767 Humor poems

It doesn’t bother me to have lint in the bottoms of pant pockets; it gives the hands something to do, especially since I no longer hold shovel, hod, or hammer in the daylight hours of labor and haven’t, in fact, done so in twenty-five years. A long time to be picking lint from pockets. Perhaps even long enough to have gathered sacks full of lint that could have been put to good use, maybe spun into yarn to knit a sweater for my wife’s Christmas present, or strong thread whirled and woven into a tweedy jacket. Imagine entering my classroom in a jacket made from lint. Who would believe it? Yet there are stranger things— the son of a bricklayer with hands so smooth they’re only fit for picking lint.

After George Herbert This tiny ruin in my eye, small flaw in the fabric, little speck of blood in the egg, deep chip in the windshield, north star, polestar, floater that doesn't float, spot where my hand is not, even when I'm looking at my hand, little piton that nails every rock I see, no matter if the picture turns to sand, or sand to sea, I embrace you, piece of absence that reminds me what I will be, all dark some day unless God rescues me, oh speck that might teach me yet to see.

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep, And can't tell where to find them; Leave them alone, and they'll come home, Bringing their tails behind them. Little Bo-Peep fell fast asleep, And dreamt she heard them bleating; But when she awoke, she found it a joke, For they were still all fleeting. Then up she took her little crook, Determined for to find them; She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed, For they'd left their tails behind them. It happened one day, as Bo-Peep did stray Into a meadow hard by, There she espied their tails, side by side, All hung on a tree to dry. She heaved a sigh and wiped her eye, And over the hillocks she raced; And tried what she could, as a shepherdess should, That each tail be properly placed.

Little Boy Blue, please cover your nose. You sneezed on Miss Muffet and ruined her clothes. You sprayed Mother Hubbard, and now she is sick. You put out the fire on Jack’s candlestick. Your sneeze is the reason why Humpty fell down. You drenched Yankee Doodle when he came to town. The blind mice are angry! The sheep are upset! From now on use tissues so no one gets wet!

Did you know that Kenneth Koch's wife Janice used to be an airplane pilot? Once she had to make an emergency landing on a highway. When Kenward Elmslie was a kid he wanted to be a tap dancer. Did you know that Kenward's grandfather was Joseph Pulitzer? Kenward once told me that Jane Russell is a dyke. Andy Warhol wanted to be a tap dancer when he was a kid too. D. D. Ryan wanted to be a ballerina. Did you know that Pat Padgett was Ted Berrigan's girlfriend for years before she married Ron? Ron Padgett and I were in the same 1st grade class together in school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ron's father, Wayne, was a notorious bootlegger in Tulsa until Oklahoma went wet. A few years ago Ron's father got divorced and married a beautiful Las Vegas showgirl younger than Ron's wife Pat. Did you know that Bill Berkson was once bat boy for the Yankees? Ted Berrigan married his wife Sandy after having only known her for five days. Did you know that the first poems John Ashbery ever had published were published in Poetry magazine under the name of Joel Symington? Did you know that Bill Berkson was on the "1oo Best Dressed Men" list of 1967? Rudy Burckhardt once dated Miss Vermont of 1938. Donald Droll is in some way related to Daniel Boone. Frank O'Hara once told me that what he really wanted to be was a concert pianist. Did you know that Harry Mathews started out to be a com- poser? He studied at the Juilliard School of Music. Edwin Denby was born in China. Anne Waldman's father wrote a book called Rapid Reading Made Simple. Tom Veitch's father writes Christmas card verse. When I was a kid I wanted to be a fashion designer, a minister, and an artist. Peter Schjeldahl's father is very famous in the plastic area. He discovered the new lightweight plastic used in Bufferin bottles. Soon he hopes to open a contraceptive factory in Red China. Did you know that Bill Berkson was once on I Remember Mama? D. D. Ryan went to see The Boys in the Band with Jackie Kennedy just a week before she married Onassis. John Ashbery was a quiz kid. Kenneth Koch once won the Glasscock Award. Did you know that Ron Padgett has blebs on his lung which may explode at any moment? They have exploded twice already. Tina Louise once sang "I'm in the Mood for Love" to Bill Berkson over London broils at P. J. Clarke's. Did you know that Ted Berrigan did his thesis at Tulsa University on George Bernard Shaw? Did you know that the Katz Tumor is named after Ada Katz who discovered it? Edwin Denby once performed in Berlin's "Wintergarten" billed as "Der Amerikanische Grotesktaenzer Dumby." Yvonne Burckhardt was the backstroke swimming cham- pion of Connecticut for one week. When I lived in Boston I used to panhandle on the street where all of the art galleries were, and I got my cigarette butts from the urns in front of the Museum of Fine Arts. Did you know that Ted Berrigan's first book of poems,A Lily for My Love, was published by the Lenox Bar in Providence, Rd. Island? Greta Garbo once called Bill Berkson her ice cream man. I once went to a "come as your favorite person" party as Marilyn Monroe. Did you know that John Ashbery once worked in a cherry canning factory?

Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet, Eating her curds and whey; Along came a spider, Who sat down beside her, And frightened Miss Muffet away.

One marriage, three children, the usual hero-to-hump tale of jobs in alternating altitudes, stories of unrequited joy. Fresh identities, dramas unseen. Too much of dawn going dark, making for a rich meal of dread, when contemplating love above the brim. You also should talk about dealings with heavy weather and one-night agonies, as if descending permanently into a single distinction. It boils to skin and plain whim, or any fabrication sufficient to implicate the act. Just then, something glimpsed from a taxi careening through Paris, afterimages of a lost father’s face becomes a tree in the park, tall, rustling with allusions, or was it simply cool air stealing across your face— that isolation again?

Some of us are chum. Some of us are the come-hither honeycomb gleamy in the middle of the trap’s busted smile. Though I let myself a little off this hook, petard by which I flail, and fancy myself more flattered — no ugly worm! Humor me as hapless nymph, straight outta Bullfinch, minding my own beeswax, gamboling, or picking flowers (say daffodils), doing that unspecified stuff nymphs do with their hours, until spied by a layabout youth, or rapey God who leaps unerring, staglike, quicker than smoke, to the wrong idea. Or maybe the right? For didn’t I supply the tippy box, too? Notch the stick on which to prop it? Didn’t I fumble the clove hitch for the rope? Leave the trip lying obvious in the tall, buggy grass? Ever it was. Duh. Be the mat, and the left foot finds you welcome. Though there’s always a subject, a him or herself. But to name it calls it down, like Betelgeuse, or the IRS. It must be swell to have both deed and the entitlement, for leaners who hold our lien, consumers who consume like red tide ripping through a coastal lake? Who find themselves so very well when gazing in that kiddie pool, or any skinny inch of water. That guy, remember? How tell this tale without him? A story so hoary, his name’s Pre-Greek. What brought Narcissus down? A spotty case of the disdains, I think, a one-man performance where the actor hates his audience.

I act like I know it all. But you, you act like you know it all. We can’t both be wrong. Still, neither of us should have children. Your head’s in a sack. In a sack with a snake with two heads. And my head is even older than our initial calculations implied. I know many names for sitting cross-legged, none for never getting up again. You, you speak as if you just checked, but it’s not even up to you. Fox pulls a rabbit out of a duck and keeps the wound-up hounds upwind. Hedgehog carries one trick around like a small booth atop an elephant. And both of us, elephant and booth, carry from birth what can’t be cast off by dying. How can we corrupt the young? The young don’t even know we exist.

If it had worked out, I'd be on a train to Green Bay, not crawling up this building with the Air Corps on my ass. And if it weren't for love, I'd drop this shrieking little bimbo sixty stories and let them take me back to the exhibit, let them teach me to mambo and do imitations. They tried me on the offensive line, told me to take out the right cornerback for Nagurski. Eager to please, I wadded up the whole secondary, then stomped the line, then the bench and locker room, then the east end of town, to the river. But they were not pleased: they said I had to learn my position, become a team player. The great father Bear himself said that, so I tried hard to know the right numbers and how the arrows slanted toward the little o's. But the o's and the wet grass and the grunts drowned out the count, and the tight little cheers drew my arrow straight into the stands, and the wives tasted like flowers and raw fish. So I was put on waivers right after camp, and here I am, panty-sniffer, about to die a clown, who once opened a hole you could drive Nebraska through.