767 Humor poems

for Shari Lewis (1934-1998) Once again, I've missed Lamb Chop's Play-Along Which, as it is, isn't broadcast in Papiamento, myself being the Centurion of the English where I am Aha! The Brook,Cherith running by here meaning the while I can “compare notes” with Elijah (Without a Jezebel to spook him!) Although admittedly in the movie Betty Davis is a winnter, ever quite without a struggle Especially in the Waltz sequence Which continues to reverberate in my head. So that I ask “Is it, I, then, that am “The Revenant”? This McTalk with its “scrolling windows” can never answer. But just now, could use A bit of that compote of “stewed pears With cinnamon” The discalced Carmelite Sisters fed San Juan De La Cruz thus, nursing and resusciating him back to “health” Which is, in itself, at best —a provisional state! Other than that,

We used to have a single cow, We called her Mrs. Rupple. But she got struck by a lightning bolt, And now we have a couple. She's walking sort of funny now, Oh pity her poor calf. Old Mrs. Rupple gives no milk, She gives us half-and-half.

pulse light starts there starts           getting smaller     All that you can’t remember, Claire says.  ,   With two glass eyes           I’m wobbling down a walkway          inflecting aloha                                        no thumbtacks, attached     no pins,           To feel.          Good by. among crimson and silver turnstiles,     all the folks          In orange, Silvery hats and thermal     The madmen mad getting madder     daisies all done          Again          me strolling, me fuming, slipping,   the stream frozen. the matter of face. the quasars huffing on.           In December   no summery mask,     No, just the shimmering scene, the firmament.     a blackbird indicating, nods Maybe a change    dust of a brick  maybe I remember,      I recall.      a cyclotron.          An ingenuous ramrod The flay of her hair               fall sinking          Rowboat turning to winter,     rowboat, rowboat      Chatter of the breakage iii.                              verb forms of a neutron bomb starts sloe gin     over time                    Fermenting in the firmament red shifting with Claire     waking with Claire, betweening and vaguing Claire          the embassies exchanging airs.          lily white, glittery photons          , spark                         at the bottom working iamb          iamb iamb                    iamb                                        iamb Claire    don’t care                    reminiscing          Tuscaloosa in.           A corner of the soiree.                              , standing so bluntly you resemble no one,          Precisely, as if receding          over a hill, you resembles everyone. corralling       , the bulky idea of the hill into. an encampment,                                                  a tiny cranium. And it’s                    as if,          Spying you                              through a whiskey on rocks.                    a mass hysteria I struttle along,      Making          commonplace.          Ubnutterances, and guts                                        your house is blue with two glass eyes iii.                              quantum entanglement starts with a single shot.          fired                not the year of my     fathers. slow, death starts.     year my mother goes     terminal, The vacuous scene          chattering,                         Like an elephant collapsing     the animals fuming,                              weird winged bugs The serious business of.    squishing them, they simply regroup. And reappear.    , Claire.          I’m stumbling down the thoroughfare. in a dark,  Pinching what few glittering photons,          I’m trolling. murky and building up.     start at the bottom,                    working a way Upwards     Evening,       like a tumbler.                    folding.  itself over Feeling contented all around.  squinting,          started clawing with two glass eyes          feeling for thumbtacks.                    Among the broad vagaries.                         among the wild visions,          Claire. . I say I know you better,                            , than.   You could imagine, or some other,          but you sock me.          Hard. In the gut instead. i.                              aimed by magnets starts redundant          Futile with a screwdriver, among the wrecks. ,  I am having a ball comma       Describe the house        comma paint the doorjamb end-stop               these months     spent   a-chatter. the sidewalk spinal column                              of a mule that carries me. Through the broad making-world.            one universe over, We are inseparable.      And own many cats     the city.                             Large. like  viewing an egg,                        From the egg’s interior. I go about the serious business   strolling,                                    The firmament Claire.   your pocket watch,          A frayed yellow.                                    T-shirt. on the narrative fringe.  of the narrative,                  the weightless photons say       Holding hands                              One universe over. You do not forgive me.            ,  all that I can’t                              but Maybe a small change maybe something less     than the sky, maybe something.                              More than the sky could conjure. ii.                                    if this were a sonnet, I start with all that you can’t remember.                  The gutters Overloaded.      the funky trinkets,           Weird winged bugs on the sill.                  In the air,      When I go about the     business , strolling home    Claire.                        riding the slipstream sloe gin.            All drink and whiskey.      the old ferry, a rowboat ,            in my gut.                        smooth as a mirror          Every mad Artifact     everyone I’ve ever met,                       resembling Claire dissembling          My wintered axe.            start at the bottom Work your way upwards.            like a signature saying I’ve been here, strolling past,            these fumes,                             on the air smell like a letter.            All thermal               , all water     Quasars bleating,      blackbird saying,      The search light pauses     Pluck The wings out one at a time.      Chicago and     blackbird, blackbird, I unaware.    of ours, the               recombinant bodies of the gods. i.                              focused by a lens starts with the scene     starts.               December,          Smooth as a mirror     Hard in the gut                         feels like a tumbler. Claire, inflecting               good, by.     walking. Claire.          the scene of sparks.     among the while, the fission The house is blue.     with two glass eyes     among the firmament no pins to pin you   No, thumbtacks to hold you          But photons and all the things that you can’t       .        Among the sloe gin, your frayed yellow T-shirt. I returned          to you, but you wanting In a corner of the soiree.  a corner of the prairie,     more than the sky This is where the elephant toppled.     when what you remember is Collided, with               Often     under the webbed foot Of my imagining, you     are the entire throng.          Wearing your face,     Dust of a brick,     what’s left is               What when the particle accelerator               paints its          disastered portrait iv.                        scatter many phrases starts with shatter.                                    , crossing the parking lot, my skin     pixilated in the sodium light, harsh corundum               skin a vapor trail                    edging the slipstream.            Tidy up the floorboards.            the wiggling infrastructure of a signature.                        says, I’ve been here before                    All airs as if a unified field.                  of night.      of     Claire.                  Collapse, arrangement of bones   where the elephant toppled.                  spells are cast, Luster in clusters,                        stone I toss          Chicago, the old ferry   through the house’s eye,  through the firmament     Light bulbs wilting,            carnations flickering,      Like a cyst the crick dribbles outward                         toward   a shore     my lady trickles, my lady pours          Give up give up,            my sweet canteen Been taken to the forest.      Honey.                  Among the wild fission.

