767 Humor poems

Hugging you takes some practice. So I'll start out with a cactus.

Thou hast committed — Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead. ( The Jew of Malta ) I Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon You have the scene arrange itself — as it will seem to do— With "I have saved this afternoon for you"; And four wax candles in the darkened room, Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead, An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid. We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips. "So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul Should be resurrected only among friends Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room." —And so the conversation slips Among velleities and carefully caught regrets Through attenuated tones of violins Mingled with remote cornets And begins. "You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends, (For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!) To find a friend who has these qualities, Who has, and gives Those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you — Without these friendships — life, what cauchemar!" Among the winding of the violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone That is at least one definite "false note." — Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments, Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks. II Now that lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her room And twists one in her fingers while she talks. "Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know What life is, you who hold it in your hands"; (Slowly twisting the lilac stalks) "You let it flow from you, you let it flow, And youth is cruel, and has no remorse And smiles at situations which it cannot see." I smile, of course, And go on drinking tea. "Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall My buried life, and Paris in the Spring, I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world To be wonderful and youthful, after all." The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune Of a broken violin on an August afternoon: "I am always sure that you understand My feelings, always sure that you feel, Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand. You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel. You will go on, and when you have prevailed You can say: at this point many a one has failed. But what have I, but what have I, my friend, To give you, what can you receive from me? Only the friendship and the sympathy Of one about to reach her journey's end. I shall sit here, serving tea to friends ...." I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends For what she has said to me? You will see me any morning in the park Reading the comics and the sporting page. Particularly I remark. An English countess goes upon the stage. A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance, Another bank defaulter has confessed. I keep my countenance, I remain self-possessed Except when a street-piano, mechanical and tired Reiterates some worn-out common song With the smell of hyacinths across the garden Recalling things that other people have desired. Are these ideas right or wrong? III The October night comes down; returning as before Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees. "And so you are going abroad; and when do you return? But that's a useless question. You hardly know when you are coming back, You will find so much to learn." My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac. "Perhaps you can write to me." My self-possession flares up for a second; This is as I had reckoned. "I have been wondering frequently of late (But our beginnings never know our ends!) Why we have not developed into friends." I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark Suddenly, his expression in a glass. My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark. "For everybody said so, all our friends, They all were sure our feelings would relate So closely! I myself can hardly understand. We must leave it now to fate. You will write, at any rate. Perhaps it is not too late. I shall sit here, serving tea to friends." And I must borrow every changing shape To find expression ... dance, dance Like a dancing bear, Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape. Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance— Well! and what if she should die some afternoon, Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose; Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand With the smoke coming down above the housetops; Doubtful, for quite a while Not knowing what to feel or if I understand Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon ... Would she not have the advantage, after all? This music is successful with a "dying fall" Now that we talk of dying— And should I have the right to smile?

It was an Artless Poster Girl pinned up against my wall, She was tremendous ugly, she was exceeding tall; I was gazing at her idly, and I think I must have slept, For that poster maiden lifted up her poster voice, and wept. She said between her poster sobs, ‘I think it’s rather rough To be jeered and fleered and flouted, and I’ve stood it long enough; I’m tired of being quoted as a Fright and Fad and Freak, And I take this opportunity my poster mind to speak. ‘Although my hair is carmine and my nose is edged with blue, Although my style is splashy and my shade effects are few, Although I’m out of drawing and my back hair is a show, Yet I have n’t half the whimseys of the maidens that you know. ‘I never keep you waiting while I prink before the glass, I never talk such twaddle as that little Dawson lass, I never paint on china, nor erotic novels write, And I never have recited “Curfew must not ring tonight”. ‘I don’t rave over Ibsen, I never, never flirt, I never wear a shirt waist with a disconnected skirt; I never speak in public on “The Suffrage”, or “The Race”, I never talk while playing whist, or trump my partner’s ace.’ I said: ‘O artless Poster Girl, you’re in the right of it, You are a joy forever, though a thing of beauty, nit!’ And from her madder eyebrows to her utmost purple swirl, Against all captious critics I’ll defend the Poster Girl.

Oh this Diet Coke is really good, though come to think of it it tastes like nothing plus the idea of chocolate, or an acquaintance of chocolate speaking fondly of certain times it and chocolate had spoken of nothing, or nothing remembering a field in which it once ate the most wondrous sandwich of ham and rustic chambered cheese yet still wished for a piece of chocolate before the lone walk back through the corn then the darkening forest to the disappointing village and its super creepy bed and breakfast. With secret despair I returned to the city. Something seemed to be waiting for me. Maybe the “chosen guide” Wordsworth wrote he would even were it “nothing better than a wandering cloud” have followed which of course to me and everyone sounds amazing. All I follow is my own desire, sometimes to feel, sometimes to be at least a little more than intermittently at ease with being loved. I am never at ease. Not with hours I can read or walk and look at the brightly colored houses filled with lives, not with night when I lie on my back and listen, not with the hallway, definitely not with baseball, definitely not with time. Poor Coleridge, son of a Vicar and a lake, he could not feel the energy. No present joy, no cheerful confidence, just love of friends and the wind taking his arrow away. Come to the edge the edge beckoned softly. Take this cup full of darkness and stay as long as you want and maybe a little longer.

