dream time

A couple nights ago, it seems,
I was mean to my wife in her dreams.
This isn't something to be poo-pooed
since it's a reality she's liminally subdooed.
Of course I'm glad she still dreams about me,
but not if those dreams lead her to doubt me.
So maybe, before I take a nap and try to work my psychic powers,
I'll change the sheets and give her a pillowcase with flowers.

behind again

The rhyming is making the posts late.
A quick update:
Tomorrow Madge and I skate,
and the doctor attempts to vaccinate
Coco. Great.

Madge Monday

Reading to her is nice. Lately she wants to read in our bed and she snuggles close. Aah.
And Twilight is getting more interesting, which is helpful, too. Though it is a difficult read-aloud for me because the narrator is female and I don't think I have an appropriately silky Edward voice. Oh, well. And then, of course, there are the very cute giggles emanating from Madge when there are awkward boy-girl interactions.
Also:

At one point Bella feels bad
for her fumbling lunk of a dad.
The poor guy seems to worry
and stay up too late
whether she's out in a hurry
or without any date.
It seems that a teen's dad has no way to win
'cuz it's bad when she's out
but worse when she's in.

An attempt

I'll pick a line from a book and weave it into something. The only problem is to make the line random or at least random-ish. I'll open the book (Andrew Marvell, Complete Poems) and point.
We'll see...
(Dramatic, isn't it? This is real-time stuff.)
... "And the green grass, and their known mangers hate,"
Pretty good so far, especially because I'm not looking at the context, as much as I'd like to because it's not making too much sense.
Here goes:

Two sheep, let's call them Thelma and Louise,
grow increasingly difficult to please.
They longingly gaze past the garden gate,
And the green grass, and their known mangers hate.
But soon, for the first time since they were born,
they wander out, bravely to a new morn
and get shorn.

A country song of sorts

Ambidextrous

They said that she is one of a kind.
That dancer's sure to blow my mind.
Though a gentleman's club, it was unrefined.
And I sat right up front to see her left behind.

At first we merely wined and dined.
Then I proposed a legal bind.
It was really too much of a grind.
To sit right up front to see her left behind.

We'd be right together, not left alone.
I'd be right over for her left overs.
I'd be right in not to be left out.
Right on!
We'd pick it up where we left off.

Without much thought she just declined.
To merely watch I was resigned
Then I saw her fooled by one of her kind.
And I sat right up front to see her left behind.

lazy post

But, hey, rewarding for you.
This is - so far - my favorite Martin and Lewis sketch ever.
Stick with it and see if you don't laugh out loud, even if you're alone.

Coco Tuesday

Eager Auntie

(Based, unfortunately, on a true story)
(But exaggerated for effect, so don't worry)

Relatives, be on your guard,
the learning process can be hard.

Playground antics need good pacing.
If you're too frenetic
you won't be energetic
for Batman and Monster and Racing.

And you'll lie in a hastily self-made bed
with bruised leg, twisted neck, and bumped head.

Madge Monday

Oooh, I was slacking last week. Sorry. Tired.
This week the kids have vacation, which is just a lame way of saying it might not be better on my end, but we'll see.
But for Madge today, I don't know yet. How about:

-Mmmmm, Edward.
-Oooooh, Bella.

Twilight is a book I didn't want to read,
no matter how much my girl would plead.
And yet she got me, oh, she's devious (and I'm proud).
She tricked me by making it our read-aloud.

I keep telling her it's not by choice
(when I read how
his looks are perfect
his voice is musical
his eyes are flashing)
that there's a hint of eye-rolling in my voice.

And sometimes she can hear the chair wriggle
as I am suppressing a giggle.

Coco Tuesday

A day late, granted, but I'm now busier on Tuesday nights, so that's how it'll be, I guess.
Today, Wednesday, was the 100th day of school.

They've been in school 100 days.
Today they count 100 ways.
By ones, by twos, by fives, by tens;
all the way up
and back again.

Their counting's loud and energetic.
For one the counting was emetic.

