Tag Archives: silly poem

Well-Armed

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Well-Armed

Folks who are idolatrous
have deified the octopus.
The Durga of the watery world,
with her many arms unfurled,
when she suffers from upheaval,
she turns dangerous and evil.

Don’t underrate this ocean creature—
a lethal underwater feature.
Rankled, she exacts revenge,
her disturbed leisure to avenge,
for warfare is the medium
with which she relieves tedium.

A predator from dawn to dawn,
I could write an essay on
the sustenance she preys upon.
First they’re there and then they’re gone,
turned into impromptu feast
by this many-suckered beast.

This queen of the underworld
is lethal with her arms unfurled,
so if perchance you come upon her,
do not think that you can con her.
For if you try, I have a hunch
you might become her choice for lunch.

 

Durga is a fierce warrior goddess. She is depicted in Hindu art as riding on a lion or a tiger. She has many arms and is always brandishing a variety of weapons.

Prompt words today are octopus, essay, upheaval, rankle and medium. Image by Serena Repice Lentini on Unsplash. 

Fourth of July 2021––Wordle 508

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Fourth of July

The sky’s effervescent with bubbles of fire
rising ferociously higher and higher.
With a new surprise every minute or so,
where are the cowering animals to go?

The dogs bark their distress and squirrels in their trees
burrow down deeper into the debris
of nut shells and pine needles, avoiding the grief
of loud explosions, seeking relief.

Meanwhile, on the borders between land and skies,
children look on with wide saucer eyes,
waiting for each pyrotechnic surprise,
ooohing and ahhing as rockets arise.

The patterns they make as they rise ever higher
are finery formed from gunpowder and fire.
Their beauty paid for by distress to the ears,
first from the explosions and then from the cheers.

Forget the poor animals. Have your loud fun,
but my days of fireworks I fear are now done.
Snap me some photos and send me a card.—
I’m spending the Fourth right here in my backyard.

 

Wordle Prompt Words: fire, poor, surprise, rising, card, finery, sky, form, , effervescent, border, ferocious.

For theJuly 4, 2021 Wordle Prompt.

Update Fatigue

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Update Fatigue

I’m frenetically trying to dance to the beat,
determined that I don’t become obsolete.
I try not to repeat the historical me,
but I fear I’m as modern as I’m going to be.

This deluge of new things to learn and to do—
updates to look up and new settings to view—
leaves me no time for just simply living,
for petting the cat and for chatting and giving.

There’s no app for real life and so I’m less queasier,
finding my off-line life to be much easier.
Rules don’t change in a confusing whirr.
Positions don’t shift. Things remain where they were.

I’m simply not fit for the internet crew.
Too often I’m swamped over what I must do
to keep up with the changes and so I’m retiring.
All my accounts are slowly expiring.

Amazon, Facebook, WordPress and Skype
I’ll leave to the more agile changeable type
of online explorer who likes daily derangements,
frequent repositionings and rearrangements.

I’ll sit here on my porch that remains where it was
with my laptop unopened simply because
without viruses, hackers and updates and spam,
I can just rest and remain who I am!

 

 

So my instant updatesI think I’ll turn off.

imbue view queue cue do dew few hue Jew knew loo moo mew new pew rue sue too view woo eschew sue two too to view whew woo you zoo

Word prompts today are deluge, repeat,frenetic, obsolete and plea.

Leftovers

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Leftovers

I’m feeling bodacious and pregnant with thought.
I’m ready to share everything that I’ve got.
Words weighty, bodacious and perhaps erogenous—
all of the parts of me rare or homogenous—
furnish the page when I’m in writing mode
and equipped to dig into the old mother lode.
I’m fertile with words and with erudition,
all my great plots coming into fruition,
but give me some room at this time of the day
for discarded words to get out of the way.
Don’t read this blog lest it turn you morose,
for you’ll trip over words if you follow too close.

Words abandoned and spurned lie below, broken-hearted—
disjointed phrases that I merely started—
I know it seems silly. Totally absurd,
but please give a small glance at a phrase or a word
that’s left over below, for words have feelings, too.
Steal a few for yourself from this discarded queue
if you should find any appealing to you
and write your own poem when you feel in the zone.
It’s the least I can do to try to atone
for my failure to launch them in poems of my own.
Otherwise, they will lie here abandoned, alone,
with no flesh around them. Words stripped to the bone!

