Tag Archives: silly poem

“My Shoes Go Out Without Me” for What Do You See Prompt, Aug 19, 2024

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My Shoes

My shoes go out without me. They do it all the time,
and do the things I never do. They jog. They hike. They climb.
When I wake up I find them strewn throughout the house—
one flip flop on the counter. High heels beneath my blouse
that’s flung across the table where I don’t remember putting it.
I bet they’ve been out dancing—two-stepping and high-footing it.

When my cowboy boots go riding, I’d like to go along.
I’m pretty sure, however, they think things would go wrong.
Perhaps the horse would throw me or I’d wind up getting lost.
I’m sorry that I bought them, considering the cost!
Other people are the boss of all their clothes and shoes,
but when my shoes and I face off, I am the one to lose.

I could take to going barefoot. This would work while at the beach.
Then when all my shoes are out far beyond my reach,
into the surf I’ll wade and then wander out again,
trapping sand between my toes everywhere I’ve been.
So when my shoes get home at night, they’ll be completely clueless
that I’ve left them out as well by venturing out shoeless!

For What Do You See?

The Ballad of Poor Molly, for SOCS, Aug 2, 2024

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The Ballad of Poor Molly

Poor Molly Smith was lonely sure on every weekend night.
No lover had she to insure an end to her sad plight.
She’d read of match.com and then eHarmony and others.
No more would she be chickless hen if she could have her druthers.
She took her keyboard in her hand to find a true love there,
for sparsely was the household manned of this poor maiden fair.
She put her name upon a site and waited for some word.
A day went by and then a night, but nothing had she heard.

Her profile words were erudite, written with such care.
Everything was done just right, yet no man found she there.
She started blogging all day long, “liked” members’ every word;
but still something was very wrong. She found it all absurd.
Other women found true love on OkCupid, but
no pierced heart, no cooing dove released her from her rut.
She sought her profile to imbue and stretched the truth, I fear.
Her hair turned blonde, her bust size grew, her beauty knew no peer.

She found a picture of some tart both sexy, tanned and toned.
Perhaps it wasn’t really smart, but soon a suitor phoned.
They made a date to meet for drinks, then she began to worry.
Her hair had all these ugly kinks, her upper lip was furry.
Her height was five-foot-four, not eight, her dress size twelve, not six.
How could she show up for this date? Poor Mol was in a fix.
She read his profile once again: handsome, rich and funny.
She felt a surge of pure chagrin. He’d humor, looks and money?

She printed up his profile pic and pinned it to her couch.
His skin was bronzed, his muscles thick, while she was flabby. Ouch!
She took a bottle to her hair and died it light as flax,
bought heels as high as she could dare and tummy-control slacks.
She ran three miles or more that day (or she more likely walked);
and thought about what she would say If her new suitor balked.
Could medication swell one out for twenty pounds or more?
Would he accept without a doubt this apologetic lore?

The time grew short. She bathed and fussed and straightened out her hair.
Her body girdled, squeezed and trussed––to sit she didn’t dare.
She’d take a bus and spend the ride standing in the aisle.
The acid churning her inside was turning into bile.
She grabbed her purse and locked the door and sprinted for the bus.
Her girdle crawled an inch or more. It made her want to cuss.
She tugged it down, got on the bus and tried to stand erect.
One way out of all this muss would be to have a wreck!

The driver drove with extra care to take her to her meal.
Yet when she wobbled down the stair, she broke one three-inch heel.
By then her hair had kinked again, her girdle slowly rose.
She had peroxide on her chin and also on her nose.
She almost left, gave in to doubt; but then she stopped to think.
Her curiosity won out. She’d stay for just one drink.
She saw him just as soon as she had entered in the door.
He was tall and golly, gee, was handsome, fit and more!

She ducked into the ladies room to tame her crazy hair
and contemplate upcoming doom. What an unlikely pair!
Then gathered all her courage up and went to meet her fate.
She’d have a drink, forget the sup and end this nightmare date.
She walked right up and tapped his arm and said his name,”Dupree?”
And when he turned, his look was warm, but he said, “That isn’t me.”
She felt a touch upon her hair and turned to find out who
or what had deigned to touch her where she’d recently changed hue.

