Tag Archives: silly poem

Dental Retaliation

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Dental Retaliation

Do you remember toothbrushes lined up on a rack
in the medicine cabinet, at the mirror’s back?
Your father’s brush was ocean blue, your mother’s brush was green,
your sister’s brush the reddest red that you had ever seen,
whereas your brush’s handle had no color at all—
as though it was the ugliest sister at the ball.

How you yearned for color, reaching for your brush
as the first summer’s meadowlark called to break the hush
of the early morning while you were sneaking out
to be the first one out-of-doors to see what was about.
Making that fast decision, your hand fell on the red,
thinking your sister wouldn’t know, for she was still abed.

You put toothpaste upon it, wet it at the tap
and ran the brush over each tooth as well as every gap.
Each toothbrush flavor was different, your older sis had said,
so you thought it would be different brushing your teeth with red.
Your father’s brush was blueberry, your mother’s brush was mint.
Your sister’s luscious cherry—its flavor heaven-sent.

“But because you are adopted,” your sister had the gall
to tell you, “they gave you the brush with no flavor at all.”
You waited to taste cherries, but that taste never came.
That red brush tasted like toothpaste. It tasted just the same
as every other morning when you brushed with yours.
You heard your sister stir upstairs, the squeaking of the floors.

You toweled off her toothbrush and hung it in the rack
and started to run out the door. Then something brought you back.
You opened up the mirror and grabbed her brush again.
A big smile spread across your face—a retaliatory grin.
The dread cod liver oil stood on the tallest shelf.
You were barely big enough to reach it for yourself.

You dipped her toothbrush in it, then quickly blew it dry.
Replaced it, shut the cabinet, and when you chanced to spy
your own reflection in the glass, each of you winked an eye.
Then you ran out to cherry trees to catch the first sunbeam
and brush your teeth with cherries while you listened for her scream.

(Not a true story, by the way!!!)

 

For One Word Sunday the prompt is “Teeth.” Image created with help from AI.

A&Wesome Burgers for the Ragtag Daily Prompt “Sandwich” Prompt

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Okay, when I saw the Ragtag prompt was “sandwich,” I decided I simply must rerun this post from 2016:

img_5457-1
Today dawned rainy and foggy with a prediction it would last all day, so instead of spending five hours on the Cabot Trail before heading southwards for another three hour journey to get my car returned to Hertz by 9 p.m., I decided to head immediately for the airport and my overnight stay at the very classy Alt hotel which is located right at the Halifax airport.  Very handy.  Enroute, I noticed an A&W Drive-in and had to stop. I thought they’d gone out of business years ago but here is proof that they are still alive and thriving in Nova Scotia. Thanks, WordPress, for the very timely prompt.  I didn’t even know what it was until I got to the wifi of my hotel in Halifax. Nice coincidence that I was already supplied with an illustration for today’s prompt of “Sandwich!”

Version 3

A&Wsome Burgers

The first drive-in I went to when I was just a kid
(before there was McDonalds or wax cups with a lid)
was an A&W sixty miles from home
with root beer served in frosty mugs and sporting heads of foam.
I haven’t seen another for years, so I believed
there weren’t any anymore—a fact that I have grieved.
So while driving into Halifax, imagine my elation
when I saw an A&W next to a filling station!

I had meant to fill my rental car before I turned it in,
‘cause the prices when Hertz fills them up are really quite a sin,
but all thoughts of filling up the car vanished in a blink
with thoughts of luscious burgers and foamy things to drink.
There’s mama burger, papa burger and even a teen,
but still no baby burgers, or anything between.
They have onion rings and French fries and something called poutine?
An addition to the menu? I found it most obscene.

Now it has been a long time since I have had the fun
of consuming family members stuffed into a bun,
but I am really very sure that poutine is a new one.
In all my life I’ve never before had the chance to chew one!
I asked the friendly sales girl for a bit of erudition
that could clue me in to this Canadian addition
to what I thought was sacrosanct—an act of pure sedition.
Just what has the world come to when franchises have permission

to add things to the menu? It simply is not right
that they can think up something new for us to bite!!!
She filled me in on what it was and said it was delicious.
French fries, cheese curd, gravy??? A mixture most pernicious.
What good are French fries served with cheese that’s certain to taste boggy,
topped off with gravy that no doubt would make the whole mess soggy?
I bought a teen burger and naked French fries at their best—
then left to eat them in my car—a sure sign of protest.

But in the end my protest was paid most dearly for.
For when I took my food to go, slamming shut the door
and roaring off to eat my food in another place,
I ended up with poutine all over my face.
For I forgot to buy my gas which would have cost a third
of what I had to pay to Hertz—a total most absurd.
Yet even though my protest in my budget put a crimp,
at least I did not stoop to eating French fries that were limp!!!

The prompt for RDP is “Sandwich.”

Skinny-Dipping for One Word Challenge

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Skinny-Dipping

daily life color103

Important note: This is a shape poem , (at least the last two stanzas are) but if you look at it in Reader, it distorts the shape by left margin justifying.  Please click on the title again and you will view it from my blog where it will be centered and you can see the shape.

