767 Humor poems

Not that anyone will care, But as I was sitting there On the 8:07 To New Haven, I was struck by lightning. The strangest thing Wasn't the flash of my hair Catching on fire, But the way people pretended Nothing had happened. For me, it was real enough. But it seemed as if The others saw this as nothing But a way of happening, A way to get from one place To another place, But not a place itself. So, ignored, I burned to death. Later, someone sat in my seat And my ashes ruined his suit.

You have a strange pet — one eye is a cat’s, the other a sheep’s. Yet, it won’t socialize with felines, will attack any flock. On moonlit nights, it wanders on the roof. When you’re alone it will lie in your lap preoccupied, slowly studying you until — on its face — a challenge. Translated from the Chinese

Out of heaven, to bless the high places, it falls on the penthouses, drizzling at first, then a pelting allegro, and Dick and Jane skip to the terrace and go boogieing through the azaleas, while mommy and daddy come running with pots and pans, glasses, and basins and try to hold all of it up there, but no use, it’s too much, it keeps coming, and pours off the edges, down limestone to the pitchers and pails on the ground, where delirious residents catch it, and bucket brigades get it moving inside, until bathtubs are brimful, but still it keeps coming, that shower of silver in alleys and gutters, all pouring downhill to the sleazy red brick, and the barefoot people who romp in it, laughing, but never take thought for tomorrow, all spinning in a pleasure they catch for a moment; so when Providence turns off the spigot and the sky goes as dry as a prairie, then daddy looks down from the penthouse, down to the streets, to the gutters, and his heart goes out to his neighbors, to the little folk thirsty for laughter, and he prays in his boundless compassion: on behalf of the world and its people he demands of his God,give me more.

I don’t have to outrun the elephant, I just have to outrun you. I don’t have to race with a belligerent ten-point buck, outpace an elephant in musth. I don’t need to flee a wrathful firmament or dance with a choleric jackboot. I don’t have to outrun the elephant. I only have to outrun you.

I got in the shower and burned my balls last Wednesday. met this painter called Spain, no, he was a cartoonist, well, I met him at a party and everybody got mad at me because I didn’t know who he was or what he did. he was rather a handsome guy and I guess he was jealous because I was so ugly. they told me his name and he was leaning against the wall looking handsome, and I said: hey, Spain, I like that name: Spain. but I don’t like you. why don’t we step out in the garden and I’ll kick the shit out of your ass? this made the hostess angry and she walked over and rubbed his pecker while I went to the crapper and heaved. but everybody's angry at me. Bukowski, he can’t write, he’s had it. washed-up. look at him drink. he never used to come to parties. now he comes to parties and drinks everything up and insults real talent. I used to admire him when he cut his wrists and when he tried to kill himself with gas. look at him now leering at that 19 year old girl, and you know he can’t get it up. I not only burnt my balls in that shower last Wednesday, I spun around to get out of the burning water and burnt my bunghole too.

No, no; for my virginity, When I lose that, says Rose, I’ll die: Behind the elms, last night, cried Dick, Rose, were you not extremely sick?

Startled from snow-day slumber by a neighbor’s mutt, it banged its buzzard’s head then couldn’t solve the problem of the white pine’s limbs with wings nearly too broad for a planned descent. Somewhere an awkward angel knows whether it was dead before it hit the ground. Any sinner could tell it was dead after— eyes unseen beneath bare and wrinkled lids, feet drawn up almost as high as hands. I loved to watch thistle and millet disappear beneath it in the yard. As snow covers feathers that will still be iridescent in the spring I remember seeing a businessman take a dripping handful of pocket change and throw it down a subway grate beside a homeless man. The coins bounced and clattered, vanishing in the humid dark. The rich man said now you’re having a shitty day too. But it’s not a shitty day and won’t be when I retrieve the bird and walk it— toes curling stiff from a shopping bag— to a houseless scrap of oak savannah birdseed drew it from and dig it into deeper snow so what was hoarded by a man may by the thaw be doled.

There's a black bear in the apple tree and he won't come down. I can hear him panting, like an athlete. I can smell the stink of his body. Come down, black bear. Can you hear me? The mind is the most interesting thing to me; like the sudden death of the sun, it seems implausible that darkness will swallow it or that anything is lost forever there, like a black bear in a fruit tree, gulping up sour apples with dry sucking sounds, or like us at the pier, somber and tired, making food from sunlight, you saying a word, me saying a word, trying hard, though things were disintegrating. Still, I wanted you, your lips on my neck, your postmodern sexuality. Forlorn and anonymous: I didn't want to be that. I could hear the great barking monsters of the lower waters calling me forward. You see, my mind takes me far, but my heart dreams of return. Black bear, with pale-pink tongue at the center of his face, is turning his head, like the face of Christ from life. Shaking the apple boughs, he is stronger than I am and seems so free of passion— no fear, no pain, no tenderness. I want to be that. Come down, black bear, I want to learn the faith of the indifferent.

