Tag Archives: silly poem

Gain and Loss

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Gain and Loss

I’ve found I simply must inure
myself to things I must endure.
I’m overweight and immature
and told my writing is obscure—
written in a dialect
that people find hard to detect.

I joined a gym, but now my trainer
says he cannot make it plainer
than to say I won’t lose weight
until I choose to fill my plate
with other food and smaller portions
to decrease present proportions.

I thought if I became a spinner
I’d become a weight-loss winner,
but in fact, no pounds I’m doffing—
only panting, wheezing, coughing.
But I didn’t waste the time.
At least I came up with this rhyme.

Now perhaps if you’d elect
to check my poem’s dialect,
you’d find that though my waist and thighs
have not decreased in girth or size,
perhaps I have lost one small thang.
Have I lost, perhaps, my Dakota twang?

Today’s prompt words are winner, dialect, coughing, proportion, trainer and obscure. Image by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash.

Reading Challenged

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Reading Challenged

Diana Gabaldon’s romances are way too historic.
Koolkosherkitchen‘s recipes? Delicious, but caloric.
Mo Willems counts on pigeons to chase away the blues,
but I’d never volunteer to fill any pigeon’s shoes
due to my fear of flying, so even in a pinch,
to read of being  airborne causes me to flinch.

Can’t read Cormac McCarthy or Murakami either.
When violence erupts in books, I have to take a breather.
Harlequin romances are too mushily romantic,
for I prefer my novels less sexually pedantic.
All-in-all you might have guessed I’ve little left to read
and so instead I write all day to satisfy my need

to hang out with a word or two that has not been written
by writers such as those above by whom I’ve not been smitten.
And though my poems aren’t edible or sexually explicit,
violent or airborne, I feel it is implicit
that I need an appointment with my therapist to see
if I can even stomach silly verses penned by me!

Prompt words are pinch, historic, appointment, volunteer, and flying. Image by Brendan Stephens on Unsplash.

Escargot

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Escargot

I am an ally of the truth, which lives the whole world over,
hiding beneath leaves of grass or hyacinths or clover.

A tiny snail detective, sliding slowly with no sound,
scoping out a food source over every edge and mound—

with its single jaw at work, nature’s innovation
cleans up all her messes with its constant mastication.

Cutter ants march by like time, disposing hour by hour,
of beauty we aren’t finished with, flower after flower,

but the snail goes gliding by, almost beyond detection,
eating everything in sight—less picky in selection.

From animal waste to fungus, and even other snails,
the appetite of gastropods seemingly never fails.

And then, ludicrous humans, knowing not what they do,
themselves devour these creatures who deign to dine on poo!

 

Prompt words today are snail,  innovation, detective, march, ally and clover.

Process of Elimination

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Process of Elimination

The child asked her grandpa to teach her how to spell,
and he could not deny her, though he knew good and well
that spelling class for him had been a different sort of Hell.

They had not been his forte, the chalk board and the book,
and so this was a challenge he timorously took. 
He had to find a method to help, by hook or crook!

He said to make a menu of all the words she sought
and he would make a list of all the spellings they were not—
a reverse teaching method that, thankfully, she bought! 

So, she gave her assent to all his ballyhoo,
discounting his misspellings of “tuthbrush”  “taribul” “hoo,”
on her route to finding  spellings that were new.

Thus she learned to overlook solutions that he sold her
in the loving ill-contrived way he sought to mold her
and used the dictionary, ruling out spellings he’d told her. 

Prompts today are: timorous, toothbrush, ballyhoo, assent, spell and menu.

Compositionally Befuddled

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Compositionally Befuddled

I’m not the beneficiary of your gift for words.
My acumen for spinning tales is simply for the birds.
When I type, the words roll out but they’re not all right.
Then the need to sort them out ends up as my plight.

I need a thesaurus for the simplest of statements.
I ask for enlargements when I really seek abatements.
I chafe under the rub of words, waiting for a rebuke.
Although I want a kumquat, I wind up with a cuke.

I could use some help most days when choosing words to keep.
Sometimes I have nightmares rifling through words in my sleep.
So when I err, be kind my friends, for I fear it’s true
that I have scant facility for what I choose to do!!!