Skinny-Dipping 

There’s a change in the weather, a shift in the light.
The palm trees are swaying. Three stars shining bright.
The water is cooling, my exercise through.
Clouds cover the moon. I think it’s my cue
to get out of the water before I turn blue,
then clouds shift and the moon turns its usual hue.

The wind stirs the water. I think of past times
ages ago in different climes.
All those past lives, can they really be mine?
If I put experience in a straight line,
could I see the reason for things as they were
as my life sped by–—a perpetual whirr?

What gave me the courage to do what I did
since that time long ago when I was a kid
and took that first journey out on my own,
out of the house across grass newly mown,
fresh from the bathtub, laughing with glee,
nude for the whole world to look out and see.

Running down the sidewalk until I was captured
again by my mother, winded but enraptured
by this two-year-old daughter escaped from her bath,
already set out on her singular path.
So many roadways traveled since then.
So many different lives that have been

tried and discarded in favor of others.
Surrogate fathers and surrogate mothers,
surrogate sisters and friends freshly minted,
plane tickets ordered, paid for and printed.
Travel adventures. Dangers to survive.
Making it through it all still alive.

I come up     from the pool,
dripping and     shivering.
Those few    bold stars
above me    delivering
promises     that I
might still   be a rover.
While there   is breath left,
my life       isn’t over.

For Word of the Day the prompt is “Bathtub.”

An October Horror Story, for dVerse Poets

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An October Horror Story: Hollow E’en

They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall.
One climbs a tree to peer within. I hope he doesn’t fall.
I cower here within my house and pray they’ll go away.
Though I am not religious, eventually I pray.

Their little voices raise a pitch. They start to bay and howl.
There’s a flutter in my heart region, a clutching in my bowel.
I purchased Reese’s Pieces and miniature Kit Kats
just for all these masked and costumed little brats.

My motives were unselfish. The candy was for them,
for I don’t eat much candy in efforts to grow slim.
And yet that bag of Reese’s, those small Kit Kats and such
called to me from where they were sequestered in my hutch.

It started with a whisper, hissing out their wish:
“We would look so pretty laid out on a dish!”
I knew that they were evil. I knew it was a trap.
I tried hard to resist them, my hands clenched in my lap.

I turned up my computer, listening to “The Voice.”
Those candy bars would not be seen till Halloween—my choice!
My willpower was solid. No candy ruled me.
(If that were true, no kids would now be climbing up my tree.)

Yes, it is true I weakened. I listened to their nags.
I took the candy from the shelf and opened up the bags.
Their wrappers looked so pretty put out for display
In one big bowl so colorful, lying this-a-way

and that-a-way, all mixed and jumbled up together.
No danger of their melting in this cooler weather.
I put them on the table, then put them on a shelf
so I would not be tempted to have one for myself.

When people came to visit, I put them by my bed.
Lest they misunderstand and eat them all instead.
Then when I was sleeping, one tumbled off the top.
I heard it landing with a rustle and a little “plop.”

I opened up one eye and saw it lying there
just one inch from where I lay, tangled in my hair.
Its wrapper was so pretty—foiled and multi-hued.
Some evil force took over as I opened it and chewed!

This started a small avalanche of wrappers on the floor
as I ripped and stuffed & chewed & swallowed more & more & more!
This story is not pretty but has to be confessed.
My only explanation is that I was possessed.

They pound upon my door and wait outside my wall,
but I have no candy for them. No treat for them at all.
Surrounded by the wrappers, bare bowl upon my lap,
I think I’ll just ignore them and take a little nap.

I hear them spilling o’er my wall and dropping down inside.
I try to think of what to do. Consider suicide.
They’re coming in to get me. Beating down my door.
They are intent on blood-letting—the Devil’s evil spore.

I guess it’s not the worst death a gal could ever get.
I’ve heard of much worse endings than death by chocolate!

The dVerse Poets prompt is “October.

Out-Joked for SOCS

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BACK GARDEN1

Out-joked

Everyone must know a joker––
plotter, trickster, laugh-provoker
who doesn’t know quite when to stop.
Who needs, in fact, a humor cop
to tell him when he’s done enough––
pulled his ultimate ruse or bluff.

The dribble glass, the rubber poop
placed upon your house’s stoop?
Definitely adolescent
if not actually prepubescent.
Yet still this buffoon thinks he’s funny.
With lists of jokes, he’s over-punny.

Every occasion, every rumor
is met by him with off-base humor.
It’s his role to create sensation
in the most serious conversation.
Exploding cigars, salty gum,
whoopee cushions ‘neath your bum.

No matter how you beg this friend
to bring these antics to their end,
he never seems to listen to
what he’s requested to “not” do.
so when he streaked my garden party,
elegant, refined and arty,

he finally found himself undone
when he’d half-completed his naked run.
Dear friend, when you chose where you stepped,
you should have veered or should have leapt.
When he replaced your rubber poo,
my dog just pulled a joke on you!

 

The SOCS prompt is “Joke.”

