767 Humor poems

A ▶                                                                                                          ◀ B You — this mucky fire slathered in my mind’s frame — are as committed to me as artists are to art. At times, your voice is constant — “kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself” — fists punching clay with the aim to make me nothing more than punched clay. Other times, you’re a cinema in my skull, screening me mangled: one leg auger-mauled, hand vice-crushed, eye pencil-blinded to life — “end it,” you say, in the scene you loop: this cinema’s walls with a bullet burst. At parties, you shape a sinister play from others’ glances: “hate him,” “idiot,” “fool.” When I bloom, a sun, all alight and rising, you flatten my lift into lines on a page like Jaffee’s in the back of MAD; you fold it over and now the rise is the wound from a wing cleaved and then gilded, the bloom’s a thousand-foot fall, the sun a drain. Yet with each step the unrelenting chorus of you circles round me, another chorus surfaces to surround you: the line of sheltering trees artists grow, loamy and ablaze, against your gale, the melodies of friends whose works asphyxiate your symphony, the lessons students teach about tipping your plinths, the magic of  bringing nib to page and penning life with urgency and patience, word by word, with abandon and care. Even though I know it can never silence you, I love this inky trick because it fills the blank before you can, marks up your script, swallows you choking in a page-mutating fold, so your cruel barks, garbled, almost seem to say: A ▶                                                                                                          ◀ B Click here to fold back so A meets B × frame your life with others' lines and you line your life with love

marc-antonizes. Somehow it organizes the mob—like so much lead—into rank and file. Somehow it stands us rabble up and makes a row of men stiffen or a rose of lead filings arise. A rose is a rose that arose, a magnetic personality very nearly said. She knew how to draw this one painter to her place in Paris and make him something greater. (She knew how to cube him.) But the magnetic can turn on a dime and go all red like a face of a Rubik’s Cube. In fact, its flip side can repel what it once sucked in— all those friends, Romans, countrymen, cubists.

He had to have it, his mother told him. How could he not, with so few left in the world? He felt heaviest at night with the miracle of it. He was a vessel now. A receptacle for a threatened being. What if he rose too fast and killed it? Or maybe his stillness would do it, too much sitting around, stunned and hungry. And what if the bear emerged alive and another formed in its place, would he have to have that one, too, and another one after that? He dreamed of the panda’s tiny eyes opening inside him, the doctor’s wide incision, a whirring pain, and then the furry thing emerging, the bear turning to him as to a stranger and whether that would be it—his bit part in the history of the future.

Ay, beshrew you! by my fay, These wanton clerks be nice alway! Avaunt, avaunt, my popinjay! What, will ye do nothing but play? Tilly, vally, straw, let be I say! Gup, Christian Clout, gup, Jack of the Vale! With Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale. By God, ye be a pretty pode, And I love you an whole cart-load. Straw, James Foder, ye play the fode, I am no hackney for your rod: Go watch a bull, your back is broad! Gup, Christian Clout, gup, Jack of the Vale! With Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale. Ywis ye deal uncourteously; What, would ye frumple me? now fy! What, and ye shall be my pigesnye? By Christ, ye shall not, no hardely: I will not be japèd bodily! Gup, Christian Clout, gup, Jack of the Vale! With Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale. Walk forth your way, ye cost me nought; Now have I found that I have sought: The best cheap flesh that I ever bought. Yet, for his love that all hath wrought, Wed me, or else I die for thought. Gup, Christian Clout, your breath is stale! Go, Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale! Gup, Christian Clout, gup, Jack of the Vale! With Mannerly Margery Milk and Ale.

Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow; And everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go. It followed her to school one day, Which was against the rule; It made the children laugh and play To see a lamb at school. And so the teacher turned it out, But still it lingered near, And waited patiently about Till Mary did appear. Why does the lamb love Mary so? The eager children cry; Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know, The teacher did reply.

I would invoke that man Who chipped for all posterity an ass (The one that Jesus rode) Out of hard stone, and set its either wing Among the wings of the most saintly clan On Chartres Cathedral, and that it might sing The praise to all who pass Of its unearthly load, Hung from its neck a harp-like instrument. I would invoke that man To aid my argument. The ass smiles on us all, Being astonished that an ass might rise To such sure eminence Not merely among asses but mankind, Simpers, almost, upon the western wall In praise of folly, who midst sow and kine, Saw with its foolish eyes Gold, Myrrh, and Frankincense Enter the stable door, against all odds. The ass smiles on us all. Our butt at last is God’s. That man is but an ass— More perfectly, that ass is but a man Who struggles to describe Our rich, contingent and substantial world In ideal signs: the dunged and pagan grass, Misted in summer, or the mother-of-pearled Home of the bachelor-clam. A cold and toothless tribe Has he for brothers, who would coldly think. That man is but an ass Who smells not his own stink. For all his abstract style Speaks not to our humanity, and shows Neither the purity Of heaven, nor the impurity beneath, And cannot see the feasted crocodile Ringed with St. Francis’ birds to pick its teeth, Nor can his thought disclose To normal intimacy, Siamese twins, the double-beasted back, For all his abstract style Utters our chiefest lack. Despite his abstract style, Pickerel will dawdle in their summer pools Lit by the flitterings Of light dashing the gusty surfaces, Or lie suspended among shades of bile And lime in fluent shift, for all he says. And all the grey-haired mules, Simple and neuter things, Will bray hosannas, blessing harp and wing. For all his abstract style, The ass will learn to sing.

