Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

XD oh goodness...these poems XD

Yes yes they are XD

'Cause he gave a poke
he was jabbed with a poker,
now hits the poke*, beat.

*'Poke' is a dialectic term for pouch or sack; sack is dialectic for 'bed' especially as regarded for sex. (Sorry, that was very obscure!)

He was willin’, she
was willin’, but after cold,
thick penicillin,

he was immune to
office flirts and full moons that
beckoned with short skirts.

M, again, RotFL! Soooo funny!

Thanks, Guy!

The monkeys are mooning me...

Thanks, Alex!

I’ve started working on what may end up as a big writing project. For years, when I was in graduate school, I kept a diary. It’s several thousand pages long. The first few volumes are written in a sort of longhand version of IPA, and the rest in a phonetic shorthand I devised.

Several years ago, I got the idea of typing it up so Mom could see from the inside what my life was like when I was in school, but I never got very far. The task became overwhelming, and the diary, which is in narrative form, is so detailed that reading it is like stepping back in time, which can be an unsettling experience.

I started keeping the diary when I decided to track down a girl who had been expelled from college, and I was pretty sure I was going to wind up dead or in jail. Unfortunately, what happened wasn’t nearly that exciting. I wound up back in graduate school.

When we were kids and went to the zoo, we used to get cigarettes from my grandfather and feed them to the monkeys. I haven’t thought of that in years.

Lol, M! :D
Al, that's how I feel about my poetry. I'm too impatient and bored with my life to just write about my day, or whatever in a diary, so I write poetry to express my feelings and beliefs.

Here comes the doctor
and the buxom nurse. Now I
must pay for my sins!

Soon now the chaplain,
the casket, the hearse, and my
slow roasting begins.

M this is again, so funny. And oddly inspirational to me this morning.



I woke in the box,
a casket of knotty pine
full of smoke and me.

I began to cough,
the sound lost to the flames' roar
then wake up again.

I open my eyes
to the quiet of darkness
painted by bright flames.

I hear someone's laugh,
as the rumble of thunder,
through my bare soles' skin.

Thanks, Guy! There’s some striking imagery in yours. I can clearly see the tormenting scene inside the coffin, the flames and smoke that are there but aren’t.

A long-ago love,
with a sigh, may ask the old
priest for direction.

He’ll kindly point, and
tell her I am buried in
the smoking section.

Sorry M and Al, but nothing but doggerel came out this time, try as I might. (I wonder if I can blame the glass of chardonnay I had last night?)

If she found the spot
she would puff her cigarette,
hike up her short skirt.

Then inhale once more
before gracefully squatting
to pee on my grave.

While I was alive
I thought I was a gals' guy.
Not so, says the grass.

Oh, the poor grass! The grass knows the truth. This is wonderfully wry. I promise to post a reply this afternoon.

The grass turned yellow
and sickly indeed in the
spot where she had peed

snidely in the smok-
ing section. Soon she had
a bladder infection

incurable, but
not the worst thing with which she
might have been accurst.

LoL! M again. I'm starting to think that the Japanese guardian spirit of the Haiku form is going to be striking us down for perverting the form. RotF!

Alex wrote: “. . . Nothing is coming to me. :/”

That never stops me, Alex!

A harvest moon shone
on the graveyard, which a drunk
stumbled through, alone,

past graves overgrown
or rotted out, the ground sunk.
With a sudden groan,

he stopped to water
the grass, but, reading the sign,
aimed for my tombstone.

"The grass could use a
little lemonade!" said the
drunkard, his pants soiled.

The priest said, "What the
hell." He unzipped himself and
joined the happy soul.

OMG! What's the matter with you guys, I say as I try to pick myself up from the floor, laughing so hard that I'm almost pissing my pants!

One errant piece of doggerel and the world comes crashing down. Too funny!

It became a fav-
orite spot for drunks and har-
lots alike to squat,

lined up to pray and
pay their dues, carefully mind-
ing their pees and queues.

M the play on words here is non-pareil! Again, RotFL! Now, what to write?


A harlot, one day,
saw fresh blood on the grave stone
seeping from two cracks.

She screamed in delight
for she knew this smoker's grave
was now stigmata

and that unlike pee
would de-stigmatize their squat
to bring Facebook fame.

She took a picture
of the miracle in stone.
So a Saint was made.

What must one learn
from such a tawdry story
of how it befell

some blackguard to burn
in everlasting glory
as a saint in hell?

Old Scratch stamped his hoof,
trying every means to scorch
what protected me.

Pickled ninety proof,
I became a human torch,
blazing happily.

M, again, just an amazing play on words here. It's late - 1:10am here, and so am heading for bed. Will have to think about how to respond to this.

Pickled ninety proof,
I became a human torch,
blazing happily.

Seriously, how can this be followed? LoL.

Thanks, Guy! This is the thread I enjoy the most. It might be fun to vary the metrics occasionally.

Alex and Guy, you’re far too nice!

This is off the subject, but here are the titles of the Harry Potter books in French (published by Gallimard):

Harry Potter a l’Ecole des Sorciers
Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets
Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d’Azkaban
Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu
Harry Potter et le Prince de Sang-Mele
Harry Potter et l’Ordre du Phenix
Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort

Sigh. I've decided that this is about the best I can do, for now. It is heavier than I'd like, especially following your brilliance M. But, here it is:


Imagine that fired spirit
blazing like a torch —
it sparks imagination.

Is Scratch to fear scotch?
The smell of a burning corpse
means conflagration

not a sanctification!
Rye is an evil
that is supposed to wreck lives.

