Tag Archives: humorous poetry

This Bear Walks into a Bar in Alaska

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“This Bear Walks into a Bar in Alaska”

I sit and wait for their cessation–
these blocks to actual conversation
that make me want to sputter, choke,
and leave before another joke
escapes the lips of that lame teller
who thinks his dumb jokes are so stellar
that they stand in for actual
statements that are factual.

It makes me want to take a toke,
to whinny, bark, meow or croak.
I don’t like jokes too awful much.
I find they are another crutch
that keeps at bay words intimate
with words that entertain or cut.
Make no mistake, I love a pun,
and humor is a lot of fun.

Laughter’s not the problem, see.
It’s jokes that really bother me.
Using someone else’s words
is what I find slightly absurd.
What’s more, there’s always just one more
joke to tell.  It’s such a bore.
I want to hear your mind at work–
not jokes retold by every jerk.

Even so, I’m prompted to
find a joke to tell to you.
So rather than betray my taste,
and hoping you’ve some time to waste,
I’m going to give a punch line here
and though I know it’s kind of queer,
I hope you’ll try to take a poke.
Here’s a punch line. Please write the joke:

“You see, I’m a bipolar bear.”
(Write me the joke now if you dare.
Don’t feel you have to make it rhyme.
A joke in prose takes half the time.)

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/ha-ha-ha/

Dishwasher Blues

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Dishwasher Blues

It really goes beyond my wishes
to have to load the dirty dishes
into the dishwasher each day.
I’d rather read or sleep or play.
But since I know I’ll never meet
a plate or glass or spoon with feet
to walk itself across the floor
and open up the washer’s door,
I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet.
Reach out for the door and pull it.
Load the glasses on the top,
Load the plates so they don’t flop.
Wedge in all I can and then
commit that common loading sin.
I’ll put some plastic cup in last
where it’s not held secure and fast
so it flips over and fills up
with water to top of the cup
So when I open up the door
it soaks the dishes and the floor.
So, though the loading is a curse,
Unloading’s what I hate the worse!!!!

WordPress offers alternate prompts for those of us who have already written about today’s prompt.  The prompt I’ve chosen to substitute for today’s prompt is The Chain Gang: Write about doing some task that you hate to do.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/back-on-the-chain-gang/

Here is today’s prompt if you haven’t already read it.

Placement

5 Replies

Where Things Go

Etiquette decrees the place for knife and fork and spoon.
Cocktails belong with sunsets. A wedding goes with June.
Placement is determined by a sort of mass assent.
Snail mail goes in mailboxes. E-mail goes where it’s sent.

Freckles belong on noses and fingernails on fingers.
Perfume should stay in bottles, not in places where it lingers
to make allergic folks like me sneeze and carry on.
It’s a fact that things smell better after the perfume’s gone.

Sheiks belong in palaces, safari guides in tents.
Molls belong with gunmen whereas ladies go with gents.
Gloves are filled with fingers and socks with only holes,
since fingers simply do not go with garments that have soles.

Arms on sweaters, legs on pants. Astronauts in space.
Cats on cushions, birds in trees and eyebrows on your face.
Everything has someplace where it is meant to go.
Missionaries in Africa, tarts with men with dough.

Tiaras go on beauty queens, a dunce hat on a dunce,
or on those of us who want everywhere at once.
We use up fossil fuel flying here and there.
One moment we’re in taxis, the other in the air.

We aren’t really sure at all where we want to be:
mountain, beach or meadow, river, lake or sea.
There is a site on Google showing every single minute
where each plane is going carrying all the people in it.

This one wants to be where that one was just hours ago.
They have to take a Learjet. Other airplanes are too slow.
People flowing elsewhere like water in a stream,
giving up the here and now for places in a dream.

Sometimes I think I’m tired of moving here and there
and that my favorite place of all is right here in my chair.
I’ll give up future travels for places in my head.
My favorite place is in my mind.  I’ll travel there instead!

