Tag Archives: silly poem

“All Lined Up” for SOCS Jan 25, 2025

“All Lined Up”

Lined up at the show
and everywhere we go,
it seems like we spend half our lives in lines that move too slow.

It seems that half the doing
consists of constant queueing––
a penance that we have to pay for eating, riding, viewing.

At cafes, traffic lanes,
post offices and trains,
museums, subways, cafeterias, we make small gains.

Standing more than walking,
muttering and gawking,
our progress is so slow that there’s less moving than there’s taking.

As we go two-by-twoing,
like milkcows softly mooing,
waiting here in lines, we find that we are all-too-often ruing

leaving our house at all
to line up at the mall
I think I’d rather be at home than waiting with y’all!

Here are a few “LIned Up” visuals: (Click on photos to enlarge.)

And, for more “lined up” photos go HERE.

The SOCS prompt is “In Line.”

A Poem of Negation for dVerse Poets, Jan 23, 2025

Why I do not Ham on Rye it

You cannot borrow steal or buy it.
Sumo wrestlers never try it.
Female starlets do or die it.
Vitamin makers fortify it
You never cookie, cake or pie it.
Pizza parlors terrify it.
Now and then I me oh my it,
but I hope I don’t defy it,
for if I ever hope to guy it,
I simply must stay on my diet!

 

For dVerse Poets, a poem of negation.

“How Much is Enough?” for the Writer’s Digest Wed. Poetry Prompt

How Much is Enough?
(Appraising the Situation)

Enough’s too much when it comes to fish
or any other smelly dish.
Too much for castor oil in spoons
or relatives on honeymoons.
Amoebas?  Any one’s too much,
and a date who wants you to go Dutch
clearly tells you he’s not “it.”
One mosquito, when you’re bit,
is not “enough,” but “one too many.”
when your preference is “not any!”

Kids with colds and snoopy neighbors,
tiresome chores and heavy labors,
bitter pills and jerked-off scabs,
rainy days with no free cabs,
diarrhea, scabies, gout?
Too much! Too much, without a doubt!
“Enough’s enough” is repetitious,
obvious and almost vicious.

So don’t go spouting it at me.
I hate cliches from A to Z.
I won’t have any said to me.
If you use them, you’re dead to me!
“It is sufficient” I will accept.
“I’ll have no more”  is most adept.
But don’t go muttering platitudes
at folks like me with attitudes,
or I promise we’ll be getting rough
enough to prompt, “Enough’s enough!”

 

For Writer’s Digest Poetry prompt: Appraisal  Image by Tonmoy on Unsplash.

An Apple a Day, for The Sunday Whirl Wordle, Jan 19, 2025

An Apple A Day

Witches use them for enchantment.  Kids give them to their teachers.
Trees dangle them from tree limbs to turn passersby to reachers.
Everyone craves apples at one time in their life.
Even Adam reached for one offered by his wife.
Latchkey kids  would miss them as a snack when home from school.
We’d miss them in our stocking toes if absent from our Yule.

It would be a small catastrophe if apples were not able
to snuggle with bananas and peaches on the table
or for folks with bows and arrows to use cucumbers instead
of apples for their targets, balanced on the head
of some trusting  assistant who surely would be pissed
if that smaller target meant that the archer missed!

Wouldn’t it cause chatter? The story would take wings
It would become that ballad that everybody sings
About the gifted archer whose limits were revealed
when he struck an unplanned target which alas, has never healed!
And, alas, no catalyst has ever been suggested
to solve the riddle of just how an apple might be bested!!!

(While posting this poem, I looked for an illustration in my photo file, I finally found the photo of the cored apple I had taken in the past so I used it.  Then I went out to the beach and found this apple lodged under the support of my beach chair. How it came to be there, I have no idea. I needed an apple and nature provided! So I had to post it as well.)

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle  the prompt words are: enchantment latch apples chatter crave catalyst catastrophe wings gift sing miss limit

“Pick”led for SOCS, Jan 17, 2025

“Pick”led

Pack a peck of pickle parts
in a silver jar.
If you feed them to a lover,
he will not stray too far.
Neither pocket book nor hockey puck
will sway his thoughts for long.
You’ll have him humming melodies,
then you’ll pick out your song
repeated in sweet harmony
as he sings along.