 

Prompt words today are keep, type, rebuke, chafe, beneficiary and thesaurus.

Unsolicited Advice

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Unsolicited Advice

With buckets of advice and a blizzard of suggestions,
and prolific answers to all of life’s great questions,
he blusters and pontificates and tells us how to live
with advice he never follows, but which, nonetheless, he gives.

He imparts his wisdom to everyone he meets:
from how to run your business to your life between the sheets.
Advice on morals, love and sex (all in his domain)
make even brief encounters such a royal pain.

You know he’ll scratch his whiskers and open up his yap
and once again you will be caught in his vocal trap.
And so you’ve found that at first sight, you must avoid detection
by altering your footsteps to an alternate direction.

Prompt words today are whiskers, sheet, prolific, bluster, bucket and blizzard. Image by Roberto Quezada on Unsplash.

Kudzu

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Kudzu

By the statue of the satyr where the kudzu is the thickest,
I toil pulling roots out, and I swear I am the quickest.
Every place I see the vine, I vow that I will best it.
I remove  it from the soil, conquering it lest it
cover all my property from here up to the sea,
knowing if it had its way, that it would cover me!!!

Prompt words today are satyr, place, kudzu, toil, root and me.

Infirm Ingratitude

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(Click on photos to enlarge)


Infirm Ingratitude

Since I broke my arm and leg and am out of commission,
all my friends and neighbors have assumed it as a mission
to bring us over casseroles—two or three a day.
Way too many meals-on-wheels for us to put away.

Not one of us encouraged them, yet they seem to compete
in conjuring up mixtures that they feel that we should eat!
And though it’s rude to quibble over what it has elicited,
allow me to point out that all this food was unsolicited.

One concoction more has just wound up at my door
that I know my family is sure to abhor.
That the dogs and cats won’t eat it is our in-family joke. 
I’d put it down the drain, but our garbage disposal broke.

My husband says it’s wasteful to throw out all this food,
but I would have to chain up my picky-eater brood
and pry their clenched jaws open to get them to just taste
all this food my husband has said I shouldn’t waste!!!

Yet I’ve lately noticed that he, too, seems way less able
to consume the edibles delivered to our table.
So I’ve devised a plan and tonight is my rehearsal
for my plot to deal with leftover food dispersal.

My broken leg is slowing down the speed with which I dash
to sneak out after midnight bearing our inedible trash.
I lug the laden bags out with my one good arm,
hoping that my passing won’t trigger the alarm

to turn the backyard floodlights on to wake up all the neighbors
so that they can witness my furtive nightly labors.
Now it is my incentive to speedily get well
just to end this present culinary Hell!!!!

Prompts today are: chains, concoction, unsolicited, quibble, compete and encourage.

Wedding Ows

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Wedding Ows

Our wedding plans are complicated by the groom’s lasciviousness
that I find incongruous to his vows of  exclusivi”us”ness.
That marriage vows will tame him I fear will prove misleading.
He’ll make his heart available  as long as it is beating
to any passing lady who looks in his direction,
a fact which as you see has not escaped his bride’s detection.
You might think I’m a martyr to forgive this faithless phony,
but I am looking forward to the future alimony!

Prompt words today are complicated, available, lasciviousness, patient, incongruous and misleading. Image by Nathan Walker on Unsplash.

A Cautionary Tale

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A Cautionary Tale

I’m held spellbound by your plan. It is ingenious for sure.
You might be a benefactor and your motives may be pure,
but still you are a diplomat and know your way around
all of the maneuverings that daily may be found

in politics and daily life and so I wonder why
the minute that I said I’d sell, you made an offer to buy.
Is it, as you say, because you know I need the cash,
or are your motives otherwise and have I been too rash

in leaping at your offer? Perhaps I’ll look around
and see if there’s a better deal waiting to be found.
Conspiracies are floating ’round. I hear there is an air full.
In politics and real estate, you cannot be too careful.

 

Prompt words today are spellbound, why, benefactor, ingenious, diplomatic. Image by Maria Lin Kim Luhn on Unsplash