The Prompt: Places–Beach, mountain, forest, or somewhere else entirely?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/places/

Tax Time is Most Taxing

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Tax Time is Most Taxing

I don’t like doing taxes. I’d rather eat a rat.
I saved all my receipts for sure but don’t know where they’re at.
I should have printed up reports and put them on a spindle,
for now I cannot find out what I’ve taken in from Kindle
or Amazon. Their tax sites are really just a maze.
After roaming them for hours, I fear I’m in a haze.
Money spent for doctors and dentists must be here.
I’ve even asked a Ouija Board that says I’m getting near
to where they remain hidden under piles of other papers.
If I lived in another age, I know I’d have the vapors.

The time that I have left is surely waning and not waxing.
And things just keep on getting worse–for tax time is most taxing.
Next year I will do better.  I’ll start out nice and early
and tax time will be easier and I will be less surly.
I’ll pat myself upon the back for files filled with slips
alphabetical and neat–no coffee spills or rips.
I will know to the penny what I spent on medicine.
I’ll save up all my dentist bills, fastened with a pin.
All my insurance payments and social security
will be neatly filed–correct from A to Z.

But as to this year’s taxes, I fear I’m out of luck.
I shake my head over the forms and murmur “What the – – – -?
I do not want to do this.  I fear I’m in a mess.
I want to write a letter to the I.R.S.
giving them my bank account and telling them my pin,
for I fear my patience is growing rather thin.
“Just take whatever cash you need and leave enough for me
to live upon ’til I expire in two thousand-five-three.”
Instead, I go back to my desk to sort another pile.
Please don’t e-mail, phone or text. I’m busy for awhile!!

The Prompt: Set It To Rights–Think of a time you let something slide, only for it to eat away at you later. Tell us how you’d fix it today.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/set-it-to-rights/

Fault Lines

5 Replies

Fault Lines

She lives up on a hillside far from the busy town,
and every year she lives there, she’s less likely to come down.
Her dog sits on her house’s dome and barks at all that pass.
One day she’ll likely join it, but for now she feels it’s crass.
Besides, she’s not that agile.  She seems to fall a lot–
merely due to clumsiness. A drinker, she is not.

She spends too much on artwork. The results hang down her halls,
sit upon her furniture and cover all her walls.
Her closets? Full to bulging with sizes large to small.
Her friends keep telling her there is no need to keep them all,
but to toss the ones that do not fit would cause her great duress.
She cannot throw any away, for next year she’ll weigh less.

Her refrigerator is her favorite scenic spot,
though entering’s an adventure with dangers amply fraught:
dog food barely balanced on a small sweet pickle jar
she has to brush against to get to where the short ribs are.
I’ve said that she is clumsy.  She doesn’t take her time.
This really isn’t new, for she was like this in her prime.

Her elbow strikes the pickle jar, the dog food comes out spinning.
They crash upon the tile floor. Our heroine stops grinning–
her thoughts no longer on the food but on the awful mess
of dogfood, pickles, broken glass–the rest you’ll surely guess.
The exercise that she will get mopping all this glop up.
will surely compensate for all the ribs she’ll later sop up.

And so she’ll lose her weight again and fit in that size eight.
As soon as this feat comes to be, he’ll ask her for a date.
Her dog will come down from the roof and she’ll come down the hill.
Her fridge and all her closets will suddenly unfill.
She’ll sell the art and cease to fall and fulfill all her scheming.
For the sixth thing true about her is that she’s prone to dreaming!

The Prompt: Far from Normal–Take a step back and take a look at your life as an outsider might. Now, tell us at least six unique, exciting, or just plain odd things about yourself.

For more writing on this topic go here: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/far-from-normal/

Today’s prompt was really “Plead the Fifth” about a question we hate to answer.  We were given the choice of an alternate prompt, which is the one I chose, but ironically, it was one I didn’t want to answer so my post really fulfills both prompts.  Tricky.  If you want to see today’s prompt and other answers to it, you will find it:  HERE.

