767 Humor poems

I. Pledge Sister Everyone looks at me as if I’m a rainbow drawn by a slow child. Because they can eat without a ringing in their ears. They can ask for gravy. They miss the point I’m always aiming at their heads. The pills I suck are like me: pink, fizzy, and totally legal. They turn listening to noise into a type of eating. Everyone wants to know about my pubic hair. They say they’re looking for signs that I’m dying, but what they really want is the food melting on the fork when they finally say none for me, thanks. They worship the pain they think I’m in. Meanwhile, I’d eat a beetle if I thought its legs could make my lashes longer. I’ve got all these organs inside me and I can’t resist teasing them to see if they’ll go away. Everyone likes it when I finally die in the magazine article: the cries no one heard, the love I needed massaged into my hamburger meat. No one knows I am the flower, the bee, the wind, the rain, the dirt: all the vectors. No one knows how well I sleep, how well I lie in bed not sleeping. I run and sharpen the bones of my face. The other girls say they don’t care if their shadows aren’t museum quality. They’re happy just knowing they’re made out of marble. They have no respect for the chisel I would take to the human race. II. Spring Break Love isn’t above starting this way: you can drop me from a second-story window if you pin me against it first. It doesn’t want to start this way, and who can blame it. There’s the electric outlet and then there’s the baby finger stuck into it. I was both. A couple nights later, on a busy street, I recognized his walk the way a mouse must recognize a hole it used last winter. Sure, I wish the universe could clear its throat. Sure, I’m sick of the source of great fire always being the sun. A few nights ago he peeled off of me as if he were my own skin and he didn’t want the job. But afterwards he kissed me as if to apologize for every brutal thing he was strong enough to have just done. Later he walked me across town, and we ended up in an expensive place, in the middle of a loud song. He looked right at me the whole time, as if I were still the one thing he would choose, even though the damn thing couldn’t stop spinning and was clearly broken. III. The Essay It is dumb to know what one has longing for. I am moved by the orange stitching on a girl’s corduroy book bag. I, too, wonder what I am happy about. There is always something natural in pieces like sand or snow. If early Western cultures had perceived the surface of the day as wrapping around them like a shell, I wouldn’t be here right now. Not exactly me, not exactly here, not exactly now. The world spreads out from how we look at one thing. I tell myself this and then I look at things for hours. Don’t think I don’t know how stupid I sound. Please, do not think I don’t know. IV. Fifth-Year Senior Everything tastes like love. That’s what makes me nervous. That and I wish I knew what I will act like later today. I watch myself being kind sometimes and I think, is there nothing you won’t fake? But that’s unforgiving. A smile, a purse, an ax, these are all things you pick up and carry. Lately, I pick up the lightest things. I am floating and honored to drag myself back and forth like a huge feather across my sleeping boyfriend. He thanks me by actually changing under my touch. He is smooth and I worry that I barely feel him, but doing things no one should see seems the only good use of my time. He buys me jewelry I never wear. I love it because it piles up, which proves I’m alive. The boys my age cry more than the girls do. They’re always losing games, and those are very symbolic. My girlfriends and I can’t get off the couch anymore, and summer is seeping in under the doors. My friend says people are wrong about us. It’s the ripe fruit that gets eaten. I say the truth is I don’t work at things because then I get them. V. Graduation Address I like to be at the end and look back at the beginning and see all the stupidity there. I think we are young. The posters all say so, and though no one ever officially joined our clubs, we designed many logos. The beautiful, dumb girl you loved was everyone at our lecture, and what a strange boy we all were in the corner with our walking stick, talking too much about the board games back home. Many of you were next to me at the talk where I became hyper-aware of the creeping in my heart. As you know, I became obsessed with the on and off inside my chest. Failure seems to be one half of the deal, which is why I have occasionally climbed on top of some of you and then left the room. But there is another way to look at it: like you, I am a house for a wet animal that is sneaking up on something it is terrified by. What is that something? The wet animal doesn’t know. The wet animal doesn’t even have eyes. There’s no way that wet animal isn’t brave.

