Category Archives: humor

dry run

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It’s been a dry summer,

no word play to spare.

What little comes forth

dissipates in the air. 

Pen poised above paper,

ink eagerly flows.

A doodle emerges;

no poems or prose.

A rhyme – ‘haps a reason – 

to brighten my day? 

But no, merely dust

on my laptop’s display. 

Perhaps chalk on the sidewalk

if not paper or screen.

but when the dust settles,

not a word to be seen. 

I’d settle for tropes

or cliches worn and frayed.

word choices so bad I 

must rhyme “marmalade.”

I’ll spare you, dear reader,

‘til rains settle in, when

words fall from the sky

in a glorious din. 

When parched brain receptors

rehydrate and breathe,

I’ll come waxing poetic, 

my soul on my sleeve.

Beyond Compare

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Day Fourteen of National Poetry Writing Month. The muses at NaPoWriMo.net have given us this prompt for today:

…write a parody or satire based on a famous poem… take a favorite (or unfavorite) poem of the past, and see if you can’t re-write it on humorous, mocking, or sharp-witted lines. You can use your poem to make fun of the original (in the vein of a parody), or turn the form and manner of the original into a vehicle for making points about something else (more of a satire – though the dividing lines get rather confused and thin at times).

Since I too get rather confused (though seldom thin) at times, this prompt is a perfect fit. The poem I chose to work with is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? For those of us who are bard-challenged, I will post Shakespeare’s version below. But first (since I control the quill), here is my rendition:

Sonnet 4: Shall I compare thee to an iced latte? 

Shall I compare thee to an iced latte?
Thou sadly in cup holder dost not fit.
While coffee stains can really ruin my day,
I can control the spillage with one sip.
Sometimes you can be cold as latte’s ice,
Complexion like milk curdled in the sun.
I think it’s fairly safe if I surmise
Your pull date has already come and gone.
My latte won’t last long enough to sour
Nor lose its taste if ice begins to melt.
I tend to drink it up within an hour
The liquid sloshing gently ‘neath my belt. 
   I hope this verse has not offended thee.
   So long to you and your oft bitter tea.

And Shakespeare’s sonnet:

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Muse

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A new April morning, a new prompt for a poem.
My thoughts had gone hither – or was it thither? – to roam.
And so I zipped off a quick five-seven-five,
to keep my NaPoWriMo challenge streak alive.

I tapped the blue button to publish my poem.
At just that same moment I heard a loud groan.
“Oh, hey there, Muse.” Quickly, I closed laptop lid.
“Too late!” Muse cawed smugly. “I see what you did!”

“You can toss words like salad; even frost them like cake.
Count the syllables,
divide lines, but it still does
not a haiku make.”

“You thought you could do this Na-Po-gizmo sans me.
But this faux form space filler shows an obvious need.
I’ve sat on that bookcase ‘tween Webster and Roget,
my rhyming riffs roiling and ready to play.” 

“Are you through with the pep talk?” My sarcasm seethed.
“I’ve muddled through without you, although not with ease.
A sonnet on sunshine, triolet carved with care,
and a shanty so swashbuckling you can smell the salt air.”

“You’ve been absent for months now, with nary a sneer.
My quill pen has molted;  a goner, I fear.
My blog has been starved, on it’s penultimate gasp, 
the only sound left: a lone cricket’s rasp.”

“I took a hiatus,” Muse confessed with chagrin.
“But I did it for you, so it’s hardly a sin.
In the Andes I found adverbs; (in Morocco, great stew;)
In Europe, interjections like, ‘Ach!’ and “Mon Dieu!”

“Just stop!” I admonished. “Your excuses are worn.
But at least ‘twixt us two today's poem has been born. 
Perhaps you will deign to remain here awhile?”
“Just like the old times,” Muse agreed with a smile.

Day Twelve of National Poetry Writing Month. The prompt from NaPoWriMo.net:

… write a poem that addresses itself or some aspect of its self (i.e., “Dear Poem,” or “what are my quatrains up to?”; “Couplet, come with me . . .”) This might seem a little “meta” at first, or even kind of cheesy. But it can be a great way of interrogating (or at least, asking polite questions) of your own writing process and the motivations you have for writing, and the motivations you ascribe to your readers.