A little man about her height, really cute, but chubby, too,
was chuckling with all his might and looking at her shoe.
“What in heaven happened to you?” he asked, and then he snatched
and snapped the heel right off her shoe so both of her heels matched.
“My name’s Dupree,” he said, “You’re you. I’d know you anywhere.
You’re tall and slim, your eyes are blue, your hair is straight and fair.
I hope you’re not too mad at my prevaricating way.
I’m really not too bad a guy no matter what they say.

I know I stretched the truth a bit. Not all I say is true,
but how else would I find a fit with such a babe as you?”
She went into the ladies room and slipped out of her girdle.
The date foreseen with dread and gloom was not the foretold hurdle.
They ate four courses, then one more. They laughed and traded quips.
He drove her home right to her door and kissed her on the lips!
Now Molly’s nest is feathered. Of chicks, she numbers three.
And Dupree is firmly tethered with Molly on his knee.

 

For SOCS prompt: Poor

Memory Aid

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Memory Aid

When lethologica rears its ugly head,
I give up and go to bed,
for when my conscious mind won’t stream it,
my response is—try to dream it.

Crabs!!! For Stream of Consciousness Saturday

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Crabs!!

A consortium of crabs can be an itchy deal.
Not the sort of gathering that one wants to feel.
Perhaps out on the beach it’s easier to bear,
but crabs should never gather in anybody’s hair!

 

Yolanda tells me that when Yoli goes to school, they have to be sure to wind her hair up and put it on top of her head as there are people who steal the hair of children and women with long hair to sell it for wigs. Some world.

For Stream of Consciousness Saturday: Itch

Born on the 3rd of July for dVerse Quadrille #203

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Born on the 3rd of July!!!

Behold the Crab who walks on toes
to all the hot spots where he goes.
And though July is Cancer’s sign
and so the Crab is also mine,
I can’t walk up on toes at all,
for if I do, I’m sure to fall!

A 44-word poem for:dVerse Quadrille: Feeling Crabby. (The photo is copied from the prompt site.)

To see other crabby poems, go HERE.

The Threshold, for dVerse Poets

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Out on a Liminal

img_9671The jolly crew over lunch yesterday. Happiest when the jefe is not in sight. He probably knows this and this is why the two older men eat in front of the house, the younger men on my patio in the back.

Liminal—I admit that I looked the word up, and I’m glad I did.  I have always thought that since subliminal meant below the threshold of conscious thought, that liminal must refer to conscious thought. Wrong.

Liminal: of or relating to a sensory threshold. 2 : barely perceptible. 3 : of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional

So, is my house in a liminal state between completion and constant repair and construction?  If so, what is the state after liminal?  Perhaps subliminal is the ultimate state rather than the one under liminal. Perhaps it is that state in which everything just goes along smoothly without having to think about it. Water flows, floors stay crack and salitre-free, lightbulbs stay perpetually lit.

Perhaps I’d better look up subliminal as well:

Subliminal: (of a stimulus or mental process) below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by or affecting someone’s mind without their being aware of it.

One out of two. It means exactly what I thought it did.

Today is the fourth day of construction at my house and the last day of the work week.  Thankfully, only six men showed up instead of the usual nine, because that is how many beers I have in the fridge and I didn’t want to have to leave to buy more to treat them at the end of this short work day.  The jefe and his assistant seem to have stayed home to leave the other younger men to complete tiling the kitchen and hammer-and-chiseling out the built-in large bathtub to transform it into a shower and construct a small wall to serve in lieu of shower curtain.

At first I was worried that the jefe hadn’t shown up because last night as I surveyed the day’s work, I noticed two problems.  One was that the tiles on the front porch were not centered.  I can understand that he was lining up the main tile with the tile in the inside of the house, but in fact the porch is more often viewed with the door shut, so as nice a it would have been if they’d taken this into account at the beginning, they didn’t, and so having the line under the door misaligned seems a smaller problem than having the entire porch off-center.

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The second problem was that the bottom step in the hall leading down to my bedroom was 1/2 inch deeper on one side than the other.  Now, these are the steps that have tripped me up three times in the past year, twice sending me careening headfirst into an edge where two walls meet and rendering me unconscious for a few seconds. So, I don’t need a further contributing factor to my own clumsiness.  I do not need one slightly diagonal stair leading up to a square one!

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At any rate, I was dreading pointing this out to the grumpy foreman, but the young man I reported it to was very pleasant and equally helpful when I tripped over one of their damn line up wires for positioning the tiles (heavy fishing line strung between two nails pounded into the cracks between the tiles.)  This is about the fifth time I’ve tripped over the dangerous things, but this one was tangled but still connected to the two nails even though the tile had long been set, so it would not release, and sent me careening down the front stairs, head-first down onto the terrace.

