Tag Archives: humorous poetry

Simplicity

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Simplicity

Simplicity is something that I rarely do.
Why have only one of something when you could have two?
It takes a lot of veggies to come up with a stew,
and we’d do a lot of limping if confined to just one shoe.

Multiples are awesome. Multiples are grand.
Look how many fingers we have upon each hand.
One finger could not do the job. Neither could two or three.
Simple cannot form a hand, did not form you or me.

Simplicity’s much touted but I think it is absurd.
Who ever heard of stories comprised of just one word?
With a single raindrop, the world could not get wetter.
Sparsity may be more chic, but I like clutter better.

I don’t get minimalism. I’m a hoarder to the core.
When I ran out of wall room, I put art upon my door.
There are no piles in hallways. Hoarding need not be a sin.
I’ve built three rooms onto my house just to store things in.

With so many lovely things in life, collecting is a joy.
With life’s manifold choices, why be niggardly or coy?
At the ice cream parlor, why does one have to choose?
You need not always limit yourself just to ones and twos.

Have a scoop of strawberry and pineapple and mint.
Green tea is delicious and tequila’s heaven sent.
Load your dish with raspberry and coconut and mango.
Why do the simple two step when you could do the fandango?

In short, I am a gatherer. I have too many things.
I like to make the choices that a complex lifestyle brings.
When it comes to writing, a stuffed-full mind is fine!
Reach into words and shake them out and string them on a line.

A solitary animal will never make a zoo.
One grain of dirt, one drop of water cannot create goo.
A single cannon fired will not execute a coup.
The world just is not simple, nor am I and nor are you!

*

I’m having a yard sale of left-over words.  Below is the “free box.” Take what you will (please note that some of these items have been recently used, but all have been laundered and are ready for a new user):

coy ploy toy bore core 
simplicity complicity duplicity felicity
ooze booze cruise who’s whose choose lose blues news pews poos cues ruse sues twos views woos youse 
doozie floozie twozie
boo  goo hue loo moo new poo queue rue sue soo sioux too to you view woo you

*

Right in line with the theme of the poem, below are way too many photos.  If you want to see the details, you know what to do, right?  If you don’t, I’ll tell you.  Just click on the first photo and click on arrows to proceed through the photo gallery.  To come back here afterwards, click on the X in the upper left corner. 

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

Blankety Blank

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Blankety Blank

I’ve no one but myself to thank
for this prison cell so small and dank,
for when I went to rob that bank,
the truth is, if I’m being frank,
I was a doofus––a real wank.
In short, my planning really stank.
For when my gun I chanced to yank
to use against that man of rank
who challenged me as feckless crank,
my confident demeanor sank;
for I fear I drew a blank!

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The prompt today was “Blank.”    https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/blank/

Child of the Fifties

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These folks were the epitomes of every her and him.
The men were all smooth-shaven with haircuts short and trim.
The ladies of the fifties had their pearls and curly hair,
and fancy little house dresses were what they chose to wear.

Their kids were the epitomes of reproductive joy
who could serve as patterns for the perfect girl or boy.
They came out cute and perfect, created just to please.
They never fought or cheated or brought home F’s or D’s.

How do I know that what I say is not stretching the truth?
How do I know these folks were all red-blooded, honest, couth;
and that every one of them maintained the stauts quo?
I know for I’m that perfect child in the very front row

who somehow by the sixties  got somewhat out of step
and later by the seventies had misplaced all her “hep,”
did not become a hippie until nineteen eighty seven,
and will join the moral majority much too late to get to heaven.

I am not the epitome of any group you know.
I do not wear the clothes you wear or go where you may go.
Epitome’s a talent that I forgot to hone,
and ever since I’ve chosen a pattern all my own.

The daily prompt was “Epitome.”  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/epitome/

(These nice people were my parents and neighbors in the little town where I grew up and this poem is in no way meant to denigrate them.  I’m sure they were all unique individuals, as well.  It is the tendency of eras to turn into cliches that I am satirizing, not them.)

