• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Flash Fiction
  • Haiku
  • Light Verse
  • Other Poetry
  • Cooking, Books, etc.
  • More
    • Home
    • About
    • Contact
    • Flash Fiction
    • Haiku
    • Light Verse
    • Other Poetry
    • Cooking, Books, etc.
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Flash Fiction
  • Haiku
  • Light Verse
  • Other Poetry
  • Cooking, Books, etc.

Denise Shelton Writes

Denise Shelton WritesDenise Shelton WritesDenise Shelton Writes

Light Verse

It rhymes and it won't bum you out

Down on the pharm

London 1979: An American's Semester Abroad

Down on the pharm

image78

 Two plastic cases
One is for morning
One is for later each night
Seven in each for each day of the week, that’s
Fourteen compartments, alright?

Six pills upon rising
Three pills before bed
Nine chances to aid what is ailing
One woman who wonders
One day at a time if the system’s succeeding or failing

One is a multi, a vitamin pill, an obvious choice so I make it

Two combat calcium’s flight from my bones: old, white, and female can’t shake it

Two are because my stomach has strayed into my gullet, don’t ask

Two are for sadness, although I suspect they’re really not up to the task

One is B-12, it builds up the blood, the cells, and the old DNA

One is the latest, supposed to prevent my marbles from rolling away

Sixty-three pills I take every day,
I hate every one, I’ll admit it,
But it brightens the notion that someday I’ll die,
Because then I can finally quit it.

Breakfast

London 1979: An American's Semester Abroad

Down on the pharm

image79

 It’s easy to eat breakfast

Put food into your mouth
It’s flapjacks in the north woods
and cornbread in the south
It’s kippers in the UK
Croissants in gay “Paree”
It’s Pop-Tarts almost anywhere
Wheatgrass in the OC

Wherever we awaken
Our noses sniff for bacon
And coffee perk, perk, perking, in the pot
For some, it’s poi or soy, plantain
Oatmeal with the works or plain
Sugar, lemon, honey, milk
Cocoa, tea, or soy-based Silk

It doesn’t matter who we are, the language that we speak
As soon as we awaken, it’s food our bodies seek

If we’ve been true and we’ve been good

If we’ve done all we could or should

Or if our lives are very sad

And so, we spend to not feel bad

None can refuse the urge to feed

It is a basic human need

So please excuse, those who refuse

To carry shame, accept the blame

For wanting food, they didn’t earn

It’s not a choice (which soon you’d learn)
If ever you should you find yourself

With nothing on the kitchen shelf

London 1979: An American's Semester Abroad

London 1979: An American's Semester Abroad

London 1979: An American's Semester Abroad

image80

 Intelligence with eloquence


Has dropped her knickers here


Everyone is wearing sadomasochist

this year


Be a buddy, be a pal


Take a punk to tea


Smile in the mirror mornings


“Jim Jones can’t catch me!”


We don’t care if we are free


Me just cares about me, me, me


Buy it, charge it, carry it out


We’ve got the card that carries clout


As long as daddy pays the bills


So, I can get my little thrills


Drink my Harvey


Bang the wall


Care I if I’m nowhere at all?

ODE to mt. Washmore

my sainted irish grammy

London 1979: An American's Semester Abroad

image81

 I don’t have a lawn
For they always need mowing
I don’t have a garden
They always need hoeing

My iron is idle
My vacuum is mute
I don’t wash the car
And I don’t give a hoot

I’ve only one kid
I can barely keep fed
I nap all the time now
So why make the bed?

The cooking I’ll live with
It comes with the eating
The dishes I’ll do without taking a beating

Why then, oh why, am I still inundated
With work that keeps piling up unabated?

It’s laundry that stalks me
Both daytime and night
With a pile of t-shirts, towels, colored and white
Underwear, sweatpants,
Flannels and jeans,
Folded and stacked on the dryer it leans,
It grows ever higher until the vibration
Impacts the stack and provokes inundation
Of clothing and hassle
For now, I’m not sure
Which ones are vile, which clean-scented pure
Clothing that’s strewn on the not-so-clean floor

Lather, rinse, repeat

my sainted irish grammy

my sainted irish grammy

my sainted irish grammy

image82

 My sainted Irish Grammy


Was everything to me


Her love was like a beacon


On the shore of a stormy sea


Her hands were cold


But her heart was warm


She loved her Savior well


But hurt one of her dear ones?


She’d send you straight to Hell


She never missed a Bingo game


Down at the old church hall


A glass or two of port at night


She loved to sing and she loved to fight


And everything would turn out right


If Grammy returned to us all


My sainted Irish Grammy


Was everything to me


Her love was like a beacon


On the shore of a stormy sea

flower power

my sainted irish grammy

my sainted irish grammy

image83

I get my thrills


From daffodils 


Tulips leave me reeling


A bleeding heart


Tears me apart


An old familiar feeling


Violets make me teary


Cherry blossoms cheery


Lilacs leave me breathless


The waiting makes me restless


Color, fragrance, beauty


I feel it is my duty


To plant and care for every one


Remember, when my life is done


I spent my days among the blooms


And not in dark and smoky rooms


Where nothing grows but vague despair 


I fed, I fretted, I took care


And so I hope when I am gone


A bit of me will still live on


Look in my garden, there you’ll find


The “living will” I leave behind


Copyright © 2020 Denise Shelton Writes - All Rights Reserved.

Powered by GoDaddy Website Builder