Category Archives: Poem

Karaoke Detour

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Karaoke Detour

When our Karaoke Adventure Tour took off to fly to Glasgow
we had not an inkling it would be such a fiasco.
It started with complaints when we tried to rehearse
and before we even managed to reach the second verse,
an angry man behind me began to scream and curse,
causing his long-suffering wife to  hit him with her purse!

The distress of other passengers ignited accusations
that they sought placation for with further free libations.
But an uncanny silence brought the fracas to an end
as four hours early, we started to descend.
The stewardess ran forward to grab a parachute
with a dozen passengers following in pursuit.

The singers ceased their singing and the angry man his cussing.
Passengers still in their seats so busy with their fussing
to fasten tight their seatbelts that their drinks were overturned for
they’d forgotten all those further drinks that they had yearned for.
Then the pilot’s voice came booming through the awful din,
to finally advise us of what trouble we were in.

So many violent storms between California and Taipan
that he was going to have to land our carrier in Japan!
Then terror turned to anger as folks began complaining
with little indication  of when protests might be waning,
while I and my companions started up another chorus,
sure that this disaster had been planned completely for us.

What better place than Tokyo for karaoke fun?
(A better place than Glasgow for our singing to be done!)
With no machines to guide us, nonetheless we lifted voices,
song requests from passengers reflected in our choices.
I guess the man behind me must have settled down to nap,
for his wife joined in our chorus with her purse safe in her lap!

 

Prompt words are karaoke, canny, accusation, complaint, pursuit and fiasco.

A Valediction Forbidding Morning

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Disclaimer: John Donne wrote “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”  This is not that poem!!!

A Valediction Forbidding Morning

When the moon is at its peak
It is the nighttime’s time to speak
words worthy of our full attention
yet this is a mere audition.
Another speaker’s  coming soon
who has hopes to debate the moon.

The sun will soon commence to snivel
that moon’s sentiments are drivel.
Thus day and night both ebb and flow
informing us by what they show
of light and dark and sun and moon,
all of their phases gone too soon.

Each noonday sun flashing its warning,
every moon forbidding morning
while warning the ladybug
to check her babies are all snug,
for as the sun climbs ever higher,
it might set her house on fire.

 

Prompts for the day are valediction, drivel, audition, worthy, peak and ladybug.

Found (For NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 4)

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The prompt today was to write a triolet. A triolet is an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetrameter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) ABaAabAB. Actually, there was a triolet challenge that I wrote for twice before for NaPoWriMo, once exactly ten years ago in 2013, the first year I did NaPoWriMo, and again in 2020. The poems as well as the cats  I  eventually “found”  back then are below:

A Poem a Minute with a Triolet In it

When first I tried to write this rhyme
I could not seem to make it scan.
In short, I felt less than sublime
when first I tried to write this rhyme;
but then I took the proper time
and proved the truth as other than:
“When first I tried to write this rhyme
I could not seem to make it scan.”

 

With Workmen Here

The cats have flown, I know not where.
They’ve chosen to remain aloof.
They don’t await me on the stair.
The cats have flown, I know not where.
Not one to steal my favorite chair.
I do not hear them on the roof.
The cats have flown, I know not where.
They’ve chosen to remain aloof.

 

The assignment for day four of NaPoWriMo 2023 is to write a triolet.

The Professor Joins E Harmony

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The Professor Joins E Harmony

On his first round of internet daming,
sure he was intent on shaming,

his blind date stirred up such a fuss
when he called her pulchritudinous,

that it proved a barrier to fun
as she announced their date was done!

His mistake was simply ’cause he
didn’t know her brain was fuzzy

and unaccustomed to such words
that more literary birds

might realize were a compliment
in fact, a word meant to augment

the chance that he might marry her
instead became a barrier

of misunderstanding that
made her think he’d called her fat!!!!

The lesson learned from this brief story
is that blind dating can be gory.

What a guy has got to do
before he makes a swipe anew

is to ascertain his date’s I.Q.
before he chooses words to woo!

Prompt words for today are rambunctious, augment, fuzzy, pulchritudinous, shaming and barrier. Illusration from the Nutty Professor Site. No attribution.

Influencer

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Influencer

By what are you influenced? What triggers you?
Do you stand at attention for the red, white and blue?
Are you of the first nation or Apache or Sioux?

Do you bask in the limelight, awash in your fame.
Hoping that everyone’s seeing your name?,
aware of the problems, but you’re not to blame!

Or are you sedulous, loving and caring,
more concerned with your heart than what you are wearing?
Wanting justice for all, intent on the sharing 

of all the riches of the land of your birth,
looking for solutions for the ills of the Earth,
considering everyone of equal worth?

 

Prompt words for the day are influencer, bask, first nation, sedulous, wash and triggers. Image by Laura Chouette.