Morning Blues Saga

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DSC08356Morning Blues 

Another day is dawning. The birds are full of tweet.
So I decide to take a little stroll out on the street.
I have no need for makeup. I prefer my features bare.
I choose my clothes most carefully, but do not brush my hair.
With my new haircut, tousled’s in. I’m told to leave it there.
“Just run your fingers though your mop as though you do not care!”
The trees are bursting verdant, dry grass the hue of wheat.
Smiles stretch across the face of every man I meet.
I find their moods infectious, so I smile back at them.
I’m sporting a new haircut, so I feel very femme.

Corner after corner I round to see what’s there.
I straighten out my collar and toss my brand new hair
as I stroll by the house the new guy’s living in.
I check my watch and see it’s only eight-oh-ten.
Perhaps he’s a late riser, so I walk right on by.
If he had been in evidence, I might have murmured, “Hi!”
and maybe he’d have talked to me and asked me for a date.
Perhaps I’m not too early. Perhaps I am too late!
One day I’m sure I’ll meet him, but I am wondering when.
It’s not that I’m accustomed to running after men,

but it’s especially pretty, this block where I’ve just been.
I turn around so I can stroll through it once again.
The second time I pass his door, I see it opening.
As he comes out my spirits soar. My heart begins to ping.
I know this is the man for me. He’s pleasant, handsome, tall.
I’d go and introduce myself if only I’d the gall.
When his eyes light on my face, he smiles like all the rest.
Of all the smiles I’ve seen today, this smile is the best.
I croon hello and smile back and yes, I flirt a bit—
his grin so wide I know that I must have scored a hit.

I pass on by but I am sure we’ll meet another day,
and judging by his smile, he’ll have much more to say.
As I retrace my steps again, I’m feeling very pert.
Perhaps I’ll lose a few more pounds.  It surely wouldn’t hurt.
I climb the hill to my house and open up the door.
The perking of the coffee pot drowns out my roommate’s snore.
I pour a cup and take it back to work upon my blog,
and all this time my roomie is sleeping like a log.
An hour passes, she awakes and stumbles by my door.
Until she has her first cup, she’s grouchy to the core.

Five minutes pass and she comes in and plops into a chair,
her grin so wide, I wonder if she’s going to diss my hair.
“I took a walk,” I tell her, and her eyes go really wide.
“Like that?” she said, “You mean that you have really been outside?”
“My hair’s supposed to look this way. The natural look is in!”
I said to her most huffily, my patience wearing thin.
“I finally saw the new guy, and he’s really cute.”
I told her, and I saw her look, because I’m so astute.
“What,” I asked her, “is your problem? Don’t you like my hair?”
I met her answering guffaw with an angry glare.

“Your hair is not your problem,” she said and grabbed my hand,
pushing me into her room, where she made me stand
before a full length mirror, where finally I could see
perhaps why all my neighbors had deigned to smile at me.
For my whole face was covered with last night’s facial goo—
dried upon my face to form a vivid shade of blue!
Not quite the statement I had hoped to make that fateful day,
and since that time I fear my confidence began to fray.
I’ve given up long walks for neighborhoods much nearer,
and I never leave my house without checking out the mirror!

For other sagas, check out this URL:https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/saga/

Fishless Chips

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Dykstra-Brown Photo

 

I received the below new lunch menu from a local restaurant via email immediately before reading the daily prompt, which was “Flourish.”  It was inevitable that the two would merge.


A NEW LUNCH MENU is being offered from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm
  • Fish & Chips with Coleslaw
  • Burritos ( Shrimp or Fish)
  • Chimichangas (Shrimp or Fish)
  • Tacos Shrimp or Fish
  • Large Salad with  Shrimp

Fishless Chips

Never have I had a wish
for any kind of seafood dish––
fillet of flounder or tuna knish.
The only menu I find delish
is piscine-free, served with a flourish.
So if this bod you wish to nourish,
just french fry spuds and skip the fish!

is, I fear, devoid of fish.https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/flourish/

Locked and unlocked

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Locks

Locked up in my bedchamber. More than I can bear.
The beauty of my countenance, the shimmer of my hair
do me no good for no prince charming comes to find me here.
I will go unmarried––for my whole life, I fear.