A B H O R E N C E S November 13, 1984 The show did not start off auspiciously, the contestants were nervous and kept fiddling with the wires attached to their privates, the men being especially anxious over the question of balls. The women were more querulous. The first question, a medical subject, was why had the anti-abortionists not mentioned, let alone commented on, the Baboon Heart transplant? One terrified contestant guessed it was because the moral majority’s nervous concern with evolution precluded their bringing it up. That hopeful contestant’s face reflected the malicious light in the eyes of the host who immediately threw the switch A powerful surge shot through the wires and both sexes screamed and writhed, to the delight of the vast viewership, estimated at 100 million, all of whom, presumably, were delighted not to be on the show, because not one in a million knew the answer.

Three crates of Private Eye Lettuce, the name and drawing of a detective with magnifying glass on the sides of the crates of lettuce, form a great cross in man’s imagination and his desire to name the objects of this world. I think I’ll call this place Golgotha and have some salad for dinner.

In a movie I have never seen: a small-town drunk stumbles into a beam of light & wakes up convinced he was abducted by aliens, convinced a hole opened in the sky & swallowed him — said they did something strange to his body some kind of experiment, said a hole opened, said cold light cauterized him shut, redefined that red theory, chrome instrument turned him into a skinless puzzle, a scrambled egg sealed back into its shell. Madness, too, can be accumulative. When my blood seemed uncontrollable, ran messy with pulp down their fingers, my cousins finally left the room, laughing closing the basement door behind them.

I get there early and I find a chair. I squeeze my plastic cup of wine. I nod. I maladroitly eat a pretzel rod and second an opinion I don’t share. I think: whatever else I am, I’m there. Afterwards, I escape across the quad into fresh air, alone again, thank god. Nobody cares. They’re quite right not to care. I can’t go home. Even my family is thoroughly contemptuous of me. I look bad. I’m exactly how I look. These days I never read, but no one does, and, anyhow, I proved how smart I was. Everything I know is from a book.

We here at Progressive Health would like to thank you For being one of the generous few who've promised To bequeath your vital organs to whoever needs them. Now we'd like to give you the opportunity To step out far in front of the other donors By acting a little sooner than you expected, Tomorrow, to be precise, the day you're scheduled To come in for your yearly physical. Six patients Are waiting this very minute in intensive care Who will likely die before another liver And spleen and pairs of lungs and kidneys Match theirs as closely as yours do. Twenty years, Maybe more, are left you, granted, but the gain Of these patients might total more than a century. To you, of course, one year of your life means more Than six of theirs, but to no one else, No one as concerned with the general welfare As you've claimed to be. As for your poems— The few you may have it in you to finish— Even if we don't judge them by those you've written, Even if we assume you finally stage a breakthrough, It's doubtful they'll raise one Lazarus from a grave Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed To work six wonders. As for the gaps you'll leave As an aging bachelor in the life of friends, They'll close far sooner than the open wounds Soon to be left in the hearts of husbands and wives, Parents and children, by the death of the six Who now are failing. Just imagine how grateful They'll all be when they hear of your grand gesture. Summer and winter they'll visit your grave, in shifts, For as long as they live, and stoop to tend it, And leave it adorned with flowers or holly wreaths, While your friends, who are just as forgetful As you are, just as liable to be distracted, Will do no more than a makeshift job of upkeep. If the people you'll see tomorrow pacing the halls Of our crowded facility don't move you enough, They'll make you at least uneasy. No happy future Is likely in store for a man like you whose conscience Will ask him to certify every hour from now on Six times as full as it was before, your work Six times as strenuous, your walks in the woods Six times as restorative as anyone else's. Why be a drudge, staggering to the end of your life Under this crushing burden when, with a single word, You could be a god, one of the few gods Who, when called on, really listens?

The poet pursues his beautiful theme; The preacher his golden beatitude; And I run after a vanishing dream— The glittering, will-o’-the-wispish gleam Of the properly scholarly attitude— The highly desirable, the very advisable, The hardly acquirable, properly scholarly attitude. I envy the savage without any clothes, Who lives in a tropical latitude; It’s little of general culture he knows. But then he escapes the worrisome woes Of the properly scholarly attitude— The unceasingly sighed over, wept over, cried over, The futilely died over, properly scholarly attitude. I work and I work till I nearly am dead, And could say what the watchman said—that I could! But still, with a sigh and a shake of the head, “You don’t understand,” it is ruthlessly said, “The properly scholarly attitude— The aye to be sought for, wrought for and fought for, The ne’er to be caught for, properly scholarly attitude—” I really am sometimes tempted to say That it’s merely a glittering platitude; That people have just fallen into the way, When lacking a subject, to tell of the sway Of the properly scholarly attitude— The easily preachable, spread-eagle speechable, In practice unreachable, properly scholarly attitude.