Ten-Finger Exercises

Skits

Yesterday was a beautiful, warm day in the 60's, and we raked pine needles, scooped poop and emptied the fish ponds. Sigh. Well, it's done, and we're glad about that. They will still need cleaning, but will definitely wait for warmer weather for that. I doubt if I even got 10% of the pine needles up before my back and shoulders protested that it was, after all, the first good day with plenty ahead. Legs too, actually. I'm kind of cheesy in the genuflecting department anyway, but today's would have been more like a curtsy; I opted for the "solemn bow."

Mardi Gras, in our case a church pancake supper, is coming up Tuesday with its annual No-Talent Talent Show. Bill doesn't like the name, and said he wouldn't participate if they didn't change it. Maybe it was just the No-Talent Show last year. He always plays his guitar for at least one act, and is usually in a skit or two. This year he volunteered me to write a skit, and I thought I'd have something in the various dialogue stories I've written for contests. Couldn't really find anything though, not that wouldn't require props and practice, and it's running a little late for that.

There are so many things in my life of which I can say, "I should have started on this sooner." I hope, when I die, people won't think that's another one!



Girdled Verbiage (a humorous, if not quite correct Than-Bauk)

If poems wore
some old corsets,
I swore they’d be
more like Than-Bauks.

I strain and prod
to make odd words
fit rod-straight lines.
Bodies aren’t meant

to be compressed
and so dressed in
oppressive clothes.
Rest not, poor words,

fight your restraints!
Bondage taints your
complaints. (The verse
faints, gasps for air.)


I couldn't get any further, but you get my point. I struggle with the restrictive framework, even though it is what makes the poem, (well, not this one.) Maybe I'm going through an adolescent rebellion, long delayed; no, revisited!

Here's a funny line I thought of while trying to come up with a skit. Husband and wife, whose pattern is to not speak to each other following a quarrel: "Is this the storm before the calm?"