Humor

A Toast to the Town – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Two

Today I was to write a poem about something I’ve done, presumably as a child or adolescent, that gives me a kind of satisfaction. I think it is supposed to be something for which I am grateful. I had to dig for this one.

Grateful for the Grog

It wasn’t cocaine but some think it’s the same
when the forbidden froth of the fifties,
long before there were Swifties,
beer became the name of the game.

First taste was a sip, likely bogarted from
mother or father, or perhaps from my drunk-ass brother,
to wash down that salty Wise potato chip?
Hometown suds, favored by local buds
and still tastes like bad-beer today.

It was gunna happen anyway.
I learned to like it and how it made me feel.
I would have tasted beer someday,
then acquisition became part of the deal.

Tom T Hall’s song set somewhere aside,
beer became my pleasure and my problem.
I’m shocked that to some
the pleasure is none
and beer is forever denied.

“I like beer, it makes me a jolly good fellow
I like beer, it helps me unwind and sometimes it makes me feel mellow
(makes him feel mellow) … (He likes beer)”

So let me explain
in this little refrain

how grateful I am
to the woman or the man who drew me my first mug
from a spout, a bottle, or a sealed tin can I can chug.

Look both ways for the imperfect pleasures of life.
Mind the gaps and watch the taps, as the kegger is still a rite of passage.

Do It Anyway – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-One

“Happy Monday,” she said. Today, I was supposed to attempt writing a poem in which something that normally unfolds in a set, well-understood, and organized way goes haywire; yet it is described as if it’s all very normal. Define normal?

Non-Compos Mentis*

Open mic Friday night on sixth street, Austin
and the crowd filed in silence.
First up, Gerty Stein wined if she told him
and Pablo painted her time off stage
when BEVO horns in and sings hooray for our side,
just then, Mathew Mac danced to silence
while imitating elon’s ox and Napoleon sang in locomotion.

The crowd cheered with silent finger snaps and the naked king
unzipped his pants
and played his instrument in tune
with united methodist horses chanting bite songs.

Two chickens fried the mic and mooned bleakly,
while the sober addicts ordered salad,
and the dead-beat dads cheered a silent sum.

The police up next went wet with white while swearing they were not watching her over there, and the crowd did the dead bug dong-dance on their backs.

Intermission brought AFD to wet down the APD who forgot their lines in unpaid fines.

And the crowd silently cheered in oxymoronic fight songs.

It rained in the house and the mic said nothing, time after time, and Bukowski’s ghost got booed and everybody left pitifully happy to never have loved at all.

Look both ways because mentality is a subjective call at poetry slams.
Mind the gaps, stutters, and forgotten lines because, funny or not,
silly is just a warm moist feeling.

*The title means “not of sound mind.”

Midnight Rider – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty

My Easter egg fortune was to write a poem “informed by musical phrasing or melody.” I was to employ sound play (i.e., rhyme, meter, assonance, alliteration).

I wrote a parody with new lyrics (my poem) assigned to the Alman Brothers song “Midnight Rider.” I used different words and a silly topic that fit the original song’s rhythm and phrasing, as suggested with the prompt.

Late-night Walker

Shit, I gotta go, run to keep from peein’
And I’m told to keep them from seein’
Yeah, I’ve got to trot out one more
Yet I ain’t gunna let ya see me, no
Not gunna let ya see the midnight walker

And I don’t know where the hell I’m goin’
And the flow goes on forever
And I’ll run around one more time to go
Yet I ain’t gunna let ya see me, no
Not gunna let ya see the midnight walker

And I’ll not wet the pants I’m wearing
This old fart will not be sharing
Yeah, I’ve got to trot out one more night

Yet I ain’t gunna let ya see me, no
Not gunna let them catch the midnight walker

Yet I ain’t gunna let ya see me, no
Not gunna let them catch the midnight walker

Yet you ain’t gunna see me go, oh, no
Not gunna let them catch the midnight walker

Look both ways when the humor just won’t let go.
Mind the gaps that push the prompt. Make Weird Al proud.

Silly Street Songs – NaPo 2025 Day Ten

Day dix found a napowrimo dot net challenge for me to write a poem that uses alliteration and punning. That’s what she said. I could include words I find troublesome to spell (there are many) and one where the meaning is wonky for me.

