Tag Archives: silly poem

May-December Marriage

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May-December Marriage

Your insistence that I swallow three times between each bite
is just one small example of directives that incite.
All your protective rules that others find adorable,
on the receiving side of them quickly turns deplorable.

Whatever you may label them by your own nomenclature,
your “loving” rules are symptoms of extreme controlling nature.
So I’m galvanized to action. Since I’m tired of your caring,
I’m making a decision that’s both personal and daring.

I’m going out without you for a little drive alone
and I’m not taking my pager and I’m not taking my phone.
I might drive without a seatbelt and who knows what else I’ll do.
If I see some flowers by the road, I’ll stop and pick a few

without worrying about the fact a passerby might see
and park his car behind me and decide to kidnap me.
I will talk to every stranger and eat in greasy spoons,
drive out to the ocean and walk barefoot in the dunes

forgetting the sharp objects that might lurk beneath the sand,
neglecting to wear sunscreen and if I get deeply tanned,
I won’t worry about wrinkles or cancer or a burn.
All your careful rules for once I’m going to spurn.

I’m going to eat sugar and perhaps get round and fat,
enjoying all the broken rules involved in doing that!
If you treat me like a kid, then guess I’ll be a teen
and when you tell me what to do, I’ll stage a little scene.

I’ll get home when I want to and go out with whom I wish.
I’ll dine alone on Szechwan food and order every dish.
When you ask when I’ll get home, I’ll shrug and say “Whenever!”
And if you do not change your ways, the answer will be “Never!”

 

Prompts for the day are swallow, between, symptomatic, galvanize and adorable.

Hallofourthofvalenmas: How It Came to Be.

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Okay! Prompt words for the day are knockers, combination, festival, beseech and sentence. What in the world would you do with a combination of words like that? Think of that before you  judge me for this:

Hallo-fourthof-valen-mas

This festival’s the weirdest of any that I’ve seen—
a crazy combination of Christmas and Halloween.
The hire-a-Santa in the mall wears bear paws on his feet
and when the kids climb on his lap, they mutter, “Trick or Treat!”
Below the Christmas wreaths above, door knockers are kept busy
as grandmas baking Yule logs are kept in a fine tizzy 
by swarms of little carolers who can barely reach
the door knockers, who gather with arms up to beseech
the homeowners for candy after every song,
then stuff it in the Christmas stockings that they brought along.

Scores of scavengers dressed  up like shepherds or like kings
as well as Virgin Marys or angels sporting wings
abandon Christmas pageants to Trick-or-Treat instead.
You might ask me by what edict the world was made to wed
Halloween and Christmas? What legislative body
chose two celebrations equally over-gaudy
and mixed them both together to try to regulate
the number of occasions  on which we celebrate?

I think it was the W-H-O that thought up this solution
to try to deal with Covid and to try to curb pollution,
then issued this weird sentence and made us all comply
to celebrate all holidays on the fourth of July!
And so in combination with the skeletons and holly,
as witches and small ghosts are enjoined to act more  jolly,
fireworks are exploding in the sky far up above,
and as they trick-and-treat they also express love
by handing out their valentines—kill two birds with one stone
by trading hearts for Hershey bars with a ghostly moan.
And that’s how Hallo-fourthof-valen-mas has come to be
the only time when we’re allowed a group festivity.
And since part of it’s Halloween, without being asked
every guest, no matter what their politics, comes fully masked!!!

Prompt words for the day are knockers, combination, festival, beseech and sentence.

The Perfect Man

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The Perfect Man

I know from what his kind is cast.
He’s fearless as he is steadfast.
He does not vaunt his strength or looks,
excels at sports and reads good books.

Sexy and mysterious, 
he’s musically serious—
motivated from within
to play a wicked violin.

He is as solid as a rock.
Nobody needs to wind his clock.
And yet I had to choose another,
for, alas, he is my brother!!!

Prompt words today are fearless, steadfast, digitally, vaunt and wind. Photo by Silas Tolles on Unsplash.

Ill-Matched

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Ill-matched

The oscillation of her mind, intuitive to rational
from personal creations to political themes national
gave her husband mental whiplash. He barely could keep up.
He found her more exhausting than a brand new pup.

As she sat there prattling, he sat there like a stone.
Her frequency of chatter made him want to be alone.
Poor fellow just could not keep up. He had a mind more staid.
He pondered each new thought he had. Opinions must be weighed!

Meanwhile, her thoughts flew here and there, her mind much more creative.
She formed opinions quickly, while his mind was more debative.
How this couple got together was a matter of derision.
Their union, all their friends agreed, must have been her decision.

 

Prompt words today are stone, poor, intuitive, oscillation, frequency, intuitive and grand. Photos by Brooke Cagle and Usman Yousaf on Unsplash

Lost

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Lost

When he said that he would lead the way, she meekly fell behind,
for to point out his meandering she felt would be unkind.
The luxuriant undergrowth clung to them in their passing,
the creeks they crossed edulcorating all they were amassing
in pants cuffs and in pockets: burrs and and leaves and pollen,
as he led the way through ditches and over trees fresh-fallen.

And though he seemed decisive, she knew that they were lost.
She followed to preserve his pride, but at what a cost?
Each quirky decision led them more astray
as she followed in his footsteps even though she knew the way.
When they finally reached their cabin, a shower, brush and comb
would eradicate the proof that they took the long way home!

