767 Humor poems

The tea-kettle bubbled, the tea things were set, The candles were lighted, the ladies were met; The how d’ye’s were over, and entering bustle, The company seated, and silks ceased to rustle: The great Mrs. Consequence opened her fan, And thus the discourse in an instant began (All affected reserve and formality scorning): “I suppose you all saw in the paper this morning A volume of Poems advertised—’tis said They’re produced by the pen of a poor servant-maid.” “A servant write verses!” says Madam Du Bloom: “Pray what is the subject—a Mop, or a Broom?” “He, he, he,” says Miss Flounce: “I suppose we shall see An ode on a Dishclout—what else can it be?” Says Miss Coquettilla, “Why, ladies, so tart? Perhaps Tom the footman has fired her heart; And she’ll tell us how charming he looks in new clothes, And how nimble his hand moves in brushing the shoes; Or how, the last time that he went to May Fair, He bought her some sweethearts of gingerbread ware.” “For my part I think,” says old Lady Marr-joy, “A servant might find herself other employ: Was she mine I’d employ her as long as ’twas light, And send her to bed without candle at night.” “Why so?” says Miss Rhymer, displeased: “I protest ’Tis pity a genius should be so depressed!” “What ideas can such low-bred creatures conceive?” Says Mrs. Noworthy, and laughed in her sleeve. Says old Miss Prudella, “If servants can tell How to write to their mothers, to say they are well, And read of a Sunday The Duty of Man, Which is more I believe than one half of them can; I think ’tis much properer they should rest there, Than be reaching at things so much out of their sphere.” Says old Mrs. Candour, “I’ve now got a maid That’s the plague of my life—a young gossiping jade; There’s no end of the people that after her come, And whenever I’m out, she is never at home; I’d rather ten times she would sit down and write, Than gossip all over the town every night.” “Some whimsical trollop most like,” says Miss Prim, “Has been scribbling of nonsense, just out of a whim, And, conscious it neither is witty nor pretty, Conceals her true name, and ascribes it to Betty.” “I once had a servant myself,” says Miss Pines, “That wrote on a wedding some very good lines.” Says Mrs. Domestic, “And when they were done, I can’t see for my part what use they were on; Had she wrote a receipt, to’ve instructed you how To warm a cold breast of veal, like a ragout, Or to make cowslip wine, that would pass for Champagne, It might have been useful, again and again.” On the sofa was old Lady Pedigree placed; She owned that for poetry she had no taste, That the study of heraldry was more in fashion, And boasted she knew all the crests in the nation. Says Mrs. Routella, “Tom, take out the urn, And stir up the fire, you see it don’t burn.” The tea-things removed, and the tea-table gone, The card-tables brought, and the cards laid thereon, The ladies, ambitious for each other’s crown, Like courtiers contending for honours, sat down.

"At pet stores in Detroit, you can buy frozen rats for seventy-five cents apiece, to feed your pet boa constrictor" back home in Grosse Pointe, or in Grosse Pointe Park, while the free nation of rats in Detroit emerges from alleys behind pet shops, from cellars and junked cars, and gathers to flow at twilight like a river the color of pavement, and crawls over bedrooms and groceries and through broken school windows to eat the crayon from drawings of rats— and no one in Detroit understands how rats are delicious in Dearborn. If only we could communicate, if only the boa constrictors of Southfield would slither down I-94, turn north on the Lodge Expressway, and head for Eighth Street, to eat out for a change. Instead, tomorrow, a man from Birmingham enters a pet shop in Detroit to buy a frozen German shepherd for six dollars and fifty cents to feed his pet cheetah, guarding the compound at home. Oh, they arrive all day, in their locked cars, buying schoolyards, bridges, buses, churches, and Ethnic Festivals; they buy a frozen Texaco station for eighty-four dollars and fifty cents to feed to an imported London taxi in Huntington Woods; they buy Tiger Stadium, frozen, to feed to the Little League in Grosse Ile. They bring everything home, frozen solid as pig iron, to the six-car garages of Harper Woods, Grosse Pointe Woods, Farmington, Grosse Pointe Farms, Troy, and Grosse Arbor— and they ingest everything, and fall asleep, and lie coiled in the sun, while the city thaws in the stomach and slides to the small intestine, where enzymes break down molecules of protein to amino acids, which enter the cold bloodstream.

Is it, then, your opinion Women are putty in your hands? Is this the face to launch upon A thousand one night stands? First, please, would you be so kind As to define your contribution To modern verse, the Western mind And human institutions? Where, where is the long, flowing hair, The velvet suit, the broad bow tie; Where is the other-worldly air, Where the abstracted eye? Describe the influence on your verse Of Oscar Mudwarp’s mighty line, The theories of Susan Schmersch Or the spondee’s decline. You’ve labored to present us with This mouse-sized volume; shall this equal The epic glories of Joe Smith? He’s just brought out a sequel. Where are the beard, the bongo drums, Tattered T-shirt and grubby sandals, As who, released from Iowa, comes To tell of wondrous scandals? Have you subversive, out of date, Or controversial ideas? And can you really pull your weight Among such minds as these? Ah, what avails the tenure race, Ah, what the Ph.D., When all departments have a place For nincompoops like thee?

loquitur the sparrow in the Zoo

In a famous painting of a founding father and the back end of a horse it’s the horse butt that’s properly lit groomed out        smooth       an immortal peach Who can say what it means about revolution that the horse’s tail emerges as though it had no bones in it no chunky mechanics of the living And the horse is not well muscled but has been living in the rich grass swollen like a birthday balloon

End of the day. A bar where you ought to leave a tip. The green bird was saying pretty pretty pretty, loved ones were walking home across the city. I waved at the girl who waves her whip    ... but please be certain I’m a citizen    ... I take stuff to the dump    ...    or maybe it’s the tip? I’m where the nitty really meets the gritty. I know I find it hard to listen. I read too much. I often need a drink. It isn’t the world that makes us think, it’s words that we can’t come up with. Sure, I can work up fresh examples and send them off to the committee. But the poetry is in the bird. And in the pretty.

