She was a Jew in Germany, when that became a crime
Hitler in power, but she left in time.
She thought back to friends she had
Incredulous laugh, then she looked sad.
She said all nations have a style
Good points, bad points, a kind of profile.
Those are the cards that nature dealt
This was genuinely the way she felt.
She gave her heart to a tall dark guy
He owned a department store, but money couldn't buy
Because on the Sabbath it had to be open
Her parents forbade any kind of eloping.
So she married my Opa, though she had doubt
The photo shows regret, but it did work out.
My other Grandma fell in love too
But he'd once divorced, so that was nixed too.
Odd to be descended from two second choices
And two women who didn't raise their voices.
Strange how people's lives are steered
One outcome was me, and I was weird.
A black sheep, or a wave of trouble
Don't come into my radius, into my bubble.
Their other descendants were much less odd.
So to the deity, a thankful nod.
your great-grandmother’s toothache was easily fixed
with lovely cocaine tooth drops, which now are probably nixed.
a predecessor to Novocain, a practice back in the day
many children had to have it, it took pain away
Marvelously fast-acting cocaine tooth drops cost a whole fifteen cents
You could get them over the counter sold by druggist McVents
It might sound odd now, but it was a common practice in 1818.
And your gums felt great afterwards, truly tingly and clean.
FLYING SQUIRREL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Seth the squirrel was tired of leaping from tree to tree.
“My commute’s horrible! Got ta be a better way for me.”
Scampered to the toy store, bought toy bike from pal, Mike
Attached some balsa wood using Gorilla Glue. Wah la! He was birdlike.
Next day from hustle and bustle of commuter traffic, he happily did flee.
Unbeknownst to Seth, flying squirrels in open airspace don’t mix,
Ostracized Seth was—not a member of the flyer’s club, a squirrelish clique.
One day was almost hit by specially designed spy drones
‘twas Putin’s, for their black flags bore a skull and crossbones.
Fearing for his life, Seth sold his plane-bike on eBay, his flying days nixed.
Of the cold night, am I,
Observing with each eye.
Overhead, I explore.
Ominously, I soar
Over the forest floor.
Oops, what nixed Mousie's life?
Only my talon's knife.
‘Star’ Caitlin Clark
Media-created Monster
Pity her, almost
She’s white, so she’s ‘right’
'Next coming' of Larry Bird
What a ruse! - Pure hype
Reality-humbled
Fresh-faced Caitlin’s no match
for tough pro players
Scored nine points tonight...
Her team lost by thirty-six
~ Star-shine was nixed
how will we find each other if we get lost? a sister asked the other two.
Let’s fashion some crazy hats, suggested the oldest, Emily Ann Sue.
They argued for a while, one wanted T-rex, which was nixed right away.
They finally settled on scrambled eggs and wore them last Tuesday.
One choice and circumstance
set us apart
Forever divergent
forever two hearts
One lasting reminder
of what can’t be fixed
The eggshells lay scattered
the pieces all nixed
In less than an instant
the future was charred
Most scarlet of letters
forgiveness stays barred
And now to requestion
the maybe’s and why’s
The Stone of Excalibur
— an easier try
(Dreamsleep: February, 2024)
We just pampered him a bit
No more than other parents do
Of course he has never held a job
And he is the ripe young age of forty-two
When he wants a sandwich from a block away
He picks up the phone and asks us to bring it his way
Sure, it is an hour and a half drive each direction,
But then we get to give our baby boy a little inspection
We see how well he is doing, and fix things that need fixed.
We would take him out for pizza, but our ideas are always nixed.
He is a teensy bit spoiled, but my ex-wife and I like it that way.
His lack of initiative means he will forever our baby stay.
I had to tell all of my friends
We ran over to look, and we were in awe
Someone had beat me in making a tire tree
It had been my dream
Now here it was, all done up,
Someone else had the same dream
The difference is, they probably did not live at home
where my parents nixed the idea of me bringing home a bunch of tires
they thwarted my artistic efforts
you could make a cotton ball tree, my friend suggested
Has she met my mother?
Our house looks like Best Homes and Garden magazine
Like no one has ever coughed or farted in it.