This transformation
can only turn the good vile
and lose us our selves.

Bravo, Guy! Your verses have an engaging, philosophical depth to them.


Though many erring
souls are saved, the sorry truth
of it all is this:

the road to perdi-
tion is paved with bar maids and
smiling waitresses,

who wreck straitlaced men’s
upright lives--these shy Lynelles
and sighing Sherries;

these stacked, affection-
starved housewives; long-lashed, long-waist-
ed secretaries.

Thanks, Alex!

M wrote: "Bravo, Guy! Your verses have an engaging, philosophical depth to them.
..."
Yes, M, but are they actually enjoyable when read?! That I'm not so sure about. But, egads, M, you set the bar high!

Al, it would seem that secretaries hold the key to universal power!

I'll see what I can come up with this time.

Oh! You didn't comment on my having played perversely with the metrics.

The ultimately sexy woman, to me, is one who wears a herringbone suit from Talbot’s and sits at a desk in a corporate office. Either that or a librarian.

Guy, I see now that you’ve slyly switched it around to an alternating 7/5/7, 5/7/5. You did such a smooth job of it, I didn’t notice that when I read it!

M, that you didn't notice what I did I take as a great compliment. :-D TY.

Well, here goes nothing! (And I love this thread, too.)


The experienced
steno had a pad that breached
stiff execs' shyness.

She gave a very stiff drink,
that helped them to think
they'd be blessed with her largesse.

Is that perdition?
They'd swear it was salvation,
and so generous.

They were free in the moment
found bliss sans torment
a hangover, serious.

I feel right at home with this one! Hmm. How to follow it.


I’m married to a
Vogue model. My children dress
in Calvin Klein. In

my desk drawer’s a
scotch bottle one girl knows of
and the stress that’s mine:

I watch her shoulders,
her deft hands that wipe up when
lunches are hectic,

that pull folders, that
type (as fast as she’s able)
on her Selectric.

No problem, Al. Just remember, if you go the secretary librarian path, its all in the fashion!

I hope the season isn't wearing you down. Keep in mind that Santa isn't really real, and so you don't have to worry about him doing a B&E in the middle of the night.

M, again you've left me a tough act to follow.

Her inclination
is to finger the models
who want to go rogue.

Single malt selections
hasten warm fondles
and ease from each foot its brogue.

Her strong deft fingers
rub from over-stressed shoulders
their weight of fashion.

Over eyelids she lingers
her lip that smoulders
and trembles with cool passion.

There are a lot of great lines in this one, Guy. It’s lean and descriptive, and the rhyme and alternating stanza forms are done with sprezzatura! Ah, the burden of fashion. The last stanza reminds me of this one from Wilde’s “Impression du Matin”:

But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps’ flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.

I’m trying to imagine Alex as a secretary and doing the routine, mind-numbing, piddling-detail-oriented tasks usually involved in a job like that. I think her Facebook posts would be mostly *headdesk*.

Though the classifieds
were few, Alex had landed
a job to suit her,

and, sharply dressed in
electric blue, typed memos
on a computer

in a suite with rich
decor, lavish with all the
corporate glories,

her boss, now standing
in the door, a mad doctor
from her short stories!

She yawned, glanced up, then
exclaimed, “Gah!” His eyes bright, he
smirked, “Mwahahaha . . .”

I love it too, M! :D

Thank you! I’m glad you like it. I’m behind on the threads, but I’m going to try to catch up today. I see that the polls have gone up.

Excellent, Alex! Mad doctors can show up in the most unexpected places . . .

LoL Al! And an excellent play off of M's excellent set! And really, are the Haiku gods laughing with us or cursing us forever?! So funny!

I’m not sure why, but I have an uneasy feeling that--in spirit, at least--these don’t really qualify as haiku.

M I enjoyed the Wilde stanza you quoted. He could write a good line or two, could Wilde.

Still thinking about yours, Al. Still laughing!

Frank’s smile told her work
would be rough. His glinty eyes
wandered from the girl.

He glanced down at his
pee-soaked cuff, startled, and shrieked,
“It’s that #@$% squirrel!”

Curses came fast and
thick. Alex’s printer spewed mem-
os from the platen.

The squirrel dodged a kick.
“Greetings,” he flicked his tail, “from
General Patton!”

There came a sudden
boom, like thunder, and plaster
fell from the ceiling.

Surveying the room,
Al dove under her desk. Frank
Putnam went reeling.

Then came a crash, and
from the mess: “I fight evil,
all who bamboozle!”

There, in super he-
ro dress, stood none other than
Miss Hanzle Woozle.

XD epic, M :)

Thanks, Kat! I hope you had a nice Christmas.

M, this is pure fun! Now, what to write? LoL.

It was fun to write, Guy! It occurred to me suddenly as an obvious thing, as I was writing, to drop Hannah in as a hero. She seems like a decisive person who knows what she knows. I wonder if most superheroes are J’s, antiheroes P’s?

M what an interesting idea. Jung explores this kind of idea indirectly in Psychological Types. Where this typology assignment gets convoluted is the strong empirical evidence that birth order plays a significant role in social roles.

I'm working on Rose's HBH prompt — it has become a challenging write for me right now! And am working on my anti-economics course, so not sure when I will squeeze time to extend your great haiku chain.

Not to worry. I think Alex will be back in a few days. She always seemed to like Squirrel, from the Popcorn Served thread. What she’ll think about a Marvel Comics version of Miss Hanzle Woozle may be a different matter. Woozle is liable to stomp Frank Putnam flat.

Good luck with your anti-economics course. I’ll bet that’s a blast (for the students, at least)!