Our grandma kissed a pumpkin on a Friday afternoon. She also kissed a crayon and a giant red balloon. I saw her kiss a chipmunk eating cookies with a queen. She kissed us in these costumes at our house on Halloween!

When he read in the obituary section that he was dead, the famous author was at first amused and flattered.They love me so much, he thought,they have imagined me dead because they fear the loss of my genius above all else. So he put on his hat, combed his goatee to a waxed point, and sauntered out of his flat to attend his own funeral.How literary, he thought,like Huck Finn, and Everyone will be weeping. He was perturbed, however, when he found that the funeral home was in a bad section of town, next to a tattoo parlor named The Desultory Slut. He walked in past the unmanned front desk, to a back room of frayed velvet and gilt columns, where his coffin was on display, a faux mahogany monstrosity with painted pewter handles. The only people in attendance were four young professors from the local college, with leather patches on the elbows of their ill-fitting tweed jackets and long cruel faces of foxes and rats. He recognized one of them, a gangly fellow with pimply cheeks who had shaken his hand after his last reading and reverently asked for his signature. Do you have one of my books to sign? the author had asked. Oh no, the young professor had cried, baring his hairless chest,can you please sign here? Now the pimply fellow was sitting in a pew, whispering loudly to his neighbor,Isn’t it great, he said,The old bastard finally kicked. His neighbor nodded silently. Deeply disturbed, but well aware of the dramatic potential of the moment, the author took this as his cue to step boldly into the room, with a loud Ta daaa! For some reason, the professors ignored him, and continued their whispering. For a moment, he was afflicted with a strange vertigo, and stood like a clay golem, without a will of his own. Then a sudden rage took him, and the author snapped out of the spell and strode to the front of the room, waving his arms.Wait, I’m not dead at all. Here I am. It was all a mistake, he cried. But the professors did not see him. In fact one walked right through him, as if he were merely a ghost or spirit, and rushed up to the coffin.Do you realize what this means? the professor cried,This means we’re free, and he grabbed the body in the coffin and dragged it to the floor. The shocked author saw in the body his own likeness, lips and cheeks rouged into a grotesque semblance of life. He’s dead, he’s dead. Our enemy is finally dead, they chanted in a frenzy and the professors began trampling on the corpse, weeping with joy and relief.

Traffic was heavy coming off the bridge, and I took the road to the right, the wrong one, and got stuck in the car for hours. Most nights I rushed out into the evening without paying attention to the trees, whose names I didn't know, or the birds, which flew heedlessly on. I couldn't relinquish my desires or accept them, and so I strolled along like a tiger that wanted to spring but was still afraid of the wildness within. The iron bars seemed invisible to others, but I carried a cage around inside me. I cared too much what other people thought and made remarks I shouldn't have made. I was silent when I should have spoken. Forgive me, philosophers, I read the Stoics but never understood them. I felt that I was living the wrong life, spiritually speaking, while halfway around the world thousands of people were being slaughtered, some of them by my countrymen. So I walked on—distracted, lost in thought— and forgot to attend to those who suffered far away, nearby. Forgive me, faith, for never having any. I did not believe in God, who eluded me.