 

NaPoWriMo Day 2, 2023. After and Before

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 After and Before

Rush hour traffic for raindrops.
The universe’s roar of disapproval.
That last guest left at a party who doesn’t realize the party is over.
Words that called out for company.
A bird searching for an answer.
A small pond that has died and gone to heaven
A single kernel.  
A small scuffle.
A man with limited vision.
 A relationship that barely passes for love.
Fate coinciding with a wish.
A storeroom for rain.

 

For NaPoWriMo 2023 Today’s prompt asks you to:

*pick 5-10 words from the following list :
owl generator fog river clove miracle cyclops oyster mercurial seaweed gutter artillery salt elusive thunder ghost acorn cheese longing cowbird truffle quahog song

*then to write out a question for each word selected and for each question, to write a one-line answer.

What is a river? Rush hour traffic for raindrops.
What is thunder?  The universe’s roar of disapproval.
What is a ghost? That last guest left at a party who doesn’t realize the party is over.
What is a song? Words that called out for company.
What is an owl?  A bird searching for an answer.
What is fog? A small pond that has died and gone to heaven.
What is a cyclops? A man with limited vision.
What is a miracle? Fate coinciding with a wish.
What is a gutter?  A storeroom for rain.
What is a truffle?  A small scuffle.
What is  acorn? A single kernel.  (A group of corns is called an ear.)
What is longing? Precognitive achievement.
What is artillery? Digging in an attempt to find buried Pre-Columbian statues.
What is a quahog? A new breed of hybrid animal half duck and half pig.
What is an oyster? A Jewish Grandpa.
What is clove? A relationship that barely passes for love.
What is mercurial? A doctor who specializes in treating the maladies of mythological sea beings.

*After you’ve written out your series of questions and answers, place all the answers, without the questions, on a new page. See if you can make a poem of just the answers. You may find that what you have is very beautifully mysterious, and somehow has its own logic.

Foggybaby Dreams

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Foggybaby Dreams Clarified
(For My Nephews––now Six Feet Tall.)

You flinched from my touch,
hated the red cowboy hats
I bought for you,
preferred the hundred
tiny grass frogs
to the cows we tried
to introduce
into your city lives,
had eyes only for the trucks
carrying salt for the cows
to gather after.

Early mornings,
you leaned against
my sleep.
And oh,
your sleep-wicked
hair
and your
sweet sour milkbreath
and the
slight fart smell
of your warm bunny p.j.’s,
your impeccable smiles.
Daylight
had barely
bedeviled
you yet.

Five minutes until
you melted
back into your
foggy baby dreams,
and I became
your
nostalgia.

For NaPoWriMo 2023, the first prompt is to write a poem inspired by a book cover.
Below is information for the book cover that seemed to best illustrate this poem:

And also for dVerse Poets Open Link Night.

Romantically Retired

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Romantically Retired

I think I’ve formerly related
that I’m neither wooed nor dated.
Zero heroes, zero traces
of besotted hearts or faces.

Gamblers better put their money
on the fact I’ll have no honey.
Chances more likely for a win
on the roulette wheel’s random spin.

Fortune tellers’ only visions
are of partings and divisions.
No new meetings, no reunion
that might prompt a future union.

So I guess I’ll go on missing
bouts of geriatric kissing.
And instead of passions new,
fond memories will have to do.

Prompt words today are spin, related, traces, vision, money and zero.

Teen Wisdom

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Teen Wisdom

The children are all burgeoning into adolescence,
though like shaken sodas, they emerge with effervescence.

Not thinking of the consequences, behavior audacious,
argumentative and therefore maddeningly pugnacious.

Parents’ beliefs are fallacies. Teens think that only they
have the means and knowledge to clearly know the way

to surge into the future, the internet their guide—
believing all its stated truths are bonafide.

They don’t listen to their parents because, for sure, they’re wrong.
They’d rather get their wisdom from TikTok or a song.

For this generation, electronic media rules,
dispensing equal wisdom from sages and from fools.

Is it truth or fiction? Is it wack or cool?
How can they know the difference? Clearly, hormones rule.

 

Prompts today are consequences, fallacy, pugnacious, burgeon, mean and soda.

(The non-teen who wrote this poem was so wack that she misspelled TikTok as TikToc. Some teenager just clued her in.) And to be fair, there are probably just as many adults misguided by the internet as there are teens who are.

Battered Wife

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Battered Wife

It’s inherent in her nature that my friend just marries losers.
She says that she likes nice guys, then she hooks up with these bruisers.
I introduced her to a gentle man I hoped could be her type,
but she judged him with her eyes instead of listening to my hype.

He was placid, kind and jovial, but had a shiny head,
so she chose a sexy surly love interest instead.
Although the nicer guy leaves her feeling somewhat curious,
it seems her needs are better met by a man more furious.

 

Prompt words are placid, jovial, shiny, inherent, need and furious. Image by Kat on Unsplash.