For SOCS the prompt is: “pack/peck/pick/“pock/puck.” Use one or use ’em all for bonus points—it’s up to you!  https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/24840312/posts/5529707414

“Unprompted” for The Daily Prompt, Jan 17, 2025

Un-
prompted,
they’d be single-tasked,
In fact, if she had not been asked,
she would never have de-masked,
the wine would not have been de-casked,
his shy love not
so quickly-tasked
in saying  yes to
the question asked.

The Daily Prompt is “Unprompted.”

Gossip at the 50th Class Reunion, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 689, Jan 12, 2025

Gossip at the 50th Class Reunion

The ghosts of teenage memories flutter and alight,
recalling card game  marathons that lasted through the night,
revealing ruinous secrets—spilling all the dirt.
After all these decades, how much could they still hurt?

Alluring little tattle-tales,  spinning out their webs,
sully reputations of aging former debs.
whose glittering reputations are maligned in manners ruthless,
by stories pulled out from the past that they insist are truthless.

Their former chastity like glass, cracked, broken and shattered
fifty long years afterwards–as if it even mattered!
We’ve strayed so far from our old roots, why is it we demur
when someone tries to alter what we insist we were?

Note from the author: Pure fiction, folks! Only the photo is of my real class reunion. I was led to this rhyme by the prompt words, not the past! For the Sunday Whirl Wordle the prompt words were: ruinous cards glass alluring spin dirt flutter secrets roots ghost glitters web 

Free Saturday, (For Cee) For FOTD Dec 21, 2024

Free Saturday

Today’s the day I get to do
exactly what I want to do.
To prowl my yard both up and down
clad only in my sleeping gown.
(The air so brisk, I guess I better
also choose to wear a sweater.)
Drink my morning coffee cold,
do not one thing that I’ve been told
to do. Make not one new appointment,
no sunscreen worn or other ointment.
Merely hang out in the shade,
leave home with no arrangements made.
Perhaps I’ll shop the Christmas fair
or simply walk to get some air.
Run into friends and have some lunch
or simply choose to skip the bunch
and have a sandwich on my own,
to drift wherever I am blown
like the dandelion I tore
out of my planter. Like its spore
I’ll fly off free to create more
adventures than I’d counted on
until my day is finally done.
Unplanned, unplotted and unlisted.
My former behavior resisted.
But first, there is this prompt to do.
I simply have to take a few
photos of new flowers for Cee,
(Well, some for her and some for me.)
An hour ago, I had not any,
but now it seems I have too many.
But, unable to make the call,
I guess I’ll have to post them all!

( I really did take all these photos this morning..yes, in my nightgown. If you look closely, you can see that my plants, too, grow where they want to.  Can you find them growing out of nose, eye and ear? Click on photos to enlarge and see detail.)

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas, Cee!!!!

For Cee’s FOTD

My Body, for the Writer’s Workshop, Dec 19, 2024

 

!!!Fragile!!!

Just as I’m becoming less agile,
all of me is turning fragile.

Flesh on flesh and bone on bone,
Nature won’t leave me alone.

Bruise more easily, skin tears easier.
Looking up now makes me queasier.

Can’t be trusted on a ladder.
Larger hips but smaller bladder.

Lips are thinner, bones are brittler.
And suddenly, I’m two inches littler.

If Nature’s bound to fold and shrink me,
Really, now, wouldn’t you think she

could leave me with my height and lips
and do her shrinking around my hips?

 

The prompt for the Writer’s Workshop was to write about my body as it grows old.

“Take 2 Aspirin,” for the Writers Workshop

Take 2 Aspirin––

For all the world’s diseases and all life’s little ills
they’ve been inventing medicines, elixirs, syrups, pills.
But those crafty bacteria, viruses and germs
keep running on ahead of us as we come to terms
with ways to counteract them. They’re crafty little mites
who somehow slip inside of us through food or air or bites.
So in spite of all our science—our test tubes and our beakers,
all that malevolent mini-world just don their little sneakers
and keep on evolving a little bit ahead.
Enough to keep us sneezing or roiling in our bed.

 

The Writers Workshop prompt is “Medications.”