Raucous Recipe #1
My flashback to a nifty dish of pears and peas and beans
is tastier if one can add olives and nectarines.
The problem is that when these five are ingested enmasse,
they cause indigestion and, I fear, a lot of gas.
So for the interim, until science solves the puzzle,
keep these five ingredients separate when you guzzle.
Prompt words today are flashback, gas, nifty, dish and pear.
Ode to My Doctor, Who Has Done Little to Curry My Favor
Each of these foods you suggest for my diet
has not one feature to urge me to try it.
The chard is too leafy, the kale makes me gag.
I will be affianced to naught in this bag.
This fluffy green spinach would be best in a dip
with sour cream and onions and served on a chip.
I have not one vestige of an urge to consume it
raw in a salad, so do not assume it
will ever pass lips as selective as mine.
I need carbohydrates and meat when I dine.
Do you get the message that I’m on the outs
with arugula, collard greens, beet greens and sprouts?
My palate’s impavid when it comes to spice.
A molé is lovely and a curry is nice,
but please put some meat in it. I’m a contrarian
when you attempt to turn me vegetarian.
Prompt words for today are sprout, vestige, impavid, affiance and chip.
Click on photos to enlarge.
Overextended
I’m swamped with obligations, let alone what I like doing.
If it were Halloween, I would have no time for booing.
Gargoyles in the garden would have no satisfaction.
They could haunt me all they want, but they’d get no reaction.
I don’t have time for feeling, for music or for fun
until all of the tasks I face are finally through and done.
I can’t finagle time to merely mess around,
for I fear it is my habitude to be completely bound
by my check-lists and my calendar, and no, I don’t know why.
It’s simply in my nature to do and do or die!
A “friend” once told me with great irritatIon, “If you’re going to do all these things, Judy, just do them, but don’t for God’s sake talk about it!” I fear I’ve broken her injunction, finally, after all these years. This poem is tongue-in-cheek. All things I enjoy doing…but I do know how to make a mess.
Prompt words today are swamp, finagle, gargoyle, habitude, feel and music.
One No Trump
It seems that any smartie would
have questions of the hardihood
of one who can’t control his urges,
but opens mouth and simply purges!
It’s anything but recondite
that he is less than erudite.
He stammers and he mispronounces
as he proudly mis-announces
facts and figures he’s invented,
letting out hot air that’s pented
up inside his roiling brain.
The scuttlebutt? This man’s insane!
For the present, we’re stuck with him,
but (we hope) his future’s grim.
In the future, perhaps a cell—
a domain that would suit him well.
No more oval office for
this vain and posturing dimwit bore!
If they ever choose to make
a movie of this shyster flake,
casting’s bound to be a bummer—
choosing between “Dumb” and “Dumber.”
Which will most aptly replicate
our soon-to-be ex “Fool of State?”
Prompt words for today are hardihood, scuttlebutt, urges, recondite, the present and movie.
Precognition
I don’t want to know what I’ll do ’til I do it.
If it’s preordained, it’s too late to eschew it.
If it’s a surprise, I would say that I blew it,
for there’s no surprise when we simply redo it.
With each future sorrow when we must preview it,
there is no advantage—just more time to rue it.
The vase will still break and we’ll still have to glue it.
The syrup with spill and we’ll have to ungoo it.
Would I accept foresight or merely poo poo it?
When push came to shove, I guess that I would boo it!
Sixteen
She met him at the harvest dance.
An act of fate, they met by chance.
The very first grown man she kissed,
he was a traveling journalist,
and she had barely got love’s gist
when he vanished in the mist.
For reference, she had not any.
She had not made love with many
and those she’d had were only boys,
as unacquainted with the joys
of mature love as she had been,
for they were only kids, not men.
She found it tedious at best
to spoon with any of the rest,
and yet she tried, and kept a list
in which she rated and she dissed
those teenage lovers that were left
once journalism left her bereft
of seasoned lover who had pleased her
whereas all the rest just squeezed her
wrong, somehow. They smacked and cuddled,
yet, somehow, they all just muddled
what she’d had occasion once, perchance,
to experience at the harvest dance.
She finally devised a plot
wherein she could improve her lot.
