Tag Archives: humorous poetry

Not to Taste

4 Replies
DSC09845

I took this picture in the river mentioned in the poem, but just noticed something. Doesn’t that look like a winged gnomish sprite looking down on the croc? (Center of photo, above the croc.)

 

Not to Taste

I have no taste for seafood—neither sea bass nor crustacean.
My friends’ attempts to feed them to me end in their frustration.
I cannot stand the taste of them—their odor nor their texture.
I’ve heard that they are good for me, so please spare me the lecture!

When I was in New Orleans, they tried to feed me gator.
I politely turned it down and had a burger later.
For though a gator’s not a fish, and that’s something I know,
they must be kin somehow, ‘cause both live in H2O!

Sometimes I go out birding up a river by the sea.
The grandson of the captain comes along to talk to me.
The river’s full of crocodiles, and birds overhead
fly in by the thousands to seek their evening bed.

They rest so gently in the trees that I forget the threat
of all those crocs there down below, lurking in the wet.
Most of the year the estuary’s cut off from the sea,
but this year there was one big rain that set the river free.

When I was swimming Saturday, beyond the surf, just me,
I saw some people looking at—whatever could it be?
I just went on exercising in the surf and sand.
The sun went down but I stayed out. The water was just grand.

But when I finally came to land, folks there on the beach
told me that a croc passed by, well beyond my reach.
And since I, too, was out there as handy as could be,
I sure am glad that crocodile had no taste for me!!!!

My TV Is Smarter Than I Am

4 Replies


The Prompt: Wronged Objects—If your furniture, appliances, and other inanimate objects at home had feelings and emotions, to which item would you owe the biggest apology?

Outsmarting my Smart TV

My TV is smarter than I am, springing to life on a whim.
When the electrician comes to do work here, I think she is flirting with him.
She flicks on and then off in a second, just like she has given a wink.
Or perhaps registers disapproval by shutting us off with a blink.

I know she has much to complain of since I purchased her two years ago.
I’ve never connected to cable or dish, so she doesn’t have too much to show.
Although she connects to computers, my Apple igores that she’s here.
That I haven’t read the instructions? I know it’s exceedingly queer.

She’s equipped to show movies in 3D, but my housekeeper threw out the glasses.
So if I want movies to jump out at me, I must go view them out with the masses
and not in the privacy of my own home with my cat or myself or my friends.
I haven’t checked out buying more on the Web, and for this I must soon make amends.

My computer is usually my viewer of choice when my friend sends me movies by Skype.
The films that he sends are amazing. He knows the best subjects and type
of videos that I like viewing. They are smart and they’re funny and Indie.
He doesn’t send action/adventure or slapstick or horror or Hindi.

 But I never watch them on my Smart screen, preferring my laptop to it.
I set it right there at my poolside and watch as I try to get fit
doing my pool aerobics for an hour and a half, maybe two.
My workouts just seem to last longer whenever I’ve something to view.

 My TV can see out the window that I’m faithful to screens that are small
and I’m sure that I’ve given a complex to my big gal I don’t watch at all.
So I started a “Last Sunday” film night. They’re pot luck, then we watch a movie.
We eat and we talk and we watch and we laugh and we all end up feeling quite groovy.

So for one night a month, my TV springs to life when I plug in the little thumb drive.
Her face flushes up in an enormous blush, for she sees that I know she’s alive.
The eyes of all eight of us fix upon her. She’s the center of all our attention.
We laugh at her jokes and cry at her pathos. Respond to her mysteries with tension.

But the rest of the month her expression is blank, sitting alone in her corner
looking so sad and so lacking in life that I feel that perhaps I should mourn her.
The first time she lit up when I entered the room to say she didn’t recognize me,
I realized with shock for the very first time that my TV could both talk and see!

I hadn’t quite realized the extent of her powers when I bought her at Costco that day.
My old TV weighed in at five hundred pounds—more than a TV should weigh.
I’d inherited it from my mom when she died so I had a personal attachment,
but to move it alone, one risked heart attack or at least a vertebral detachment.

