Humor

Sing a Song of Age with Me

lillian32 Comments

I am eight syllables of rhyme.
A wannabe decimista
addicted to my barista,
tap dancing through life double-time.
Old age is not a paradigm.
I wore polka-dot underwear
during yesterday’s love affair
with life, eating savory tarts,
cotton candy and red hot hearts.
Life’s too fun for a rocking chair.

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Gayle hosts dVerse today and asks us to write a Decima: 10 liner, 8 syllables per line, ABBAACCDDC rhyme scheme. Popular in Puerto Rico, many times decimas are created and sung on the spot in competitions. Think duelling banjoes only with words! Performers are called decimistas. Humorous decimas usually satirize an individual’s weakness or something silly they did. Photo: me a number of years ago at the Boston Pops 4th of July concert.  I do love life! 🙂 Also used for NaPoWriMo Day 21.

Snippets of High School French

lillian7 Comments

Patisseries,
le chocolat and savory too.
Do not knead de pain,
only le fruit
from le menu please.
Modeste? Ordinaire?
Moi?
I choose le joi de vivre.
Life can be
as the saying goes
a piece of cake
or, in my way of thinking,
le gateau and
the entire boulange!

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A “Kenning” poem written for NaPoWriMo Day 20. A kenning is a riddle-like metaphor….a circumlocution. In this case — life is like a boulanger (a bakery) — step right up and choose! 🙂 I last took French in 1965 — intersting the phrases I remember. And for those of you who are Christmas lovers, I can still sing the first verse of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in French. Ah, my teacher would be proud 🙂  Photo credit: Jendo Reversal

This Ain’t Kansas

lillian49 Comments

You blew into town,
slicked back hair, muscle shirt.
Swaggered in with a cocksure grin,
ordered whiskey shots.
Tom Jones dropped in the jukebox,
pulsed heart throb beats.
Women groveled, blushed and fawned
Me? I dropped the cue,
clicked my heels and sashayed out.

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A quadrille (44 words) written for dVerse Poet’s Pub. Grace is tending bar and asks us to think about the word twister.  Also applying for day 18 in NaPoWriMo. Photos are two free images fused together.

What’s in Your Book Spines?

lillian11 Comments

i
The Happiness Project
Swing Swagger Drape
A Hundred Daffodils

ii
You’re Wearing That?
The Audacity of Hope

iii
Plain and Simple:
If I Had My Life To Live Over
I Would Pick More Daisies
Off Camera

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NaPoWriMo Day 10: My suggested prompt was used for everyone today! Stack ’em up and write  Book Spine Poetry, hopefully from books on your book shelves.
My three poems include titles from: Gretchen Rubins’s The Happiness Project, Jane Slicer-Smith’s knitting pattern book Swing Swagger Drape, Jane Kenyon’s White Daffodils; You’re Wearing That? by Deborah Tannen and Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope; and the third one includes Sue Bender’s Plain and Simple, If I Had My Life to Live Over I Would Pick More Daisies edited by Sandra Haldeman Martz, and Ted Koppel’s Off Camera.  Happy Sunday!

Paging Vincent Van Gogh

lillian10 Comments

Hybrid sunflowers
big time flower power.
Fast growing giant Kong,
Bashful Lemon Queen,
bold eye catching.
Ms. Mars, uncommonly gorgeous.
Elf, compact charmer
and Little Becka too.
Madly floriferous Candy,
Strawberry Blonde, Frilly
and Crimson Blaze,
dazzle with sensuous high definition.
Sunny Bunch, Honey Bears
precious beauties,
incredible lovable faces.
All flummoxed on your easel,
sowed one quarter inch deep
in oil, denied full sun,
borders and beds.
Your fame, their demise.

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Written for Day 6 NaPoWriMo, using day five’s prompt: Create a poem using words from a seed catalogue. This is from Burpee’s 2016 catalogue, pages for sunflowers. All words, including title, are exactly as written in Burpee’s except for those italicized. Kong, Bashful, Lemon Queen, Ms. Mars, Elf, Little Becka, Candy, Strawberry Blonde, Frilly, Crimson Blaze, Sunny Bunch, and Honey Bears are all hybrid sunflower varieties. I do love the Found Poetry genre. Photo: from beautiful Cape Cod’s Provincetown, several years ago. 

Arachnophobia Be Damned!

lillian25 Comments

[With apologies to Mother Goose]

Little Miss Muffet determined to stay
plots on her tuffet as bravely she sits
needles in hand she prepares now to play,
two legs to eight, but rapier in wits.

Nursery rhyme loser? A girl who has fits?
Web spun over years into dark comedy.
Finger pricked in the snatch, spider flits
flails, then falls. Arthropodic tragedy.

Silken threads become elegant to the eye
blood dots cloth as she doth smart
needles weave and suddenly stop with spasm cry.
Game over. Venomous to the heart.

Curds and whey topple, she utters a moan
dead heat with spider, they lie on the stone.

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Written for dVerse Poet’s Pub with Gayle tending bar. We’re asked to write a Bouts-Rimes which is French for Rymed Ends. This form began in the 17th century as a rhyming game. Gayle’s challenge: use the following fourteen words in the order presented: stay, sits, play, wits, fits, comedy, flits, tragedy, eye, smart, cry, heart, moan, stone. These words were borrowed from a sonnet by Edmund Spenser. These words, in this order, must be the end line rhymes. For me, another poetry sudoku!
The real Nursery Rhyme:
BY MOTHER GOOSE
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

 

Ms. Poppins’ Travails

lillian29 Comments

Drones.
Little mechanical beasties
shall not be my demise!
Flashing metal, whirs and spins,
winds whoosh. Just concentrate!
Umbrella steady, point toes left.
Nose bleeding, dress in shreds
whirling blades too close again.
Children waiting. Parents chafing.
Magic wearing thin.
Umbrella soon to be
my rain-only accessory.

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With apologies to Mary Poppins.  Motivated by Dverse Poets Pub prompt: create a Persona Poem. Decided to take the “light” approach today — a little humor to hopefully make you smile.

Birthday Party

lillian6 Comments

He sat upright
surrounded by canes, walkers
tv guides, checkerboard games,
and the people that accompany them
in a place like this.

He waited patiently
for the last strands of that age-old song,
some high pitched warblers
hunched over the tinny piano
pulled out for occasions like this.

Balloons hovered above his head
as candles dripped life-time moments
onto fondant flowers.
Festive paper plates too thin
for the thick slab he desired.

And so I asked the centenarian
for the secret of his longevity.
Well sonny, I always say,
close your eyes to dream.
Just make sure you open them wide
to watch where you step.

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