Nature Knew

All they needed
was a gardener’s catalogue.
They should have known.

Tumpet vine,
also known as trumpet creeper.
Common colors, orange and orange red.

Some consider the plant invasive.
Drops hundreds of seeds
sending up suckers.

Keeping size under control
with aggressive pruning
is often necessary.

If allowed to grow,
can easily take over.
Extremely difficult to get rid of.

Containment
is a
consideration.

Prevent the plant
from reseeding
in other areas of the landscape.

Tumpet vine
can work its way
under shingles

and
cause damage
to foundations.

They should have known.

Stanzas 2 through 9 are quoted from two on-line garden sources. Shared with dVerse OLN, the virtual pub for poets where it’s open link time – share a poem of your choice today – no prompt. Bar opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come imbibe some words or pour your own!

Opus Us

When
life
gets
all
staccato,
insert
a
rest    

and slow yourself down.
Don’t beat yourself up.
Think key largo
and slip into three-quarter time.

Note:
I’ll dance with you
to any music, any time,
any place, any where.
Except the polka.
I hate dots and oompah bands.

Note_lines_horizontal

Victoria is hosting dVerse today, a virtual pub for poets. She asks us to write a poem that incorporates music. Bar opens at 3 PM Boston time….stop by and add your own musical voice, scat with us, or just enjoy some of the other folks jammin’.  For those non-musicians among my readers, opusstaccato, rest, beat, key (as in key signature), largo (as in slowly), 3/4 time, note and of course polka all refer to music. Photo/graphic credit to freepik.com

Recipe Card for Rejuvenatement

Feeds: TBD
Baking Time: 65 to 70 years.
Time may vary, depending on your power source

Ingredients:
One ripe chick or rooster
Zest of lemon pepper (sometimes called life)
1 cup of sunny disposition, firmly packed
1 Peter Pan attitude [the flying kind; not the collar]
Dash of bitters, tempered by condensed joy

Step lively – do not beat.
To achieve needed volume,
may use lower speed or additional appliance.
Texture may be wrinkled – this is normal.

Choose icing to your liking.
Tutti fruiti is, by far, the most popular.
Add cinnamon red hots for extra kick.
Tinsel may be used for effect during the Christmas season.

Best served with a glass of cold chardonnay,
although a virgin bloody mary may also make merry.

Enjoy!

img_2646For today’s Poetics prompt at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, Mish asks us to write a recipe poem! She includes a list of suggestions such as a recipe for peace, merriment, etc and “rejuvenation” was among the suggestions. Well! That’s my word! See my About 🙂  Never say “retirement.” I’m in rejuvenatement! 🙂  So here you go, Mish! I accepted the challenge. Photo is of my Christmas tree when I was a little girl — drenched in tinsel!  Hence the line in the poem.

Two Clerihews

** A clerihew is a comical biographic verse. See full explanation below photos.

i.
All the ladies admired the young Houdini,
but wished he performed in a thong bikini.
Their screams take it off created a racket
as he hung upside down in a confining strait jacket.

ii.
Rip Van Winkle slept away the years,
escaped his wife’s nagging and too-often tears.
Thought he’d be a ladie’s man, a new phenomenon,
instead he limped beside the dames, testosterone gone.

Written for dVerse, a poet’s pub, where today Gayle asks us to write a Clerihew: a comic verse on biographical topics consisting of 2 couplets and an aabb rhyme scheme. The first line is to name the individual. Form invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) at age sixteen. Very challenging to write humorous poetry!!!  Pub officially opens at 3 PM Boston time…drop by and read some more of these — or try your hand at comical verse and share yours with other dVerse readers!

The Feminist Deconstruction of Humpty Dumpty

I warned you!
and the spiders have taken heed . . .

You cared not to sit with ordinary blokes,
dangled your feet and watched all their woes.
You squirreled me away with Peter’s wife,
stuck in a pumpkin shell for life.

I am not addled nor scrambled in wits.
And so in the evenings of hey diddle diddle
your eyes on the cow and the cat and the fiddle,
I found my way out, maneuvering the vine.

I added more bricks by the light of the moon,
layer by layer, higher it grew.
Til I smiled in the window that final day,
snacking on pumpkin and watching you swoon.

You sat on your wall, looking down upon me
sneering and laughing and kicking in glee.
And then with bravado, a tip of your hat,
you leaned forward and laughed
until . . .

Splat!
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
couldn’t rewrite you together again.

The wall is demolished, Jill’s bucket is full.
I am quite proud and raucously so,
to sit on my tuffet, secure in my ways,
eating, nay feasting, on curds and whey.

Kim is hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, a virtual pub for poets. Bar opens at 3 PM. We’re asked to take a character, fictional or non-fictional, and re-write their story from the point of view of their husband or wife. I’ve taken the liberty of assuming Little Miss Muffet was married to Humpty Dumpty 🙂  Photos from Childcraft, Volume One Poems of Early Childhood, copyright 1947.  I may be a tad older than my readers so these photos provide the Mother Goose rhymes alluded to in my poem.

Merry Me Not

Carnival merry-go-rounds go
round and round and up and down.
My knot-so-merry-tummy goes
round and round and up
and down and urp [sic] it goes,
paint me calliope green.

merry-go-round-horses-2-1442505

Written for dVerse Tuesday Poetics where CC is tending bar. The topic of conversation is “even monkeys fall from trees.”  CC asks us to write about mistakes we’ve made – can be humorous or serious. Well, I learned the hard way — I never ride on merry-go-rounds! Photo credit: Richard Styles