Mom said be sure to wash
your face off before lunch, by gosh
The son obeyed
but without a mouth, eyes, and nose
He could not eat, why do you suppose
The women in the kitchen are exceptionally pretty
Because they are my relatives, and they love me
My mother is wearing a red dress, but it is muted
Aunt Sue is dressed in green with a fancier apron
The entire house smells like vanilla and cinnamon
I salivate the minute I enter the kitchen
You may have one cookie before lunch, mother says
How can I choose just one?
My favorite cookies are all over the place
Chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies
Gingerbread cookies, frosted sugar cookies
“Okay, two,” she says, seeing my dilemma.
My aunt sneaks me a third cookie when my mother turns.
“I saw that!” My mother says, without looking.
I am only seven, but I know she has eyes all around her head.
My aunt laughs, but I am scared now. What else does Mom know?
Scarlet was impulsive, impetuous, and hasty.
Her cousins said her decisions were reckless.
I felt they were repeating their parents’ words.
Their parents made fun of everyone.
Scarlet was intuitive, determined and lucky too.
Most of the time her decisions panned out for her.
She married a man after knowing him nine days.
Their marriage lasted 71 years, until his death.
Scarlet quit twenty-eight jobs before finding her career.
Nay-saying cousins had much to say about this.
She quit many jobs on the first day, before lunch.
They thought this was hysterically amusing.
When you quit jobs this fast, it does not take long…
to successfully eliminate twenty-eight jobs that were not right.
She returned to school and became a counselor.
She loved this job, held on to it for twenty-seven years.
The cousins no longer call her reckless.
They consider her risk-taking wise now.
She has been content most of her life.
I think the cousins are more forgiving since their parents are gone.
It takes more courage to eat before complaining
Than to protest and create a conflict before lunch
if you are at community soup kitchen
Where there are mostly sheep and many eyes
There may be a right time for everything
But there is never a right time for conflict
Even if it is easier than threading a needle
Or catching a fish
How can you sleep here? Asks an artist from the north.
Leopard is used to the vivid colors of the rainforest.
He can sleep anywhere, but especially here.
It is his home, his hunting ground, his safe place.
The stranger keeps talking, annoying leopard.
He may have to snack before lunch.
All my time is laying on my laurates floor
I've written my poems
and don't have much to show
Those books don't appear to be useful
I've played my secret passion
and eat my buffalo wings
I've got few Anthology's
to please my peers
it don't ring true,
part reciting them from Lands End
when a Poet goes out
before Lunch
King Hypocrite
We have the king of hypocrites, right here on the soup
With more chastising, straight from his stoop
Once again, he points his finger, from high on his wall
A brand new blog with the same childish bawl
Deleted in twenty-four, that’s his usual hit and run
He likes his big words that help hide his fun
He stands at his pulpit, his thesaurus in hand
It makes him feel smart, here in poetry land
He likes to praise your work and then throw a punch
He’ll tuck tail and run and be gone before lunch
He gets his mighty courage straight from the keg
He’ll get blind drunk and then hump your leg
The simple truth will always contradict him
So he looks for new poets and then plays the victim
Like the trolls before him, he’ll wobble on his wall
Then like humpty dumpty, he will crack from his fall
She had an idea that this was no ordinary day
It started out differently than the others.
She could not describe it in words, but in feelings
It was a wow, a super feeling which cannot be explained.
Her heart danced a bit, she felt incredibly loved.
She knew something powerful and marvelous was going to happen.
She passed away in her sleep before lunch
With her Bible opened to Acts II on her lap.
When she saw her parents, she was overjoyed!
She was in the place she had always wanted to be.
She had made it home.
The wow feeling had surpassed her wildest dreams.
3-6-9 format created by Emile J. Pinet. The scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla believed that the numbers 3-6-9 held great significance, and in deference to him, the 3-6-9 was invented. An eighteen line rhyming verse with the following rhyme scheme: (aba - cdcefe - ghgijiklk,) with a syllable count of 333, 66666, 999999999. It looks best centered.
School bell rang
Pledge was said
Children sang.
Reading first on the bill
With groups according to
Proficiency and skill;
Arithmetic quickly
Followed before lunch time--
A subject most prickly.
Post lunch came lessons in history
Geography quickly followed it
Along with science, a mystery.
When we were sleepiest, teacher read
A story to hold our interest
We tried to keep from nodding our heads.
Last came music and creative art
End of the school day slowly approached,
We readied ourselves, glad to depart.
Frazzled more than dazzled by her new employer, Mrs. Fries.
This weird job she had taken was worse than her last four tries.
She could not believe they were progressively rude and unkind.
The plausibility of this possibility had never entered her mind.
The boss, an arrogant man, with a concrete crocodile smile.
Would have been surprised to know she had his number already.
His charming manner he could easily increase up and down by dial.
Name of Frederick Pomp Peaburger Junior; we called him Freddy.
He dialed up the dial, and pretended to be suave, debonair and quick.
In actuality, this moron was a Mama’s Boy, arrogant, irritating and slick.
Fries figured this pouting banana out before lunch that very first day.
He was okay seconds until his mouth and his mind got in his own way.
So, Mrs. Fries was on to another job hunt, I think this was seventy-two.
The company fill apart, because Daddy died, and junior was no glue.
The Mama’s boy’s pout got bigger and longer every single solitary day.
Mrs. Fries did not have to see it, for she was squirrelled safely away.
How can she balance herself like that?
Did she stack those or did something magical stack them?
What kind of a witch is she?
I don’t know but she sure has game.
Winteria heard them but refused to look up from her book.
She had a daily goal for herself.
She always read eleven books before lunch,
And an additional six books in the afternoon.
Her goal was to read all of the books in the library
By the time she left for the middle school.
Besides, she was busy swashbuckling another pirate.
Joji Varghese Kuncheria
Summer Vacations
I looked forward to summer holidays,
Free from school, to run away, to
My maternal home amid paddy fields,
Reachable only by boat those days.
To play on snake boats in the lagoons,
To go fishing around the back waters,
And give the catch to nanny to be fried,
And eat it all well before lunch time.
We wait for the sun to go down a little,
To be out again for a session of games,
To cool it all down the river after a while,
And to dash back home before sun set.
Reaching home before the church bells,
For the evening prayer that's long always,
We pray for the vacation never to end,
And not to go back soon to school.
Bed time is a world of fantasy tales,
With grandmama's cooked-up stories,
Each day a new one from her store,
And to sleep to the tune of her lullaby.
*******
They tumble out of cars
That are booming with sound
We teachers know they live in houses
Where they cannot think
Some as young as five
They fall asleep at their desks
Before lunch and we cannot wake them
Because their brother had video games glowing all night
So they could not sleep
Some as young as five
We teachers can barely stand the noise
As their parents pull up to pick them up
After they have had a trying day at school
Trying to adjust to silence which they do not understand
Trying to fill it with all the noise they can
And getting in trouble for it
We ask the parents what time their bed time is
The parents say seven o’clock
We do not stay at the car long
Because we cannot bear the blasting from their radios
Which they do not seem to hear
This does not bother us half as much
As them not seeing their children
Who are five and have no voice
I skated holding onto the tail of a jet stream today.
We went to Dubai, Zimbabwe Omaha and Bombay.
I got back before lunch before my mother could say
Where have you been child? In the yard you must stay!
What if chickies had boobs in the back as well as the front
Hugging would last an eternity, can imagine twice the grunts
Hard to pry peeps apart
Talk about uncontrollable farts
If I have one last wish, we'd hug six times before lunch
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