get distracted.
The seizure of my ice cream cone would not be reenacted!
It was my dog who got distracted  by a small dog with a bone.
By the time that I caught up with him, the other dog lay prone

with my dog above him, thinking that he alone
should have it, so you guessed it, I offered him my cone!
And so my efforts foiled again, I resorted to barter,
demonstrating once again, my canine friend is smarter.

Prompt words today are rapscallion, ingenious, desperation and rapid.