They come furious and fast; this one not quite either, but here goes:

I pick apples from the apple tree  (When did you ever pick apples from the apple tree?)
As the kids run free

I pick scallions from the garden for my wife  (They’re leeks)
It’s a wonderful life

There is a wine grape-covered trellis by the pool (We’ll never sit there)
We are too cool

There is rhubarb and blueberries galore
What more can one hope for? (I was hoping for a new car.)

But what grows most noticeable
Is not what is edible

It is more family time
For which I rhyme.

-A.

[In the future, poems may require a huge reading fee.  Still, send them in.]

… who thinks that since three people live in Oregon, this is either me or the guy in the wagon next to me.  (Unlike Leonard, I am a tireless advocate for butt-sitters, in Oregon and other outlying states.)

 … Dictionary Dot Com’s word of the day is Homily and one of the sentences they use is this:

“He launched into a homily about marriage as a garden that requires care.”
– Janet Maslin, “Somehow Form a Family:  Between the Hills and Gilligan’s Island”, New York Times, June 7, 2001.

Hmmm … love and gardens, where have we heard that?  Yes, from C.!  She has a brief passage about it in her book (out in paperback, June 2007).  She’s talking to John about marriage and flowers and gardeners and attributing the theory to M., the gifted director.  Now Janet’s saying that Tony Early’s saying that it came from an unnamed preacher at his wedding. 

Yawn, whatever.  Here nor there.  Your task today is to write a poem about homilies or gardens or both.  On my desk by five. 

… He gets it exactly right, somehow, every single time.  A. nod, perhaps, to the more senior A. — the one presiding in Rockland County.

Maureen Cannon was doing the two-minute poem way before we were, turns out.  And E’s been spitting them out by the fistful all this time.  The kids are all doing 30-second poems now, E. – chop-chop!

Knowing what you know now, and also that the piece below from E. took an unfathomable four minutes to be born, well viewers … read at your own discretion. 

Not for Psychosis but Rather Mood Stabilization
(In Iambic Pentameter)

I want to be more active and alert,
Without the mud and suck that’s in my head
And heart and blood.  Of all the pills on Earth
to help along your hot daydreams of death,
Geodon, unfairly named, does work the best …

Top that one, kids!

[Send your 30-second or longer poems here.]

… That picture’s there (below) for no good reason. The one I meant is on my computer, my computer’s in a little room in Sherwood, Sherwood is a town in Oregon about 16,000 big and it’s nine miles from Dundee. Dundee is five minutes from the woman with the self-cleaning house.

I have 274 stress points — 26 more and I’ve a good shot at getting ill! Wait, I feel ill right now. The carpet makes me ill, I think I’m ill.

“Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age,” said James Joyce. “Hmmm,” I replied. “I believe I’m withering.”

Claire counts off kids from her high school who got famous.  (Dude, Becky from Roseanne?  Her mom taught you AP English?  Nerd-o!)

Noga makes dinner.

E’s friend sends me a poem:

I left the gun in Afghanistan
But, anyhow,
I am not going to kill
you.

Call in with sewing tips, or send me flowers. 

… * Blabby is a frequent contributor to Teresa DiFalco dot Com and elsewhere, dispensing bad advice and cigarettes as necessary.

Dear Blabby,

I made a catty remark about a stranger to my friend in an email and then my friend forwarded my email to the stranger. First of all I live in a drab little mud shack in Oregon infested with tiny black flies so I need catty remarks, I’ve little else. Second, should I beat my friend up or just send him on bad blind dates?

Yours Truly,

Cat Woman

—————————–

Dear Cat Woman,

I forwarded your message to several other strangers and they are unimpressed with your flies. Send the original stranger a Hickory Farms Crowd Pleaser (the one with the Handy Cheese Spreader) and stop bothering friends with your catty remarks.

Sincerely,

Blabby

(If you have a question for Blabby, send it here.)

From E:

(Conceived and then composed within two minutes)

There’s a thing
What makes writing
Poems real
Hard. It’s the brains,
I think,
the having
to use them.

(Support Guest Poet Monday by sending your very own two-minute poem here.)