I’ve Come Undone

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I’ve Come Undone

If I could undo anything that’s happened in my life,
I would not undo enemies or illnesses or strife.
For all led up to my life now that really isn’t bad.
All given, I am happy, and frequently I’m glad.
My palm trees may need clipping and my dogs may have the mange,
but all in all there’s really only one thing I would change.
I’d undo one tequila or two or three or four.
I think that that is all I drank. I can’t remember more.
And after that, that dance I did as others ringed the floor?
I fear I chose to party when I should have chosen the door!

And that knee I rocked on back and forth, remembering the twist?
I fear I chose to overdo instead of to desist.
My friends did not remove me, but cheered me on instead.
And now I have a throbbing knee and needles in my head.
That knee I’d earlier injured when I fell on cobblestones
had healed, I thought, relieving all that aching in my bones.
But now I’m hobbling back and forth–gimpy once again,
for you gotta pay the piper when you choose a life of sin.
I know my knee will heal and that this agony will end,
but please remind me next time that tequila’s not my friend!!

The Prompt: If you could undo something, what would it be? Discuss why, potential repercussions, or a possible alternative.

The War of the Words (Love and War)

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 The War of the Words

The words packed tight within my mind
seek the empty page.
They fly like hummingbirds and hawks
escaping from their cage.
But when all my empty places
I seek to fill again,
too many words rush in at once,
creating such a din
that nothing can be made of them.
I cannot restore order
in these alien syllables
that flood across my border.

I did not think these previous lines.
They just crept up on me.
I place them here upon the page
and thereby set them free.
They have no place within my head
where I had plans to write
a valentine or love poem.
Instead, they spar and fight.
One trying to beat the others
to the front line of my mind.
Love words elbowing their way
through “sensitive” and “kind.”

So shyness steps on anger’s toes
and sloth runs out of steam
trying to reclaim the place
where words like it must dream.
I no longer know the purpose
that I set out upon
I fear the mood is broken–
my concentration gone.
The thought that any love poem
will come is now absurd.
Ten minutes ago I was in love,
but now I have been cured!!

The Prompt: Write an Ode to something or someone you love. Bonus points for poetry.

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!!!

Ice Cream Manifesto

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Ice Cream Manifesto

It’s just a little kiosk in the middle of the street
between two one-way roadways, in the center where they meet.
There aren’t any tables. There isn’t any chair.
You have to stand out in the street to give your order there.

Mango or tequila, tamarind or corn.
As you can see, the flavors don’t agree with any norm.
They’ve ice cream made of purest cream , but they have ices, too,
in so many flavors that I always choose a few.

My favorite? Strawberry ice. Vanilla under it.
I get a cone so I don’t have to wait to plunder it.
I finish it as I drive home, licking all the way.
I give my dogs the empty cone. It always makes their day.

The cone is hard as any bone–sweet and chewy, too.
If I were a better mother, I’d arrange that they had two.
But though I know I’d enjoy two passing o’er my lips,
Later I would not enjoy their presence on my hips.

I love that little ice cream stand. Love it all to heck,
with its lovely homemade ice cream made in Jocotepec.
That pueblo is quite close to me. It’s just five miles or so.
So it isn’t that it is so very far for me to go.

The thing is that for me, ice cream is an impulse buy.
It’s not a major purchase, like a cake or like a pie.
If I just happen to be passing and see that fellow there
waving his ice cream scoops at me, right out in the air,

preordination says that I must stop and have one now–
a bite of crispy wafer cone, adorned with ice of cow.
I do not claim responsibility for decisions of this kind.
It’s a creative impulse, not a matter of the mind.

So if you’re a public servant–an official of this town
looking for new laws to pass, don’t tear this kiosk down.
Fill some potholes in the street or put a speed bump in.
For legislating ice cream bans is sure to be a sin!

 

The Prompt: Do or Die–You have three hundred words to justify the existence of your favorite person, place, or thing. Failure to convince will result in it vanishing without a trace. Go! (355 words, poetry police–so sue me!)

Enough’s Too Much

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Enough’s Too Much!!