And so I gave in to my friend’s cajoling that it was time to buy another.
and I gave away the monster TV that I had acquired from my mother.
But guilt has suffused me ever after that day, for I really don’t need a TV,
and this smart girl is lacking in challenges, just wasting her talents on me.

She’s recently started to turn herself on (something that girls alone do)
and talking to me when I enter the room and enter her angle of view.
Finally I just unplugged her—an act of most selfish defiance.
I haven’t time in my life just to chat—especially to an appliance!

Although they still won’t accept my pingbacks (!!!!!) you can see more writing on this subject at: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/wronged-objects/

Calling Uncle Duckie

4 Replies

The Prompt: Calling Uncle Bob—Have you ever faced a difficult situation when you had to choose between sorting it out yourself, or asking someone else for an easy fix? What did you choose — and would you make the same choice today?

Calling Uncle Duckie

I can’t get my link established. Guess I’m just unlucky.
Luckily, I have a fix. I just call Uncle Duckie!
He can fix most anything from formatting to routers;
but you’ve got to stay real calm. He doesn’t work with pouters!

“Uncle Duckie, dear,” I say via email or on Skype.
“I want to post my post now, but I have a little gripe.
I can’t get my poem to post in single space, my dear.
It looks too long when double-spaced, and I have a fear

no one will read a two-paged poem. Long postings are no fun.
Is there any way that I can get it down to one?”
“Hit shift-return at ends of lines,” he tells me really pronto.
On my blog he wears the mask. And me? I’m merely Tonto!!!! **

** Note: In Spanish, “Tonto” means stupid. In other words, if viewed in Guadalajara, our favorite childhood program would be called, “The Lone Ranger and Stupid!”

Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210

4 Replies

The Prompt: Grateful and Guilty—write a thank-you note to your guiltiest pleasure

Okay, I challenge you to find a better excuse than I have for not getting posted until 7:10 at night.  I’m told by the owner of the little palapa restaurant I’ve come to after not being able to get online all day that it is probably because of yesterday’s eruption of Colima Volcano about 80 miles northeast of me.  Frustrating but exotic, no?  At any rate, here is my “real” post for the day…Judy

IMG_7969
Chocolate-covered Potato Chips and 90210

Thanks be to God for TV that’s evolved beyond Godzilla.
And thanks to him for frozen cream—both praline and vanilla.
Another pleasure is writing in bed. It’s how I start my day.
With no spouse or kids to feed, it’s where I get to stay.
I know that grandkids would be nice, but still I’m rather grateful
that being childless cuts to nil the chances they’ll be hateful.

Chocolate and potato chips, together or alone
are two more guilty pleasures for which I must atone.
I try to limit quantities that pass between my lips,
for if I eat too many, they’re displayed upon my hips.
Another guilty pleasure that’s high upon my list
is a stupid TV show that somehow I just missed

the first time that it came around and which I must admit
is really superficial, although it was once a hit.
Still, I can’t stop watching it when I am all alone—
a guilty pleasure for which I’ve found ways I can atone.
I only watch it from the pool as I do exercise—
computer balanced within view while I aerobicize.

The show I watch is Beverly Hills Nine-Zero-Two-One-Oh.
And that’s about as far as this confession’s gonna go!
I’m sure I’m shrinking brain cells, but I grow them back again
by reading hours of Marcel Proust, and then Anais Nin!
My ending comment must be this sincere beatitude:
for friends who like me as I am, I have great gratitude.

Guilty for my sins and the excesses that are mine—
grateful for the friends who still insist that I am fine
if I never turn out perfect both in looks and my behavior,
I guess the fact that they’re not perfect either is my savior.
Guiltily and gratefully, we all pass through this life,
pudgy from our excesses and battered by our strife.

But that’s how life is patterned, and we all are lucky still
that of our guilty pleasures we’re allowed to have our fill.
Thanks be to our compulsions and life’s excesses of pleasure,
for all our peccadillos end up as life’s greatest treasure.
So, thanks be again for naughty things. We both love and revile them.
With some of them we stuff our mouths. With others, We just dial them.

Pieromaniac

9 Replies

stock-photo-homemade-organic-berry-pie-with-blueberries-and-blackberries-139194887

Pieromaniac

At any time of day or night,
I’m always open to a bite
of pastry stuffed with something nice,
in fact, pie is my favorite vice!

