Tag Archives: humorous love poem

Rich Harvest

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© Sharon Knight
I saw this photo by Sharon Knight on Sascha Darlington’s blog and knew it was the perfect photo for this poem as well.  Thanks to both Sharon Knight and Sascha as well as dVerse poets, who sponsored this prompt. Like Sharon Knight, I grew up in the midwest and this photo could easily have been taken in my home state of South Dakota, a bit before the harvest time described in my poem.

Details from retablo “The Gleaners.” Painting by Anna O’Neglia, retablo and photo by jdb (Click on any photo to enlarge all)

Rich Harvest

The night that we brought in the wheat,
our weeks of labor now complete,
we raised our voices, beat our feet,
and in that stifling prairie heat,
weary and arm-sore, yet replete
with satisfaction for jobs well-done
earned in the dust and chaff and sun,
we ceased our labors and had some fun.

Hank gave the prim schoolteacher a treat
by lifting her from her safe seat
to move her to the fiddler’s beat.
Soon, her hairpins met defeat,
her wild hair anything but neat,
 and Hank was heard to woo the miss
and then to plant a tender kiss.
She remembers all of this

now that their family’s complete
with Rita, Sarah, and little Pete.
Now every harvest, when you greet
each townsperson you chance to meet,
chances are they will repeat
how Hank brought in the wheat that year
and afterwards, conquered his fear
and dared to call the school marm, “dear.”

The prompt today is treat.

Sinning Lessons

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Sinning Lessons

I am a paragon of virtue. I have no other choice.
I do not have a figure.  I have no sultry voice.
I’ve no talent at kissing. The boys leave me alone.
I have no lovers calling me nightly on the phone.

I get my thrills from scripture. I embroider and I tat.
The creature that I cuddle with is an old grey cat.
Sometimes virtue’s chosen, but it isn’t so with me.
I’d rather spend my weekend nights on some feller’s knee.

But it isn’t in the cards. It’s just my Ma and me.
I guess I’ll just be buttoned up instead of brash and free.
My ma found a new hired man. He isn’t very tall.
A moustache but no muscles. Not swashbuckling at all.

But he has a good strong back. He carries water for me.
And for reasons I can’t fathom, he seems to adore me.
It’s one morning in the cow barn, milking Bossie, that I miss
the bucket with the milk stream when the hired man plants a kiss

on my neck as I bend over. It makes that old cat’s day.
He opens up his mouth and drinks as I just dream and sway
then turn to open my mouth, too, and see how kisses feel
when they are given mouth-to-mouth. It makes me almost reel.

But Hank the hired man catches me, sets me straight again,
and that’s the starting of my life as a paragon of sin!
Sinning’s not so bad at all. You can’t believe the preacher.
And it’s not so hard to do when you have a teacher.

Lessons started in the milking barn but ended in the loft.
The hired man got handsomer as he took his clothing off.
I think he liked me better, too, when I was in the buff 
for no matter how much more I showed, it never seemed enough.

We had a lovely time up there, the hired man and me.
As testament, now seven kids cluster round my knee.
The hired man’s beside me. As I sit and hold his hand,
he runs his fingers back and forth across my wedding band.

The old gray cat’s still happy, for sometimes he still gets lucky
when I’m distracted in the milking ’cause my husband’s feeling plucky.
Married life is lovely. We’re happy, him and me.
We are paragons of loving for perpetuity. 

 

The prompt today is “paragon.”

The Reveal

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The Reveal

Even when she’s in the buff,
he feels she’s not revealed enough.
He wants to know her heart and soul—
to know her entire being, his goal.
But, alas, she cannot do it.
If she does, she knows she’ll rue it.
Much as she loves a certain sir,
there is a certain part of her
that must remain a mystery.
For in this maiden’s history
are other suitors it behooved
to have her secrets all removed.
But when she revealed it all,
one by one, they did not call.
And thus she learned a maiden’s rule:
Men are fickle. Men are cruel.
Lest you be put up on a shelf,
keep parts of you safe in your self.
To keep him interested in your stuff,
Most of you is just enough.

 

 

 

The prompt today was “buff.”

Cross My Heart

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Cross My Heart

I’m counting steps from one to ten,
across my heart, them back again
to see the places it has been.
First loves were merely friends and kin
before my heart first snagged on men.
Then well do I remember when
the swell of love turned into wen.

The cure of it beyond my ken,
with all my pain I filled my pen,
then released it on the page again.
Once cured, I uttered an “Amen,”
discovered the i ching and Zen.
Turned into a comedienne,
and sought to leave love’s gambling den.

In truth, though, that was there and then.
So now, as through my heart I wend,
I wish that love might never end.
I seek once more its tricky bend.
To welcome in, the heart must rend,
which causes pain, but oh my dears,
a lover’s breath will dry those tears.

 

 

 

The prompt today is “crossing.”

