Scared Sleepy Fairy Tale Book

I've written a book of poems that will be out within the next few weeks. The poems are based on old fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Here is the cover for the book and one of the poems. Hope y'all like both!

Loosey Goosey

Mother Goose was a little loose

Her virtue was in dispute

Not that anyone would say that to her face

Or a nose they might lose

No, people kept quiet

when Mother was around,

but as soon as she left the room,

the gossipers went to town

They talked about her conquest

The men she loved and left behind

They talked about her openly

when she couldn’t return in kind

Not that it would have bother her

Mother Goose did not care a bit

what others thought of her

She wasn’t going to quit

Loving and leaving men

She was having too much fun,

and so far, none of the men had complained,

not a single one

Mother figured as long as no one was hurt

whose business was it where she lay

It wasn’t like she was killing people

She just liked to play

Mother had a twisted sense of morality

She didn’t care about the wives at all

She thought if they were doing what they should

The husbands wouldn’t come to call

The wives thought differently

They blamed Mother for leading their husbands astray

And, finally, a group of them got together

and came up with a plan to make her pay

They broke into Mother’s house

and to her dresser drawer the stole

They found her collection of protection

and in every one, they poked holes

In the appropriate amount of time,

Mother Goose started to show

No man would go near her,

None wanted to know

Who the father was

Who had stopped the play

Who had ruined the fun

Who had spoiled the day

For her part, Mother had no clue

She had slept with so many men

that when asked,

she just said, “Who knew?”

Mother, even though she was a wanton woman,

still did not approve of abortion

so she was stuck with the children

cooking in her oven

By the time the goslings came,

Mother was waddling to and fro

People laughed and stared

Wherever she would go

Mother hated the whispers most

She wished people would talk out loud

If they had something to say about her

Go ahead, be proud

Don’t whisper behind her back

Cowards, the lot of them were

It wasn’t like anything they said

would upset her

Mother, though she would never have thought it,

was proud of her goslings

each and every one

she loved their fuzzy little bellies and their squeaks,

Babies were fun

And the father didn’t get off Scott-free

No, it ended up not being hard to determine

Who the father was, you see

Tom Turkey was the lucky dad

He couldn’t deny it if he tried

For no matter how blind you were

A baby goose with a waddle was hard to hide

Unforgivable

Charles slowly pulled the piece of metal from Tom’s stomach. The sight of the bloody fingerprints where his hand had gripped the steel was more than he could handle.

Tom watched as Charles retched in the bushes. He pulled himself along the sidewalk and wrapped his arm around the crumpled man. “Think of me while you rot in prison,” he whispered.

Charles jerked away and turned his back on the man who had been his best friend for over twenty years. He couldn’t believe what Tom had done. Even though he knew his sin was unforgivable, he still couldn’t believe Tom would go that far to get even. 

He had tried to pull the metal away from Tom, but it had done no use. Tom was smarter. He had used Charles’s on strength against him, thrusting the cold steel deeply into his own stomach.

The gurgling sound of Tom’s last breaths brought Charles around. He moved to his friend’s side and held his hand. “I’m sorry, Tom. So sorry.”

Although there was no rational way he could know what Tom meant, Charles believed the slight squeeze of his hand meant he was sorry, too. Not that the mutual apologizes were going to do either one of them any good. 

 

And Claire. 

It had been bad enough when Tom had caught Charles and Claire in bed together. The pain and humiliation on her face had almost broken Charles’s heart. He didn’t know if she would be able to handle the shame that would be heaped upon her shoulders when everyone found out the reason for Tom’s death. And he wouldn’t be there to help her through it.

As the flashing blue lights of the first police car reached him, Charles thought the person who was going to be hurt the most was the woman both men had loved, and he wondered if maybe that hadn’t been Tom’s intent. His friend had always had a vindictive streak.

Eggnog Mistakes

Here was our writing exercise for the week:

After drinking a few too many eggnogs at your annual holiday party, you wake up the next morning realizing you did some things you now regret. Write an e-mail to your boss that will ensure you still get a raise next year.

Here's what I came up with. What do y'all think?

To: HowardWatkins@Millerandassociates.com

From: RonaldAmes@Millerandassociates.com

Subject: Christmas Party

Hello, Howard. I know you’re probably regretting last night as much as I am. I am so sorry I stumbled into the cleaning closet when I did. I know you and Donna wanted privacy. I really thought it was the bathroom. Damn eggnog. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll keep the photograph I took with my phone to myself. I know you were worried about it and wanted to ease your mind.

See you Monday at eight for next year’s performance evaluation. You and Martha have a nice weekend.

                                                                                                          Sincerely,

                                                                                                               Ronald Ames

Dysfunctional

Here's my story for the Three Word Wednesday prompt. I managed to not kill anybody in this one.

My whole childhood was a struggle. A struggle to find something interesting going on, some mischief to get into or some way to torture my parents who were too lenient and thought I could do no wrong. Little did they know, I hardly ever did any right. 

I acted up in school, but the teachers did nothing about it because my father was the principal. Of course, that gave me license to try to find the one thing they couldn’t ignore. Ours was an old school establishment in which all twelve grades were in the same building. I tried for twelve long years and never managed to be sent to the Principal’s Office once. I think the teachers were more scared of what my father would do to them than to me.

As for my father, he was too busy sleeping with the school secretary to care what I did during school hours. He only cared whether I told Mother about Mrs. Johnson, which I never did. I thought if my mother was too stupid to figure it out on her own, she didn’t deserve to know. 

My mother, now she was a piece of work and a half. She spent her days reading fashion magazines and going to the beauty parlor and her nights with cucumbers over her eyes and some stinky green goop smeared all over her face, trying to be beautiful for a man who was screwing a woman twice her size, but who baked killer chocolate chip cookies and called him sir. 

And my brother, well, he was a spoiled rotten brat from the time he could walk. I plotted his death numerous times while growing up, but my plans always were foiled at the last minute. I swear that boy lived under a lucky cloud, while I lived in a fog of misery.

I couldn’t wait to leave the town of Rockchester when I grew up. You see, we never went on vacation. We never went anywhere. My father wouldn’t leave Mrs. Johnson for any length of time, and my mother wouldn’t leave her sewing circle, aka gossip group. I begged them to go to the beach, which was only twenty miles away, every summer to no avail. 

I didn’t even make it to the beach as a teenager like most kids in town did because my parents refused to buy me a car and I had no friends to hitch a ride with. I had no friends period.

The suck ups who tried to be my friend because of my father I ridiculed until they cried, and the outcasts were scared to be my friend because of my father, so I was left alone, which suited me just fine. Most of the time.

Sometimes, I wished I had a friend, you know, because misery loves company. 

Despite it all, I managed to grow to adulthood. I never did leave town though. I went to Rockchester Community College after high school where I met my husband, James. We have been married for ten years. 

My mother and father are still together. Mrs. Johnson has lived with them for the last five years since my mother had a stroke and can’t kick her out. My brother spends more time in the county jail than at home with his wife and six kids. 

As for me, well, I’m the principal of the new Rockchester High School, and the assistant principal makes the best cookies in town.