Haiku and photo: “Jump”

Jump

One small jump for friends. /

One last leap for summer fun. /

High above, stars wait.

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#haiku #poem #poet #poetry #writer #writing #davidebooker #leap #summer #stars #friends #jump #summer #sunday #september #2019

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What Classic Novel Describes Your Life?

Which one indeed

What Classic Novel Describes Your Life?.

Photo Finish Friday: “Portal”

In the hedge lay adventure.

Robbie said, “Ain’t so.”

“Is too,” Ray said back.

Robbie and Ray were each six years old. Robbie was a few months older, and on occasions like this, he like to remind Ray of that. They just weren’t sure what this occasion was. Still, Robbie was asserting his role as elder statesman to tell Ray he was wrong.

“It’s like Nose legend.,” Ray said “You know, that great fight called Rag in a rock.”

“This got nothin’ to do with that,” Robbie said. “Ain’t nothin’ more than a strange cut in the hedge for that box.”

“It’s a portal, I tell you. And those Nose gods will come pourin’ through it to do battle with them frost giants and there will be an army of Gideon.”

“Who’s that?” Robbie asked.

Ray shrugged. “Some guy who can pour armies.”

“Ain’t no army goin’ to come pourin’ out of that hole in the hedge. It don’t even go all the way through.”

“It’s still a portal,” Ray said, “and if you go and sit in it for six hours, you will see it: happening. I dare ya’. I double dog dare ya!”

Not one to turn down a double dog dare, Robbie snuck up on the rectangular. And to show he wasn’t scared at all, he climbed into the hole in the fence. He tried several different poses and a few words he wasn’t supposed to.

After thirty minutes, Robbie fell asleep in the portal. After another ten minutes had passed, Ray left and walked back to the family picnic where he immediately ate his ice cream allotment and Robbie’s, too.

Freeform Friday: Americana

Pig on a porch swing

Pig in a Porch

by David E. Booker

Pig on a porch swing
sittin’ by the road.
One day waved
at a passing toad.
Toad wheeled around
to give the pig heck
when the pig pulled out
a menu and a pet.
The toad saw the pig
had a frog on a string,
which to him was
the oddest of all things.
I’ll free that frog
if it takes all day.
the toad said to himself
when asked the pig to play.
Pig on a porch swing
sittin’ by the road.
One day waved
at a passing toad.
Toad wheeled around
to give the pig heck
when the pig pulled out
a menu and a pet.
The toad saw the pig
had a frog on a string,
which to him was
the oddest of things.
I’ll free that frog
if it takes all day.
the toad said to himself,
then he asked the pig to play.
The pig said, “Sure
Whatcha have in mind?”
The toad said, “Sit Still.
It’s a favorite of mine.”
So the pig sat still
Well into the night
Which was all well and good
And to the Toad’s great delight.
So, to this very day
Should you pass by his swing
You’ll find our intrepid pig
Is still doing the statue thing.

The blathering idiot and Santa’s lap

The blathering idiot stood in line to sit on Santa’s lap.

“Do you really think this is a good idea?” the young mother asked of the man standing with her as they tried to control three squirming kids dressed in wise men outfits.

The man grunted.

“We can always stop.”

The young woman was very pregnant.

The man grunted again.

For some wishes there isn’t enough magic in Santa’s cap … or lap.

The blathering idiot had never sat in Santa’s lap when he was a kid. Since losing the election for the highest office in he land, he decided he would do some of the other things in life he had never done before. Sitting in Santa’s lad was the first thing on his list.

He did not tell anybody: not Zoey, not Xenia, not Lydia, not anybody.

One of the kids in front of him squirmed away from her parents and was toddling away. The mother ran after her. The mother had to pick the daughter up and bring her back, kicking and screaming all the way. It was then that the blathering idiot realized all three of the kids were girls. Still, they looked as if they had been dressed to be miniature wise men.

“Are you sure?” she asked again.

She was staring hard at her husband.

He stared back. He did nothing to help control the kids.

The blathering idiot could detect a cold silence between them as the line crept forward.

As they neared the head of the line, the kids increased their antsiness.

Then they were next in line. It had been almost thirty minutes.

The boy on Santa’s lap burst into tears. After two attempts to calm the young man down, Santa looked at the mom, who, slightly red in the face, stepped up from the other side of Santa’s thrown and retrieved her son.

An elf in a pea green costume with bells on the ends of his up curled show tips and a five o’clock shadow across his downturned chin, stepped up to the red velvet rope and unhooked it from one of the poles.

“Last chance,” the woman said.

“Next,” the elf said, stepping back, clearing the way up the two steps to the dais on which Santa sat.

The man hesitated, then surged forward.

The mother and the three girls followed. They walked up to Santa, the squirmy one still in her mother’s arms, and the other two fidgeting as they moved. Then, they walked past Santa as the man, the husband, the father sat in Santa’s lap.

Seeing the man plop himself into Santa’s lap and Santa struggling to handle the size and the weight, the blathering idiot no longer had a desire to sit in Santa’s lap.

“Santa,” the man said, “I want you to bring me a baby son for Christmas.”

Then the blathering idiot suddenly felt antsy. He couldn’t remember what he wanted to ask Santa for.

cARtOONSdAY: “Blown about”

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

cARtOONSDAY: tHE gREAT eSCAPE

Sometimes, plot happens.

The 13th noir

Some days, you get the noir, and some days the noir gets you.

Brush with success

Corner in a corner of his mind

He painted himself in a corner in a corner of his mind. His first brush with “success.”

The blathering idiot and the sign

The blathering idiot had never stopped to read the sign until Xenia asked him about it. They were in a restaurant. One that she had selected and he had taken her to in order to help out his on-again, off-again girl friend Zoey. He was doing this to try to get back into her good graces.

But Xenia’s question was proving hard to answer. Maybe too hard. He stood in the rest room, hands over the sink, waiting for an answer, or even somebody to ask. But for ten minutes now nobody came in the rest room. No employee even bothered to poke his head in.

So, all he could do was stand, bent over the sink, hands under the dripping faucet, back twinging, and read the sign next to the mirror over and over and over again:

Employees must wash hands

Sooner or later one of them had to come in, and at that moment, he would make that person wash his hands and then he would return to finish supper with Xenia, and he would never come to this restaurant ever again, particularly if he had to tip the employee for this slow service.

[Editor’s note: other blathering idiot “adventures” available by clicking on the “blathering idiot” tag below.]