767 Humor poems

Sharpen your wit— Each half of it— Before you shut Scissors to cut Shear skin deep Underneath wool Expose the sheep Whose leg you pull

Now as the farmer sits at his accounts Reviewing fleeces neath deciduous beeches And notes in red contented ink Net profits of his quite impossible serenity; As graded apples marketably beautiful Into the bushel-baskets sink And trussed hay to the tin roof reaches, And where red tiles through darkening trees are reared A whole year's work is sold in sacks of meal; Now suddenly running Drops like a sprig Of oak in a gale on the neck The little wriggler, Vindictive-legged cunning, Drops like a fleck Of blood on a finger ring Crooking in his sting. It wriggles and stops, Wriggles and turns Through copper ferns Through stubble of crops Into the garden of his most impossible serenity. Chrysanthemums Wilt in alarm As dangerous comes Its arching arm A probable harm Nearer to his impossible serenity. Brambles turn sour Berries crinkle All fruits, Every flower, All roots wrinkle: The trees' atour Lapses, and the power Of his impossible serenity Collapses. The scorpion poison grips, its patterns spread Like wine that trickling on a dusty floor Hence and thence makes pellets and canals. Asphodel, improbable, beside the river bed Is found rank ramsons with a garlic smell. And cider in a dirty cask, lovelike, turns vinegar. Where had been pears and pippins, is a row of rotten balls, Globes of mundungus, faced with foul fungus, And locusts swarm to make the end complete. The last bee disembowelled waves its dislocated feet. Diseased the last elm falls, and with it falls The indistinct last glint of Dionysus Lysius. Earth is with scorpions like spiders hung. From every tile and brick they flick Like leaping twisting mixing flies on dung. A pretty virgin makes a pretty shrew, As those lo longer virgins also do, Because they are no longer so, or else because they are. The fracasado, self-considering as from far, By force of self-perverted scales Pities himself for impotence, and rails Oftener therefore: more he pities, more he fails. The scolding wife drives man to keep a scolding whore: If either dies, he grieves because she scolds no more, And scorns the other still because she scolds. The man whose one wife makes him ten cuckolds Wishes the girl were plain: she finds no joys In playing with her multiplicated boys, Wishes herself plain too, to find her joy in one. Whose wife Is dutiful and bashful all her life Thinks he would be happier if she were loved by other men. Surely some wit usurps the throne of Cypris, when Woman so seems what never woman was, For man to caper to as man should not. The golden mean is not. The man of business bonded to his trade Postpones his culture till his fortune has been made. The cultured man to realize his will Can find no means, nor wherewithal to touch His learning, since his culture costs too much. Reformers, visionaries, poets, other such, Because their vision real is, too sane their wit, The multitude they seek to benefit Lunatic calls them: and although they spurn Others' opinions, lunatic for lack of heed they turn, Parodying their visions of perfection. The land, too stupid to desire a change, Too lazy for that mental insurrection, Yet knowing their salvation lies In broader education Like cats enough uneasy to surmise They have the mange, Further enlightenment refuses And its chief men accuses Of unenlightenment, With consequent Stagnation. Over its losses Autumn its mosses Draws: the dormice go to sleep. In the shorter afternoons Determined to forget, the caterpillars crawl Into the weak oblivion of cocoons. To easier life the coward birds have all Flown from the towns and woods and pools: But some remain at large, poor ignorant fools. The bats are wiser, who hang upside down, Less crazily inverted than the town: Snails in cement immure their sleepy souls: Less mad, though timid, are the celibate Ferns that abide the next arriving spring To unroll fronds again, when warblers sing, Meantime intelligently hibernate, And delicately, Up to date. But we as leaves evacuate a lime Cannot deceive ourselves nor bide our time: Forced to retire by buds that seize our place, Self-superannuated, in disgrace, Know but too well that what we most deride In others is the poison on our side, Stung by the poison we ourselves put up Ourselves the poisoned cup We give our intellectual pride To sup. A scorpion drops from a unicorn's nape Into the virgin's lap. A scorpion drops from blood Xanthippê's tongue And Socratês though he have wrung A whole night's liquor from a score kulixes And sadly his wine mixes, Drinking all below the table, Wanders, constitutionally unable To drink himself unwise. Yes, even him approaching now to weigh these things The scorpion stings. This belt of fretted stars that so promiscuously plays Upon our eyes, we learn to name them all, Picking our favourites out like horses in a race. But now their steady passages recall How, geared to the years, They tick our lives out: and we cease to see Much hope in false futurity: Instead we falsify stars that have been With promise that we alter since those stars, Raising reality Not in what we see, Nor in what meteors there yet may be, But in fixed stars we would we once had seen.

