her heart’s leftover snowdrifts
all melted by May
~ no need for incantations
Inner self craves quality time.
Protect your golden opportunities at all cost.
Be gentle and pace yourself.
Wordku: 5-7-5 words
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
I said I ain't been on no bike
He said, 'Well, there it is.'
Premature baldness and popcorn muscles
I told him I got a B in History
He said, 'What a life you're gonna have.'
This is what I'm paying for
Man hugs and comic sans garage dweller
As I lay in bed on my side
With the book open next to my eyeball
Country music in one ear
Chewing three pieces of gum simultaneously
Offering extra strong mints to friends
I am inside a wooden nesting doll
The windscreen is frozen over
I am a dog looking out the driver's window
A constant expression of weariness
He wants to see me again in a month
He asks for a mint as I leave
I ask reception for a shovel to dig to
Disappointment Island
Do they know I invented the world? I wonder as I stare at them
We are all in this waiting room
They probably think I am the same
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I am an alien, not from a planet, but from middle earth.
A little girl about seven years old coughs.
I give her my mind-meld look.
Her cognition will be disintegrating in a few minutes
Does anyone notice?
Heck no. I am in this together with only one other, my muse.
Trixie asked, “why did you do that?”
I hate her sometimes too
I hate all of these people
And I hate my medications
They take away my mania
I will lie to the doctor
Unless he has a truth ray
They say laughter is the best medicine
to keep away the ills
So from now on I decided to write only lines
which put away the pills
Donning the role of a courtroom jester
My grey wired cells I began to pester
As I began to brew my soup on the site
My dark world broke with crystal light
I giggled as the ink began its play
Dancing words so happy and gay
He is the man that is everywhere, yet nowhere.
He is the man that is in all of time and space.
The man filled with sadness, guilt, and anger.
The man filled with happiness, love, and understanding.
He is the smartest and the dumbest.
He is protection, he is destruction.
He is loved and he is hated.
He is excitement and adventure.
He is the man you feel safe with, even if you’re dying.
He is the man of a thousand faces.
He is the mad man with a blue box.
And, worst of all, he is the man on the television screen, unreachable.
A trip to the doctor, these days,
Is an ordeal in so many ways
Glued to their computers, it seems,
They never look at your seams.
Electronic gadgets fill the room
No personal talk unless it’s doom,
They’re always in such a rush
No time for issues to discuss.
Next appointment automatically generated
But not to see the doctor venerated,
You’ll be handed off to a nurse prac
That is, unless you don’t go back!
Written December 11, 2022
my feet smell
my nose runs
my heart breaks
my tongue is tied
my liver is chopped
my brain is cramped
my spare rib is missing
my throat harbors a frog
my sweet tooth is craving
my eye teeth need glasses
my funny bone isn’t laughing
my athlete’s foot lost the race
my sense of humor is twisted
my heel ran back to Achilles
my ear drum lost its rhythm
my pinky broke its promise
my mouth has a foot in it
my toes are hammered
my fingers are crossed
my lips are sealed
my fever broke
my breath is short
I’m long in the tooth
I can’t see eye to eye
the bridge of my nose is narrow
Call the Doctor!
Clement Moloch is a despicable doctor.
This physician specializes in death and torture.
For any government, he is there to be hired.
A professional assassin who has retired
is called upon to catch the evil perpetrator.
All over the world, Moloch has been a murderer.
Holland the assassin goes to Central America,
where the doctor was last seen in Guatemala.
There, Holland employs uncanny perfection
in taking out each of the doctor's protection.
Want to see how the rest of the movie will go?
All you have to do is watch the video.
Based on the 1984 film "The Evil That Men Do".
There's nothing we can do, the doctor said!
It was December, nineteen-seventy.
At once, those words exploded in my head
and pierced my heart- which broke in agony.
How could this be- she's much too young to die
at fifty-four, and I, just thirty-two?
Convulsed in tears, I begged the question, why-
please, doctor, tell me, please- this is not true!
To lymph nodes, bones- the killer-cancer crept-
too late for surgery or chemo now.
The doctor's sad, dark eyes said, please accept
this news I give- which we can't disavow.
She passed away late summer, the next year;
those long nine months- such painful reveries.
Though, forty-nine years now- I still hold dear
my loved, missed Mom- in dusty memories.
July 31, 2020
Contest: Dusty Old Memories
Sponsor: Constance La France
LORD Jesus, while on earth, was fully human - shelving His divinity by submitting His will to the Father's - without "discarding" His full deity. So on earth Jesus was born out of womb via birth canal, and probably got s slap on His back to gulp the first air outside Mary's womb. (LORD, help me with these next few lines, amen)
1. Whose sin did Jesus pay for with the first SLAP on the back He got from the attending "midwife or medical expert" in the day? Maybe the person who helped with the delivery, LOL!
2. What would the Disciples have said whenever Jesus would sneeze or FART - or pass gas?
BLESS US, LORD, or simply "More, LORD!"
(Jesus in His Eternity and Omniscience knew He died for my sins and words including these very human considerations and cogitations about Our LORD's humanity and KOINONIA, or fellowshipping, with the closest Disciples.
Jim's hemorrhoids were hurting him so
He then went to a doctor named Flo
With her fingers she probed
while old Jim was unrobed
Then Jim yelled out, "Doc, I have to go"
It was then he started passing gass
Right in the doctor's face, that poor lass!
soon after Flo passed out
And it left not a doubt
That old Jim was a pain in the a**
4-19-2020
Limerick Contest
Sponsor: Janice Canerdy
Doc said put on this hospital gown
Then remove your clothes from the waist down
My bare tootsies she clocks
As I’d removed my socks
No need for that, she said with a frown!
True story today - get my biopsy results in a month - got my fingers crossed ... wish I could have kept my legs crossed lol
3/19/19
Let’s get one thing straight, dear
Let’s give the Devil his due
The clouds are conspired against us
The Revolutionaries hate us, too
There’s no room at the foot of the mountain
Only the sordid survive
Youth only drowns in a fountain
Only wasted memories thrive
Did you ever hear the one about
The doctor with no patience
Don’t leave me locked here in this lab
With my hideous creations
You pay the price for your concealment
So hidebound and subdued
If I knew where childhood’s zeal went,
I’d be in a better mood
But now the autopsy is finished
No hope for the organs at all
And no trace of the heart’s existence
But for the splatter on the wall
Did you ever hear the one about
There under the sweltering lights
Time is a play of dimension
I know you’re up to your arms in gore
But I was hoping for an extension
I was hoping for a life-extension.
The doctor and the poet became friends late in life--
as old men they looked over the past in similar ways,
wishing their youth had never ended, their work continued,
their lives once again resplendent and filled with promise
as the one healed the body and the other the soul....
But Time is always the master of Life till Death frees both,
and so the doctor sent his patients away and the poet
lost his words, the words he tried to heal with, words
that sang and danced and played like carefree children....
The poet told his friend, the doctor, how he found his soul
whilst in the blackest part of hell, utterly alone, in pain
far beyond any pain the doctor ever treated, a soul
he had forgotten and found when he threw his life away.
The doctor listened to his friend, the poet, but could not,
or perhaps just would not believe-- he just could not see
existence beyond mortality, nor purpose beyond chance.
The doctor was so wise as to be foolish, thought the poet,
and I, so foolish as to be wise? he wondered to himself...
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