I am very very very
fond of all things flavored cherry,
and of all this cherry pleasure,
pie’s the one that I most treasure.

Good for breakfast, good for lunch,
on pumpkin pie, I love to munch.
Coconut or chocolate cream?
They are my fantasy and dream.

Banana, apple—oh, and peach!
Put one of them within my reach,
and I’ll purloin a piece or two.
No pie is safe within my view.

On the window ledge or table,
I’ll grab a piece if I am able.
In a coffee shop or grandma’s kitchen,
pie’s delicious. Pie is bitchin’

At picnics, parties, celebrations,
with coffee or with small libations,
at any occasion or event,
pie is the best accompaniment.

Yet there is one aspect of pie
that I hope never meets my eye.
I don’t like pie in just one place.
Please don’t shove it in my face!

Today, I’m using the weekly challenge: Pie—The scent of pastry baking, the sound of a fork clinking on a plate… This week, make our mouths water with stories about pie.

Romancing the Word

10 Replies

The Prompt: Oil, Meet Water—Of the people who are close to you, who is the person most unlike you? What makes it possible for you to get along?

Romancing the Word

Scrabble, Dice and Mexican Train—
I play them once and then again,
while he won’t play a single game
of any sort or any name.

I like to travel. He sits at home.
Walmart’s as far as he will roam.
Won’t go to movie theaters, clubs,
exhibitions, galleries, pubs,

museums, fiestas, meetings, for
such crowding makes him hit the door.
Tourist attractions leave him numb
and make him wonder why he’s come.

I fill my house with Mexican art
that drains my purse but fills my heart,
but my artful clutter makes him frown.
His décor? Purely hand-me-down.

I like people. He sits alone.
His desk chair is his chosen throne
where he supervises the internet—
the biggest nerd you’ve ever met.

I dance whenever I’ve the chance,
but you might have guessed—he doesn’t dance!
He’s six-foot-two. I’m five-foot-six.
Yet tall and short just seem to mix.

I know our friends and family
find us an anomaly.
for these differences are just a start.
We’re 1600 miles apart!

So how can he be my best friend
when our differences never end:
a scorpion talking to a crab,
a Chihuahua running with a Lab?

What makes our congress less absurd?
We’re both addicted to the written word!
We both love puns and definition.
Apostrophe errors? Pure sedition!

While other folks discuss Obama,
we dissect uses of the comma.
We discuss dashes from en to em,
and how the world misuses them!

Splitting hairs but not infinitives,
sound editing advice he gives
for everything I write online.
If words were grapes, he’d strip the vine

of sour grapes and slugs and weeds
and after he had done these deeds,
the wine would pour more sweet and rare,
culled out by his loving care.

And so it goes here on my blog.
In its machine he is a cog—
mending lost links and feeling free
to cut that spare apostrophe.

To wrestle errant prepositions,
question faulty suppositions,
to polish off each word writ wrong
until a ditty becomes a song.

We meet each day on the cyber page
that is the parchment of our age.
While you meet others of your type
at coffee bars, we meet on Skype.

Our discourse clever, funny, rare.
We do not pine and ache and stare
eye-to-eye hour after hour.
For us, it’s words that carry power.

(Here) is another response to this prompt that I loved! It is by Sam Rappaz.  Check her out!

Life Is Too Short to Be Afraid

5 Replies

Staid: adjective: sedate, respectable and unadventurous. “staid law firms”
synonyms: sedate, respectable, quiet, serious, serious-minded, steady, conventional, traditional, unadventurous, unenterprising, set in one’s ways, sober, proper, decorous, formal, stuffy, stiff, priggish

Life Is Too Short To Be Afraid

Life is too short to be afraid,
caught, traditional and staid,
serious, steady, lacking flair,
always well-clothed and never bare.
We were not meant for formal fare,
pinched and tucked with perfect hair.

We’re meant to flap and drag and wear
with tattered bits and unkempt hair.
Life’s meant to mess us up a bit
as we make use of all of it.
Not just the parts traditional,
decorous and conditional.