 A man walks down the street

Steven strongly strides seven steps
neither up nor down, never noticing
how Candice curves create cardio calls from cool cats
among and amid amusing amassing amateurs.

Tourists to me.

I shoot six street shots, some suggestive, startling strangers,
but buskers buttress bongs and banjoes.

Suddenly, Steven stops and stares at Simone Sunlight Someone
shooting several subtle series of snaps.
Suddenly, some sucker sees and shoots.
I surrender to staring strangers strongly suggesting something serious.

Like this poem.

Look both ways at amusing language and funny faces that look and sound similar.
Mind the gaps and please chew with your mouth closed but your eyes open.

Rhyme Time – NaPo 2025 Day Nine

Today’s challenge is to write a poem that uses rhymes, but unlike yesterday, without adhering to specific line lengths. That’s it.

The Pedagogue Bullfrog

Biology class.
Dissection Day.

The stink in the classroom would make ya cry. Remember?
When we were there to slay already dead frogs, not toads.

I think.
Step by disgusting step we cut the carcass open to expose wads and globs
of all the things I learned in high school: heart, lung, stomach.

But the smell is what I remember best.
Formaldehyde, Baby.

Like in the beer in the Nam,
A key component in dead humans when used to embalm.

But gizzards do not abound in and around Bullfrogs. Just chickens and turkeys
dissected at home by Mom for celebrations of life.

Of “all the crap I learned in high school it’s a wonder
I can think at all—but I can read the writing on the wall,”
and a good witch can read the petri dish entrails.

Look both ways and hear the moan of the bull
because those frogs are not an endangered species.
Mind the gaps and touch your face before licking your lips. Embrace the stink.

Why Not Art? – NaPo 2025 Day Seven

Today I am prompted to write “kind of” a self-portrait poem wherein I explain why I am not an object of art. Additionally; I should include a fake fact and a highly unlikely comparison.

objet d’art

A can of soup was not art.
Wait now, the can may be but not the soup.
Tell the chief her food is not art
and you may invoke a visceral emotional response
from them (pronoun problems today)
about his grossly gristly
chicken fried steak found at some greasy spoon
somewhere in the middle of Texas or Montana.

Intent counts in sin and art. Fuck for effect.
I am the conscious effort, like the fork, push pin,
or skin covered hairless fat over brittle bone and
Weird Andy Dubya paints me as a Brillo box
for which some fool pops millions. I’m not that.

But is it art? Am I?
Am I that posed and canned portraiture photo of me
p-shopped to make me artfully handsome and young
soliciting a salacious feeling from someone
who practices the high art of pornography?
I am not that kind of art, thank you, Reverend.

We all love being objectified, of evoking
an aesthetic or emotional response
from the neighbor’s horny wiener dog down the road which
is not art. The road I mean, not the cat. I mean dog.
But maybe, could be, should be transformed
into a painting of an old hammer, which I am also not, but
a can of soup is. Art’s weird if you ask me,
which you were not and I’m not saying.

Look both ways and up at a ceiling full of shit-filled condoms and call it art
because it evokes within you an emotional response.
Mind the gaps where function follows form, and a poem is a form of expression
but isn’t art.

Hot Chow – NaPo 2025 Day Six

To determine today’s NaPo prompt, I randomly selected a number from 1 to 10. I picked ten. Then I scrolled down to find a table of 10 rows and 4 columns. At the row corresponding to 10, the first cell to the right gave me the name of an edible item: cilantro. That was what my poem was to be about. The next two cells had words that were to be used in the flavor-descriptive poem. To see the entire prompt click here.

Cilantro

I don’t know when it came into my life.
Probably after I met my wife because
if it wasn’t meat with mashed potatoes
and some form of bean,
I had never tasted it.

Two things provided for expansion
of my sense of taste and flavor,
including smell. Marriage
and my military life. Chow halls
didn’t care, but they also did.
I actually like liver and spinach
(sorry Mom).

It goes in with other stuff,
Where would salsa, soups, guacamole,
and other dishes be without it? Sure,
there is parsley, dill, and basil,
but they are not the same.

