The A Mused Poetry Contest 10/31 – 11/06/2020

Chel Owens

Do you love to laugh out loud? Silently snicker? Guffaw as you …gallop? You’re in the right place!

Here are the rules for this week:

  1. The Theme is road-trip disasters or vacation mishaps. Did you travel all day and into the night, only to find another person in your bed? Find a flat tire midway through Nebraska? Get chased by roos in The Never-Never? Poem about it.
  2. Length: flexible. Keep the word count between 5 and 155 words.
  3. I recommend Rhyming, but it’s up to you!
  4. Arriving in a strange town where no one speaks your language and discovering you haven’t packed spare underwear is very frustrating, so the Rating can be PG-13 or cleaner.
  5. MAKE US LAUGH. Sad as you feel/felt/will feel, capture the humor in the annoyance.

You have till 10:00 a.m. MST next Friday (November 6) to submit a poem.

Use the form, below, to remain anonymous for a week.

Otherwise, include your poem or a link to it in the comments. Drop a comment if your link-back doesn’t show up by midnight the day you create it.

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Bon voyage!

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Photo by Nubia Navarro (nubikini) on Pexels.com

©2020 Chel Owens

23 thoughts on “The A Mused Poetry Contest 10/31 – 11/06/2020”

  1. Pingback: The A Mused Poetry Contest Oct 31-Nov 6/2020: Road-trip Disasters – Relax, It's all Write

  5. Best holiday ever

    We should never have chosen off peak
    It was raining, the car sprang a leak
    David squashed granny’s best hat
    Baby Alfie was sick on the cat.

    On the moors, dad ran over a ram
    An hour later, we’re stuck in a jam
    We got there too late for the ferry
    Mum found the bar and got merry.

    We arrived there to find we’d left gran
    At the caff, with a man from Japan
    Our five star was under construct
    And all of the rooms double booked.

    The food gave young Lucy the trots
    And Christopher broke out in spots
    German measles, our french doctor said
    And confined him to ten days in bed.

    Going home, despite begging and pleading
    Dad got a ticket for speeding
    When the copper told dad he could start
    Our tyres were as flat as a fart.

    Once home, track-traced for Covid 19
    So then, yes you’ve guessed, quarantine
    And because we are now isolating
    This vacation gets zero star rating.

    I’ve deleted a couple of verses so that it fits within your word limit. The full poem is at
    https://hobbospoems.com/2020/11/02/best-holiday-ever/

    Liked by 2 people

  6. Basil and Mabel

    Basil and Mabel went to Spain
    Again and again and again.

    He drove from Dover
    And to remain sober
    He’d refrain, refrain, refrain.

    One day on the Costa
    He thought he’d lost her
    The pain, the pain, the pain.

    To dull the fear
    He ordered sangria
    Again and again and again.

    Mabel was worried,
    Around she hurried
    The fool, the fool, the fool.

    It began to concern her
    When inside the taverna,
    On a stool, a stool a stool

    Basil was slumped.
    ‘Oh you old chump’
    Dabbing the drool, the drool, the drool.

    She left the bar
    And found the car
    Near the pool, the pool, the pool.

    ‘Where to, Bas?’
    ‘Let’s try La Paz’
    ‘It’s cool, it’s cool, it’s cool.’

    They took to the road;
    She drove like Toad
    Too fast, too fast, too fast.

    On a blind bend
    Tipping end over end
    They met their last, their last, their last

    The moral of the fable
    Of Basil and Mabel
    Is you always lose
    When full of booze
    So try and abstain
    When in Spain, in Spain, in Spain.

    You’ll have to disqualify me because it’s too many words, but I hadn’t the heart to cut back on Basil and Mabel…

    Liked by 3 people

  7. Reflecting on our king-sized Kingman, Arizona adventure… Ah, fading memories; Yet how they linger.

    That Holiday Air.

    We breezed into Kingman, wafted up up to our pre-booked room,
    ‘Twas a romantic cute boutique newly tarted-up hideaway hotel,
    Even in this modern times, foolish dreamers, do not presume
    That an Arizonan night of heavenly pleasure can’t go all to hell.

    The owners had been penny wise when fitting out the Brunswick,
    True to its history they’d turned to every possible cheap trick,
    An attempt to retain all original features, all part of the plan,
    So, creaky bedsprings and no air-con except the ol’ ceiling fan.

    Outside a high desert wind buffeted the shuttered window pane,
    Inside, an ill wind blew no good, thanks to a lousy hotel’s buffet,
    Dawn saw the leaving of two wretches that guest house won’t see again,
    Now neither of us dare speak of, much less wish to repeat that sorry day.

    (Certain hotels should have had their names changed to protect their guilt. But what the hell. And pushing the PG13 rating? Ah, what the hell.))

    Liked by 2 people

  8. Pingback: The A Mused Poetry Contest 10/31 – 11/06/2020 – Twenty Four

  9. Here’s mine, Chel.

    Four gormless teenage lads on the road

    Dora Dora has a single building
    bereft of any sort of modern gilding;
    pub and general store all rolled into one;
    no exotic idyll baking in the sun.

    Entering we see a bar
    that you might see in Lilliput afar;
    we become an instant crowd
    eight feet sounding too loud.

    Behind the bar, in a top hat,
    sits a man with a newspaper and a scabby cat.
    ‘Corn flakes and milk?’ we enquire
    ‘Not in the bar, take three steps to the side.’

    Groceries obtained, we ordered beers for four
    and he nodded to where we’d been before.
    Shuffling left, he pulled four ales,
    fixing us with eyes like bloodshot snails.

    Enough was enough and we re-join the track,
    thinking it was never like this for Jack Kerouac.
    And we realise somethin’ very disturbin’.
    We’re not sub-culture, we’re just plain suburban.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Pingback: Basil And Mabel #A-musedpoetry | TanGental

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