Jerboa on a triple: I was in for it, my zither on a double looking feeble as a "promising" first book. Oedipal & reckless, my scheme would fail: keep him a couple drinks ahead, & perhaps the muse would smile upon me with some s es or some blanks. January, Vermont: snowflakes teased the windows of the Burlington airport bar. The waitress tallied tips & channel-surfed above the amber stutter of the snowplow's light: it couldn't keep up, either. Visibility to zero, nothing taking off & his dulcimer before me (50 bonus points for "bingos") like a cautionary tale. The night before I'd been his warm up act, the audience of expensive preppies doubling to twenty when he shambled to the podium to give them Martial & his then-new poems. "Why do you write something nobody reads anymore?" queried one little trust fund in a blazer. "Because I'm willing to be honestly confused & honestly fearful."Il miglior fabbro, a.k.a.Prez: sweet & fitting honorifics he has left upon the living's lips. Sweet & fitting too that I could know the poems much better than the man, flawed as I am told he was. Connoisseur of word-root & amphibrach, of Coltrane solo & of California reds, of box score & Horatian loss, his garrulousness formidable & masking a shyness I could never penetrate, meeting him would always find me tongue-tied, minding my p s &q s, the latter of which I could not play, failing three times to draw a u. The dead care nothing for our eulogies: he wrote this many times & well. & yet I pray his rumpled daimonion shall guide our letters forward as they wend the snow-white notebook leaves, the stanzas scrolling down the laptop screens. Game after game & the snow labored on. Phalanx, bourboned whiteout & the board aglow as he'd best me again & again.Qintar &prosody, the runway lights enshrouded & the wind,endquote, shook the panes.

I climbed up the door and I opened the stairs. I said my pajamas and buttoned my prayers. I turned off the covers and pulled up the light. I’m all scrambled up since she kissed me last night.

Seamen three! What men be ye? Gotham's three wise men we be. Whither in your bowl so free? To rake the moon from out the sea. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine. Who art thou, so fast adrift? I am he they call Old Care. Here on board we will thee lift. No: I may not enter there. Wherefore so? 'Tis Jove's decree, In a bowl Care may not be; In a bowl Care may not be. Fear ye not the waves that roll? No: in charmed bowl we swim. What the charm that floats the bowl? Water may not pass the brim. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. And our ballast is old wine; And your ballast is old wine.

Must Sean Penn always look like he’s squeezing the last drops out of a sponge and the sponge is his face? Even the back of his head grimaces. Just the pressure in his little finger alone could kill a gorilla. Remember that kid whose whole trick was forcing blood into his head until he looked like the universe’s own cherry bomb so he’d get the first whack at the piñata? He’s grown up to straighten us all out about weapons of mass destruction but whatever you do, don’t ding his car door with yours. Don’t ask about his girlfriend’s cat. Somewhere a garbage truck beeps backing up and in these circumstances counts as a triumph of sanity. Sleet in the face, no toilet paper, regrets over an argument, not investing wisely, internment of the crazy mother, mistreatment of laboratory animals. Life, my friends, is ordinary crap. Pineapple slices on tutu-wearing toothpicks. Those puke bags in the seatback you might need. The second DVD only the witlessly bored watch. Some architectural details about Batman’s cape. Music videos about hairdos, tattoos, implants and bling. The crew cracking up over some actor’s flub.

You thought you saw me! But you didn't. I wear black turtlenecks. Black panties. Live in a tall cave! You don't know where my cave is. But I come out. Every day! To buy mustard & relish! See what— A man. Walking away from me. No good. Smash him! With a loud smash! Smash his metal table and cards. Good! Down in my cave. Put on my Seahawk gear! Watch Parade of Homes. Watch Ron Popeil put chicken & fishes & burgers & pork & macaroni in the same box. Hey! I can sell that box! At school. Where I smash the gym teacher in his head! I don't wear my uniform. I don't clean my locker. I don't share my lunch with the athletes. My lunch—mustard. Straight from the packet. No one sits next to me. Keep working my skills. Keep circling the word blood in Macbeth. Good. It takes days. It takes days.

13. After the dinosaurs fell asleep, after those terrible lizards began their slow decay into mythology, Andre the Giant was there to cradle their bodies in his soft hands and weep. 24. Andre the Giant wrestled the Earth into a globe, carved his name into the ocean floor with his pinky to remind the whales who taught them to sing. 32. Andre the Giant was a village. Then he became a dragon. Then he became an army. Then he became a king. Now, he is the wind. 40. A man can’t bodyslam Andre the Giant unless he’s worthy of slaying a monster, unless the giant decides it’s time to lie down. 58. Andre the Giant stole fire from Heaven, hid it in his mouth, fed it to monkeys one lick at a time until they learned to pronounce his name. 67. Before there were boys with magic beanstalks, with slingshots or singing swords, Andre the Giant brawled with sooty angels, volcanoes spouting from where he buried their hearts 75. Andre the Giant scaled the Empire State Building with Marilyn Monroe in one hand, Cleopatra in the other. They marveled at how small we are. 81. Andre the Giant once cracked the sky’s ribs. Then he was thunder churning like trout. Then he was an avalanche of fists and knees. Then he was a fire burning through the forest. Then he was a tidal wave seething offshore. Now, he will not be a metaphor. 93. When Andre the Giant pitched a man over the top rope and out into the crowd, he aimed at the moon. 100. A man never tells a lie, always treats a promise like his mother’s name. Andre the Giant once threw a silver dollar across the Potomac, hit a buffalo in the eye and killed it as it grazed. 116. Andre the Giant drank three bottles of whiskey and grappled with the Devil in a bingo hall in Memphis. Then he invented the blues. 125. On television, Andre the Giant grinned with a mouthful of shark’s teeth. He devoured mortal men ten-at-a-time, laughed and spit their bones into our living rooms. 137. Andre the Giant was a Frenchman. Then he became an ogre. Then he became a movie star. Now, he is the constellations. All of them.

