Tag Archives: marital spats

Tableau

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Tableau

She found him obnoxious, he found her inane.
Their thirty-day marriage, suddenly insane.
Both were fatigued by exhausting routine.
The breakfast, the paper, the washing machine.
A giant moth fluttered, beating the screen
and the window glass— imprisoned between.
The cryptic message it beat with its wings
sang of detachment and other sad things.
Both heard its struggles and both moved to free
anxious to end at least one tragedy.
Her hand touched the clasp and his moved the screen.
The moth vanished into the fresh morning green.
A brush of his knuckles on the hair of her arm,
his gentle reminder that he’d meant no harm.
Her turning toward him, a touch and a kiss.
Their world straightened out with nothing remiss.
A silent tableau—solution with no words.
A moth soaring free. A chorus of birds.

 

 

Word prompts today are flutter, screen, obnoxious, cryptic and routine.

Happy Ending

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Happy Ending

He was a follower, a grunt
who married a lass dominant.
She led, he followed in their dance.
He wore an apron, she the pants.
It was a perfect unity
if folks had only let them be;
but, alas, the other blokes
had to make the usual jokes.

They called him pussy-whipped and meek—
berated him as timid, weak—
and so, simply to please his mates,
to end their jeering cruel debates,
he went against his true love’s wishes
and refused to do the dishes.

The facts, there’s no need to imbue.
Both words and dinner plates, they flew.
He could not match her swift invective
of ways in which he was defective,
and so he simply stood and waited
until her fury was abated,
then asked this cyclone he had wed
if she would like to go to bed.

Their skirmish ended in romance.
He shed his apron, she her pants.
A worn-out lover well-behooves
a meeker husband in his moves,
and nothing like a little tiff
to make a timid fellow stiff.
Now that her angst had flared and passed,
he got to be on top, at last.

The prompt today is dominant.