I didn’t quite follow the prompt, but hey, my muse isn’t always cooperative. Other posts featuring Muse:

Waking the Muse

Bookends (Slaking the Muse)

Reverse Engineering

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Passing Through the Lot on a Hot Day

Whose parking lot? I have no clue.
She probably lives in Timbuktu;
Security cams all turned on me,
She’ll see each car I’m prowling through.

Your big ‘ol mutt is onto me,
entering your car without a key.
Apart from dog drool, crushing heat; 
the brightest day you've ever seen.

Mutt jerks her leash, the collar breaks.
I know I’ve made a big mistake.
Her bark so loud, now sirens wail.
She pins me hard, there’s no escape.

The lot is filled; lights blue and red.
I alibi, cops shake their heads.
They haul me off, the jail’s close by.
I’ve made my bed, so here I’ll lie.

Day Three of National Poetry Writing Month! Today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo.net:

Find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite. For example, you might turn “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” to “I won’t contrast you with a winter’s night.” Your first draft of this kind of “opposite” poem will likely need a little polishing, but this is a fun way to respond to a poem you like, while also learning how that poem’s rhetorical strategies really work. (It’s sort of like taking a radio apart and putting it back together, but for poetry).

Okay, so maybe I didn’t quiiiiiiite follow the prompt, but I kinda did, in spirit at least.

The poem I chose to use is Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Here is Frost’s poem: 

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost - 1874-1963

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

To see how others have responded to the challenge, go to NaPoWriMo.net and check out the comments section for links to other participating poets.

In the Stars

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I was debating with my daughter the other day as to whether I might be an alien, (something to do with my long toes), and I was reminded of this piece I wrote in 2013 for my original (now defunct) blog. As I am the master of my own blog — if not my own destiny — I decided to post it again. Herewith:

Psychic Revelation

You’re not going to believe this… well, maybe you are. I didn’t at first, but now the notion is kind of growing on me.

You see, I just found out that I’m from another planet. Maybe even another star system. It’s a little hard to wrap my mind around the idea, but it would sure explain a lot.

I had a reading with a psychic yesterday, and among other (very accurate) things, she told me that I was an old soul (I’ve always felt that), and that I was a “star seed.” I’d never heard of a star seed. The psychic indicated that I had a lot of “homework” to do to get up to speed on all of this, so as soon as the reading was over, I ran right to my computer to research the whole matter.

The Sirius Temple of Ascension website tells us that “Star Seeds are beings that have experienced life elsewhere in the Universe on other planets and in non-physical dimensions other than on Earth,” although they may have had previous life times on earth as well.

Old soul star seeds are “Guardians of the earth” and have usually had “hundreds of life times on earth going back to the beginning of humanity” or even the beginning of earth. The life missions of old soul star seeds are “tied into the long term evolution of earth and humanity” and so they have incarnated on earth multiple times to fulfill relevant “projects.” Once the projects are completed, the old soul star seeds discontinue their cycles of lifetimes.

The psychic indicated that my purpose was related to healing. She mentioned Reiki (a form of hands on energy healing) and I told her that I was, indeed, a Reiki practitioner. The conversation somehow got sidetracked there when she said that my cats didn’t want me to give them Reiki because they were evolved beyond that and so they just roll their eyes when I try it on them.

I was so astounded at the idea of my cats rolling their eyes at me that I forgot to pursue the whole old soul star seed topic any further in our discussion. My subsequent research, however, turned up some tests that one can take to determine whether or not they are a star seed. My favorite is the Starseed Quiz. It consists of 100 questions and the nifty part about it is that the computer calculates your score at the end.

Some of the questions that intrigued me:

“As a child, did you have an imaginary friend?” I had three. Didn’t everyone?

“When alone & indoors, have you ever worked or studied in the nude?” That would be a “no” for me. Eww!

“Do you have a blank space/or unusually high level of memory of your early childhood years?” My memory of my whole life is pretty blank, not just my childhood. Not sure what that might indicate.

“Do you like tapioca?” Well, yeah! What’s not to like?

“If offered a choice of meeting a celebrity or an alien ~ would you choose the alien?” I wasn’t convinced this had to be an either/or question. I’d personally like to meet a celebrity alien.