 

 

Profound Courtship

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Profound Courtship

When my next lover comes around,
I’d prefer he be profound––
intellectual and mysterious,
also ponderous and serious.
Insight and depth I’m sure will be
the things that he looks for in me.
We’ll have no need for Cupid’s dart,
as passion steps aside for smart.

On our first night, we’ll pop a bottle,
arguing over Aristotle,
debating proton, neutron, quark
and entanglement in the dark.
I’ll reel off famous quotes by heart
from Shakespeare, Camus and Descartes––
whisper “sweet somethings” in his ear,
knowing what he’ll want to hear.

He’ll analyze our chemistry
and then discuss the Odyssey,
Plato, Aristotle, Kant––
any subject that I want.
If we don’t get around to kissing,
we’ll barely notice that it’s missing.
Who needs an interlude romantic
when they can have one that’s pedantic?

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/249091/

For the literal-minded among us, must add that I’m kidding! If it comes to a vote between Aristotle and the kissing, I’ll take the kiss every time. (Within reason.)

A Certain (Lack of) Understanding

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Choose One

Sign Language

I know our birth tongues aren’t the same,
but still I think words aren’t to blame.
It is your means of understanding
that convinces me you’re underhanding.
For every time I give you kisses,
it seems you go to other misses
in search of the translation tips
they give by laying on of lips.
My dear, if we were dumb and blind
then translation service of this kind
might make some sense, but I must say
your excuses will not work  today.
Please have your translator of prose
stick this finger message up your nose!!!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/understanding/

After the Honeymoon

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Today’s NaPoWriMo Prompt was to write a “mix-and-match” poem in which you mingle fancy,  poetic vocabulary with distinctly un-fancy words.

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After the Honeymoon

Oh my dear,
caught in this star-studded cowboy boot world,
I love you more than an Oreo cookie,
more than bubble gum
or a dill pickle.
You are a full gas tank and my shoelaces.
You are both what keeps me going
and what I am reaching out for—
my goal and trophy rolled into one.
You are my ironing board and my blender—
what churns me up and straightens me out.
Everything in the world is caught up in you.

It is flowering, our ordinary world.
peanut butter sandwiches
and corned beef hash
are surrounded by rosebuds,
soaring heavenward in sartorial bliss.
The sewing machine is holy
and our Dodge truck dreamlike.
The fanciful and practical
are shuffled in our dream world
like cards at a poker table.
A washcloth and a comb soar heavenward.
Birdsong becomes a phonograph needle,
caught in its groove.
Verdant is the garden hose–
pulsating with a new vibrancy.

If I am a tax form, you are my pencil.
You are diaphanous in your kitchen apron,
a fairy in blue jeans.
I could sing an ode to your toothbrush.
If I took a measuring stick to our love,
the world’s breath would be bated,
waiting for the result.
Birdsong would issue from the teakettle
to chorus the announcement.

For oh, my love, our passion is a hammer.
A scythe that slices through the problems of the world:
the shopping lists and the crabgrass.

Love vaporizes our petty problems––
the broken dishwasher
and the broken fingernail––
leaving my bride, my fairy princess.
My pencil sharpener.
The trimmer of my wick,
the cooker of my sausage.

My dear, I am turgid in thy love.
You are what wrenches my heart
and nails shut the door
of every misgiving I might have had.
You are mustard to my sauerkraut,
pastrami to my rye.
Love in a Ziplock bag might seem less fairylike,
blander than white bread
and more Sunday School than magical;
but, my little zucchini,
my Dove bar and my Orange Crush,
you are still my camellia and my rose.

I think of you under lindens,
your footsteps filled with magnolia petals
and your cook pot full of stardust.
Heaven resides in our walkup flat, my dear,
and I pulsate every day
with the memory of that honeymoon
which was only our penultimate dream—
leading up to the chock-a-block,
stuffed turkey with all the trimmings,
overflowing Christmas stocking,
burst balloon filled with confetti,
blissful rest of that conjoined life
that with every morning alarm clock
will spill over us again
like a freshly split piñata.

If you are curious, here is the list of words I made up to use before I wrote the poem:

bated, penultimate, scintillating, vaporous, tyrolean, fragile, throbbing, majestic, cloud, magical, fragile, fairylike, vaporous, birdsong, flowering, verdant, diaphanous, star-studded,dreamlike, rose strewn, elfin, birdsong, Zephyrus, pulsating, silence, hush, tra la la, turgid, verdant, rosebuds, camellias, lindens, pastoral, heavenward, pulsating, sartorial.

gas tank, hammer, shopping list, dog food, can opener, wrench, pillow slip, garden hose, scrub brush, dishwasher, washcloth, comb, Ziplock bag, pencil, phonograph needle, emery board, shoelace, eyelash, curtain rod, stapler, bubble gum, Oreo cookie, peanut butter, corned beef sandwich , sauerkraut, blander, fingernail clippers, measuring stick, pencil sharpener, gas tank, shoe polish, Dodge truck, table saw, ski boot, cowboy boot, bra strap, ironing board, dill pickle, 

http://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-four-2/