Enough’s too much when it comes to fish
or any other smelly dish.
Too much for castor oil in spoons
or relatives on honeymoons.
Amoebas?  Any one’s too much,
and a date who wants you to go Dutch
clearly tells you he’s not “it.”
One mosquito, when you’re bit,
is not “enough,” but “one too many.”
when your preference is “not any!”

Kids with colds and snoopy neighbors,
tiresome chores and heavy labors,
bitter pills and jerked-off scabs,
rainy days with no free cabs,
diarrhea, scabies, gout?
Too much! Too much, without a doubt!
“Enough’s enough” is repetitious,
obvious and almost vicious.

So don’t go spouting it at me.
I hate cliches from A to Z.
I won’t have any said to me.
If you use them, you’re dead to me!
“It is sufficient” I will accept.
“I’ll have no more”  is most adept.
But don’t go muttering platitudes
at folks like me with attitudes,
or I promise we’ll be getting rough
enough to prompt, “Enough’s enough!”

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Enough Is Enough.” Wow, this sounds so grouchy.  It is meant tongue-in-cheek.  I’ve probably used the phrase hundreds of times myself—usually directed at myself when I have lost my keys or glasses for the dozenth time that day!

Once Upon a Lime in Mexico

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Once Upon a Lime in Mexico

I was just a small amoeba living on a lime,
and though Judy disinfects her fruit every single time,
I fear that the bartender doesn’t bother to
so that is how the tale occurred that I am telling you.
She squeezed her lime above the ice, then dropped it in the drink.
The Coca Cola fizzed up and the ice began to clink.
As she took her first big swallow, I lost hold of the lime
and slid down a soft pink chute into another clime.

I’d heard of other journeys and knew how this might end,
but I decided I’d enjoy every curve and bend.
I wound up in a reservoir where I gave in to sleeping,
but woke up to a million of me jumping, kicking, leaping.
It wasn’t half so pleasant as it had been before,
so I commenced to swim around, looking for the door.
Unfortunately, though I found it, it seemed to be blocked.
The wind was brisk, the waters churned, but the way out was locked.

When I heard the one who had consumed me groan and cry and cuss,
I rued the fate to which that Cuba Libre had doomed us!
For as distressed as she must be with headache and each cramp,
I was suffering equally from jostling and the damp.
For two days she lived on Electrolit, in bed and with no food.
And I held on for my dear life, listening to my brood
tell of what we could expect, flushed to a watery hell
down in the earth with all our kin—this legend they knew well.

Two days I lived like this, just holding on for my dear life,
listening to her pleas as spasms cut her like a knife—
too ill to go for help and unable to even sit.
I wondered how much worse this grisly tale was going to get.
Then suddenly, this morning, I felt the waters swirl.
I felt myself slip-sliding right out of the girl
into a clear container where I could see the world
from prison I’d once more escaped, or rather, I’d been hurled!

I felt the jostling and the engine of the moving car
which set up small vibrations in my little jar.
Yet still my progeny and I enjoyed the five mile ride.
It was so much better now that we were not inside
that dark and windswept place where we’d resided for two days.
Though I’ll admit none of our legends accounted for this phase.
No other amoebian Aesop had written any story
that took a turning such as this. Former endings had been gory!

I heard the car door open, footsteps and a creaking door.
Other footsteps, blinding light, and I was freed once more!
Spread onto a sheet of glass, surveyed by a big eye,
I breathed a sigh of pure relief. I’m such a lucky guy.
While they weren’t looking, I slipped off and landed on a shelf
where ever since I’ve been observing others like myself
who have escaped amoeba hell at least for a small time.
While I’m in amoeba heaven, and my dears?  It is sublime!!!

So clean, well-lit and active. Just like a picture show.
I sit here so languidly and just go with the flow,
calling out encouragement to visitors like myself.
And now and then, others come and join me on my shelf.
The girl who works here likes to put her sandwich very near,
where it serves as a good cushion for those of my kind, I fear.
The moral? Take care what winds up inside you, please, my friends;
for in spite of all my warnings, this story never ends.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Once Upon a Time”—tell us about something that happened to you in real life last week — but write it in the style of a fairy tale.

Sorry, friends, this one is another groaner!!!!