In all, I probably traveled seven feet horizontally and about a foot from house floor level down to terrace level.  If it had been an Olympic event, I might have placed, but as is I just said a few very vile swear words–in English, not Spanish, so perhaps they didn’t have the same effect on listening ears.  At any rate, the nice young man who had heard earlier complaints came running to take my camera out of my hands, (Yes, I was going to photograph the misaligned porch tiles.)  to help me up and then to remove that damn fishing line that should have been removed two days ago.

So, all in all, I’d say my day so far has been anything but subliminal.  But although my entire state for the past week as we moved everything out of the house and then dealt with four days of noise, dust and constant activity has certainly been transitional, it is certainly not been barely perceptible. And in spite of the fact that my stumble and fall over my literal threshold was totally sensory, still, taking the full definition of both terms into account, I seem to be in a state neither liminal nor subliminal.

I’m just lucky that after that nasty spill that my state isn’t terminal!!!! And I can safely say, I think, that my bone density is excellent. This entire discourse, of course, simply acts as an introduction, to The Verse!!!!!

The Threshold

I must say that it’s criminal
how I must deal with liminal
aspects of  this threshold wire
that seem to signal I’ll expire
if they do not complete forthwith
this entryway. It seems a myth
that I will ever pass it freely
without tripping. Will I? Reallly?
I fear my life’s conditional
on it being transitional.

 

For dVerse Poets Pub: Liminal Spaces

Paper Shoes for Ragtag Daily Prompt, June 8, 2024

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Paper Shoes

I’m folding me some paper shoes
so I can walk away the blues.
The love poems I cannot recall
I’ll scuff off as I pass the mall.
Someone will find my words all shredded–
how you wooed and won and bedded
one so young and so naive
that she could not help but believe
words pilfered from a Hallmark store
that you had often used before.

All those lovelorn lines obscured.
All that loneliness endured.
On Main Street I will shed my heart—
that part of me you tore apart.
All the lines I wrote about it,
all the times I grew to doubt it.
Your words the heel, my words the sole,
the sidewalks will consume them whole.

All the futile poetry
that passed once between you and me
ground into the pavement where
perhaps two lovers will find it there—
the words like seeds that hung around
hoping for more fertile ground.
Love sprouted from a used-up word
might strike some others as absurd,
but I like to think perhaps
our use of them was just a lapse.
Repeated by those other voices
who choose to live by other choices,
all those words that we now rue
might work for lovers who are new.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt, the subject is Paper

“Unruly Words” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 657

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Unruly Words

This poem wants to dangle or take a giant leap.
I can hear it whirring as it wakens me from sleep.
I think that it’s been restlessly dancing in my dreams,
clicking on its castanets and bursting at its seams.

It may want to be a song, and thus the castanets.
Let’s hope this is the noisiest that this poem gets!
I like my poems whimsical and gentle like a sneeze.
Instead of words that storm and fuss, I prefer a breeze.

I grant that poetry has stirred others to their fate,
but poems that are too preachy tend to irritate.
Please talk to me in gentle words that put me at my ease,
for in this angry world it’s harder to find words that please.

For The Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: clicking whimsical leap poetry songs be whirring dangling fates talk grant storm (Image from a free image generator–couldn’t resist, but I promise not to get carried away with this!)

 

 

A Whiff, For SOCS, May 18, 2024

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A Whiff

What’s that smell
that spray can’t quell?
Smells a bit
like puppy shit,
but never fear,
no puppies here.
It comes alone
from Mom’s cologne.
Efforts relentless
to turn her scentless?
Those ends we sought
have turned to naught.
Each day or two?
A new pee-yew!!!!

 

Without a doubt, the absolute worst perfume ever invented on Earth was Ben Hur. Guaranteed to empty a room the minute its wearer entered!

 

For SOCS: What’s that smell? For this challenge we had to write stream of consciousness with no editing….Phew.

 

Feline Gamble/Renewing the Catfood for #Squares Renew

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Feline Gamble

Stocked up on sustenance for my cats
and stowed it in a cupboard that’s
just outside my kitchen door.
(That’s what I built that cupboard for.)

The only problem seems to be
that closet lacks security,
but that is no problem, is it?
Unless cat burglars choose to visit!!

Go HERE for a kitty serenade.

 

For # Squares Renew