Tag Archives: humorous poetry

Exhortation in Support of the Written Word!

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Exhortation
in Support of the Written Word!

Discussing a good book can improve any conversation,
while other books just serve us as a means of rumination.
Books come in many forms from poetry to exhortation.
Some use them to improve their minds, others as decoration.

Books furnish everyone a chance to get an education
as writers entertain us and provide elucidation.
Ghost stories and horror books give rise to palpitation.
Action and adventure lead to heights of exultation.

Comics lead to laughter and beyond—to jubilation.
Histories tell tales of conquerors and usurpation—
deprivation due to wars, like bombing raids and rations,
slaughter, mayhem, battle strategies and amputations.

Some books furnish thrills while some serve only as sedation.
Some books read as sermons, others bombastic oration.
Preachers read from Bibles to provide their congregation
with words that furnish some with hope, others with trepidation.

Some dread books they feel may raise their “lessers” to their station.
Some fear the joy they rouse in us and label our elation
as the hands of Satan, which they’ll cure with amputation,
labeling their action as an act of “God’s creation.”

Driven to destroy the means of all our excitation,
having few words of their own, a zealot’s main “quotation”
is burning books they fear in a colossal conflagration
that gives another meaning to the word “illumination!”

Whatever you might like to read, a certain exultation
waits for you when reading is your favorite vocation.
A torrid romance may work best while on a beach vacation,
(the heat a good excuse for your excessive perspiration.)

Mysteries serve for planes and trains—all forms of transportation—
either while you’re riding or just waiting in the station.
Books are everywhere. They form a great accumulation.
They bore us, reassure us, or provide great inspiration.

Information in most books serves as a vaccination
against hate and bigotry and all discrimination.
For those trapped by fate, they make a good means of migration,
as reading has no borders as to neighborhood or nation.

The Prompt: Reader’s Block—What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without reading a book (since learning how to read, of course)? Which book was it that helped break the dry spell? (My consideration of books took me off on a slightly different tangent, but the prompt is to get us started. Right?)

 

 

Coffee with No Ceremony!!

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All dressed up for the coffee ceremony, but what is missing?

The Prompt: Dictionary, Shmictionary—Time to confess: tell us about a time when you used a word whose meaning you didn’t actually know (or were very wrong about, in retrospect).

Coffee With No Ceremony

I lived in Addis Ababa adjoining Mexico Square.
I ate injera every day. Had cornrows in my hair.
I thought I knew it all, and though my language skills were poor,
I knew enough Amharic to get by in any store.

Seated in a circle, on low stools around a flame,
We watched Demekech fan the fire—this ritual the same
in every house and every village all throughout the land.
The thick and sludgy coffee was always ground by hand.

Boiled in a clay carafe, then set aside to brew
as in another little pot, some corn kernels she threw.
The popcorn taken from the flame, the colo nuts were next.
Except—we found that we had none, and we were sorely vexed.

The coffee jug was sealed up with a fresh-wound plug of grass
ready for the pouring, but one aspect of our mass
was missing, so I said I’d go to buy some at the souk,
lest our hospitality give reason for rebuke.

These little shops were many, lining both sides of the street;
and at each one, I knew the custom—always did I greet
the owner with proper respect, and always, he said, “Yes!”
when I asked if he had colo, but I couldn’t guess

why no one ever seemed to want to sell any to me.
Always the same reaction—first the shock and then the glee.
So, finally, I walked back home. My failure I admitted.
Departing, I had felt so smart, but now I felt half-witted.

What had I done wrong? I knew that every shop had colo.
The problem must have been that I had gone to get them solo!
Returning empty-handed, I felt I was to blame.
Coffee without colo was a pity and a shame.

But my roommate and our guests and cook were really most surprised.
I must have asked for something else than colo, they surmised.
What did I ask for? When I told them, they dissolved in laughter.
They said that I was lucky not to get what I asked after.

For colo had two meanings, depending on the stress
put on the first syllable, and I had made a mess.
Instead of nuts, they told me (and this was just between us,)
­I had asked each souk owner—if he had a penis!

(This is a true story of only one of the gaffes I became famous for in the year and a half I taught and traveled in Ethiopia in the period leading up to the revolution that deposed Haile Selassie.)

Rummy

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Upturned Noses—Even the most laid back and egalitarian among us can be insufferable snobs when it comes to coffee, music, cars, beer, or any other pet obsession where things have to be just so. What are you snobbish about?

