767 Humor poems

I’m a rattling boy from Dublin town, I courted a girl called Biddy Brown, Her eyes they were as black as sloes, She had black hair and an aquiline nose. Chorus— Whack fal de da, fal de darelido, Whack fal de da, fal de darelay, Whack fal de da, fal de darelido, Whack fal de da, fal de darelay. One night I met her with another lad, Says I, Biddy, I’ve caught you, by dad; I never thought you were half so bad As to be going about with another lad. Chorus. Says I, Biddy, this will never do, For to-night you’ve prov’d to me untrue, So do not make a hullaballoo, For I will bid farewell to you. Chorus. Says Barney Magee, She is my lass, And the man that says no, he is an ass, So come away, and I’ll give you a glass, Och, sure you can get another lass. Chorus. Says I, To the devil with your glass, You have taken from me my darling lass, And if you look angry, or offer to frown, With my darling shillelah I’ll knock you down. Chorus. Says Barney Magee unto me, By the hokey I love Biddy Brown, And before I’ll give her up to thee, One or both of us will go down. Chorus. So, with my darling shillelah, I gave him a whack, Which left him lying on his back, Saying, botheration to you and Biddy Brown,— For I’m the rattling boy from Dublin town. Chorus. So a policeman chanced to come up at the time, And he asked of me the cause of the shine, Says I, he threatened to knock me down When I challenged him for walking with my Biddy Brown. Chorus. So the policeman took Barney Magee to jail, Which made him shout and bewail That ever he met with Biddy Brown, The greatest deceiver in Dublin town. Chorus. So I bade farewell to Biddy Brown, The greatest jilter in Dublin town, Because she proved untrue to me, And was going about with Barney Magee. Chorus.

Your first dog is ever your one dog And no story has a happy ending anymore. We have all wasted lives, sometimes we waste Our own. Some nights are long ones, some Never end at all. I don’t know how we can fall in love, which implies landing, Whereas love promises everything but. That’s why I like to listen to birds call At dusk to each other from the acacias But then I recall it’s still daylight and I Hear them in the absence of the trees. When I am traveling by train over mountains All I think of is the sea. My father was Never quite so alive until he died and now He’s immortal. Somebody must do the calculus, Somebody must work out the logic of the logic Of this spectacle because spectacle’s the last Word anyone would use for dreams that don’t cease, For the sound of weeping coming from the next room, Only there’s no next room and we’re the only ones There, though just for a moment and a lifetime more. Listen, I will tell you a secret, the secret you told Me once on the train into the mountains On the journey to the shore, a time long ago when We spoke and never met.That secret, which is ours. Some nights are so long the old dog comes home To us who remain there waiting and waiting Even if we’ve never been here before, where we are.

It’s fine to have a blow-out in a fancy restaurant, With terrapin and canvas-back and all the wine you want; To enjoy the flowers and music, watch the pretty women pass, Smoke a choice cigar, and sip the wealthy water in your glass. It’s bully in a high-toned joint to eat and drink your fill, But it’s quite another matter when you Pay the bill. It’s great to go out every night on fun or pleasure bent; To wear your glad rags always and to never save a cent; To drift along regardless, have a good time every trip; To hit the high spots sometimes, and to let your chances slip; To know you’re acting foolish, yet to go on fooling still, Till Nature calls a show-down, and you Pay the bill. Time has got a little bill — get wise while yet you may, For the debit side’s increasing in a most alarming way; The things you had no right to do, the things you should have done, They’re all put down; it’s up to you to pay for every one. So eat, drink and be merry, have a good time if you will, But God help you when the time comes, and you Foot the bill.

The first person in recorded history struck by a comet slept on her couch across the road from the Comet Drive-In and the comet found her roof, her sadness, her knee, and woke her. Everything that hurts hurt before, she said. Showing at the drive-in, a documentary on tightrope-walking: a young man frustrated that his dream, the World Trade Center, was not yet built so he practiced for years in a meadow crossing intended sky, intent like a pillowcase sweetening him, no harm . . . Here let the towers go, let them write his crossing, cursive, back and forth his name steadying our tongues . . . Famous, overcoat floating down without him, the idea that we stand where we mean to stand, 1974, a distraction from my parents’ morning commute. At 59th Street they split. The poems I was writing were no longer poems of their divorce, my father’s sweeping gestures or his pain, the old Volkswagen and garden hose—all of that had washed from my poems and instead an imaginary family arrived in borrowed gardens, their son stillborn—even as I grew heavy with my own son I wrote poem after poem holding this imagined horror close.

Some people like to relax and kick back with their friends just talking and having a drink which is obviously highly pleasurable. Some people like to be entertained by music or a movie; some people like to make some jokes with people they like, maybe at a bar or at someone’s house. Some people like to lay around with another person, just touching, or to prepare food, alone or with others while listening to music that they feel a particular affinity for. But sometimes people like to thrust themselves into the howling wind and snow, arms tied behind their backs. I prefer to open my mouth wide open knowing what will happen if I’m just holding my mouth open, ready to respond or yell or whatever seems appropriate. You know, I keep my mouth at the ready to make a lot of noise. And sometimes it becomes filled with hard packed snow or with sand, sand being more of a problem, since, you know, it won’t melt.

One teeny tiny worm making the earth turn.

It chafed like some new skin we’d grown, or feathers, the cummerbund and starched collar pinching us to show how real this transformation into princes was, how powerful we’d grown by getting drivers’ licenses, how tall and total our new perspective, above that rusty keyhole parents squinted through. We’d found the key: that nothing really counts except a romance bright as Technicolor, wide as Cinerama, and this could be the night. No lie.

For Flaco A cooler head of lettuce prevailed, but when the actor asked his question and paused for us to watch him pause and think inside the pause, I almost answered as if we were in a bar, just the two of us and a balcony and spotlight. The two of us and programs and makeup and a sofa from the director’s living room and the black/ womb/agora/séance of theater inviting us to feel together alone. I recall I don’t recall the question but its scope on his face was immense, as if he were the Milky Way asking am I pretty, am I here for sure for real for long

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

Who I am’s child’s play, a cry in a kindergarten; though I pun on Latin, my Yorkshire kin’s laik, a whole lexical rainbow unweaving in no code, no Mason’s Mahabone nor Horseman’s Word — but I’m caltrops at night to the bare feet of adults inspiring their language to such colors as I am, Kulla, Mondrian plastic pixelating Mies blocks; the Ephesian Artemis in each cubist bust; the Song of Amergin by a Turing machine: name me or you’ll be thicker than any brick.