Give me something to eat, Good people, I pray; I have really not had One mouthful today! I am hungry and cold, And last night I dreamed A scarecrow had caught me— Good land, how I screamed! Of one little children And six ailing wives (No, one wife and six children), Not one of them thrives. So pity my case, Dear people, I pray; I’m honest, and really I’ve come a long way.

Poor old lady, she swallowed a fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a spider. It squirmed and wriggled and turned inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a bird. How absurd!   She swallowed a bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a cat. Thank of that!   She swallowed a cat. She swallowed the cat to catch the bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a dog. She went the whole hog when she swallowed the dog. She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a cow. I don't know how she swallowed a cow. She swallowed the cow to catch the dog, She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don't know why she swallowed a fly. Poor old lady, I think she'll die. Poor old lady, she swallowed a horse. She died, of course.

More nice than wise. XI Mon. January [1733] hath xxxi days. Old Batchelor would have a Wife that’s wise, Fair, rich, and young, a Maiden for his Bed; Not proud, nor churlish, but of faultless size; A Country Houswife in the City bred. He’s a nice Fool, and long in vain hath staid; He should bespeak her, there’s none ready made. XII Mon. February hath xxviii days. N. N. of B---s County, pray don’t be angry with poor Richard. Each Age of Men new Fashions doth invent; Things which are old, young Men do not esteem: What pleas’d our Fathers, doth not us content; What flourish’d then, we out of fashion deem: And that’s the reason, as I understand, Why Prodigus did fell his Father’s Land. I Mon. March hath xxxi days. My Love and I for Kisses play’d, She would keep stakes, I was content, But when I won she would be paid; This made me ask her what she meant: Quoth she, since you are in this wrangling vein, Here take your Kisses, give me mine again. II Mon. April hath xxx days. Kind Katharine to her husband kiss’d these words, “ Mine own sweet Will, how dearly I love thee! If true (quoth Will) the World no such affords. And that its true I durst his warrant be; For ne’er heard I of Woman good or ill, But always loved best, her own sweet Will. III Mon. May hath xxxi days. Mirth pleaseth some, to others ’tis offence, Some commend plain conceit, some profound sense; Some wish a witty Jest, some dislike that, And most would have themselves they know not what. Then he that would please all, and himself too, Takes more in hand than he is like to do. IV Mon. June hath xxx days. Observe the daily circle of the sun, And the short year of each revolving moon: By them thou shalt foresee the following day, Nor shall a starry night thy hopes betray. When first the moon appears, if then she shrouds Her silver crescent, tip’d with sable clouds, Conclude she bodes a tempest on the main, And brews for fields impetuous floods of rain. V Mon. July hath xxxi days. Ev’n while the reaper fills his greedy hands, And binds the golden sheafs in brittle bands: Oft have I seen a sudden storm arise From all the warring winds that sweep the skies: And oft whole sheets descend of slucy rain, Suck’d by the spungy clouds from oft the main; The lofty skies at once come pouring down, The promis’d crop and golden labours drown. VI Mon. August hath xxxi days. For us thro’ 12 bright signs Apollo guides The year, and earth in sev’ral climes divides. Five girdles bind the skies, the torrid zone Glows with the passing and repassing sun. Far on the right and left, th’extreams of heav’n, To frosts and snows and bitter blasts are giv’n. Betwixt the midst and these, the Gods assign’d Two habitable seats for humane kind. VII Mon. September hath xxx days. Death is a Fisherman, the world we see His Fish-pond is, and we the Fishes be: His Net some general Sickness; howe’er he Is not so kind as other Fishers be; For if they take one of the smaller Fry, They throw him in again, he shall not die: But Death is sure to kill all he can get, And all is Fish with him that comes to Net. VIII Mon. October hath xxxi days. Time was my spouse and I could not agree, Striving about superiority: The text which saith that man and wife are one, Was the chief argument we stood upon: She held, they both one woman should become; I held they should be man, and both but one. Thus we contended daily, but the strife Could not be ended, till both were one Wife. IX Mon. November hath xxx days. My neighbour H—-y by his pleasing tongue, Hath won a Girl that’s rich, wise, fair and young, The Match (he saith) is half concluded, he Indeed is wondrous willing; but not she. And reason good, for he has run thro’all Almost the story of the Prodigal; Yet swears he never with the hogs did dine; That’s true, for none would trust him with their swine. X Mon. December hath xxxi days. She that will eat her breakfast in her bed, And spend the morn in dressing of her head, And sit at dinner like a maiden bride, And talk of nothing all day but of pride; God in his mercy may do much to save her, But what a case is he in that shall have her.

I have a friend who’s not well dressed. He wears no hat. He wears no vest. Upon his back he wears no shirt, so you can see there’s lots of dirt. He wears no shoes upon his feet. He wears no pants upon his seat. In fact, he doesn’t wear a stitch, so he can scratch if there’s an itch. I hope that you don’t find him rude— my dog is happy in the nude.