Category Archives: Poem

Breach of Conduct

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Breach of Conduct

There’s a glitch in my spelling—a flub in my speech.
I spelled the word breech when it should have been breach.
There’s a stupendous difference from word to word,
thus my conveyed meaning was rather absurd.
Forgive me for saying that your breech was ample.
and sending the notice out to get a sample
of whether the world at large shared my opinions,
and that is how my formidable minions
came to demonstrate actions unseemly and rude.
Their remarks about size were incredibly crude.
And so though I am sure that your actions were dumb,
I have no opinion re/ the size of your bum! 

Prompt words today are glitch, speech, stupenous, demonstrate and sample. Photo by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash.

Unready for Steady

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Unready for Steady

I’m being boyfriended to death, and it’s only been a week
of walking home from school together, strolling cheek-to cheek.
I never see my girlfriends. I have no time alone.
Every single moment, we are touching bone-to-bone.
I didn’t really think about the facts of going steady.
I guess I should have realized that I just wasn’t ready.
So because you are his best friend, I’m begging you to ready him
because after school today, I’m going to unsteady him!

For dVerse Poets Pub: Verbing

Heartful Gatherings: August 27, 2020

15 Replies

Heartful Gatherings

Those who yawp on about rainbows and the weather are too wordy.
I’d rather converse at great length about topics more nerdy.
Crossed ankles and a pot of tea with polite conversation
seem somehow remiss in their mental titillation.
Give me feet up on the coffee table with a nerd or two—
both talk and a libation of a stronger brew.
Quantum physics, writing, music, games or art
make for a connection that is closer to my heart.
When it comes to cliques that I could  be a part of,
I prefer to find a group that I can find the heart of.

Prompt words for today are connection, nerd, rainbow, yawp and group.

Read the Signs

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Read the Signs

Days of wild adventure, pulsing with delights
are turning into zombie days that fade to zombie nights.
Nothing on our agendas. No traveling, no dates—
our calendars reduced to onerous empty slates.

It does no good to protest. God hears not when we ask.
We merely have to don that necessary mask.
Though every instinct urges camaraderie,
Mother Nature warns us that she will wait and see.

Will we clean up our messes? Put out every fire?
Calm her winds of warning before we all expire?
Ban plastic from her oceans, stop digging for black gold?
Cool the global warming and restore the cold?

If we will not listen, she’ll only turn deaf ears
to all our present pleadings, to all our future fears.
Oh foolish foolish children, just dealing with effects
instead of paying heed to what nature expects.

 

Prompt words today are instinct, nothing, protest, onerous and zombie.

Bumblebees (dVerse Poet’s Quadrille Challenge)

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Bumblebees

Plant some flowers, and they will come,
and though they have a fuzzy bum,
curb your finger, curb your thumb.
Have another sip of rum.
Crack your knuckles, pop your gum.
Call your sweetie, call your mum.
Bake some brownies and have you some.

Sing a ditty, whistle, hum.
Play tuba ‘til your lips are numb.
Strum your cello, pound your drum.
Sand your chair legs ‘til they’re plumb.
Pat your kitten’s furry tum,
but as these bumblebees go and come,
to pet one would be really dumb!!!!!

For the dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille Challenge: bum. Two quadrilles on this one!!

To see the challenge, go HERE.

Home Vacation

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Home Vacation

Exotic locations hold no sway with me.
I’d rather relax right here under my tree.
Here I’m sovereign of place. I’m the queen of the lot.
No finer vacation can ever be bought.

No accidental airline disaster,
no luggage to lose and I get here much faster.
The kitchen is close if I’m in need of sipping.
I need not wear masks and there’s no need for tipping.

Travel right now isn’t all that it was.
Its credibility lowered because
since we are not through with enforced quarantining,
we travel through videos and magazining.

So bring out the cards and bring out the dice,
and a dry gin martini , with olives, on ice.
If we can’t travel to Vegas or Reno,
we’ll have to make do with our home-grown casino!

Word prompts for today are sway, credibility, accidental, sovereign and location.

Designer Diets

19 Replies

Designer Diets

I’m in need of a diet in front and behind,
yet I cannot survive on such food as the kind
that dieting gurus decree I must chew
like all of the reigning glamor queens do.

Designer lettuce and parsley and kale
with a soupcon of dressing is what they inhale.
They do not eat Oreos, bon bons or gummies.
They deterge their colons and staple their tummies.

No carbohydrates of any kind
will they order in diners, even in a bind.
And so they go hungry, albeit they’re svelte,
but I think I would rather just loosen my belt.

 

Prompts today are surviving, design, soupcon, deterge and kind.

Creeping Shadows

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Creeping Shadows

I have no wish to classify shadowy explorations—
furtive trips to low-life bars or questionable vacations.
I’m aloof in my present. I don’t think about my past.
I have no need to dwell upon times more overcast.
In past attempts to deal with them, I tried to rearrange them
to find they only frustrate me because I cannot change them.
Still, memory’s tyranny will win. I can’t escape, it seems.
Those shadows banished in the day creep back into my dreams.

 

Prompt words today are shadowy explorations, classify, aloof, frustrate and tyranny.

Retribution

39 Replies

Retribution

I swallow screams for dinner,
hold my tongue the whole meal through.
I’m told I’ll have to eat my words
if I let slip a few.
I’m choking back the clever things
that I want to tell,
but all my smart rejoinders
simply will not jell.

“Better seen than heard,” they say,
and yet they do not see me.
If I’m not allowed to speak,
how will I ever be me?
When I grow up, I’ll talk and talk.
Never will I be quiet.
If someone tries to shut me up,
I simply will not buy it.

By then my folks will be real old.
To shush me? They won’t dare.
If they do, I’ll shush them back, 
and put them in a chair.
I’ll make them face the corner
and tell them to be quiet.
And if they say to eat my words?
I’ll say I’m on a diet!!!

 

For Poets and Storytellers United. Swallow Screams

 

Final Rights

14 Replies

Final Rights

The legacy our mother left seems to have something missing.
Is it just coincidence I think I saw you kissing
her lawyer shortly after her funeral today?
It reminded me of earlier behavior, I must say.
Your high school English teacher whom you later held at bay
only after he had raised your grade from F to A.
Do I mean to insinuate it may have been a factor
in the raising of your grade that you’re such a primo actor?
Feigning school girl crushes until you’ve achieved your aim
and seducing gullible lawyers? Do I think that’s your game?
I must admit this codicil  that you have lately found
gives rise to questions. You should realize that we are bound
to question her late change of mind, leaving the bulk to you
when all the time that she was ill you never were in view.
The lawyer swears it’s aboveboard. These were our mother’s wishes.
Did she forget those countless times you would not do the dishes
but left the job to me as you hurried out the door?
The times you defied curfew, tracked up her just-mopped floor?
Because I was her favorite,  was it, then, her guilt
that made her deed to only you the house that Grandpa built?
Sister dear, your goose is cooked, for just a month ago
Mom fired the lawyer you seduced and hired one you don’t know.
He filed a new will signing the house over to me.
Mom foresaw your shenanigans and said they would not be.
Your lawyer’s response to your wiles? A small sin of omission.
Who could blame him for collecting his amorous commission?

Prompt words today are legacy, missing, reminded, insinuate and factor. Although the poem is fiction, this is actually the house I grew up in.