Prompt words today are erogenous, pregnant, furnish, bodacious and mode.

       audacious                       bought          bode

                        tuition           darted      started.     do   glue      imbue

few                   hue   queue. 

                    cue rue stew               sue                 two

come into view                 whew            you                    zoo

verbose
code         goad lode             node rode           toad 
        phone              hone                alone stone
               shone tone    bone

 

Exercising Lethargy

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I’m not saying Forgottenman is lazy. I much admire his activity in getting out to mow his lawn once a week in the heat and humidity of the boot heel of Missouri, but let’s just say that otherwise, he is somewhat exercise-challenged, save for trips to Walmart for provisions, to the P.O. for mail or city hall to pay taxes or sauntering from bed to desk, desk to kitchen or laundry room and back again.

Other than those activities, his main exercise has for years been mental, save for a few trips where I’ve jogged his getalong a bit. Thus, I’d like to share with you this brief Skype conversation last night which led to a silly poem this morning:

Judy: Skype says you are active now. What are you doing? Jogging or pushups?
Forgottenman: Doing my lethargy exercises.
Judy: I believe lethargy exercises is a good topic for a poem, don’t you?
Forgottenman:  (Silence)
Judy: (15 minutes later)

Exercising Lethargy

Exercising lethargy? In that I am well-versed,
so pay attention to these moves that must be oft-rehearsed.
Use your pointer finger to call over the waiter.
Then point it at your forehead to jumpstart your debater.
Should you have the catfish or should you have the shrimp?
Do those mental pushups to show you aren’t a wimp.

When you bend down to pull up socks it is a major feat.
Not to mention leg extensions, for they can’t be beat
while slipping into loafers, so appropriately named.
Not to mention hitting targets where the feet are aimed.
Push away from tables when you are fully sated,
for the benefits of arm extensions cannot be debated,

Practice tactics that I’ve taught and I promise you’ll see
what benefits may thus be wrought perfecting lethargy.

Different Strokes

21 Replies

Different Strokes

I believe I’ve lost my juju. I’m throwing in the towel.
If I were a mason, I’d be throwing in the trowel.
I’m too light on pragmatic and strong on fanciful.
I’m not achieving much but my life is never dull.
I’m terrible at numbers, organizationally lax—
a non-controversial drawback when it comes to paying tax.

I have a different point of view based on imagination
which works for writing poems but does not work for pagination
where “one” must always lead to “two” and “nine” must follow “eight.”
If I were timekeeper, the whole cosmos would run late.
The fact that I’m disorganized cannot be debated,
but it’s going way too far to say I’m addlepated.

The world needs many opposites to balance out each other.
For every north there is a south, for every dad a mother.
Sober’s stirred by silly and warm thaws out the cold.
Calm smooths out the erratic and meek balances the bold.
So if I tend toward fanciful, don’t issue an indictment.
There’s way too much reality. We need some more excitement.

 

Prompt words today are pragmatic, terrible, controversy, juju and towel.

Enough

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Enough

At six o’clock, glib comments start to fill the air.
We’re hungry for frittata, but the table’s bare.
Darkness fills the kitchen, for mama’s gone on strike.
She’s gone off to the city. Alone, on papa’s bike.

It’s dicey whether she’ll return. She says she’s tired of cooking.
She’s in need of a vacation and so she made a booking
at a posh hotel that has its own cafe
where she will dine on coq au vin followed by crème brûlée.

For once, serving the rest of us will not be her fate.
Someone else will  wait on her and she’ll just sit and wait.
In the morning she will order service in her room
where she’ll not even make her bed or wield dust cloth or broom.

Her note says then she might come home, or she might just wait
and find a nice seaside resort where she can cogitate
for another day or two. She says we shouldn’t worry.
The pizza place delivers if we’re not in a hurry.

Her recipe book’s on the shelf. The stove is  under it.
Her apron’s in the closet and she’s sure that it will fit
each and every one of us while she is on vacation.
She says that fending for ourselves will be an education.

She says to wash the dishes even though it is a bore,
for if she sees a messy kitchen when she walks in the door,
she’s going to walk right out again until we prove we’ve learned
that things will be real different after Mama has returned!

 

 

 

 

Prompts for today are six, glib, frittata, dicey and darkness.

Special Delivery

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Special Delivery

Fetch the doctor and bring him home.
I’m giving birth to a new poem.
If he gives you the runaround,
I guess I’ll be hospital-bound,
for I’ve got fever, cramps and chills
that can’t be cured by any pills.

I’m falling into a big pit
and I can’t get rid of it.
The lacuna waits for me.
It is the well of poetry
that I’ll fall into if no saint
comes to rid me of the taint
of words that rhyme or words that don’t.
 I fear that if the doctor won’t,
surely I’ll be ripped apart
by narratives that must depart.

