767 Humor poems

Radiant child of Leto, farworking Lord Apollo, with lyre in hand and golden plectrum, you sang to the gods on Mount Olympus almost as soon as you were born. You sang, and the Muses sang in answer, and together your voices so delighted all your deathless elders that their perfect happiness was made more perfect still. What was it, though, that overwhelmed them, that suffused, astonished, even the endless ether? Was it the freshest, most wonderful stops of breath, the flawless intervals and scales whose harmonies were mimicking in sound the beauty of the gods themselves, or what you joined to that, what you were singing of, our balked desires, the miseries we suffer at your indifferent hands, devastation and bereavement, old age and death? Farworking, radiant child, what do you know about us? Here is my father, half blind, and palsied, at the toilet, he’s shouting at his penis, Piss, you! Piss! Piss! but the penis (like the heavenly host to mortal prayers) is deaf and dumb; here, too, my mother with her bad knee, on the eve of surgery, hobbling by the bathroom, pausing, saying, who are you talking to in there? and he replies, no one you would know, sweetheart. Supernal one, in your untested mastery, your easy excellence, with nothing to overcome, and needing nothing but the most calamitous and abject stories to prove how powerful you are, how truly free, watch them as they laugh so briefly, godlike, better than gods, if only for a moment in which what goes wrong is converted to a rightness, if only because now she’s hobbling back to bed where she won’t sleep, if only because he pees at last, missing the bowl, and has to get down on his knees to wipe it up. You don’t know anything about us.

They made a myth of you, professor, you of the gentle voice, the books, the specs, the furitive rabbit manners in the mortar-board cap and the medieval gown. They didn’t think it, eh professor? On account of you’re so absent-minded, you bumping into the tree and saying, “Excuse me, I thought you were a tree,” passing on again blank and absent-minded. Now it’s “Mr. Attila, how do you do?” Do you pack wallops of wholesale death? Are you the practical dynamic son-of-a-gun? Have you come through with a few abstractions? Is it you Mr. Attila we hear saying, “I beg your pardon but we believe we have made some degree of progress on the residual qualities of the atom”? [August, 1945]

Pepper blacks the pan so never shake it near me. Wait for the flagrant animation in my bedroom, in my bed base. In mountaineering situations sleep swaddled, wake ecstatic my frantic menus in your mind. I taste of them all. Refuse to refuse me. Waste your time on my errands. Squeeze your lime on my lemons. Turn up wearing the whole bird not just the feathers.

The Mayor of Scuttleton burned his nose Trying to warm his copper toes; He lost his money and spoiled his will By signing his name with an icicle-quill; He went bare-headed, and held his breath, And frightened his grandame most to death; He loaded a shovel, and tried to shoot, And killed the calf in the leg of his boot; He melted a snow-bird, and formed the habit Of dancing jigs with a sad Welsh rabbit; He lived on taffy, and taxed the town; And read his newspaper upside down; Then he sighed, and hung his hat on a feather, And bade the townspeople come together; But the worst of it all was, nobody knew What the Mayor of Scuttleton next would do.

marry at a hotel, annul ’em nary hep male rose sullen let alley roam, yell melon dull normal fellow hammers omelette divine sunrises Osiris’s irises his splendid mistress is his sis Isis creole cocoa loca crayon gumbo boca crayfish crayola jumbo mocha-cola warp maid fresh fetish coquettish a voyeur leers at X-rated reels

Mary, Mary, quite contrary How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells And pretty maids all in a row.

In the sad November time, When the leaf has left the lime, And the Cam, with sludge and slime, Plasters his ugly channel, While, with sober step and slow, Round about the marshes low, Stiffening students stumping go Shivering through their flannel. Then to me in doleful mood Rises up a question rude, Asking what sufficient good Comes of this mode of living? Moping on from day to day, Grinding up what will not “pay,” Till the jaded brain gives way Under its own misgiving. Why should wretched Man employ Years which Nature meant for joy, Striving vainly to destroy Freedom of thought and feeling? Still the injured powers remain Endless stores of hopeless pain, When at last the vanquished brain Languishes past all healing. Where is then his wealth of mind— All the schemes that Hope designed? Gone, like spring, to leave behind Indolent melancholy. Thus he ends his helpless days, Vex’t with thoughts of former praise— Tell me, how are Wisdom’s ways Better than senseless Folly? Happier those whom trifles please, Dreaming out a life of ease, Sinking by unfelt degrees Into annihilation. Or the slave, to labour born, Heedless of the freeman’s scorn, Destined to be slowly worn Down to the brute creation. Thus a tempting spirit spoke, As from troubled sleep I woke To a morning thick with smoke, Sunless and damp and chilly. Then to sleep I turned once more, Eyes inflamed and windpipe sore, Dreaming dreams I dreamt before, Only not quite so silly. In my dream methought I strayed Where a learned-looking maid Stores of flimsy goods displayed, Articles not worth wearing. “These,” she said, with solemn air, “Are the robes that sages wear, Warranted, when kept with care, Never to need repairing.” Then unnumbered witlings, caught By her wiles, the trappings bought, And by labour, not by thought, Honour and fame were earning. While the men of wiser mind Passed for blind among the blind; Pedants left them far behind In the career of learning. “Those that fix their eager eyes Ever on the nearest prize Well may venture to despise Loftier aspirations. Pedantry is in demand! Buy it up at second-hand, Seek no more to understand Profitless speculations.” Thus the gaudy gowns were sold, Cast off sloughs of pedants old; Proudly marched the students bold Through the domain of error, Till their trappings, false though fair, Mouldered off and left them bare, Clustering close in blank despair, Nakedness, cold, and terror. Then, I said, “These haughty Schools Boast that by their formal rules They produce more learned fools Than could be well expected. Learned fools they are indeed, Learned in the books they read; Fools whene’er they come to need Wisdom, too long neglected. “Oh! that men indeed were wise, And would raise their purblind eyes To the opening mysteries Scattered around them ever. Truth should spring from sterile ground, Beauty beam from all around, Right should then at last be found Joining what none may sever.”

the root and mirror of a plant its shape and power familiar iris the light is disturbed by the boxwood leaves shining rosemary green, unblossoming (the earth is too damp) the eye catches almost a tune the moth in the piano wherein unhammered the air rings with an earlier un ease of the senses disturbed ( by Mrs. Arpan, wife of a sailor

Little boy blue, Come blow your horn, The sheep's in the meadow, The cow's in the corn. But where is the boy Who looks after the sheep? He's under a haystack, Fast asleep.

Little Jack Horner Sat in the corner, Eating a Christmas pie; He put in his thumb, And pulled out a plum, And said, "What a good boy am I!"