My father thinks he honors me. I am his special treasure.
He worries not about my fate.  He thinks not of my pleasure.
I am but one more lovely thing he keeps for his collection––
admired for my golden locks, my flawless pale complexion.

I care not for beauty.  I care not for my tresses.
I do not treasure jewels or slippers or my ornate dresses.
A husband and a family are all that I desire.
A simple life’s the sort of life that I most admire.

From my window I look out upon the broad King’s Highway.
All roads must converge here––every path and byway.
And so I see them passing: beggars, countrymen and princes.
Vendors selling mangos, apples, oranges and quinces.

My eye is caught by sunlight flashing from his sword
as he stoops to have a sip from a vendor’s gourd.
He pays her with a small coin and thanks her most politely,
then mounts his horse with one sure leap–graceful, sure and spritely

I see him passing often and his face is full of laughter,
calling out and gesturing to companions, fore and after.
One day I wave my scarf at him as he goes passing by
and every day thereafter, I know I’ve won his eye.

At first he bows politely–a gesture I don’t miss.
and after a few weeks of this, one day he blows a kiss.
I reach out and grab it and press it to my face.
He rears his horse and races off at a faster pace.

The next day he doesn’t come, although I wait and wait.
But finally, I see him turning towards my father’s gate.
In distress, I call out that  he must not tarry here.
My father’s wrath must not be stirred.  It is what I most fear.

He does not see me gesturing. He hears not my distress.
I rue the day I waved at him, although I must confess
I also thrilled to think that he had come in search of me.
I fantasized that he would be the one to set me free.

But my prince never entered, though he tarried long and late.
Until the full moon rose above, he waited at the gate.
Although it had not opened by the time the next sun rose,
the young man sat astride his horse with hoarfrost on his clothes.

‘Twas then that I began my moan and tears sprang from my eyes.
I tore my clothes, scratched at my face.  I’d ruin my father’s prize!
My serving maids, sorely distressed, tried to stay my hand,
while my genteel companion sat with startled eyes and fanned!

When one maid put down the apple she’d begun to pare,
I grabbed the knife and severed one long lock of hair.
Lock after lock, I parted with this prison I had grown.
I’d see if father still wanted a daughter newly mown.

Then outside my chamber, I heard a deafening grate.
I flew back to the window. They were opening the gate!
At the same time, I heard a knock and my door opened wide.
I knew it was my father in the passageway outside.

I feared his consternation, his anger and his wrath,
and yet I chose to put myself squarely in his path.
In one hand I held half my locks, in the other were locks more.
All my other shorn-off glory, around me on the floor.

“I am not your possession,” I tell my father then.
I am no pretty pet that you can lock up in a pen.
You can have my beauty––” (Here I handed him my locks.)
“but you cannot seal me up in your private box.”

My father raised his hand, and I feared that he would strike me––
angered that he’d never again have a treasure like me––
but instead he circled his arm around my shoulder
and said, “This day, I have acquired a daughter who is bolder!

It was never me who kept you sealed  up in this tower.
You always had it within you to unlock your own power.
You must know this unlocking is both metaphor and literal.
The freedom that you’ve won today, both actual and clitoral.”

And that is how this princess, once set upon a shelf,
learned that the price of freedom is to win it for one’s self.
By cutting off my own locks, I opened up the gate.
My reward––the clever prince wise enough to wait!

Helen Meikle sent along this song which she said had a similar theme to my poem.  Can’t believe I’ve never heard it before…but I agree.  Listen to it HERE

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

http://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-one/

“The Gawkey and Flaybottomist—Who Should Have Stopped When First They Kissed”

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The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a poem using at least ten terms from a specialized dictionary. I guess when I chose to use the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue  from my own bookshelf, I should have realized that at least 1/2 of the terms would involve sexual innuendo. Nonetheless, I decided to proceed. I must warn you that the following poem is a bit risqué, so please avoid reading it if rude language offends thee!