Take a chance to win or fail.
Face the flood and face the gale.
Jump right in with both your feet
when adventure you chance to meet.
Go out to meet the world with grace,
hand extended, face-to-face.

In this great apple called mankind,
live in the fruit, not in the rind.
In the messy, fragrant, toothsome center
be an enjoyer, not a repenter.
Buy life full-price and not on clearance.
Live on the pith and not appearance.

For all too soon it will be over.
That field you rolled in, full of clover,
will sprout small stones that bruise your spine.
The rich mussels on which you dine
will be something you’ll have to pass
for fear that you might suffer gas.

The places where you want to go
can’t be got to when you’re slow.
You won’t have the energy
to travel fast and travel free—
to hitchhike, backpack, hop a train
when you have rheumatism pain.

So gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
“Real” life will wait another day.
Be silly and take chances now.
Forsake the contract, pledge and vow.
Too soon the walker and the cane.
You never will be young again.

The Prompt:No Time to Waste—Fill in the blank: “Life is too short to _____.” Now, write a post telling us how you’ve come to that conclusion.

 

 

Sticking to the Text

11 Replies

The Prompt: Bad Signal—Someone’s left you a voicemail message, but all you can make out are the last words: “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you months ago. Bye.” Who is it from, and what is this about?

“Corpus linguistics reflects the shift in academic focus from the brain
to the text as the appropriate source of information.”

Sticking to the Text

Mister tall, dark and handsome has left me in the lurch,
standing at the altar in my little hometown church.
My friends are all around me and my niece clutches her flowers.
The guests have entered all their pews ‘neath ribbon-bedecked bowers.
My bridesmaids stand around me in their pastel-colored gowns,
My father close beside me, all their faces swathed in frowns.

I have my cellphone with me in a special little pocket
sewn into my wedding dress beneath my granny’s locket.
It buzzes reassuringly. I know it is my love.
I fumble as I strip my hand of bracelet and of glove.
I reach into my bodice and switch my cellphone on.
I notice that my mother is looking sort of wan.

I ask at once if it’s my groom and if he will soon come.
“The guests are restless, dear, I say, and father’s looking glum.”
But it is not my true love talking. Rather, it’s his brother.
(The one I’ve always loved the most, though I would wed another.)
He voice-texts me he’s sorry, but I’m making a mistake.
His brother’s a philanderer, a scoundrel and a rake

who really loves another­—a lowlife moll named Ruth.
He says he’s tied him up for now ‘til I can hear the truth.
Their plans are just to bilk me, to steal my money and
make off with it together once he has claimed my hand.
He’s so sad he has to relate this, he tells me with a sigh.
“I should have told you months ago,” he adds, and then says, “Bye.”

The guests sit in stunned silence, for they’ve all overheard.
I hear a mourning dove call out—a most appropriate bird.
My father begins sputtering. My mom says not a word.
My bridesmaids begin fluttering. The day has turned absurd!
I hit “reply” upon my phone and hear it dial him.
It rings and rings and with each one, this day becomes more grim.

But finally he answers and I ask one question of him.
I ask him what his motives were and tell him that I love him!
He answers that he loves me, too, but never guessed the truth.
To take away his brother’s girl just seemed to him uncouth.
But now that he’d found out their plan, he couldn’t let me wed him.
He couldn’t stand to see me say my vows to him and bed him!

I asked him where he was just as he walked right up the aisle.
And love suffused my body to replace the shame and bile.
It mattered not a whit to me my groom had found another,
for I found a happier ending when I hitched up with his brother!
I’ll just let your imagination guess what happened next.
Just let me say I’ve always preferred sticking to the text!

 

Fast Change

2 Replies

The Prompt: Let It Be—A restaurant that removed your favorite item from the menu, a bad cover of a great song… Write a post about something that should’ve been left untouched, but wasn’t. Why was the original better?

Fast Change

This modern world has changed and changed
until I have become estranged.
These alterations make me dizzy.
I do not like my world so busy.

The young are used to change, it’s true.
They love the instant and the new.
Texts and sound bites come so fast.
Nothing’s really built to last.

