README AT YOUR CONVENIENCE
Poetry, even mine, comes in different flavors of
seriousness,
From CheeryOats™ for kids to angst and mystical
dreariness
So sweaty Hallmark would reject it, good for only
hippy readings.
The kind that on this page you see are no such
bleedings,
But somewhere in between a sob and chuckle, and
suitable
For your ordinary literary kind of pretty casual
perusal.
To write the stuff I have no choice.
It just keeps coming out, that noise, that tortured voice.
But to be known as a poet I am loath.
Poets I know in person are sweaty and boring, both.
Another thing annoying
About my rhyme
Is that I wind up, every time,
Just cynical, sarcastic, cloying.
If that’s what poetry is,
The stuff’s not worth bothering wiz.
I really wish I didn’t do it,
But do, so keep it secret, I’m a poooohet
EDGAR ALLEN POET
When I was a high school student,
But never since, and I can prove it,
I was required to appreciate Edgar Allen Poet,
If his raven is poetry, take it and stow it,
I decided, but a new poet I have found
On my own, Ogden Nash, adorably profound.
Nowadays in my dotage,
For muse high voltage
I Google an Ogden ode.
I'm in the Ogden mode.
I paint like Sargent, don’t I wish;
Poems like Nashy Ogden do I dish
Out, Linseed oil I relish
Greatly, rhyming mine is hellish.
More kitschy yea more Nashy Ogden,
Hardly sublime my trashy rhymey pogem.
Hasn't that soaked into your head even yet?
To flush-faced Halmark poets I’m no no threat
AN ODE TO THE GOADED MODE
For at least an hour or two, maybe three,
From out of the blue, unaccountably,
I’m smitten by this dumb paroxysm --
I can only think and write in rhythm.
Couplets and quatrains, all iambic,
A case study of all that’s psychiatric.
Get over it, sleep it off, damnation!
Count me out, I’m useless for the duration.
THE ODD COUPLE
My Sonja has a tiny toy she-pooch,
And a humongous shaggy bad-boy cat,
Devour poodle puppies like a hawk a gnat,
He could. In fact they’re in cahoots.
O Zig and zag and zag-zig they go,
Big Zig and iddy-biddy Zoe.
Hellbent feline beeline blur
Goosed as often as not
By a canon ball of poodle fur.
Poke and jab, whap and whop;
Leap, and pounce, and levitate;
provoke and pester, titillate,
Frustrate, exasperate, reciprocate.
O Chase! O Race! Reverse and race and chase,
Uppity puppy, macho cat, all over the place,
Cat tail burgeoning, regal, Egyptian,
Stubby cotton ball, a vibrating conniption.
Agile as a humming bird, as supple
As a noodle, that poodle, against cat's statuary dignity,
Maw and paw, that cat and poodle – an odd couple,
Keystone Cops, a situation comedy.
O Lion and Lamb shall lie together
In that Peaceable Kingdom up beyond.
Yawn… O far more fun to yank each other’s tether,
And with adrenaline and upraised hackles respond.
THE CHILD'S PRAYER
"How beautiful, the child's prayer!
How cherished!" That's the parents' praise.
Is this praise a cliche which asks not where
The beauty lies? Is it in the prayer's phrase
And word? Somewhat, but these the child got
from older folks by rote, and if they
Praise perpetuated robotic argot,
They praise the way they, the parents, pray,
Not the child. So then where the beauty?
In the child's voice, not his words.
In his love not yet shaped by duty
Yet already fully stirred, unblurred
By hazed minds of wrinkled, wrinkling men
Et cetera. Also beautiful, to me, the raucous
Clearing, appended to the prayer's amen,
Of a glob of greenish nasal mucous.
MEANING IS WHERE YOU FIND IT
From something every man derives a worth.
Some find meaning in imagined mirth.
Some find meaning in reading before a hearth.
Some their meaning in just the screaming.
Some find thrills in gasps.
Some, clinching fists, determine to relax!
Some in having answers down pat.
Some in questioning this and that.
Some find meaning in a lapse.
Some in a lover's lap.
Some find meaning in a task.
Some behind a mask.
Some find it in a jewel or an ale cask.
Some in a sumptuous repast.
Some in a fatal fast.
Some in fertilizing the grass.
Some celebrate the Latin Mass.
Some celebrate a fecal mass.
It's all just laughts, none lasts,
Except perhaps, alas, the fecal mass.
ON CERTAIN DAYS THE GRASS LAUGHS
On certain days when you tell it the proper joke
Grass laughs
Gently, at the humorous thing you spoke
To it. Ask
The grass to whisper next, and it will --
Secrets known only to you, it, and your hill
EPIC POEMS SUNG
TO AN INVASION OF WOE (deer);
EULOGY TO HOSTA
GREEN INCONSISTENCY
If it comes to air or gasoline,
Hostas or the deer,
Activists will save the atmosphere
And forget that hosta’s also green.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
You can’t have your hostas and a Bambi zoo.