My books are full of mistakes but not the ones Tony’s always pointing out as if correct spelling is what could stop the conveyor belt the new kid caught his arm in. Three weeks on the job and he’s already six hundred legal pages, lawyers haggling in an office with an ignored view of the river pretending to be asleep, pretending to have insight into its muddy self. You think that’s a fucked-up, drawn-out metaphor, try this: if you feel you’re writhing like a worm in a bottle of tequila, you don’t know it’s the quickness of its death that reveals the quality of the product, its proof. I don’t know what I’m talking about either. Do you think the dictionary ever says to itself I’ve got these words that mean completely different things inside myself and it’s tearing me apart? My errors are even bigger than that. You start taking down the walls of your house, sooner or later it’ll collapse but not before you can walk around with your eyes closed, rolled backwards and staring straight into the amygdala’s meatlocker and your own damn self hanging there. Do that for awhile and it’s easier to delight in snow that lasts about twenty minutes longer than a life held together by the twisted silver baling wire of deception and stealth. But I ain’t confessing nothing. On mornings when I hope you forget my name, I walk through the high wet weeds that don’t have names either. I do not remember the word dew. I do not remember what I told you with your ear in my teeth. Further and further into the weeds. We have absolutely no proof god isn’t an insect rubbing her hind legs together to sing. Or boring into us like a yellow jacket into a fallen, overripe pear. Or an assassin bug squatting over us, shoving a proboscis right through our breast plate then sipping. How wonderful our poisons don’t kill her.

Home team suffers string of losses.—Time to change loyalties. Quadruple bypass.—Hold the bacon on that next cheeseburger. Poems tanking.—After stormiest days, sun comes out from behind clouds, or used to. Marriage on rocks.—Nothing like Coke. Election going the wrong direction.—Kick off slippers, take deep breathe,be here now. Boss says your performance needs boost.—A long hot bath smoothes wrinkles. War toll tops 100,000.—Get your mind off it, switch to reality TV. Lake Tang Woo Chin Chicken with Lobster and Sweet Clam Sauce still not served and everyone else got their orders twenty minutes back.—Savor the water, feast on the company. Subway floods and late for audition.—Start being the author of your own performance. Take a walk. Slip on ice, break arm.—In moments like this, the preciousness of life reveals itself. Wages down in non-union shop.—You’re a sales associate, not a worker; so proud to be part of the company. Miss the train?—Great chance to explore the station! Suicide bombers wrecks neighborhood.—Time to pitch in! Nothing doing.—Take a break! Partner in life finds another partner.—Now you can begin the journey of life anew. Bald?—Finally, you can touch the sky with the top of your head. Short-term recall shot.—Old memories are sweetest. Hard drive crashes and novel not backed up.—Nothing like a fresh start. Severe stomach cramps all morning.—Boy are these back issues of Field and Stream engrossing. Hurricane crushes house.—You never seemed so resilient. Brother-in-law completes second year in coma.—He seems so much more relaxed than he used to. $75 ticket for Sunday meter violation on an empty street in residential neighborhood.—The city needs the money to make us safe and educate our kids. Missed last episode of favorite murder mystery because you misprogrammed VCR.—Write your own ending! Blue cashmere pullover has three big moth holes.—What a great looking shirt! Son joins skinhead brigade of Jews for Jesus.—At least he’s following his bliss. Your new play receives scathing reviews and closes after a single night.—What a glorious performance! Pungent stench of homeless man on subway, asking for food.—Such kindness in his eyes, as I turn toward home. Retirement savings lost on Enron and WorldCom.—They almost rhyme. Oil spill kills seals.—The workings of the Lord are inscrutable. Global warming swamps land masses.—Learn to accept change. Bike going fast in wrong direction knocks you over.—A few weeks off your feet, just what the doctor ordered. AIDS ravaging Africa.—Wasn’t Jeffrey Wright fabulous in Angels in America? Muffler shot.—There’s this great pizza place next to the shop. Income gap becomes crater.—Good motivation to get rich. Abu Ghraib prisoners tortured.—Let’s face it, shit happens. Oscar wins Emmy.—Award shows are da bomb. FBI checking your library check-outs.—I also recommend books on Amazon. Gay marriages annulled.—Who needs the state to sanctify our love? President’s lies kill GIs.—He’s so decisive about his core values. Self-Help.—Other drowns.