But, for someone over fifty,
all this change is hardly nifty.
When at each end the candle’s burned,
when everything we’ve newly learned,

when everything that we hold dear
turns obsolete within one year,
we’re always slightly out of gear,
which makes us feel unjustly queer.

They make these changes without a clue.
Let’s start out minor, then work up to
the major things they’ve set askew:
(I will not mention Dr. Who.)

Every computer becomes its clone.
I cannot use the telephone.
My applications change so quick
that I have come to feel I’m thick.

Skype makes its changes overnight.
(Yet rarely ever improves the site.)
Microsoft Word just loves to change,
which leaves her users feeling strange.

Move this to there and that down here;
so all my mental powers, I fear,
are spent in figuring out the APP
and organizing a mental map

of how to write instead of what,
creating one big mental glut.
No room for creativity.
No safe place where our minds soar free.

We’re always “searching” for, instead,
our minds caught up in fear and dread
of where they’ve moved the enlarge bar to
in this week’s Word processing zoo!

Our e-mail servers have joined the plot.
I feel like pitching out the lot.
Just when I’ve learned most every trick
of tool and contact, every lick—

their Machiavellian, evil team
goes and changes the whole darn scheme!
But when we’re sending coast-to-coastal,
the alternative is going postal.

So though we bitch and though we frown,
they are the only game in town;
and so they have us where they want us.
Though they frustrate, ire and daunt us,

one after another, they are the same,
playing at this modern game
of change for change’s sake, it’s true.
There’s really nothing much to do.

So I submit, though in a tizzy,
I’ll relax less and keep real busy.
I’ll leave the cyber world alone
and concentrate on just one bone

I have to pick in this modern world,
and I say this with my top lip curled.
Max Factor, Revlon, Almay, please—
I kneel before you on my knees.

Leave the lipstick colors that we hold dear
alone! Don’t change them every year.
Each time you cancel one that’s zesty,
to find another makes us testy!!!

Finally, A Voice!!!—A Letter from Two Bad (Misunderstood) Dogs

24 Replies

Today they chose my suggestion for the daily prompt! It was: Return Address—Yesterday, your pet/baby/inanimate object could read your post. Today, they can write back (thanks for the suggestion, lifelessons!). Write a post from their point of view (or just pick any non-verbal creature/object).

If you’d like to see the letter the below post answers, please go here.

dsc07914 (1)
Finally, A Voice!!
(A Letter from Two Bad (Misunderstood) Dogs)

Do you think it’s simple, giving voice to our demands
without the proper vocal chords, without your human hands?
Everytime we try to talk, you scold us and you hush us,
even though you’ve just admitted that our howls are luscious.

And lacking proper fingers, we cannot write you letters.
We aren’t given proper tools to address our “betters.”
Simply howls and growls and barks and waggings of the tail—
and yet you do not take the time to learn this doggy Braille!

If you’d listen closer, perhaps you’d understand us.
Instead you shout out, “Stop!” and “Hush!” and seek to countermand us.
Can’t you understand that we’re protecting you from prowlers?
Feral cats and owls and skunks and nearby canine howlers?

We have such curiosity, though you determine to balk us.
We wouldn’t have to rush the gate if you’d take time to walk us!
We have to climb up on the roof to get a worldly view.
We wouldn’t be there barking if you’d take us out with you!

As for the cat food, take a clue. The reason we adore it
Is ‘cause it’s smelly, wet and luscious. Dog food? We abhor it!
That cat leaves a bit to tempt us—it’s a cruel feline game!
So why not buy us cat food? It costs you just the same.

And now the final agony. The ultimate tragic hitch,
Not only can our mom not cook, but now we make her itch!
No wonder our neuroses include jostling for attention.
A mother who can’t touch us? This escaped your earlier mention.

We thought you didn’t like us so we tried to win your favor.
Your touch is what we long for even more than cat food’s savor.
And as for pooping in the yard, you never told us to
sneak behind the garden shed to have our little poo.

You seem to think we know these things, but where would we have learned?
It’s you who should have taught us, for obedience must be earned.
If you would spend more time with us, perhaps you’d finally see
there is no other creature with whom we would rather be.