If there’s one thing sure to send me into dudgeon,
It’s beholding Bambi nibble hostas into nubbin.
SUBLIMATION
While the endangered piliateds flay
The redwood timbers of my home,
While my hostas disappear into
The maws of state-protected deer,
I am granted recourse to naught
But sigh and tear,
And so I sigh and eject another poem.
While Rome went up in flames
Nero fiddled.
While hosta disappeared into deer
I pouted, rhymed, and dwiddled.
I think I shall never see
Any hosta under any tree,
Now that deer range free
To rampage suburbanry.
Our pioneering forebears cringed
As wolves consumed their flocks, fleas and all;
We suburbanites become unhinged
As deer devour our hosta, leaves and all.
OUR OHIO DEER DAIRY
Previously given over to crops of corn,
A deer dairy
I never intended
Our Ohio prairie to become.
But beneath the Ohio haze,
All too contented,
Deer herds now there graze.
Once just dappled woods
For Indians and forest frogs,
Then fields of corn for pigs and hogs,
Now but suburban Bambi farms.
I Sigh for Ohio’s long-lost charms.
PASTORAL SCENE
The bad-rapped racoon cavorts
But never molests a single hosta
But thanks to pious Bambi’s kin and cohorts
Not a single hosta's left when once were lotsa.
EPITAPHS
GREAT AMERICAN CHALLENGE EATER
Behold the Great American Challenge Eater,
A chromium coated, ulcer-guted, figgity twitchy
Horatio Alger-Eeyed, wiry, wired creature
Boasting printed circuits beeping victory
And emitting pre-recorded statements to the press:
"It was a great challenge!" He will always stress
The Challenge.
Do not hesitate to feed the creature.
Feed him some plumbing to be orbited;
Wars to be made on hatred;
Oceanliners to tow;
Nations to get financial aid,
Or nations to be laid low;
Cornerstones and various women to be laid.
Feed him a challenge and watch him jump on command,
With Pavlovian salivation, and snap it out of your hand.
The challenge! He thrives on challenge,
The game grin, never the cringe,
The Great American Challenge Eater
Is a biologically curious creature,
Possessing a digestive fistula
Terminating just beyond his uvula.
The gulped challenge, hardly chewed,
Plops out onto the ground, food
Wasted. No wonder he is always hungry.
DOUBLE OVERDOSE
So now we have them both,
Substance and government dependency.
Somehow they seem to go together,
And for the rest of U.S., despondency.
RHYMES OF THE TIMES
ROCKY ROLLOUT
If ObamaCare’s redoubtable rollout
Is any clue
To how the rest may well play out,
It’s redux Waterloo.
IT’S LOGICAL
If love is free,
BC ought to be.
Hippies brought in the first,
A Sandra Fluke, the perks.
FROM ISHMAEL TO ISIS/ISIL
Whether it's ISIS or ISIL,
It's a crisis damn dismal
The Egyptian god of domestic niceness, Isis.
ISIS isn’t.
NOT WORTH A TWEET
Hillary didn’t actually say,
“What difference does it make?”
But rather, “What does it matter?”
Schmake, schmifference, or schsplatter --
Either way, she doesn’t much, anyway.
READY FOR HILLARY
“You can make a difference!”
The innocent chant of idealistic adolescence.
Or was, until the famous Hillary outbreak:
“What difference does it make!”
WITH APOLOGIES TO ROBERT BURNS
Ababa Ahmad Abu abounds
In automatic weapons and rounds,
And spends his days
In various murderous insurgent ways.
Abu been at’em.
TURBAN WARFARE
In her regulation burka, beard, and turban,
Clutching Koran and hooka,
Grenade and regulation bazooka,
Ahmad Amanda's suitably garbed for warfare urban.
KITSCH IN TIME
There once was an unbeatable pol named Kasich
Who Trumped all nine with caboodles of Kasitsch.
ENDORSED
Though endorsed by Bill O’Reilly
And by folks of such diversity
As gentle Ben, Palin, Putin, Christi,
Donald Trumpsey I regard not highly.
TRUMP RULES
O let the Trump be Trump showbiz and all,
And never never play by his baneful rule.
Promising young Marco tried to, eyeball to eyeball
And wham! Became naught but sweat and drool.
CLUELESS RIGHT ON CUE
I cannot forget that at Obama's inauguration
The buzz was that he was clueless
Devoid of clues of any hue, simply clueless.
But nobody says that now, damnation!
The man had promised change galore
And delivered his promise and too much more.
TRANNY GRANNY
I think I shall never see
A long-haired implanted tranny
Who endured expensive surgery
Just to be a sweet old granny