My mother never let me have paints.
The pols say: ‘A soda tax is OK.’
Cynical voters nix them anyway ~
For they rightly suspect
Pols just want to collect ~
Behind it all, a revenue grab preys
____________________________________
Between 2012 and 2019 'sugary drink' taxes
of 1 -2 cents an ounce on Coca Cola and such
were nixed or repealed by the electorate in
NYC, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
I used to have a friend so dear,
We laughed and talked, without any fear.
But now she's changed, so different from before,
I'm left wondering what happened, what for?
I try to reach out, to bridge the gap,
But she keeps her distance, and I feel trapped.
She says it's for my sake, but I'm not so sure,
Is it something I did, that made her unsure?
I miss her smile, her cheerful laugh,
But now she's quiet, it's like walking on glass.
Maybe she's hurt by something I've said or done,
But I don't know what, I wish I could just run.
I can't force her to stay, or turn her back on me,
But I'm uncomfortable with this change, can't she see?
She's confused, she says, but she's getting me mixed,
I don't know if we're losing each other, or just getting nixed.
I hope one day we can talk and make it right,
And bring back the friendship that shone so bright.
But until then, I'll keep trying to understand,
Why people change without warning, and slip through our hands.
Santa, last year we were in a tussle
Stole an icy kiss, amidst the hustle
Bad boy, it’s fisty cuffs
Viagra in your cream puffs
This year boop-dee-doop meet me in Brussels
by I Am Anaya
Santa's cutie, we got in a tussle last year
When I stole an icicle kiss as I drew near
Hollywood's Harvey, you fixed
When his advances you nixed
So, I'll see you in Brussels, so get over here!
by Robert Gorelick
When Santa Clause went in for the tussle
He got himself into lots of trouble
His cold icy lips
To her lips did stick
And the iced cold had froze every muscle
by Belle Bellevue
New York State voters just voted down
Same-day Voter Registration
leaving New York less progressive than
nineteen other states in our fair nation *
Universal Vote-by-Mail was also nixed
putting New York in a real pickle of a fix
Alas, now her ballot-box rules are not as up-to-date
as woke states like California, numbering eight **
Of course, no one dares say a peep about
the performance of P.C. Governor Kathy Hochul ***
She seems not to have taken the pulse
of her state's deplorable local yokels
_______________________________________________
*Source: Ballotpedia.org
**Source: thinkcivics.com
***Pronounced 'Hokle'
She was such a tomboy, her mother decided to make her more girly.
She dressed her in frilly pink and stuck bows in her hair.
She wanted to put fake nails on her, but Daddy nixed that.
She is fine, he told her. Let her be the way she is.
The more Daddy took her side, the closer she came to daddy.
When she came out in the ninth grade, she did not tell her mother.
She and her mother were distant, aloof and often estranged.
Mother was busy teaching her four-year-old boy to shoot guns.
He had no interest in them at all; he was a kind sensitive soul.
Hunting and killing were never going to be something he would do.
The mother spent her life wondering why her children never visited.
They were at her ex-husband’s house every weekend though.
After she left the house for realities unknown,
the abandoned rooms hollowed out
small discrete spaces for her to rest within
should she ever return.
Buses still stopped next door,
sparrows hopped over the stalks of phantom roses,
Eventually, Girl Guides selling cookies nixed
her address off their clipboards.
The mail began to forward itself to nowhere.
The house tidied up the way den denizens do.
sifting through mites and squamous dust
for signs of her in-dwelling mind.
It found non-intrinsic parts of her
which it glued to the stale air as her likeness,
yet this remembered facsimile
kept dissolving in puddles of moonlight.
The house began to whisper to passersby’s.
It called to migrant cats, homeless mice,
indigenous tribes of Carpenter bees.
A face on a board was planted in the yard,
prospective buyers entered and left,
none moved in.
The previous owner came back for a while,
She occupied the new spaces
pleased with the improvements.
Then she left the house
riding upon a starlit stairlift,
her ghost moving upwards to a safer premise
where grab bars and access ramps
were reimagined
in a newly renovated sky.
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