Rummy

Forget my birthday or my name.
Beat me at my favorite game.
Insult my décor or my looks.
Ignore my artwork and my books.

Any coffee brand will do.
I am not snobbish about my brew.
If you must, you may be tardy.
Just serve me no rum but Bacardi!

If someone one day deemed to proffer
the finest Cuba has to offer,
there is no choice. I wouldn’t totter.
I’d just decline and ask for water!

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Back and Forth

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Back and Forth

If I should find a time machine, I might or might not buy it.
And even once I bought it, I might or might not try it.
To think about the future always makes me sweat,
for I am trepidatious about how bad it might get.
I foresee live-in bubbles for one or two or three
who merely turn on YouTube for whomever else they see.
Pollution would be too advanced to venture far outside—
the world turned way too violent for most folks to abide.

If I visited the future, chances are I’d see
the death of friends and loved ones—perhaps the death of me!
See our country crumble due to earthquakes or to slaughter.
See Monsanto poison food crops after ruining our water.
Our seasons turned to drought, tornado, hurricane and flood—
by turn made dry or spinning or blown away or mud.
I know there are alternatives, but I can’t help but doubt
that current politicians will let it all work out.

But if I went into the past, perhaps I’d also rue it.
I might just be happier if I chose to eschew it
I might see as a toddler that I was just a brat—
a little squirming dervish—graceless, spoiled and fat.
I might hear that my singing voice was just a bit off-key
and see the looks the others gave as they were hearing me.
If I encountered me, we might just end up in a fight
like ones I had with sisters—and discover they were right!

Yet, this probably won’t happen and perhaps it might be fun
to have another look at what I’ve seen and what I’ve done.
And though to relive some things would leave me feeling queasier,
I know that it would certainly make memoir-writing easier.
What fun to relive Christmases from year to year to year,
To see my mom and dad again, what’s more, to get to hear
all the stories of my dad and this time to record them—
to spend time with my sisters and to show how I adored them.

What fun to watch me with my friends— Rita, Lynn and Billy—
to see when we were children if we were just as silly
as little kids I see today who just seem to be reeling
with energy and foolishness and excesses of feeling.
I’d drive on roads with fewer cars to spots no longer there.
Go roller skating in Draper gym. Fall on my derriére!
I’d have a Coke in Mack’s Café and then I’d shop at Gambles.
Buy love comics at Mowell’s Drug and then expand my rambles

down to the playground monkey bars, where I would do a flip.
Then to the Frosty Freeze where I would have another sip
of orange slush and then I’d have to buy a barbecue.
(I fear that in my tiny town, that’s all there was to do!)
I’d skip ahead, then, many years, to 1971,
and fly off to Australia for adventures in the sun.
Then Singapore and Bali, Ceylon and Africa.
See everything as it once was, when it was new and raw.

Regrets? Of course. I’m human, and so I’ve had a few,
but over precognition, I prefer déjà vu.

The Prompt: One-Way Street—Congrats! You’re the owner of a new time machine. The catch? It comes in two models, each traveling one way only: the past OR the future. Which do you choose, and why?

College Daze

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College Daze

I should have been cramming for English—­reading Macbeth or Candide­
and finishing off all my papers on Shakespeare or Becket or Bede.
But I always put off all assignments until the last possible minute,
lugging around every textbook without really looking within it.

When final week came, I was panicked. I studied all day and all night.
Living on No Doz and coffee, my eyes were a terrible sight.
Bloodshot and ringed with dark circles, they read on and read on nonetheless—
Chaucer and Dickens and Somerset Maugham (and Cliff’s Notes, I have to confess.)

My very worst procrastination was ten papers in just seven days—
my mind racing onward and onward as I searched for each insightful phrase.
Biology, German and history, psychology and all the rest
battled to come to the front and be heard when they came to be put to the test.

By the end I was crazed and exhausted, craving only closed eyes and my bed—
putting authors and symbols and figures and facts right out of my overstuffed head.
I could have avoided this torment, the pressure, exhaustion and dread
If only I’d started three months in advance to prepare for each “big day ahead.”

In college I fear I was guilty. I put all things off just a smidge.
I majored in procrastination and minored in marathon bridge!

( This poem is dedicated to Marti, Yvonne, Patty, Ramjet, Karen Rea and all the house hashers, with whom I wasted many a long college afternoon and evening expanding my mind by playing bridge. I must admit that I haven’t played it since, which is why I have the time to write a poem a day and post it on my blog. Sometimes we learn more after college than during!)