I am always hungry & wanting to have sex. This is a fact. If you get right down to it the new unprocessed peanut butter is no damn good & you should buy it in a jar as always in the largest supermarket you know. And I am an enemy of change, as you know. All the things I embrace as new are in fact old things, re-released: swimming, the sensation of being dirty in body and mind summer as a time to do nothing and make no money. Prayer as a last re- sort. Pleasure as a means, and then a means again with no ends in sight. I am absolutely in opposition to all kinds of goals. I have no desire to know where this, anything is getting me. When the water boils I get a cup of tea. Accidentally I read all the works of Proust. It was summer I was there so was he. I write because I would like to be used for years after my death. Not only my body will be compost but the thoughts I left during my life. During my life I was a woman with hazel eyes. Out the window is a crooked silo. Parts of your body I think of as stripes which I have learned to love along. We swim naked in ponds & I write be- hind your back. My thoughts about you are not exactly forbidden, but exalted because they are useless, not intended to get you because I have you & you love me. It’s more like a playground where I play with my reflection of you until you come back and into the real you I get to sink my teeth. With you I know how to relax. & so I work behind your back. Which is lovely. Nature is out of control you tell me & that’s what’s so good about it. I’m immoderately in love with you, knocked out by all your new white hair why shouldn’t something I have always known be the very best there is. I love you from my childhood, starting back there when one day was just like the rest, random growth and breezes, constant love, a sand- wich in the middle of day, a tiny step in the vastly conventional path of the Sun. I squint. I wink. I take the ride.

A peanut sat on a railroad track, His heart was all a-flutter. The five-fifteen came rushing by-- Toot toot!   Peanut butter!

No classes here! Why, that is idle talk. The village beau sneers at the country boor; The importuning mendicants who walk Our cites’ streets despise the parish poor. The daily toiler at some noisy loom Holds back her garments from the kitchen aid. Meanwhile the latter leans upon her broom, Unconscious of the bow the laundress made. The grocer’s daughter eyes the farmer’s lass With haughty glances; and the lawyer’s wife Would pay no visits to the trading class, If policy were not her creed in life. The merchant’s son nods coldly at the clerk; The proud possessor of a pedigree Ignores the youth whose father rose by work; The title-seeking maiden scorns all three. The aristocracy of blood looks down Upon the “nouveau riche”; and in disdain, The lovers of the intellectual frown On both, and worship at the shrine of brain. “No classes here,” the clergyman has said; “We are one family.” Yet see his rage And horror when his favorite son would wed Some pure and pretty player on the stage. It is the vain but natural way Of vaunting our weak selves, our pride, our worth! Not till the long delayed millennial day Shall we behold “no classes” on God’s earth.

When my brother died I worried there wasn’t enough time to deliver the one hundred invitations I’d scribbled while on the phone with the mortuary: Because of the short notice no need to rsvp. Unfortunately the firemen couldn’t come. (I had hoped they’d give free rides on the truck.) They did agree to drive by the house once with the lights on— It was a party after all. I put Mom and Dad in charge of balloons, let them blow as many years of my brother’s name, jails, twenty-dollar bills, midnight phone calls, fistfights, and er visits as they could let go of. The scarlet balloons zigzagged along the ceiling like they’d been filled with helium. Mom blew up so many that she fell asleep. She slept for ten years— she missed the whole party. My brothers and sisters were giddy, shredding his stained T-shirts and raggedy pants, throwing them up into the air like confetti. When the clowns came in a few balloons slipped out the front door. They seemed to know where they were going and shrank to a fistful of red grins at the end of our cul-de-sac. The clowns played toy bugles until the air was scented with rotten raspberries. They pulled scarves from Mom’s ear—she slept through it. I baked my brother’s favorite cake (chocolate, white frosting). When I counted there were ninety-nine of us in the kitchen. We all stuck our fingers in the mixing bowl. A few stray dogs came to the window. I heard their stomachs and mouths growling over the mariachi band playing in the bathroom. (There was no room in the hallway because of the magician.) The mariachis complained about the bathtub acoustics. I told the dogs,No more cake here, and shut the window. The fire truck came by with the sirens on. The dogs ran away. I sliced the cake into ninety-nine pieces. I wrapped all the electronic equipment in the house, taped pink bows and glittery ribbons to them— remote controls, the Polaroid, stereo, Shop-Vac, even the motor to Dad’s work truck—everything my brother had taken apart and put back together doing his crystal meth tricks—he’d always been a magician of sorts. Two mutants came to the door. One looked almost human. They wanted to know if my brother had willed them the pots and pans and spoons stacked in his basement bedroom. They said they missed my brother’s cooking and did we have any cake.No more cake here, I told them. Well, what’s in the piñata? they asked. I told them God was and they ran into the desert, barefoot. I gave Dad his slice and put Mom’s in the freezer. I brought up the pots and pans and spoons (really, my brother was a horrible cook), banged them together like a New Year’s Day celebration. My brother finally showed up asking why he hadn’t been invited and who baked the cake. He told me I shouldn’t smile, that this whole party was shit because I’d imagined it all. The worst part he said was he was still alive. The worst part he said was he wasn’t even dead. I think he’s right, but maybe the worst part is that I’m still imagining the party, maybe the worst part is that I can still taste the cake.