Tag Archives: silly poem

Simian Payback

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Simian Payback

In more ways than one, my new roommate is simious.
Eating bananas, he’s hardly abstemious.
His arms are so long that his fists scrape the ground
and when I am gone, he monkeys around!

When we go out in public, the people all gape.
It doesn’t take science to declare him an ape.
He swings on the curtains and ruins my decor
by pulling the drapes from their rod to the floor.

If you said he’s an ingrate, you wouldn’t be wrong.
When I go to the dentist and he comes along,
he mimes for a freebie—a checkup and cleaning,
then stands at the mirror, inspecting and preening,

never imagining he’s out of line
as I dole out the cash for his cleaning and mine.
Just one thing might mitigate his crazy acts,
so I ask that you temper your scorn with the facts.

He was raised in the jungle, then put in a cage
and only let out when he reached middle age.
So how could I help but assist in his exit
with no one around to thwart it or hex it?

With the key in the lock, I just gave a twist
and gave his jailbreak a needed assist.
But now I admit I was way less than clever,
for I have acquired the worst roommate ever!

What prompted my action? Was I less than smart
 when I saw his great need, in playing my part?
I felt that I owed him a really big debt,
 for an ape is way more than merely a pet.

If you studied your science and paid good attention,
you could not have missed this pertinent mention:
if there hadn’t been apes, then there wouldn’t be
any of you and there wouldn’t be me!

 

Prompts today are decor, ingrate, mitigate, abstemious and science. Image by Suzanne Schwartz on Unsplash.

False Endings

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False Endings

His paranoia is one for the books.
He finds disease wherever he looks.
He anguishes over the slightest small sneeze
and the tiniest bump brings him down to his knees.

When his girl left him, the heartbreak he felt
was myocarditis, and the smallest welt
on his neck or his face is cancer for sure,
so he’s off to  to Mayo Clinic to look for a cure.

His fixation’s macabre and his acts supercilious
every damn time that he feels a bit bilious,
for he knows better than all of his friends
that he’ll soon meet his maker, so he makes amends

for all his ill deeds and his slights and his snits,
seeing the light when he’s down in the pits.
He should have done better and eaten less pie,
and now he’ll pay for it, for he’s going to die.

And when he gets better, you can bet he’ll be sure
that repentance has brought a miraculous cure.
So goes the story, and though it’s not his ending,
you can be sure that a new plague is pending!

(Note: I know I’ve used this photo at least a few (?) times before but it’s just so appropriate to this poem that I can’t help using it again. )

Prompt words today are: myocarditis, macabre, anguish, supercilious and paranoia.

Bar Stool Bozos and the Predictable Come-on Line

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Bar Stool Bozos and the Predictable Come-on Line

A new potential conquest is seen falling from her stool
in bodily protection from contact with this fool.
He’s a denizen of single bars, a problem to avoid,
for he’s sure to leave you listless, if not, in fact, annoyed.

How many boring platitudes can one bromide spout?
How may time-worn come-on lines are vying to get out
of lips that move unceasingly, spilling into the night
all the obvious clichés that he’s driven to cite?

Of all the gin joints in the world, why did he enter in
into the one where you came to have a quiet gin?
There should be a law passed that you get to vote on who
gets to wander into bars and saunter up to you.

They should have to pass an I.Q. test, then be sorted and tagged,
from “interesting” to “boring,” and the worst should then be gagged
with a small hole for a soda straw so they could go on drinking
without the ones around them having to know what they’re thinking.

 

Notable come-on lines that are grounds for gagging:

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”
“We gotta get you outa that wet dress and into a dry martini.”

 

Prompt words today are bromide, falling, denizen and problem.

Note: Bromide in literary usage means a phrase, cliché, or platitude that is trite or unoriginal. It can be intended to soothe or placate; it can suggest insincerity or a lack of originality in the speaker. Bromide can also mean a commonplace or tiresome person, a bore (a person who speaks in bromides).

Eulogy for Artichokes

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Eulogy for Artichokes

Behold the bristly artichokes scattered through the field—
delicious little thistles when boiled, buttered, peeled.
With our taste buds wakened and when they’re salted slightly,
it takes a bit of discipline to try to eat politely.

Leaf by leaf, we peel them bare, scraping off their meat.
We like them better with each tiny bit of them we eat.
Then scraping off the “chokey” part, we gobble down the heart.
They told us all along that this would be our favorite part.

Who knew these fat green pinecones would turn out to be so tasty?
Now we wish consumption of them hadn’t been so hasty.
And even after plates are bare and not a morsel lingers,
we’d like to slurp the butter up and lick it from our fingers.

 

Prompts for the day are scattered, field, discipline, bristly and wake. Image by Margaret Jaszowski on Unsplash.

Not in the Cards (An Art Dealer’s Lament)

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Not in the Cards
(An Art Dealer’s Lament)

I hear your family reads tea leaves and
can tell the future from a hand.
And it’s been said that being mystic
tends to make one altruistic;
but insufficient evidence
exists in proof of this and hence,
moving forward, I must state
it is a truth I must debate.