Where would be the fresh citrusy
and floral flavor? That peppery tang
we find in and among the Mexican gang.

If it tastes like soap, there is no hope.
Genetics rule. Thanks to a gene
called OR6A2 for that
and eat something else.

For the rest of us, we enjoy the
gentle chip drip into the culinary saucy sink.
Good food is more than you think.

Look both ways and learn to love the food.
Mind the gaps and pity the picky eaters.

Friday Fictioneers for May 3rd, 2024

Dear Mistress Rochelle,

Please excuse Mr. Bill’s absence as he was poetically abusing himself.

Sincerely,
NaPoWriMo

♥⇔♥

I could not pass up Ted’s excellent picture of a funny memory. Rochelle, from whose blog we all learn so well, can be found by clicking on Ted’s photo. From there you may, in May, write a micro-blurb story according to the rule of Her Fabulous Highness.

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz — Click it to ride over to Rochelle’s Blog.

Genre: SNL Fake History
Title: He’s Gonna be Mean to Me
Word count: 100

The flyer said, “Script writers wanted: interviews, 8PM Saturday night, 30 Rock Plaza, studio 8H.” I went.

Before I knocked, I heard a high-pitched voice, “Oh Nooooo, Miss Sally. Do it again.” A female voice yelled, “Idiot! When I said, ‘Bite me,’ I didn’t mean for you to bite me, Dummy.”

I knocked. I heard banging and doors slamming. The squeaky voice said, “Please come in, Mister Bill.”

I entered. A stuffed doll in a chair said, “If you can script a skit, you start tonight.”

When I told him I couldn’t do that, he yelled, “Oh nooooooo, Mister Bill.”

Look both ways and remember nineteen-seventy-eight.
Mind the gaps but save the records, ducks, dolls, skits, and names.

The celeb ducks are (L-R) Freddie Mercury, John Belushi, Willie Nelson, and Jerry Garcia. Click this pic to read more stories.

 

 

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 30, Controlling Feline

For the final day of the challenge, we were to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend.

I chose a Greco-Roman mythological goddess, Megaera, from the three Furies: Alecto (anger), Megaera (jealousy), and Tisiphone (avenger). I embodied her as a pet cat.

Controlling Feline

I am Megaera the Cat, your jealous Goddess
sent here by Gaea and made from
the blood of the Lord tomcat, Uranus.

My holy task is to punish you for being human.
You may do nothing without my revocable approval.
If I have not approved your every action,
the indignity of Hades awaits within my hairball.

You must be shamed into submission by me.
I will make you fall; I will pee on everything
and everyone else you love until you bow,
honor, and feed me. Pet and feel bitter pain.

Privacy is a sin. Your computer is mine now.
All this furniture is mine and mine alone
to use and abuse as, and when, I see fit.
My water bowl is only half full. Fool!

I am a daughter of Darkness. Do not even look
at another cat, animal, bird, person, or
(may Nyx and Zeus forbid such sin) a dog.
You will pay dearly and experience
the smell of Hell, if you ignore me.

Look both ways, forward into May and back to April.
Mind the gaps as you recover from 30-in-30, all to prompt.
We are saved by the human gift of humor. Empowered by babble.

NaPoWroMo 2024, Day 29, Antithetically Self-effacing

The darling lexicographers at Merriam-Webster selected ten words from Taylor Swift songs. I was double-dog-dared to choose one of the words and write a poem that uses that word in its title.

Antithetically Self-effacing

Having a love-hate relationship
with attention and spotlights
and being “that guy” when attention
is focused on me, which makes it weird
that I like to stand and speak at the mic,
to be the MC, the introverted old man
who is not very shy—that guy
is certainly me. She said I had
“mic presence” (whatever it was).

I will talk to anyone, especially
those who break the clichéd ice first.
Me! The stage crew grunt who,
without notice or one second of rehearsal,
had to read his lines from
Macbeth in front of the entire
student body, whose girlfriend
said, “Your pants were so tight,
I was distracted. You read lines?”

Yeah, I am that guy.

Look both ways and listen to the words of the tortured and ravaged poets,
and when the West Reading angel sings, or gives one of her looks;
sing, sing, sing; or dance, if you can’t.
And mind the gaps if she gets you tickets for the Super Bowl.