767 Humor poems

O what a strange parcel of creatures are we, Scarce ever to quarrel, or even agree; We all are alone, though at home altogether, Except to the fire constrained by the weather; Then one says, ‘’Tis cold’, which we all of us know, And with unanimity answer, ‘’Tis so’: With shrugs and with shivers all look at the fire, And shuffle ourselves and our chairs a bit nigher; Then quickly, preceded by silence profound, A yawn epidemical catches around: Like social companions we never fall out, Nor ever care what one another’s about; To comfort each other is never our plan, For to please ourselves, truly, is more than we can.

When the first mechanical picker had stripped the field, It left such a copious white dross of disorderly wispiness That my mother could not console herself to the waste And insisted on having it picked over with human hands, Though anyone could see there was not enough for ten sheets And the hands had long since gone into the factories. No matter how often my father pointed this out, She worried it the way I’ve worried the extra words In poems that I conceived with the approximate Notion that each stanza should have the same number Of lines and each line the same number of syllables— And disregarded it, telling myself a ripple Or botch on the surface, like the stutter of a speaker, Is all I have to affirm the deep fluency below. The Hebrews distrusted Greek poetry (which embodied Harmony and symmetry, and, therefore, revision) Not for aesthetic reasons, but because they believed That to change the first words, which rose unsmelted From the trance, amounted to sacrilege against God. In countries where, because of the gross abundance Of labor, it’s unlawful to import harvesting machines, I see the women in the fields and think of how, When my mother used to pick, you could tell Her row by the bare stalks and the scant poundage That tumbled from her sack so pristinely white And devoid of burrs, it seemed to have already Passed through the spiked mandibles of the gin. Dr. Williams said of Eliot that his poems were so Cautiously wrought that they seemed to come To us already digested in all four stomachs of the cow. What my father loved about my mother was not Just the beauty of her body and face, but the practice Of her ideas and the intelligence of her hands As they made the house that abides in us still As worry and bother, but also the perfect freedom beyond— As cleanliness is next to godliness but is not God.

Mr. Van Ess bought 14 washcloths? Fourteen washrags, Ed Van Ess? Must be going to give em to the church, I guess. He drinks, you know. The day we moved he came into the kitchen stewed, mixed things up for my sister Grace— put the spices in the wrong place.

Much better than a goat it was to drop an anarchist from a Park Row window because he wouldn’t confess to federal agents. He fell to his death while sitting on the windowsill holding a pamphlet close to his eyes and maybe waving his arm in appreciation, and no one heard him screaming — they were wearing earmuffs or just they forgot to bring their earpieces but it was nothing, he was a fiend and a cutthroat and he would have murdered Rockefeller if he had the chance, for which reason I have locked my front door for I can’t find a rat trap big enough.

Everything about the young foreign taxidermist was overdone. Did he absolutely have to wear the apron with the tiny red castles in the shop? Or weave, at night, in and out of the trees? I don’t think so. I would bring him buckets of ice water day after day hoping he would just cool off a bit. Fact is, he never did. But to be fair, he really was practicing what the papers called, “heroic medicine.” It was love. I admit it. It was fancy love. I was the envy of the world, being hitched up with such a genius, and that felt good. Of course, these days, I can’t touch rope or a small child without thinking of him. Without expecting his large hands to come out of nowhere. We were, as mother said, both “slowly losing our minds.” He’d talk for hours about hygiene, the Water Cure for example, and wrote an award-winning essay on the Electric Bath as a way to treat hysteria in the female fox. “Too many foxes,” he would say, shaking his fist, “too many foxes running around like chickens with their heads cut off.” In the winter months we would ride our bicycles down to the scrap-metal yard where he would make love to me in devout silence. The delight in his eyes when he found that small cage! He was both tender and rough, and I had never, and will never again, be as touched by another man. I didn’t notice the black mustache growing slowly but unmercifully on his left shoulder until two or three years into the affair. At first it seemed harmless. A small patch of dead grass. But eventually I couldn’t help but only see the large dark field. Its silent twitching. By then it was already early fall, and the fact is, it tore us apart.

I do not understand the poets who tell me that I should not personify. Every morning the willow auditions for a new role outside my bedroom window—today she is Clytemnestra; yesterday a Southern Belle, lost in her own melodrama, sinking on her skirts. Nor do I like the mathematicians who tell me I cannot say, "The zinnias are counting on their fingers," or "The dog is practicing her geometry," even though every day I watch her using the yard's big maple as the apex of a triangle from which she bisects the circumference of the lawn until she finds the place where the rabbit has escaped, or the squirrel upped the ante by climbing into a new Euclidian plane. She stumbles across the lawn, eyes pulling her feet along, gaze fixed on a rodent working the maze of the oak as if it were his own invention, her feet tangling in the roots of trees, and tripping, yes, even over themselves, until I go out to assist, by pointing at the squirrel, and repeating, "There! There!" But instead of following my outstretched arm to the crown of the tree, where the animal is now lounging under a canopy of leaves, catching its breath, charting its next escape, she looks to my mouth, eager to read my lips, confident that I—who can bring her home from across the field with a word, who can speak for the willow and the zinnia— can surely charm a squirrel down from a tree.

My doggy ate my essay. He picked up all my mail. He cleaned my dirty closet and dusted with his tail. He straightened out my posters and swept my wooden floor. My parents almost fainted when he fixed my bedroom door. I did not try to stop him. He made my windows shine. My room looked like a palace, and my dresser smelled like pine. He fluffed up every pillow. He folded all my clothes. He even cleaned my fish tank with a toothbrush and a hose. I thought it was amazing to see him use a broom. I’m glad he ate my essay on “How to Clean My Room.”

“My doggy ate my homework. He chewed it up,” I said. But when I offered my excuse My teacher shook her head. I saw this wasn’t going well. I didn’t want to fail. Before she had a chance to talk, I added to the tale: “Before he ate, he took my work And tossed it in a pot. He simmered it with succotash Till it was piping hot. “He scrambled up my science notes With eggs and bacon strips, Along with sautéed spelling words And baked potato chips. “He then took my arithmetic And had it gently fried. He broiled both my book reports With pickles on the side. “He wore a doggy apron As he cooked a notebook stew. He barked when I objected. There was nothing I could do.” “Did he wear a doggy chef hat?” She asked me with a scowl. “He did,” I said. “And taking it Would only make him growl.” My teacher frowned, but then I said As quickly as I could, “He covered it with ketchup, And he said it tasted good.” “A talking dog who likes to cook?” My teacher had a fit. She sent me to the office, And that is where I sit. I guess I made a big mistake In telling her all that. ’Cause I don’t have a doggy. It was eaten by my cat.

My frog is a frog that is hopelessly hoarse, my frog is a frog with a reason, of course, my frog is a frog that cannot croak a note, my frog is a frog with a frog in its throat.

My hat was run over by a trolley yesterday. This morning my coat took a walk to some place far away. This afternoon my shoes happened to get assassinated. — I’m still here? that’s just i t.