Miss Snooks was really awfully nice And never wrote a poem That was not really awfully nice And fitted to a woman, She therefore made no enemies And gave no sad surprises But went on being awfully nice And took a lot of prizes. November 1964

I swive as well as others do, I’m young, not yet deformed, My tender heart, sincere, and true, Deserves not to be scorned. Why Phyllis then, why will you swive, With forty lovers more? Can I (said she) with Nature strive, Alas I am, alas I am a whore. Were all my body larded o’er, With darts of love, so thick, That you might find in ev’ry pore, A well stuck standing prick; Whilst yet my eyes alone were free, My heart, would never doubt, In am’rous rage, and ecstasy, To wish those eyes, to wish those eyes fucked out.

I wake to money, and take my money slow I watched for money, lights turned low One must have a mind of money . . . Money that is not there and the money that is The art of money isn't hard to master . . . The money surrounds us . . . Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet money Money on a wet, black bough Do not go gentle into that good money The pure products of money go crazy Money sweeping out from us to disappear Oh Money! My Money! our fearful trip is done I myself will die without money Money, Money, you bastard, I'm through.

Moo, moo, brown cow Have you any milk? Yes miss, three jugs smooth as silk. One for you, And one for me, And one for the little cat Who sits in the tree.

D: The Dreadful Dinotherium he Will have to do his best for D. The early world observed with awe His back, indented like a saw. His look was gay, his voice was strong; His tail was neither short nor long; His trunk, or elongated nose, Was not so large as some suppose; His teeth, as all the world allows, Were graminivorous, like a cow's. He therefore should have wished to pass Long peaceful nights upon the Grass, But being mad the brute preferred To roost in branches, like a bird. 1 A creature heavier than a whale, You see at once, could hardly fail To suffer badly when he slid And tumbled (as he always did). His fossil, therefore, comes to light All broken up: and serve him right. MORAL If you were born to walk the ground, Remain there; do not fool around. E stands for Egg. MORAL The Moral of this verse Is applicable to the Young. Be terse. K for the Klondyke, a Country of Gold, Where the winters are often excessively cold; Where the lawn every morning is covered with rime, And skating continues for years at a time. Do you think that a Climate can conquer the grit Of the Sons of the West? Not a bit! Not a bit! When the weather looks nippy, the bold Pioneers Put on two pairs of Stockings and cover their ears, And roam through the drear Hyperborean dales With a vast apparatus of Buckets and Pails; Or wander through wild Hyperborean glades With Hoes, Hammers, Pickaxes, Mattocks and Spades. There are some who give rise to exuberant mirth By turning up nothing but bushels of earth, While those who have little cause excellent fun By attempting to pilfer from those who have none. At times the reward they will get for their pains Is to strike very tempting auriferous veins; Or, a shaft being sunk for some miles in the ground, Not infrequently nuggets of value are found. They bring us the gold when their labours are ended, And we—after thanking them prettily—spend it. MORAL Just you work for Humanity, never you mind If Humanity seems to have left you behind.

