humor

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. 

April Cruelty

lillian38 Comments

Crocus seduce, daffodils beam,
we walk lighter, brighter.
Young women shed coats,
bellies concealed in down
bloom pregnant joy.

Temptress Spring,
hips swaying in soft breezes,
sashays to bed budding green.
Wakes at dawn,
cold white kisses shimmer,
laughs flurry at our foolish trust.

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Photo Credits: That’s me, this morning, April 4. On the porch in my bathrobe appalled at this cruel April snow! Crocus  photo by Swirls 71.
Written as a quadrille (44 words) for dVerse using the word “shimmer” and for NaPoWriMo Day 4‘s prompt to write about the cruelest month.

All That Jazz

lillian35 Comments

Swingin’, swayin’ to all that jazz
Max drummin’ drums to syncopate
Ella’s scat, can ya dig it mate?

Billie’s sultry voice croons smooth as
liquid gold. Zoot suit struts janglin’
while Louis puffs his cheeks far as

air can go. Cool rhythms gyrate,
swingin’, swayin’, to all that jazz.

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Great jazz musicians referenced in poem include Max Roach drummer, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, both jazz singers; and Louis Armstrong, trumpeteer extraordinaire. Written for dVerse Poet’s Pub. Victoria asks us to create an Octain Refrain: Poem composed of two tercets and a couplet. Each line must contain 8 syllables. Poem must contain the following rhyme scheme: A b b, a c-c a, bA   Another poetic sudoku! A is the refrain with first and last being the same or close to the same. Second stanza c-c means there should be an internal rhyme within the line. Quite the challenge!  Photo credit: Free-Pik.

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.

 

Watch Me!

lillian38 Comments

I am in my eighty-seventh life on this earth. I’ve always been a feminist. Female, beautiful, and independently sufficient at the same time. I loved my can-can ruffle life in the Parisian bordello. And I donned a bright sash when I pounded my suffragette drum.

But this narcisstic genius body? It’s perfect!

I am bright, erect, and wear my sunny ruffles well. I stand above those two-lip characters, dutch men all of them. Short-lived though I shall be, there is nothing daffy about me! I am JonQuil the magnificent. And I out shine every bloomin’ thing!

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Word Count: 96. Written for Friday Fictioneers. Rochelle Wiseoff-Fields provides the photo prompt and a myriad of folks work their words into what is known as “flash fiction.” Must be a complete story about the photo, in 100 words or less.  FYI:  the jonquil, as well as the daffodil, are members of the Narcissus genus. Photo Credit: The Reclining Gentleman.