The 16 terms I used and their definitions are given after the poem. If you wish, you might want to read them before the poem, or you can try to follow context clues to discover their meaning on your own:

 

“The Gawkey and Flaybottomist—Who Should Have Stopped When First They Kissed”

I predict the cross patch and the flaybottomist
are the sort of women least likely to be kissed.
The first’s so busy grumbling that the kiss never connected,
while the second merely thinks of how the kiss may be corrected.

Now, there was an awkward village boy excessively unworldly,
that on one occasion had acted most absurdly
by planting a fast buss upon his teacher’s nearby cheek
then since he was both young and shy, he beat a fast retreat.

The following week when mellow, he thought he’d try again—
His amorous nature brought out by much congress with his gin.
He desired a bit of relish, and the gin made him a fool
So he took his gaying instrument up to the village school.

I fear he was a gawkey–the worst that you might meet,
and he tripped over his crab shells as he stumbled up the street.
The roaring boys pursued him, thinking they would later cackle—
leaking all the secrets of where gawkey stowed his tackle.

Upon his knock, the school teacher opened up the door,
attired in her negligee–and I fear nothing more.
She greeted him with Friday-face, but he took little note,
for he was practicing the lines that he had learned by rote.

The teacher was a dumplin and her suitor tall and thin,
yet when she heard his practiced plea, I fear she let him in.
But what he didn’t know then, as he quenched his carnal thirst
was that on that night of visitors, he was not the first.

The reason our flaybottomist had greeted him ungowned,
clad only in her negligee and with her hair unwound,
was because the French instructor had been there to give instruction—
a fact that I fear later led to misery and destruction.

For her tutor left her Frenchified, which she passed to the gawkey,
who took his French leave quickly, feeling a good deal less cocky.
The moral of this little tale—at least the one you’ll get?
Things are apt to get sticky when you’re the teacher’s pet!

 

Words from the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue used in this poem:

*crab shells:  Irish, shoes
*gawkey: a tall, thin, awkward man or woman
*gaying instrument: the penis
*cross patch: a peevish boy or girl, an unsocial or ill-tempered man or woman
*relish: carnal connection with a woman
*cackle or leaky: to blab or reveal secrets
*roaring boy: a noisy, riotous fellow
*flaybottomist: a schoolteacher
*mellow: almost drunk
*dumplin: a short thick man or woman
*tackle:  a man’s genitals
*Friday-face:  a dismal countenance (Friday being a day of abstinence.)
*French leave: to go off without taking leave of the company
*Frenchified: infected with venereal disease.
*Negligee: a woman’s undressed gown,
*buss: a kiss “kissing and bussing differ both in this, We busse our wantons,
but our wives we kisse! (Robert Herrick, “Hesperides,” 1648) from buss, 1570.

To see the NaPoWriMo prompt or to participate, go here: http://www.napowrimo.net/day-seventeen-2/

Although I doubt this poem will prompt much heavy breathing, I’m posting it on the WordPress site as well: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/breath/

Misplaced Meandering

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Misplaced Meandering

I’m asking you who is not lost in this life––
which child or mother or husband or wife––
our direction determined by machines and signs
that know our direction, but not our designs?
I think I’d prefer a simpler way
where I could just drift through each hour and day
turning right at the blue house, then going by guesses
without Google maps or those damn GPS’s.

Remember when maps could be lifted and folded?
If you were berated, corrected or scolded,
your wife was the one who said you’d gone wrong,
not a voice from your dash interrupting the song––
“Long Way Home” on your player, crooned by Tom Waits––
as your TomTom says you’ve gone through too many gates.
No more do we lollygag, detour or amble.
We can’t program Garmin to dawdle or ramble.