She’d do a deed of much renown
to draw her lover back to town.
And this is why she planned the prank
wherein she would rob the bank.
Of course she’d send the money back.
The larcenous gene she seemed to lack,
but this would create so much news
that she was fairly sure he’d choose
to come investigate the crime,
and that would be the perfect time
to improve her skills of woo.
He’d be her prey and she’d count coup.
For a week, her schemes just perked.
She watched and waited, planned and lurked
watching for the perfect timeÂ
to enact her lovelorn crime.
And, finally, the time seemed good.
She donned a long-armed cloak with hood,
took her daddy’s gun and, masked,
said “Stick ’em up” when she was asked
if she was seeking to deposit,
distressing her, it seems, because it
seemed to cause so little pause,
from the teller, perhaps because
the teller, who was also masked,
gave her a sucker before she asked
what transaction she might mean
to request on this Halloween!
And so it was the plot was foiled.
By mistiming, her plans were spoiled.
She abandoned larceny
and resumed her tomfoolery
with the local high school boys
wherein they all discovered joys
by practice to bring that surcease
she’d sought to learn by expertise.
Prompt words for today are journalist, reference, tedious, list and pleased.
Today’s prompt words are macro, profile, precipitant, cone and unspoken.
Memory Games
Half over-achiever, my other part is zen.
Sometimes I concentrate on now, other times, where I’ve been.
This morning’s evanescent. I can’t remember shit.
I know I found my car key but what did I do with it?
Ameliorating circumstances? Sorry. There are none.
I simply have no memory of what  I have just done.
I know I wrote a poem, but I can’t recall a bit.
I haven’t the foggiest memory of what I said in it!
It’s said I have good judgment and a judicious mind,
but as to short-term memory? I fear I’m in a bind.
I remember blow-for-blow what happened as a child.
My college years I recall well. My twenties are well-filed.
When I write, the memories pop readily to my brain.
It’s only hours later that the memories don’t remain
of what I have just written or the words that I have used.
The present and my recent past simply are not fused.
So if you want a memory, please choose one in my past.
The farther back, the better, if you want my reply fast.
Fifty years ago are fine. The details I’ll relate.
But details of this morning? I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.
Prompt words today are ameliorate, judicious, zen, evanescent and bit.
Orgulous* of Orgulous!!!
I’m suffering from reluctance and a bit of perturbation
that is interfering with my blog’s administration.
Embarrassed for this rhyme, I’ve no proclivity to flout it.
I’m sure my stats will plummet. There is no doubt about it.
We’ll ascribe the blame to Ragtag, for “orgulous” is the word
they’ve chosen for our prompt today—a choice that is absurd.
Who uses it in common speech, or formal speech, in fact?
Any poem I used it in, I’d afterwards redact.
I’m not a jolly blogger. I’m delaying activation.
I feel no need to add to my reader’s education
by using words requiring their use of dictionaries.
I prefer clear writing that requires no further queries.
It’s habit that demands that I find a way around this.
But now I feel no further need to otherwise expound this.
I’ve flailed around in writing this. I edit and I stumble.
Tomorrow may they choose a word that is a bit more humble!
*Orgulous: haughty, proud, ostentatious, disdainful!.
Prompt words for today are stats, jolly, activation and orgulous. (Good grief!)
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on unsplash. Used with permission.
“In many countries, the phenomenon is so widespread that new terms have developed to describe it: bamboccioni [literally, big babies] in Italy, “hotel mama” in Germany, boomerang children in Australia, parasaito shinguru [single parasite] in Japan. These young men and women don’t leave home and don’t get married, because they only want to buy brand names and enjoy themselves and to live, as an ideology, at their parents’ expense. It’s nothing less than a pandemic.” https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-new-syndrome-grown-up-kids-who-stay-home-1.5336944
Boomerang Boy
If more interest charges he wishes to defray,
he needs to find a paying job without further delay.
He should at once take heed of my excellent advice
and give up on his former full-time job of shooting dice.
He might become a rose vendor, a troubadour or chef
or become the famous author of a roman a clef.
if only he would get a job, his parents would rejoice,
but, alas, sheer laziness is his career of choice,
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 