1 When Clumsy harks the gladsome ting-a-lings Of dinner chimes that Mrs. Clumsy rings, His two hands winglike at his most bald head, Then Clumsy readies Clumsy to be fed. He pulls from satchel huge a tiny chair, And waggling his pillowed derriere He hitches up his pants to gently sit. Like two ecstatic doves his white hands flit Tucking his bib in quickly, then, all thumbs, They brush away imaginary crumbs From knee-high table with dismissive air. With fists wrapped round his giant silverware He shuts his eyes and puckers up for kisses. In such a pose Clumsy awaits his Mrs., Rubbing his hungry ribs. But oh, alack, Quite unbeknownst to Clumsy, at his back The circle of a second spotlight shows That No-No has delivered fatal blows To Mrs. Clumsy since that happy time She summoned Clumsy with her dinner chime. And there is Clumsy’s darling lying dead. How like a rubber ball bounces her head As No-No drags her feet-first from this life. Then No-No dresses up as Clumsy’s wife, Her scarf now silhouettes his long hooked nose, His long bones rattle in her frilly clothes As No-No brings a tray of cups and plates Into the light where puckered Clumsy waits. Hearing her footstep soft makes Clumsy take The pucker from his lips and sweetly break Into falsetto greetings, then resume His lips into a kiss. But this is doom, And hideously silent No-No stands. When Clumsy parts his eyelids both his hands Fly up as if on strings and Clumsy screams, The tears squirt from his ducts a dozen streams, His mouth blubbers, inelegantly smeared, “Where is she, No-No? Oh, I am afeared!” Then No-No lifts up Clumsy’s trembly chin, And leans to hiss with loud stage whisper in The big pink ear of Clumsy, “My dear friend,” No-No enunciates. “This is The End.” 2 Disguised as Doctor of Philosophy In academic haberdashery By dint of hood and black capacious gown, No-No wipes off the blackboard up and down, His black sleeve floating outward with each lunge, The black streaks glisten from his dampened sponge, While Clumsy sharpens pencils two feet long To little stubs and wets them with his tongue, Then smooths his pad of paper with gloved fists. He lifts his sleeves a fraction at the wrists And twirls his hands around like windmill sails To soothe his nerves, then drums his muffled nails Until the Doctor claps his hands rat-tat And picks his pointer up and points it at His eager pupil with the jumbo ears: “Compose a paragraph.” And Clumsy clears His throat a dozen times to soft aver, “I don’t know how to write with letters sir.” At which the Doctor hides with sleeve a smile Most uncontrollable and fraught with guile, Until, authority regained, he says, “In that case you may dictate sentences Which you most wish to write, and I’ll record Your words for you to copy from the board.” Now Clumsy tries to think of what to write. He cranes his neck around stage-left and -right, He gazes toward the rafters thinking hard And sometimes shakes his head as to discard Ideas he finds less than adequate, Then caroling a joyous “I know what!” He pulls a giant lightbulb from a sack And holds it overhead and puts it back, And in his vast excitement both his hands Pull up his earlobe-anchored rubber bands To lift from scalp his tiny frizzy wig: “I’d like to start with ‘God is very big.’ ” Erupting laughter nearly knocks quite down The Doctor in his nearly empty gown, He whirls on heel and cuts his hooting off: “My theologian! Fellow philosophe! Your disquisition has the resonance Of truth’s unique, unutterable sense But yet, being pedantic and antique, This mind of mine must tinker, weigh, and seek, And wonder if together you and I For sake of scholarship should specify How big God is?” Thus groping for the truth About the size of God makes pink smoke poof From Clumsy’s ears in jets, and fire alarms Go off backstage as, lowered head on arms, Full sixty seconds Clumsy cogitates. The Doctor snaps his chalk in two and waits. Clumsy looks up and No-No utters “Yes?” “Bigger than the biggest clouds, I guess.” “Bigger than clouds! Dear fellow! I should say I never would have thought of God that way! Then let’s begin.” And No-No sets the chalk Tick-ticking on the board like time-bomb clock While Clumsy wraps his pencil finger-wise And sets it on the page and squints his eyes At No-No’s blackboard words so white and clean And neat and straight with spaces in between, And then, his page two inches from his nose, He copies out in crooked uphill rows: “I, Clumsy, hereby give and wittingly My soul to No-No for Eternity.”

When I push your button you fly off the handle, old skin and bones, black bat wing. We're alike, you and I. Both of us resemble my mother, so fierce in her advocacy on behalf of the most vulnerable child who'll catch his death in this tempest. Such a headwind! Sometimes it requires all my strength just to end a line. But when the wind is at my back, we're likely to get carried away, and say something we can never retract, something saturated from the ribs down, an old stony word like ruin. You're what roof I have, frail thing, you're my argument against the whole sky. You're the fundamental difference between wet and dry.