The results of my test indicated that it definitely could maybe be a possibility that I am indeed a star seed.

So what am I going to do with this newfound information? Well, my cats can forget sitting on my lap for Reiki any time soon, that’s for sure. But I may need to do some further investigating into the rest of it. Even though I am poking fun at it, who am I to say what is and isn’t within the realm of Universal possibility?

I mean, tapioca seldom lies.

Bird Talk

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Day Two NaPoWriMo prompt: Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on a word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account devoted to obscure and interesting English words. 

I used the tweet pictured below, which gave the words for the sounds certain birds make.

Herewith, my poem:

Oh, Dr. Seuss, you silly goose,

you loved to glacitate.

You wrote that owls go hoo hoo hoo.

In truth, they cucubate.

Your nonsense rhymes, those made-up words,

a lazy way to write.

So many real words just as fun,

and downright erudite.

A rooster doesn’t “cock-a-doodle do”

when he cucuriates.

And the hen’s response might well be “cluck,”

but — to rhyme — she glocidates.

Toward “wockets in pockets” I hold no grudge,

but to my ear, it grates;

like the striddly stry of a peacock’s cry

when it so poopity pupillates.

Assumptions

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Bloganuary prompt: What do people incorrectly assume about you?

Others may assume that I am unassuming,

but my assumption that they assume so

would, indeed, make their assumption incorrect,

would it not?

It is more likely that I assume things about others

that would prove to be incorrect.

But if I’m assuming that my assumptions are incorrect,

then are they really assumptions?

My head hurts now.

The photo above is of Auggie, my unassuming grandpuppy whom I failed to feature in previous posts. Auggie, please don’t assume that I love you any less. You are near and dear to my heart.

Dogs Make Me Laugh

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Bloganuary prompt: What makes you laugh?

dog day1
“I’m really sorry I did it. Really, really sorry. Um… which ‘it’ did you discover?”
dog day2
“I don’t know why the cat dug up the water sprinkler, but I scared him away just before you got here.”
stylin4
stylin1
greener
partners2
“Hmmm. Fruity, black currant, vanilla, buttery… I’d say cab-sauvignon aged in oak.”
“I’d say cherry Pop Tart.”
partners3
“Are you sure, brown dog? Bark if I see ANYTHING at all on the street, and twice as loud if I see NOTHING at all?”

To my Teenage Self

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It’s January, and so begins the #Bloganuary Challenge from WordPress, where participants are given a daily prompt for blogging inspiration. Today’s prompt: What advice would you give to your teenage self? So here goes.

Dear Teenage Me:

Look at you! So young, I hardly recognize you – er, me. I know, you think it’s odd that an old fart like me is addressing you. You work so hard to stay invisible, and yet I see you. It’s not easy for me, either. I tend to avoid people, especially teenagers. You kids are very intimidating at that age. And, well, I try to stay invisible, too. Still. 

You have a long row ahead of you (that’s a good thing so keep going), so here are some pointers to get you through a bit easier than I had it.

  • When you get your wisdom teeth pulled in your twenties, do NOT use tequila as a pain killer. The side effects are not worth it. You will wake up wishing you could get more teeth pulled just to take your mind off the hangover.
  • Nurture your artistic self. You don’t have to excel at art or music or writing or photography or stained glass or anything else in order to validate your interest and participation. If it feeds your soul, it’s worth doing.
  • Don’t dance like nobody’s watching. Dance like you don’t give a flying leap whether they’re watching or not. That will come in handy when your second grader pulls you out on the floor during the school music program to dance the macarena with her.
  • You’ll be a better parent than you think you can be. Listen to your kids. They’ll let you know how you’re doing. But maybe don’t let your children write their own absentee excuse notes for school. When you actually write one yourself, the school will think it’s fake because the signatures don’t match.
  • Don’t despair. When you think you’ve hit rock bottom, there’s only one way to go: up.

Well, that’s about the extent of my garnered wisdom. Check back in another twenty years, and I can advise you on how to get through your midlife crises. By then, however, you’ll realize that you don’t need other people’s voices in your head, you just need to trust your own.

Wishing you many, many joy-filled years to come.

Love,

Your older and wiser self