Lost in our motor home, lost in our car
though we know precisely just where we are.
Lost in our lives, no direction our own
with nüvi on our dashboard and Waze on our phone.
They point us in their choice of route and direction
while never inquiring of our predilection
for scenery, museums, or byways or diners.
When spontaneity beckons, they are decliners.

Remember those trips when you were a kid
when your dad would pull over whenever you bid,
take off on a side road to see what was there
and wend this way and that way with nary a care?
Now that sort of journey is bound to excite me,
but to take off today with these systems to fight me?
The thought of their voices is bound to incite me
to turn them all off and scream, “You can just bite me!”

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

Chillin’

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(Click on first photo to enlarge and arrows to view all images.)

Chillin’

If I were the queen of time, in charge of all its flow,
I’d speed it at the dentist, while dessert would progress slow.
Each bite of pie, with me in charge, would take at least a minute.
An ice cream cone would last an hour while I enjoyed what’s in it.

If I controlled the seconds, the hours and days and weeks,
a hummingbird’s flight would slow way down to afford us peeks.
A fine ballet would then commence whenever they flew by––
each move so delicate and slow––detectable by the eye.

House work would vanish quickly as the clicking of a finger,
while footrubs, hugs and kisses would be the things that linger.
The time between waking and sleep would flow as swift as water
If I were grandmother of hours–time passing’s favorite daughter.

If I could slice time thick or thin and serve it out in portions,
I’d speed up each painful death as well as birth’s contortions.
I’d slow down bullets leaving guns and thus destroy their power.
I’d slow how fast the ice cube melts, the lifetime of each flower.

Sunsets would last for hours and time with friends for days,
so we’d enjoy together each evening’s parting rays.
Plane rides with their narrow seats and no room for our knees
would pass as fast as possible–as quickly as you’d please.

Time before a party would go slow to afford time
for the cleaning of the house, the cutting of each lime.
And once each flower is put in place, the buffet table done,
time’s pace would be restored again and revelry begun.

When we need more or less of it, time would be there for us.
Our favorite songs would be strung out. Braggarts would never bore us.
There’d be more time for writing, for eating and the arts.
Headaches would pass in seconds. So would  anger, angst and farts!

If I controlled the hours,  the world would be run smoother.
Instead of causing us much angst, time would be our soother.
If I could dole out time so it was spread on thin or thickly,
perhaps I could have managed for this poem to end more quickly!

The Prompt: Pace Oddity––If you could slow down an action that usually zooms by, or speed up an event that normally drags on, which would you choose, and why?https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/pace-oddity/

“Nomenculture”

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Illustration by Isidro Xilonzochitl for my book Sock Talk

“Nomenculture”

The names called across playgrounds in 1952
were “Lynn and Rita, Sharon, Karen, Sheila, Portia, Sue”.
But the kinds of names that mothers now choose for their daughters
are all names we never called out from our teeter-totters.

“Emma, Ava, Mia, Hannah, Isabella, Addison, 
Sophia and Olivia, Amelia and Madison,
Harper, Lily, Mia” are the sorts of names girls call
out to one another via texts or in the mall.

“Harper, Ella, Mia, Emily and Abigail”
are the names that girls today most commonly use to hail
each other on their smart phones via tweets or via text.
It’s hard to predict what may be the names that moms might next

choose to call their daughters.  Perhaps Venus, Saturn, Mars
will be the sort of names our daughters’ daughters call from cars.
Modern names for modern girls–– monikers so cool
that giving names like Betty, Pat or Judy would seem cruel.

Today, names must be Biblical or characters from Austen.
Or the names of cities from Madison to Boston.
“Judy” is a boring name, silly, old-fashioned, dull––
the sort of name that nowadays never makes the cull.

Those of my generation may seem rather out of date,
perhaps because of how we dress, our language or our weight.
Some women opt for face-lifts, saying wrinkles are to blame,
but I think it would be easier to simply change my name.


The Prompt: Say Your Name––Write about your first name: Are you named after someone or something? Are there any stories or associations attached to it? If you had the choice, would you rename yourself? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/say-your-name/