Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty's real name was Veronica and she was doing just fine,
wearing silver bangles and selling crafts and woodwork and stuff
from her shop on the corner of Cool and Funky.

Then this prince kisses her
like maybe he was running for office
cos he kept saying "baby...baby!"
despite the fact that she was 23 and curvy as a mountain road.

Well, after that she just couldn't stay awake.
She'd sway between the displays, knocking stuff over and mumbling.
The prince kept calling, 
but that just made her worse--
she curled up in the window and made the cat run the store.

Pretty soon her voice mail filled up.
"Ronnie? It's mom. Are you okay?"
She wasn't. Never had a kiss bored a woman so thoroughly.
The cat tried to help by jumping on her,
and dropping toys on her face, but nothing could stir her.

Then one day, Ronnie's friend Chloe,
the serial killer from the coffee shop next door, stopped in.
"Oh fudge," she said as she took in the conked out chica.
So she went next door and got the Succubus, 
and together they each took an arm across their shoulder
and dragged the bored babe over to Danny's. 

God the waitress took one look and put on a fresh pot.
Ronnie's cat came strolling in the open door and sat down licking its paw,
knowing that everything would be all right now.
Later, deep in conversation with the kitten Giuseppe Verdi,
he revealed what had happened.
God, who speaks Cat, heard the whole thing.

Wouldn't you know, just at that moment,
here comes the prince, flashing his pearly whites,
but he barely had time to duck before a hail of napkin dispensers came his way.
The Queen of the Vampires, in black panther form, leaped
and bowled over old Princey, then dragged him out the door with her teeth.
Chloe the serial killer stood in the front window,
smirking and waggling a sign that read,
"Danny's reserves the right to refuse service to anyone."

Anyway, I'm happy to say that the Danny's girls
were able to bring Ronnie back from the edge.
They sure are hip, ain't they?

So, Merry Christmas from God and Denise (waitresses), The Queen of the Vampires, the Succubus, Chloe, The Dark-Haired Chick, Savanna the Teenage Runaway, the kitten Giuseppe Verdi, and everyone at Danny's Coffee Shop!
_______

For Get Listed at Real Toads. I used "corner", "edge" and "sleep(ing)".

Image: Christina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil.

 
 

Euro Love Song // Extinct Gravity Baby// Sturm & Dang

any raindrop road upseT the applecaRt,
"your nose hairs look like they pick up radio stations"
yeah...
the river is full of  / mascara fish
why did granDmotHer put out the morning strudel?

the moon drips wicks waxing white when 
"give me your hand"  // "the sky crows land on my eyes"
he told me this--
"apples talk to me from the sidewalks"
are we in a spY movie?

he leaned his bicycle against the bed.
"figaro figaRo FIG/ a /ro" i said.
everyone died.
"have you ever wondered-- (where ants go in wiNteR?)
"your lips remind me of the train to Prague"

boy howdy // said the cobbleSTONE*
boy howdy
the baby crawled over the eDgE of the eaRtH
& w/ a daffodil in its hair,
(abruPt and rAndoM change of subject HERE)
i wept.

berlin in spriNg.
motorcars in the parking garage of custard sorrow.
i gave my elbows to you
"i love yOu   & etc %$#"
open the letter with your soul, whatever that means //
the taxi denied what you said
but i belieVed.
___________

 

A Progression Of Responses Upon Receiving A Love Poem From Shay

• Wow! Can I read it right now?
• Wow. Can I read it later?
• Wow. In a minute. I want to watch this commercial.
• Wow, I can't stop yawning!
• Wow. Maybe some time next week.
• Nice sentence structure.
• Wow. It has sentences.
• I read the first sentence.
• I must have lost it.
• Get lost, Shay.
• Zzzzz.

__________

a 55 for the G Man.

Ghosts In Blue Ice

The lost picnic family ends up in the Arctic.
Father should have noticed the GPS glowing a deep ominous red;
Mother should have caught the smell of brimstone.
The children should have paid attention to the cruelty they heard in the voice that said,
"Turn here. Trust me."
And alerted their elders.

Instead, they are tipped on their side on the tundra,
Fried chicken spilling, attracting polar bears.

With powerful swipes,
The bears free the family from their safety belts and torpor.
They tumble out like Cheerios,
Their mouths the round open centers.

See, children?
No cute talking penguins in sight.
See, father?
Racquetball seems such inadequate training now, doesn't it,
For war with white behemoths?
And mother?
You worried for nothing. There are no ants.

The lost picnic family should have prepared itself for real eventualities--
Devils, ice, ravenous beasts--
Instead of going soft in front of television.

Now, they are the show that no one watches,
Glowing souls too frozen to rise;
They are the club-wheeled SUV in the reserved parking space of oblivion--
They are the unseen, unremarked ghosts in blue ice.
______

for Hannah's Transforming Friday challenge. 

 

Shit Poetry Fans, Weep As One!

Jennings Mulderhorn Strophe,
father of the modern shit poem,
croaks off.

Mazdas and Fiats barrel past him
as he lies helpless and beyond saving
in the middle of La Rue Merde.

The young Strophe could scald the soul
with his grim, fiery fables--
"Cockroach Floating In A Backed-Up Sink" 
won him legions of alienated young fans,
and made him the undisputed master
of random allusion.

Lifted from the pavement, and placed,
too late, into a waiting ambulance,
Strophe is already being eulogized.

Pen & Quill laments, "Like his poems,
Strophe's death would seem to mean something--
but what?"

Indignant, heartbroken female fans throw themselves,
and roses,
at the emergency vehicle as it trolls slowly away
toward eternal fame and routine embalming.

The women carry Strophe's later, softer works
close to their little valentine hearts
like brain-damaged kittens.

Oh, the sharp grief
for the loss of the adequate word at the right time!
His publishers immediately issue a luxurious, leather bound edition,
and advertise it in the coupon sections
of Sunday newspapers across the nation.

How tiresome a world,
without Strophe's genius for 
paint-by-numbers, derivative drollery!

Little is said about Strophe's "blue period",
or his heaps of paeans to carnal love
in which
no twitch
of anything truly erotic can be detected,
thus pacifying the church, and parents,
both of which endorse him for their fragile,
malleable
children to read.

Let us remember a man of letters!
Who better to speak for Strophe, than Strophe himself!

"Perplex-ed I am, when the crumb of life is to much,
And the mountain climb-ed behind us
Shrinks puny before my flaming love as I cry,
Your the one! Adieu!"

Jennings Mulderhorn Strophe
1926-2012
bringing shit poetry
to an adoring world!
_____

my word list was: sharp, indignant, detect, tiresome, luxury, malleable, fable, perplex, grim and scald. 

 

tea

Millicent Menzies-McPhee
Invited me over for tea.

The mood was torpid, the talk was vapid;
The descent into fidgety misery was rapid.

Millicent droned on and on and on 
About her dismal daughter and stuporous son;

Neither was wedded, or even employed,
And of any interest completely devoid.

I sighed and suffered and wished I were dead,
As my mind dissolved and my poor ears bled,

Then, unable to take it, I exploded in laughter,
Took off my clothes and swung from the rafter.

"More tea?"
Inquired Ms. Menzies McPhee.

I said, "You are a tiresome, torturous bimbo!"
As the S.W.A.T. team came and rappelled in her window.

I was removed to the sanitarium post haste,
Which saved her life with not a second to waste.

And the moral is, most obviously,
If you want to have tea...

Don't have it with Millicent
Menzies-
McPhee!

_______

for Ella's photo challenge at Real Toads.