Swung from the toes out, Belly-breath riding on the knuckles, The ten-pound maul lifts up, Sails in an arc overhead, And then lifts you! It floats, you float, For an instant of clear far sight— Eye on the crack in the end-grain Angle of the oak round Stood up to wait to be split. The maul falls—with a sigh—the wood Claps apart and lies twain— In a wink. As the maul Splits all, may You two stay together.

Dinner finished, wine in hand, in a vaguely competitive spirit of disclosure, we trail Google Earth's invisible pervert through the streets of our hometowns, but find them shabbier, or grossly contemporized, denuded of childhood's native flora, stuccoed or in some other way hostile to the historical reenactments we expect of our former settings. What sadness in the disused curling rinks, their illegal basement bars imploding, in the seed of a Walmart sprouting in the demographic, in Street View's perpetual noon. With pale and bloated production values, hits of AM radio rise to the surface of a network of social relations long obsolete. We sense a loss of rapport. But how sweet the persistence of angle parking! Would we burn these places rather than see them change, or just happily burn them, the sites of wreckage from which we staggered with our formative injuries into the rest of our lives. They cannot be consigned to the fourfold, though the age we were belongs to someone else. Like our old house. Look what they've done to it. Who thought this would be fun? A concert, then, YouTube from those inconceivable days before YouTube, an era boarded over like a bankrupt country store, cans still on its shelves, so hastily did we leave it. How beautiful they are in their poncey clothes, their youthful higher registers, fullscreen, two of them dead now. Is this eternity? Encore, applause, encore; it's almost like being there.

Yes, nonsense is a treasure! I love it from my heart; The only earthly pleasure That never will depart. But, as for stupid reason, That stalking, ten-foot rule, She’s always out of season, A tedious, testy fool. She’s like a walking steeple, With a clock for face and eyes, Still bawling to all people, Time bids us to be wise. While nonsense on the spire A weathercock you’ll find, Than reason soaring higher, And changing with the wind. The clock too oft deceives, Says what it cannot prove; While every one believes The vane that turns above. Reason oft speaks unbidden, And chides us to our face; For which she should be chidden, And taught to know her place. While nonsense smiles and chatters, And says such charming things, Like youthful hope she flatters; And like a syren sings. Her charm’s from fancy borrowed, For she is fancy’s pet; Her name is on her forehead, In rainbow colors set. Then, nonsense let us cherish, Far, far from reason’s light; Lest in her light she perish, And vanish from our sight.

Huzza! Hodgson, we are going, Our embargo's off at last; Favourable breezes blowing Bend the canvass o'er the mast. From aloft the signal's streaming, Hark! the farewell gun is fir'd; Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expir'd. Here's a rascal Come to task all, Prying from the custom-house; Trunks unpacking Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse 'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket, Ere we sail on board the Packet. Now our boatmen quit their mooring, And all hands must ply the oar; Baggage from the quay is lowering, We're impatient—push from shore. "Have a care! that case holds liquor— Stop the boat—I'm sick—oh Lord!" "Sick, ma'am, damme, you'll be sicker, Ere you've been an hour on board." Thus are screaming Men and women, Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks; Here entangling, All are wrangling, Stuck together close as wax.— Such the genial noise and racket, Ere we reach the Lisbon Packet. Now we've reach'd her, lo! the captain, Gallant Kidd, commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why 't is hardly three feet square; Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill." "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still: Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet." Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you? Stretch'd along the deck like logs— Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you! Here's a rope's end for the dogs. Hobhouse muttering fearful curses, As the hatchway down he rolls, Now his breakfast, now his verses, Vomits forth—and damns our souls. "Here's a stanza On Braganza— Help!"—"A couplet?"—"No, a cup Of warm water—" "What's the matter?" "Zounds! my liver's coming up; I shall not survive the racket Of this brutal Lisbon Packet." Now at length we're off for Turkey, Lord knows when we shall come back! Breezes foul and tempests murky May unship us in a crack. But, since life at most a jest is, As philosophers allow, Still to laugh by far the best is, Then laugh on—as I do now. Laugh at all things, Great and small things, Sick or well, at sea or shore; While we're quaffing, Let's have laughing— Who the devil cares for more?— Some good wine! and who would lack it, Ev'n on board the Lisbon Packet?