For a long time the Spanish from Spain Who came here became slightly insane In a special way and just a little. You can try this yourself. Walk farther than you can into the forest in New York So it’s a toss-up whether or not you know the way back. For you there’s going to be a smidge of confusion, a glow of fear That smells like burning rye toast, And the illusion that you are the only person alive On the earth. You will probably have the second illusion That no one likes you, which doesn’t jibe with the first illusion Of no other people. This was about the extent of it, for the Spanish, They felt all that just a few hours a week, but every week at home, Living in, say, small San Francisco, Which made thinking slow and hard at these times, But if you try this yourself in the deep woods You’ll see you can still think enough And you’ll remember your way back to the loving arms Of your wife, husband, or mother, in Rochester. (Yes, You could try it as a child, but please don’t.) The Spanish had a purpose to walk east inland to the Sierras, the gold. The Indians said there were five hills and two mountains Entirely of gold and you had to wear ferns dangling before your eyes Like sunglasses when you got near the mountains. The hills, they said, were not so bright. The Spanish thought this was bullshit But were having trouble with the coast (where They truly believed the gold was) which was that boats Could not travel north and south even as fast as people walking Because the Pacific coast was opposing currents (you made Half a mile an hour in the water with biggest sail). An expedition of thirty Spaniards from Spain (living In small San Francisco) walked east inland toward what’s now Mariposa. It means butterfly. In that place, the shivering feathery Insects rose from the ground and blacked out the sun. The sky had no room for more butterflies so the leftovers attached to the trees, Making the trees appear like ragged trees. Look up the other way, the explorers said to each other, but That way, when they did, was no blue sky but darkness of orange insects That did not fly in clouds but were the sky, So any forward motion by the thirty men seemed, not seemed Did make the sky covered each inch With the thin trembling insects, brown or green or orange, But as a whole a black ceiling with little light between them and the men, Who thought slow and hard but did think, and so returned To small San Francisco where no one believed them but understood The illusion because when they asked the thirty men What such an encounter with butterflies felt like, the men described Feeling the way all the colonists and explorers and priests and women Felt a few hours each week at home— Fear making the olfactory illusion of burning rye toast hand In hand with the illusion of being the only one And the simultaneous but contradictory illusion That no one likes you. How could everybody hate you If there was no everybody? Or even anybody. Well there was a way to fix this And we use it now around here (I Mean in New York and California and Nevada and Hawaii, Not just in my house) which is to wrap our loving arms Around each other. It works very well And I know you’ve tried it. The Spanish from Spain brought virtuous women Over for that purpose only (you don’t think the virtuous babes looked For gold, did you?) and it worked very well Except the women were worse, I mean much worse, Not just specially a little insane and needed The loving arms much more than the men. They needed longer sessions and more sessions. What’s more, if the expedition of thirty butterfly Illusionists had gone six miles further, They would have seen silver sticking out of the ground Like glass after a four-car accident on a street in Rochester. But for many decades the promise of the waiting loving arms, Versus the unacceptable illusion of the butterflies Forming the entire black sky, kept them near the coasts. When you put down this book, you could decide For yourself if it is true that wrapping loving arms around Somebody is as temporarily powerful as I’ve made it Out to be or is possibly permanently powerful or is an illusion Like the massed feathery insects which were absolute.

How does one grow the cojones to celebrate a Fudgsicle? I’ll tell you, and won’t begin by mentioning trellises forsooth. The items on the register are mechanisms inscrutable, yes. But they sway in the doubled-up air with a sense of lucidity, A kind of gong affect that chiggers as it steamrolls forth, Appraisals for unchintziest bling. Time for a sea change. Your turn, and this means you Come with me. Agreeable and mute, like the original Doppelgänger, or as we in my neighborhood called it The Doppler Radar. On school mornings, a trust fund in my teeth, High yacht vanilla swilled my parents’ bed. I would be multiple and exact. From that vantage, a windpipe brought forth On invisible horseback to the sick child’s bed. I’m sure you can’t quite imagine it, ember In the tabby lobby. But I could. I arrested it. Gershwin and American Airlines and I could always Tell the voice without the face, God’s gift to me For being lame in phlegmatic tissue. O parabola. Look at the ashtrays! There they are. Swinging, roiling, Ocean-choppy, a gauntlet of remote controls, Paint supplies all stacked up with nowhere to go In the corner of a grave illness — like pink paint. This forecast of centenarians in Florida, and Burbank. All my life I wanted a fractal tie and strawberry apron. Now I’m a Church lady, no hint of arthritic condition. My name isn’t Sallie or Mae, it’s Sallie Mae. Millions of tiny pendants, Waterford crystal, bubbling From local tree-fort where boys grope one another. Will you come with me for Pilates at Fort Ticonderoga? Denise Austin is here. Stretch in the sun. Champagne woods, lakes chasms, dismounts. Then you say: You have no idea what I lived through. The Green Mountain Boys were like a second dad to me.

