The TweetSpeak theme for April was candy, or maybe it was Daily Doses, or was it National Poetry Month? Anyway, with my confessed weakness for candy corn, I forgot the doses and Poetry Month and went looking high and low for some candy.
I looked at the Facebook pages for TweetSpeak Poetry and T.S. Poetry Press I looked in the comments for all the posts in April (all the comments, and trust me, there were A LOT of comments in April). I looked at blogs. I even looked in my email (yes, my email – containing some of the most interesting email messages in the world, I think).
I found candy.
Boy, did I find candy. I was the kid in the candy shop. I didn’t know what to buy with my nickel. So I spent 25 cents and bought five pieces of candy.
They were wonderful. They were not chocolate, however. Chocolate is not candy, according to my wife; chocolate is one of the four basic food groups.
But they were all good.
Darlene at Simply Darlene had some figurative if not literal Red Hots.
Gluttonous
tongues
lick
greedy pink
sweet
and drill
woodpecker
holes, giddy-up
straight
through
chocolate’s heart.
Who me?
No, no,
no. .
Honeycrisp
apples
rocket
this country-fried
vegan girl
toward
gluttony’s
yummy moon.
It’s my mustached
tall drink
o’ water cowboy
husband
who
flirts
mouth-first, with
miniature
cakes
all mixed
whipped
baked
fluffed out
and
fancy-pants sugar
sprinkled.
Grace Marcella Brodhurst-Davis had an entire candy jar, including the Red Hots:
The Candy Jar
She stands tall
Atop the console in my entry hall
Vessel for candied contentment
Sweet childhood memories
Now my posterity’s
She is a regal lady
Her mermaid-like gown
Flows gracefully from
Her buxom-bodied phial
Fecund with sweet treats
Proudly displayed for trial
She’s entertained many varieties
From lollipops to lemon drops
Facilitated certain balance
Between upstart ‘Red Hots’
And indecisive ‘Sweet Tarts’
Though she’s been packed
And traveled quite a lot
She’s been bobbled and toppled
It’s a wonder she’s still intact
She remains a regal lady
Maureen Doallas created some cocoa balls, bonbons, and sugary things – and even an advertisement!
Playing Her Craft
Your superhero swings
in her cherry red boots,
high on the mayplay
and jacked up on coffee.
Heavy with poems,
she emerged Mondays,
already big, her deliveries
of off-counter words your sugar,
each just a play for real
-world encounters in a minute
or two. She drizzled nothing
sweeter to us than a promise
to continue playing with candy
-themed poetic picks featured
so often at Every Day Poems
we’re going to add a hashtag
to remember to tweet the weekly
new combinations: a month of Play
-Doh, bonbons, and cocoa balls to grab
at the right time and leave here.
Nancy (or is it Davis?) Rosback found some candy that I hesitate to describe, but it reminded me of that hot tamale gum I chewed as a child.
just look at the two of them together
red tongues and sticky syrup in their hair
some on the spoon and down the front of their shirts
thinking that we might want to dose e dō.
Britton Minor developed some haiku-ish candy:
While the branches swayed
I ate the candy bar whole
Three lemonheads fell
And then Darlene came back with some (Yay!) jelly beans, down-home style:
i know my rhymes
are childish
in comparison
to your alls
who know
bigger words
‘n paint purtier
scenes
with things mightier
than assorted jelly
beans.
it’s sorta
like when the Clampetts
bumped (& burped) into
to town
and met that dude
Ralph
Waldo
Emerson
at the gas
station
hall o’
fame
But with all these riches, did I find my prize, my sought-after sweetness of orange yellow and white, my candy corn?
Alas, no candy corn
no sweet kernels of saturated
high-fructose corn syrup
(I don’t care)
no getting sick after
eating the third one
no cloying feeling
on my teeth
no sugar high
just a sugar sigh
Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young, author of Dancing Priest: A Novel
___________
Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $5.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Roses.
- Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass” - May 22, 2025
- A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
- World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025
Simply Darlene says
What an ending! A sugar sigh. Love that.
And I must say it was a surprise to find some of my poetical ponderings here. I had my husband read “Cowboy Flirt Mouth-First” Sunday before we left for church. He honked it aloud, much like a chemical engineer guy who hates poetry, would. He ended and said, “Oh. What? This is just a bunch of words to me. A bunch of words I don’t get.” That’s okay, right? At least he keeps America in plywood and assorted wood products.
The Candy Jar took me to my old kinfolk’s home. Spot-on.
Maureen’s sticky hair syrup is grande fun.
And those lemonheads, yummo! (As a side note, if you need to eat ants for survival in the woods, pop off their heads ’cause they bite going down, oh yeah, and they taste just like lemonhead candy. For realsy.)
Thanks sir Glynn, the man know forevermore as the dude with the sugar sigh.
Blessings.
L. L. Barkat says
Lemonhead ants? (Where’s Maureen? Surely this is the stuff of poetry 🙂
Tell your husband not to worry about getting the words. He can just listen to their sounds, the way they jostle and tickle (or split and chainsaw).
I loved the sugar sigh too 🙂
Glynn says
Darlene – we need plywood and assorted wood products. And poetry. Hmmm, I feel a poem coming on: “Plywood, Planks and Poetry.” How about a bumper sticker: “Honk if you love poetry!”
Maureen Doallas says
The candy theme may have been the best prompt ever!
Visions of puckering Lemonheads may haunt me the rest of the day.
Nancy (er, Davis) gets credit for the sticky syrup.
Thank you for including my poem from the comment box, Glynn. I want to be the first to read “Plywood, Planks and Poetry”, btw!
Simply Darlene says
You know, there is more chemical engineering fodder for your poetical pursuits in that for the previous 10 years of my husband’s employment (before switching to wood products), he was in the pulp & paper industry… toilet paper, burger wrappers, fancy printer paper, etc.
That was a way more stressful job than his current one in the wood industry. I used to tell him that when he gets into the meeting with the bigwigs and they’re frettin’ about the numbers and all that technical stuff, just say, “Boys, my wife wants me to remind you all that some of this is gonna be used for butt-wipe. Get over it.” Somehow he never did mention my thoughts on the matter. Good thing ’cause I reckon he’d got canned on the spot. Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Simply Darlene says
Hey you all,
HAPPY MAY-DAY to you. We don’t have neighbors so my kiddo is bummed about not being able to leave posies on people’s doorsteps ’round here.
Blessings.
davis nancy rosback says
thanks for including my lines.
i need to re-up for the every-day poems.
seems the time is right for a little more word playing.
Grace Marcella Brodhurst-Davis says
Thanks for including my poem, Glynn! It was certainly enjoyable reading everyone’s take on the candy theme. I especially liked Darlene’s Jelly-bean ‘down-home style’ poem. I laughed through the visual I got of the Clampetts and really felt that ‘sugar sigh’ at the end.
brittney hall says
do you have any CANDY just candy poems!(