Perhaps for him it did recall
the beers that once were on the wall
and through some quite precocious thinking
he projectiled ahead
to nights of drinking.

Madge Monday

Dear Cast and Crew of Whatever Was Filming At Our Playground

I don't know what to say.
I apologize.
I didn't realize
- though it made my daughter's day -
that I was walking through your shot.

Two young moms I did pass on my way.
Boy, was I suprised
when I realized
- as I politely wished them good day -
that they were real but their babies were not.

Did I ruin your teleplay?
Well, as you revise
and maybe curse my eyes
as you cut me in your editing bay,
well, anyway
Please send me whatever you got.

My new baby

I was encouraged to adopt a word at www.savethewords.org .
You might want to do the same, I don't know. I got a certificate in my inbox and now I have a word to cherish and nurture. But be warned, you don't get a shiny new word that's all cute and cuddly, you get an aging, retired word. It's more like a make-a-wish foundation thing for words on their way out.
Luckily I got one with a bit of fighting spirit left in it, if only in a metaphorical application. I think we can do this.
My new old word, which I'd like to call George but can't, is: yelve. It looks like a verb, but don't say that to its face. It's a noun and has always been. It's a dung-fork. How exactly it is different from a pitch-fork I'm not sure and it won't tell me.

When someone spreads opinions he or she ought to shelve,
in other words bullshit enough for twelve,
you say, "Hang on, let me get my yelve."

Educational Typo

Sometimes, when I'm trying to find rhymes, I start typing words that might or might not work, and I let WordPerfect be the arbiter. I was trying to see if it would accept "chinny" as a word - we all know what it means, after all: it's the diminutive of chin, just as skinny is the diminutive of skin. Wait.
Anyway, my finger neglected to depress the "C" and I typed hinny. But it didn't get a red underline, so I looked it up.
Apparently, it's the other thing you can get when you cross a horse with a donkey.

If you really want to know, here is the rule:
Female horse, male donkey, that's a mule.
When a female donkey makes a male horse whinny,
the end result of that tryst is a hinny.
I read on, I'm no fool,
I know you, too, are puerile.
Just one - the entry "mule" -
includes the fateful: sterile.

(Hinny also doesn't seem to have the connotation of being stubborn. Coincidence?)

Coco Tuesday

It's so easy to fall behind when the kids stay home.

As we stay home all day,
listless, uninspired,
I keep the meds away.
It only makes them wired.

I've kept their crazy moods at bay,
I brought them lunches on a tray,
I bring DS games, let them play,
while, reading, on the couch I lay.
Hey,
("lie" doesn't rhyme, what can I say?)
Why am I so tired?

Great Stuff

What, no poem? No, probably not.
A wonderful link is all I have.

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/i-lego-ny/?em

Graham Greene would be proud

Maybe. Anyway, this is a true story, as you can verify by searching for the names or places I mention.

An incarcerated middle-aged spy,
Harold James ("Jim") Nicholson,
was aided by a younger guy,
Nathaniel, his trusting un-fickle son.
Jim was jailed, so he had pre-percussions
of selling state secrets to Russians.
But though the bloke was stuck in jail
he had more secrets for sale.
So he said to his son,
"Let's sell every one."
And so poor young Nathaniel
was sent out like a Spaniel.
The part of the tale that made my day:
they met at a Cypriot T.G.I. Friday.

Okay, so it's lacking a struggle with Catholicism and an inability to form human attachments, but I still think Greene might have appreciated the mundaneness and seeming anachronism of the whole thing.

Also, if I were a limerick writer, I'd be sweating over the lovely initial line:
At a TGI Friday in Cyprus.

But luckily it's Monday, so I'm not one.

Madge Monday

Not the most thrilling day. Coco was sick with a fever, Madge was sick without one, so I figured I'd make my life easier and just keep both at home.

Only a seasoned deceiver
will take time to make a fake fever.
Since I like to believe what I'm told,
she stayed home with merely a cold.