The Prompt: Big Day Ahead—It’s the night before an important event: a big exam, a major presentation, your wedding. How do you calm your nerves in preparation for the big day?

The Indigestibles

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The Prompt: Mouths Wide Shut—Are you a picky eater? Share some of your favorite food quirks with us (the more exotic, the better!). Omnivores: what’s the one thing you won’t eat?

The Indigestibles

No room for mushrooms, can’t live with liver.
The thought of brains just makes me shiver.
Though I like pizza, my other law
is I don’t eat tomatoes raw!

Drinking milk’s against my wishes.
Fish is simply for the fishes.
I eat no veal or other baby,
and steak for me is simply “maybe.”

So if it’s your plan to invest
in things that I like to ingest,
I won’t make it any harder
for you to come and stock my larder.

All else you want to bring to feed me—
what edibles you wish to cede me:
Injera, curries, Thai, Chinese—
all are sure to tempt and please.

Except for one thing I just thought of
that in the past I’ve had a lot of.
There’s one more mouthful I won’t try.
I have no taste for humble pie!

A Message for Henry Selick

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The Prompt: Make It Count—You’ve been given the opportunity to send one message to one person you wouldn’t normally have access to (for example: the President. Kim Kardashian. A coffee grower in Ethiopia). Who’s the person you choose, and what’s the message?

A Message for Henry Selick

In our age of information—
and also instant confirmation
of every little truth and fact,
it’s necessary to react
with some protection, I understand.
The famous of us take a hand
to protect themselves from the clamoring band
of those who call for their attention
to win a conference or audition,
an interview or invitation
to meet for food or a libation
as a means to talk about
ideas that we have need to flout.
And so I see why I could not
reach the person whom I sought
to pitch my Christmas storybook.
The plot is good. I have a hook.
The characters are funny and
the artist has an expert hand.
I even know the person who
I wish to do my pitching to.
But he’s grown famous through the years
and our acquaintance is in arrears—
his movies scarier by far
than any of my stories are.
But readers tell me that in a pinch,
my Christmas story beats the Grinch!
A Christmas classic the film would be
if only Hollywood could see
the book that no one yet has seen
because my Facebook notes have been
seen by no one and I have not
a way to advertise my lot.
So here I make a heartfelt plea
for Henry Selick to contact me!

(To further jog your memory:
Your wife Heather had a job
teaching with my husband Bob.)

The book is Sock Talk: A Christmas Story, and you can see more about it here.


Blog Sock Talk

Slackers

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The Prompt: Ready, Set, Done—Our free-write is back by popular demand: today, write about anything — but you must write for exactly ten minutes, no more, no less.

Slackers

If we knew what to write about, we’d do so every day;
but instead we come here hoping that you’ll tell us what to say.
Already you have proven twice your prompt site isn’t prompt.
And once again upon our trust you mindfully have stompt
by turning us away to find our topics on our own.
So once again, dear WordPress, all our trust in you has flown.
We do not go to clothes stores to buy dresses not yet sewn,
nor come here to this prompt site to be told to pick our own!

The Gauntlet

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The Prompt: Handle With Care—How are you at receiving criticism? Do you prefer that others treat you with kid gloves, or go for brutal honesty?

The Gauntlet

If brutal honesty’s your thirst,
please don’t throw down the gauntlet first.

I have no need for verbal sparring.
In fact, I find it rather jarring.

So please pick up your gauntlet and
just place it back upon your hand.

Kind’s my material of choice
with which to gird thy hand and voice

as you tell me how I’ve erred,
so please wear gloves and wear them paired!

And then I have one more request.
Other critics have found it best

while telling me how to comport
myself in life, to make it short!

At Great Length

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The Prompt: Brevity Pulls—“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” — Blaise Pascal. Where do you fall on the brevity/verbosity spectrum?

At Great Length

In sonnets, free verse, story, song—
I fear that I go on too long.
I flunked at law school, to my mother’s grief.
I could not seem to write a brief!

Hmm.  9:29 and we are still unable to post on the WordPress Daily Prompt site.  So, I fear my post needs to be expanded.  So much for brevity:

Our contact delayed yesterday
seems delayed once again today,
for now that I have penned a rhyme
that doesn’t take much of your time,
it seems the hyperlink won’t work
so here in limbo we all lurk!

“Delayed Contact” was the theme
for yesterday, but still they seem
stuck in it. We’ve cussed and prayed,
but still our contact is delayed!
Wordpress, please come out to play.
It seems you’re stuck in yesterday!!