Prompt words are luxuriant, decisive, quirky, edulcorate (to free or purify by washing) and leading. Photos by Joshua Woroniecki and Kurt Liebhaeuser on Unsplash.

And here is my favorite Tom Waits song, “The Long Way Home.”  Seems appropriate to include it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCk-f03o6aA

Some Truths about the Jellyfish

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Some Truths about the Jellyfish

The fact is that the jellyfish
will never be a deli fish,
for when one tries to catch their goo
in nets, they’ll find it slips right through.

Their choreography includes
frequent oozing interludes,
the ramifications of this being
that the jellyfish you’re seeing

might be prone to disappear.
So for a moment he is here
and then he’s gone and over there
peering at you from his lair.

A kaleidoscope of colors that
sometimes look skinny, then look fat—
expanding to a great extent.
Shrinking and swelling is their bent

So if you seek a belly fish,
please rule out the jellyfish,
for though I know they look delicious,
they simply aren’t edible fishes.

Prompt words today are kaleidoscope, choreography, ramification and jellyfish. Photo by Maxime Bouffard downloaded from Unsplash.

Slipping out of the Groove

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Slipping out of the Groove

For those of you it might behoove
to operate out of the groove,

I’d like to say that stranger’s better
than performing to the letter. 

In things you write and words you speak
it’s much more fun if you’re unique. 

Comments boring
create snoring.

 

For dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Groove.  Go HERE to see the prompt.

Sticky Fingers

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Sticky Fingers

Gram’s a kleptomaniac. It’s known all over town.
She’ll glom onto anything the neighbors don’t tie down.
It’s obvious what she’s up to, for she takes no pains to hide it.
She’ll peer into the coffee spout to see what is inside it
and if it isn’t boiling hot, she’ll make off with the whole of it.
She’ll steal anything in sight, for “need” is not the goal of it.

She collects things in the daylight and sneaks out after dark.
She has no fear of guard dogs. She’s not warned off by their bark.
Unabashed, she faces up to every cluck and frown
as she steals coins from collection plates of every church in town.
My dad makes restitution and gives them more besides
while my mom checks out the stashes of everything she hides

and returns things to their owners. It’s become her daily chore
and Grandma doesn’t seem to mind. She goes out and gets more.
I don’t have to tell you that my Gran’s become notorious.
It’s fun for her but for the rest of us, it’s turned laborious.
We have to take turns following and keeping track of all
she sticks into her pockets when visiting the mall.

As she stuffs things in the right side, we extract stuff from the left.
She’s so busy pilfering, she doesn’t feel bereft
of all the things she stole before for she cannot remember
what she lifted seconds before with fingers swift and limber.
Mom and her brother say that soon we’ll have to lock Gram in,
but for now they’re letting her enjoy her life of sin.

For years she put up like a Saint with everything they did.
So for now they’re letting my grandma be the kid!!

 

Before you ask, this is fiction. Prompt words for the day are spout, glom, kleptomaniac, obvious and daylight, Image by Cassia Tofano on Unsplash.

Sticking to the Straight and Narrow

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Sticking to the Straight and Narrow
(Mother Superior’s Rejoinder)

Please do not lollygag. There’s no time more.
We’re closing the shutters and locking the door.
Wipe those dreams from your brain, for it is our fear
that your thoughts will diverge from the prim and austere.
Make sure your spirit is pearl white and pure
with no sinful streaks to compete with demure.
Deadly sins number from one up to seven,
and striated souls will not make it to heaven.

 

Prompt words today are lollygag, austere, brain, striate and lock.

Ludicrous Lore

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Ludicrous Lore

They say the perpetrators all got off scot-free
by posing as indigenous, but how could that be?

They made a ludicrous trio, emerging from their car.
All wrapped-up like packages, they couldn’t wander far.

They’d been here stealing chickens from White Cloud’s poultry farm
 on the reservation, but what could be the harm?

He had so many chickens that he’d never miss the one
or two or three or four or five that they had pinched for fun.

Yet with feathers in their hat bands and blankets held around them,
instead they uttered this excuse when the rangers found them.

They’d done a bit of hunting here on tribal land.
Their leader was Geronimo. He and his loyal band

had shot the deer with arrows, then bound it to their roof
with ropes tied ’round its antlers and then around one hoof.

But driving down the winding road, the driver got too dizzy.
(They said that it was vertigo that put him in a tizzy.)

That’s what caused the accident that spilled them off the road
where they toppled over sideways and lost their struggling load.

The deer ran off into the woods. It seems it wasn’t dead,
but merely stunned when arrows hit it on the head.

(Luckily, the bottle from which they’d all been drinking
had fallen in the water where the car was quickly sinking.)

It’s surprising that the rangers believed their tawdry tale,
and so they didn’t haul these buffoons off to jail.

They simply called a tow truck, which to their consternation
towed the whole bunch down the road to the reservation

where, alas, they found no kin but only laughter met them
as they huddled near the car and phoned for friends to get them.

And after they departed—hungover, sodden, sore,
their whole silly debacle passed into tribal lore.

The time those drunken cowboys with nothing else to do
sneaked onto the tribal lands and tried to pass for Sioux.

Their totaled car they left behind, and here the whole plot thickens.
It now serves as a handy coop for all the tribal chickens.

Today”s prompt words are scot-free, vertigo, indigenous and package. Image by Tyler Mulligan on Unsplash.