Your sister’s painting of the farm
shows some skill, a certain charm,
with animals in states of grace
which normally is not the case.
Stallion, bantam rooster, steer
are not the best of friends, I fear.
And that pig you lately ate
likely knew its horrid fate.

I’ve no need to excoriate
your peaceful kingdom, but of late
realism is the trend
in the paintings that I vend.
It’s clear your sister did not foresee
what my response was going to be,
for her depictions of rural glee
are not the canvasses for me.

Prompt words today are altruistic, farm, canvas, forward, insufficient.

Perpetual Kid

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Perpetual Kid

My little brother was hard to tie down,
and after his rambles through country and town,
hangry and dirty, he plopped in a chair,
and enclosed in his pants cuffs and stuck in his hair
were tree leaves and grass stalks and pollen from flowers
that accompanied him home after hours and hours
of wandering aimless inspecting the world
where all of the wonders of life were unfurled.

A junior adventurer, he would not change.
Even grown up, his travels would range
from border to border as yearly he tended
to follow adventures that never have ended.
From China to Africa, from pole to pole,
to see the whole earth has become his goal.
Yet year after year, when he’s through he comes home
where his sister is waiting with cook pot and comb
to fill up his tummy and clean the man up.
For in every lone wolf remains traces of pup!

 

Prompts for today are ramble, hangry, enclosed, tend and junior.

Tactical Failure

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Tactical Failure

Cream whipped up frothy as air smothering chocolate cake—
how much more temptation is my rival going to make?
She knows that my true love is fond of skinny hips,
and yet she makes confections she knows will tempt my lips.

Tiny marzipan cherries adorn the cookies that
she knows that I will not resist and that they’ll make me fat.
She wants to exacerbate a rift she knows is there
ever since as a surprise I cut my knee-length hair.

His complaints resounded over the neighborhood.
Everyone heard his distress, so I’m sure she could
as she passed by on the sidewalk, walking very slow
on her way to the juke joint where they both liked to go.

I know she had designs on him for the very next day
she brought three dozen cookies lined up neatly on a tray.
They were for consolation for she knew we were in trouble,
and so she baked me cookies and made the frosting double.

Thus did this vixen hasten my love affair’s demise
by appealing to my weakness and doubling my size.
And thus because her tactics seemed so perfectly to work,
I wound up with a sweet life while she would up with a jerk! 

Prompts today are frothy as air, exacerbate, marzipan, resound and joint.

A Mismatched Love Story

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A Mismatched Love Story

He approached their assignation
with a bit of trepidation,
for she was gregarious
while he found talk nefarious.

With an air of resignation,
he forgave her education,
but though she loved a well-penned book,
he found, alas, she couldn’t cook.

She loved dogs, he had a cat,
but he could  get over that
if not the comments that she made
while strolling down the esplanade.

What he found impetuous
was her transforming “Me” to “Us.”
So, alas, they never wed.
He learned to cook himself instead!!

 

Prompts for today are resignation, lean, gregarious, impetuous and comment.

New Dress, Two Sizes Too Small

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New Dress, Two Sizes Too Small

Once I hone my figure, this will fit me like a glove.
Not one curve will be awry. I’ll be in shape for love.
I’ll put myself in training and walk a mile a day.
I’ll pack up all my cake pans and stow them all away.

I’ll give up chips and chocolate and concentrate on kale,
and after just a month or two, be skinny as a rail.
I have such fine convictions. I know I’ll reach my goal,
and to celebrate, I think I’ll have another roll!

 

 

Prompt words are awry, hone, train, figure and  glove. Dress image by Sharon McCutcheon. Cinnamon roll image by Dilyara Garifullina, both on Unsplash.

New Baby Blues

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New Baby Blues

I rue the day my mom acquired my new baby brother.
I wish that she’d return him and come back with another.
When I first saw him, he was cute and I was rather proud,
but that’s before I knew the fact that he would be so loud.

When he cries, he makes a sort of ear-splitting sharp bleating
all the time Mom’s in the kitchen seeing to the heating
of the bottle used to apportion out his dinner.
You’d think for all the fuss he makes that he was growing thinner,

Yet I swear that day-by-day, to my great disgust
that he’s growing bigger—fatter and more robust!
And when he isn’t sleeping or drinking or deranged,
he is damp or poopie and insisting to be changed.

I think this baby’s broken and I think we need a new one.
I asked if I could go along when they go to view one,
but Mommy says there’s no return because this one is used,
while Daddy uttered not a word—just stood looking amused.

It really isn’t funny, though. In fact, I’m most annoyed
that they have less time for me now that they’re employed
taking care of baby—making sure he’s fed and well
while all this time I’ve been here too, living in baby Hell!

He’s diapered, held and cuddled, sung to and adored
while his older sister sits here feeling bored.
They say that I’ll feel different once he’s more grown up,
but if it were up to me, I’d trade him for a pup!

 

Prompt words today are proud, heating, apportion, damp and rue.