They’ve been gestating so long
that I fear something will go wrong.
So call the doctor. Tell the fellow
that my fingers have gone yellow
from the words that can’t get out.
I’m getting rheumatism, gout.

I’ve got a mass within my heart
and I don’t know how best to start
to free the words that must be born—
that from my body must be torn.
Womb and brain and heart and spleen
stuffed full but yearning to be lean.

Emptied of words, stripped to the core,
then I”ll have room to sprout some more.
For though I grow the poems right well
and have fine stories I can tell—
although I’m bursting with the stuff,
I know that words are not enough.
For years they have been telling me
it’s all in the delivery.

 

 

Prompt words are fetch, runaround, chills, yellow and lacuna.
Photo by Freestocks on Unsplash.

Gardening in the Rain

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Gardening in the Rain

It started with a gentle tug
to trim a succulent from a jug
stuffed full with hardy hens and chicks
but tugs turned into pulls and picks
Until the pockets of my pants
and both my hands were full of plants.

By then, I was already soaked,
for as I pushed and pulled and poked,
the storm that had been gentle  drops,
turned into pelts and then to plops.
Since cool rain was a respite from
days of heat and glaring sun,

I loitered some along the way
to see what new additions lay
along the path that stretched between
the lower garden where I’d been
and the house far up above—
that toasty place—that cushy glove.

But then there was that empty pot
(whose jade plant we’d moved to the lot)
where there was dirt but plants were not
and all those cuttings I’d just got
stuffing my pockets, filling hands.
Can you see how the plot expands?

Thus it went that for an hour
I stood there in the soaking shower
restoring beauty to the pot 
where formerly beauty was not.
Then, dripping in my sopping clothes,
I used my sleeve to swipe my nose

and shed my clothes all at the door,
tracked wet prints across the floor,
hung up wet clothes and dried my skin,
then used the towel to wrap me in,
and meant to dress and have a meal,
but couldn’t help it, had to steal

to the window for one look more,
then opened up the sliding door,
and, one hand clasping tight the towel,
I headed out with garden trowel
to add if needs be one plant more
to the pot planted before.

I love gardening in the rain.
and see no reason to abstain.
With no sun to scorch my skin,
no reason to remain within.
And since I loved where i had been,
What I did once, I did again.

 

(Click on photos to enlarge and read captions to hear the rest of the story.)

Then I spotted those hen and chicks
and other overgrown pots of succulents.
but that didn’t stop my collecting,
It was then that I remembered the empty flower pot on the boulder near the pool.
Nearby was a large-leaf jade plant I’d been meaning to trim back
and a number of offshoots from a plant beside the sidewalk
And before I knew it, the empty planter was empty no more.
Four hours later, my blouse is almost dry.

 

He Said, She Said

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He Said, She Said

When she questioned his fidelity, he said she was a loser,
though he was the real lowlife—a bully and a bruiser.
“We’re not a pair,” he snapped at her. “I never took an oath
that I would be true to you, in fact, I’m rather loath
to say that when I married you, it wasn’t a mistake.
The only thing I liked about it was the wedding cake!

I’d had a few too many the day that we were hitched
and ever since we had the kids, you have bitched and bitched.
You like to snap my head off If I partake with the boys
and come home after midnight. If I make the slightest noise
and if I wake the kids up, well, so what? They’re my kids, too.
Perhaps they’d like to spend some time with me instead of you.

So what if it is 3 a.m.? Tomorrow we’ll sleep in.
You’d think that playing with your kids past midnight is a sin!!!!
The way to keep your man is to practice your felicity.
Instead of gripes, I’d like to see some wifely elasticity.
I always was a party guy. I always was a rover.
If you expect much more of me, my time with you is over.”

To Which She Answered:

The kids are at my mother’s, your packed bag in the garage.
Almost from the beginning, our marriage was a mirage.
I’ve called the man to change the locks. I’ve closed our bank account.
There’s money in your suitcase—a very small amount.
My father bought our house and my salary, at best,
is what was in the bank account. You drank up all the rest.

So what if it is 3 a.m.? You’re used to nighttime games.
Check your little black book. It’s sure to yield some names.
If you’ve had too much to drink, it’s best you don’t drive far,
but I’m sure that you’ll be comfy sleeping in the car.
I’ve decided to withdraw from marital complicity,
and that will bring you what you want. In short, your wife’s felicity!!

Prompts today are “not a pair,” snap, partake, felicity and loser. Photo by Elvis Bekmanis on Unsplash, used with permission.