Cleanup Crew for SOCS

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Not dead..just stuffed full and taking a rest.

Cleanup Crew

They eke their living out of our scraps
purloined while we are taking naps
or out for walks or just aren’t looking––
so intent upon our cooking
that we fail to see them scamper
(from where they hide behind the hamper)
out to gather crumbs they seek.
But instead, they prompt an “Eek”
as Mom goes one way, they the other
off to find, they hope, another
kitchen where the cook’s more willing
to ignore their needs for filling
rodent jaws and rodent tummies
with some errant human yummies.

The SOCS prompt is eek/eke

“Wordless” for Word of the Day.

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Wordless

I wish that I could wow you with putting prompts to rhyme,
but I seem not to be able to do so at this time.
“Amplify’s” been silenced and refuses to fight back,
while its potential author is revealed as just a hack.

It seems my old acuity at making words behave
has somehow deserted me, branding me a knave.
The truth that I am lacking in *vocabular agility
has left me slightly flummoxed with a new vulnerability.

(*For all I know, some lexicographer’s already dissed
my coinage of a brand new word the dictionaries missed.)
This poet, once ferocious, has been worn down by time.
and I’m thinking in my next life I might come back as a mime.

The Word of the Day prompt is:  “Amplify.”

Minds Like Mine, for The Sunday Whirl, Sept 14, 2025

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Minds
like mine
are bound to
slip away into the
swells, blown away
through cracks in time
to  where a poem dwells.
Fans of verse   may lure me
into sitting on a  fence picking
bones of words that together make
no sense. I sort them into towers, then
grasp more words to  build trapped words
in frosted pyramids with messages well-chilled.

The Sunday Whirl words are: bound slip swells fan luring fence cracks bone tower frosted trap grasps

The photo, taken by me, is of a snow-covered venting volcano.

“Deer Ones”

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Arising early, I stumbled upon this poem, “Table for One, Please” by Bartholomew Barker. That led to reading more of his poems, including THIS ONE at BeatnikCowboy.com. Have a look at it, but please come back to hear my reply. I was so impressed that he knew a herd of deer could be called a “parcel,” but then it occurred to me that perhaps he was just being poetically inventive, so I had to research the matter and in doing so, found this list of synonyms for “herd,” as it applies to deer:

In most situations, you can refer to a group of animals like deer simply as a “herd”. A herd of deer is probably the most common way to designate them, but it is most assuredly the most boring. To be more deer-specific, the other ways to refer to a group of deer include a bevy, a rangale, a bunch, or a parcel. When using parcel, however, it’s generally going to refer to a group of only young deer.

And that new knowledge led, unfortunately, to this hair-splitting and corny rhymed poem on my part:

Deer Ones

A “herd” is most commonly what you will hear
folks  calling a grouping of two or more deer;
but if you’re a poet in need of a rhyme,
perhaps you’ll use “bevy” some of the time.
Which is just as correct, though granted, more rare
to describe groups of deer that are more than a pair.
But if you need a rhyme for deer in a dale,
you just might prefer to use a “rangale,”
which is also proper—or perhaps a “bunch,”
to label a deer herd gathered for lunch
in field or in forest, munching on leaves
or grass, twigs or acorns—or crops left when sieves
abandon their fields of soybeans or corn
leaving some crops abandoned, forlorn.
But if you use “parcel” to call deer among
deer of their ilk—that’s just deer who are young!

“Toast” for SOCS (Here’s to the Bride) Aug 29, 2025

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Here’s To The Bride

The groom’s family was titled and a bit anachronistic.
So when they saw the bride, I fear they went a bit ballistic.
Instead of white she wore a dress of scarlet oddly draped.
The mother of the groom grew faint. Her husband merely gaped.
She wore something archaic instead of merely old—
her grandma’s feather boa—a bridal statement bold.
Around her neck, a python, and her arms were densely bangled.
Her veil pinned to a tractor hat of satin, oddly-angled.
The brim turned back as though she were an umpire at a game.
In short, the bride’s ensemble was anything but lame.

As she hip-hopped down the aisle to a tune by Kanye West,
the groom stood fondly watching her in morning coat and vest.
Her lipstick blue, her bustier was borrowed and conditional
on return to its owner in a manner most traditional.
To complete her fashion statement, her combat boots were blue,
and if you’ve paid attention, you could guess that they were new!
Her bouquet was fresh dandelions bound up with some chives.
She held it in one hand and with the other, gave high fives
to friends all up the aisle as she jerked her way on by.
The groom’s mom gave a shudder and his father gave a sigh.

So did this modern wedding  forsake the antiquated
with customs much less stuffy, less predictable and dated.
The wedding fare was tacos, Cuban sandwiches and chips,
jelly beans and donuts, crudités and dips.
No caviar or salmon. Just ribs and Tater Tots.
The toasts to bride and groom were made with Jello shots.
The wedding cake was chocolate with custard between layers.
Good wishes voiced by ministers, gurus and namaste’ers.
In place of rice the bride and groom were showered with quinoa.
In short, it was a wedding to rival mardi gras!

The SOCS prompt is “toast.”