Be large with those small fears. The whole sky has fallen on you and all you can do about it is shout, dragging your fear-ettes by their pinked ears. They dance a number now: consequence without sequence. Lovingly broadminded in their realization and ruin, expert at the parting shot. Not so small after all, we micro to macro, swelling to the horror shows lifted from the sly ways of life. You, both scorched and shining in the terror of the equivocal moment, its box of cheeky logics rattling cold certainties out of bounds and into the plaits of a girl’s desirous ends. A little debauched, the flirt in a freckling, wondering spun to falling comes to this pert contract of a paradox: saying things because they will do no good, ringing change in frumpy mono-determination, fruity and fruitless. Exploded out of shelter, the tides come roaring in. Let in the hoarse Cassandras and the dull pain of the storyteller. You’ve needed those eyes all along. We thought them disconcerting at first, but it’s the only way. You live here now having exchanged etiquette for energy. Don’t be clever, don’t be shy! Participate today. Yesterday you say everything for their own sake, and soon enough, tomorrow, you learn a lot from them.

A Satire upon the True-blue Protestant Poet T.S. All human things are subject to decay, And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey: This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long: In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute. This aged prince now flourishing in peace, And blest with issue of a large increase, Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the State: And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit To reign, and wage immortal war with wit; Cry'd, 'tis resolv'd; for nature pleads that he Should only rule, who most resembles me: Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, Mature in dullness from his tender years. Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity. The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day: Besides his goodly fabric fills the eye, And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty: Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign. Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee, Thou last great prophet of tautology: Even I, a dunce of more renown than they, Was sent before but to prepare thy way; And coarsely clad in Norwich drugget came To teach the nations in thy greater name. My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung When to King John of Portugal I sung, Was but the prelude to that glorious day, When thou on silver Thames did'st cut thy way, With well tim'd oars before the royal barge, Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge; And big with hymn, commander of an host, The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets toss'd. Methinks I see the new Arion sail, The lute still trembling underneath thy nail. At thy well sharpen'd thumb from shore to shore The treble squeaks for fear, the basses roar: Echoes from Pissing-Alley, Shadwell call, And Shadwell they resound from Aston Hall. About thy boat the little fishes throng, As at the morning toast, that floats along. Sometimes as prince of thy harmonious band Thou wield'st thy papers in thy threshing hand. St. Andre's feet ne'er kept more equal time, Not ev'n the feet of thy own Psyche's rhyme: Though they in number as in sense excel; So just, so like tautology they fell, That, pale with envy, Singleton forswore The lute and sword which he in triumph bore And vow'd he ne'er would act Villerius more. Here stopt the good old sire; and wept for joy In silent raptures of the hopeful boy. All arguments, but most his plays, persuade, That for anointed dullness he was made. Close to the walls which fair Augusta bind, (The fair Augusta much to fears inclin'd) An ancient fabric, rais'd t'inform the sight, There stood of yore, and Barbican it hight: A watch tower once; but now, so fate ordains, Of all the pile an empty name remains. From its old ruins brothel-houses rise, Scenes of lewd loves, and of polluted joys. Where their vast courts, the mother-strumpets keep, And, undisturb'd by watch, in silence sleep. Near these a nursery erects its head, Where queens are form'd, and future heroes bred; Where unfledg'd actors learn to laugh and cry, Where infant punks their tender voices try, And little Maximins the gods defy. Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here, Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear; But gentle Simkin just reception finds Amidst this monument of vanish'd minds: Pure clinches, the suburbian muse affords; And Panton waging harmless war with words. Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well known, Ambitiously design'd his Shadwell's throne. For ancient Decker prophesi'd long since, That in this pile should reign a mighty prince, Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense: To whom true dullness should some Psyches owe, But worlds of Misers from his pen should flow; Humorists and hypocrites it should produce, Whole Raymond families, and tribes of Bruce. Now Empress Fame had publisht the renown, Of Shadwell's coronation through the town. Rous'd by report of fame, the nations meet, From near Bun-Hill, and distant Watling-street. No Persian carpets spread th'imperial way, But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay: From dusty shops neglected authors come, Martyrs of pies, and reliques of the bum. Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby there lay, But loads of Shadwell almost chok'd the way. Bilk'd stationers for yeoman stood prepar'd, And Herringman was Captain of the Guard. The hoary prince in majesty appear'd, High on a throne of his own labours rear'd. At his right hand our young Ascanius sat Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state. His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace, And lambent dullness play'd around his face. As Hannibal did to the altars come, Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome; So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain, That he till death true dullness would maintain; And in his father's right, and realm's defence, Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense. The king himself the sacred unction made, As king by office, and as priest by trade: In his sinister hand, instead of ball, He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale; Love's kingdom to his right he did convey, At once his sceptre and his rule of sway; Whose righteous lore the prince had practis'd young, And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung, His temples last with poppies were o'er spread, That nodding seem'd to consecrate his head: Just at that point of time, if fame not lie, On his left hand twelve reverend owls did fly. So Romulus, 'tis sung, by Tiber's brook, Presage of sway from twice six vultures took. Th'admiring throng loud acclamations make, And omens of his future empire take. The sire then shook the honours of his head, And from his brows damps of oblivion shed Full on the filial dullness: long he stood, Repelling from his breast the raging god; At length burst out in this prophetic mood: Heavens bless my son, from Ireland let him reign To far Barbadoes on the Western main; Of his dominion may no end be known, And greater than his father's be his throne. Beyond love's kingdom let him stretch his pen; He paus'd, and all the people cry'd Amen. Then thus, continu'd he, my son advance Still in new impudence, new ignorance. Success let other teach, learn thou from me Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry. Let Virtuosos in five years be writ; Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit. Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage, Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage; Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit, And in their folly show the writer's wit. Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence, And justify their author's want of sense. Let 'em be all by thy own model made Of dullness, and desire no foreign aid: That they to future ages may be known, Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own. Nay let thy men of wit too be the same, All full of thee, and differing but in name; But let no alien Sedley interpose To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose. And when false flowers of rhetoric thou would'st cull, Trust Nature, do not labour to be dull; But write thy best, and top; and in each line, Sir Formal's oratory will be thine. Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill, And does thy Northern Dedications fill. Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame, By arrogating Jonson's hostile name. Let Father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise, And Uncle Ogleby thy envy raise. Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part; What share have we in Nature or in Art? Where did his wit on learning fix a brand, And rail at arts he did not understand? Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein, Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain? Where sold he bargains, whip-stitch, kiss my arse, Promis'd a play and dwindled to a farce? When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin, As thou whole Eth'ridge dost transfuse to thine? But so transfus'd as oil on waters flow, His always floats above, thine sinks below. This is thy province, this thy wondrous way, New humours to invent for each new play: This is that boasted bias of thy mind, By which one way, to dullness, 'tis inclin'd, Which makes thy writings lean on one side still, And in all changes that way bends thy will. Nor let thy mountain belly make pretence Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense. A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ, But sure thou 'rt but a kilderkin of wit. Like mine thy gentle numbers feebly creep, Thy Tragic Muse gives smiles, thy Comic sleep. With whate'er gall thou sett'st thy self to write, Thy inoffensive satires never bite. In thy felonious heart, though venom lies, It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies. Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame In keen iambics, but mild anagram: Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command Some peaceful province in acrostic land. There thou may'st wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways. Or if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit, Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute. He said, but his last words were scarcely heard, For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepar'd, And down they sent the yet declaiming bard. Sinking he left his drugget robe behind, Born upwards by a subterranean wind. The mantle fell to the young prophet's part, With double portion of his father's art.