Once was a lady named Patsy
With wooden leg and eye glassy
She looks both ways
Glassy eye just stays
Often poots for she is quite gassy
Once was a pretty lady called Daisy
Rumored eccentric and quite lazy
She shaved her head
But not her legs
To defeat summer heat quite crazy
in response to contest prompt: In 25 words or fewer describe how difficult it is to write a response/poem in 25 words or fewer.
…it’s like stuffing a circus into a teacup
From the curvings of forgotten history, a device was born,
Forged with the wisdom of ages, and secrets yet unworn.
It held a mirror that measured beauty beyond the eye,
And painted the perfect version of a mortal passing by.
It studied every face, every smile, every graceful line,
Suggested robes of wonder and designs almost divine.
When tested upon the world, its numbers never fell,
Humanity celebrated the machine that knew beauty so well.
But while it travelled home, a soul ran past its sight,
A fleeting glimpse of her, gone within a moment's flight.
The machine trembled softly, its calculations turned strange,
Its perfect laws shattered under a beauty it couldn't arrange.
The mirror cracked into silence, the suggestions lost their flame,
No cloth, no jewel, no colour could ever define her name.
The device, defeated by something beyond its creation,
Displayed a final message: a beautiful revelation.
"The beauty you seek cannot be captured, measured, or chained,
It rises beyond clouds where imagination has remained.
It is not found in mirrors, nor in what eyes can see,
For true beauty is the universe escaping its own decree."
Refresher from the ‘Requirements’ sign,
you’re way too tall to write this line.
I spread layers of laughter in a long baking pan,
with a rhythm that twists the smoky scent I can scan.
Five lines per slice, I assemble carefully quick,
make this dish pulsate and glint like a limerick.
First sheet, a town and a person, famed or unfamed,
second, an odd trait that need not be tamed.
The rhyme goes A-A, then loosens its tight grip,
repeats at the last layer with a tag line flip.
Short lines on top, longer anapest pasta below,
the meter stumbles slightly, then steals the show.
B-B ricotta and spinach creep in the middle on the sly
with simmering mozzarella that doesn’t overflow dry.
I season the dish with nonsense spice, lively and loud,
a crispy curl at the base makes the last layer proud.
With light ragu sauce I garnish the humorous trait,
just with the perfect comical timing I bake it great.
The final ingredient is hilarity with melodramatic bend,
with a twist at the end to be served with fun to a friend.
Topped off with a punch line parmesan. that is hot,
I cook the best meal, limerick lasagna, in poetry pot.
"He is different" --
She said after their first date,
Her clown makeup on.
The man in the elevator was all a flush
A lady just told him pull your zipper up
He hadn’t noticed his fly was open wide
For looking at a woman he thought a DD breast size
He turned facing the rear to quickly zip it up
But then unluckily dear his Willy got stuck
He let out a scream and then passed gas
The people weren’t mean but all had to laugh
My brain is full of fuzz
With Footle rhyming buzz
Much harder than it looks
This is one for the books
("Rainbow Body" detail, 2018, original encaustic)
Today I noticed on a website I use for book reviews
All eight of my poetry books
Suddenly have a fresh new one star review.
Sadly though there is no content to these reviews
Nothing to sink my teeth into and learn from
Just a single star
Which simply means, “I hate it.”
But these are the first reviews or ratings
I have ever received in ten years now
Of publishing poems
So I will take it
Mostly because I have no choice.
It is a free world after all
And so if we engage with it
We shouldn’t be surprised
When it engages back.
The beauty of getting only one star reviews
Of course is it doesn’t get my hopes up
Hopes of becoming rich and famous
Influential and significant
Because I know, especially now,
None of that would be true.
(9/15/25)
Letters that are sound enhancing
and trippingly through my words go dancing ~
that’s the language that I seek
to get all my verse to speak,
though mostly ~ tongue-in-cheek.
Writer's Block, just blocked my thoughts again!
Scratched my scratchy head, with Itchy Pen.
But, no cure can cure a Writer's Rash!
Uninspired, sired "Inspiration Crash!"
Do©to® $©®@t©h M@$t€®
Eating them won’t make you smarter
Flaying them, frying them won’t make you high
Scraping them off the pavement
Certainly, won’t make you fly
Peeling them off some stickers
May certainly make you laugh and cry
At the same time like me
Synchronicity
There’re always two sides to every coin
Just like there are two halves for every brain
The left and the right may just hold a private conversation
Inside the skull, my numbskull sculling time
Scrolling through my mind
Perhaps, this is the time
I reach out to another
Other person with some brains
Who believes like me and who's not insane:
For some unknown reason
Eating poetrysoup
Really satisfies my brains
wee've awl maid miss takes
sum foke think their perfect butt
cann knot sea era’s!
eye fink aye cann right
butt eye’ll admit sum era’s
sum thymes doo app pier
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