767 Humor poems

Five hours, (and who can do it less in?) By haughty Celia spent in dressing; The goddess from her chamber issues, Arrayed in lace, brocades and tissues. Strephon, who found the room was void, And Betty otherwise employed, Stole in, and took a strict survey, Of all the litter as it lay; Whereof, to make the matter clear, An inventory follows here. And first a dirty smock appeared, Beneath the armpits well besmeared. Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide, And turned it round on every side. On such a point few words are best, And Strephon bids us guess the rest, But swears how damnably the men lie, In calling Celia sweet and cleanly. Now listen while he next produces The various combs for various uses, Filled up with dirt so closely fixt, No brush could force a way betwixt. A paste of composition rare, Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead and hair; A forehead cloth with oil upon’t To smooth the wrinkles on her front; Here alum flower to stop the steams, Exhaled from sour unsavory streams, There night-gloves made of Tripsy’s hide, Bequeathed by Tripsy when she died, With puppy water, beauty’s help Distilled from Tripsy’s darling whelp; Here gallypots and vials placed, Some filled with washes, some with paste, Some with pomatum, paints and slops, And ointments good for scabby chops. Hard by a filthy basin stands, Fouled with the scouring of her hands; The basin takes whatever comes The scrapings of her teeth and gums, A nasty compound of all hues, For here she spits, and here she spews. But oh! it turned poor Strephon’s bowels, When he beheld and smelled the towels, Begummed, bemattered, and beslimed With dirt, and sweat, and earwax grimed. No object Strephon’s eye escapes, Here petticoats in frowzy heaps; Nor be the handkerchiefs forgot All varnished o’er with snuff and snot. The stockings why should I expose, Stained with the marks of stinking toes; Or greasy coifs and pinners reeking, Which Celia slept at least a week in? A pair of tweezers next he found To pluck her brows in arches round, Or hairs that sink the forehead low, Or on her chin like bristles grow. The virtues we must not let pass, Of Celia’s magnifying glass. When frightened Strephon cast his eye on’t It showed visage of a giant. A glass that can to sight disclose, The smallest worm in Celia’s nose, And faithfully direct her nail To squeeze it out from head to tail; For catch it nicely by the head, It must come out alive or dead. Why Strephon will you tell the rest? And must you needs describe the chest? That careless wench! no creature warn her To move it out from yonder corner; But leave it standing full in sight For you to exercise your spite. In vain the workman showed his wit With rings and hinges counterfeit To make it seem in this disguise A cabinet to vulgar eyes; For Strephon ventured to look in, Resolved to go through thick and thin; He lifts the lid, there needs no more, He smelled it all the time before. As from within Pandora’s box, When Epimetheus op’d the locks, A sudden universal crew Of human evils upwards flew; He still was comforted to find That Hope at last remained behind; So Strephon lifting up the lid, To view what in the chest was hid. The vapors flew from out the vent, But Strephon cautious never meant The bottom of the pan to grope, And foul his hands in search of Hope. O never may such vile machine Be once in Celia’s chamber seen! O may she better learn to keep Those “secrets of the hoary deep!” As mutton cutlets, prime of meat, Which though with art you salt and beat As laws of cookery require, And toast them at the clearest fire; If from adown the hopeful chops The fat upon a cinder drops, To stinking smoke it turns the flame Pois’ning the flesh from whence it came, And up exhales a greasy stench, For which you curse the careless wench; So things, which must not be expressed, When plumped into the reeking chest, Send up an excremental smell To taint the parts from whence they fell. The petticoats and gown perfume, Which waft a stink round every room. Thus finishing his grand survey, Disgusted Strephon stole away Repeating in his amorous fits, Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits! But Vengeance, goddess never sleeping Soon punished Strephon for his peeping; His foul imagination links Each Dame he sees with all her stinks: And, if unsavory odors fly, Conceives a lady standing by: All women his description fits, And both ideas jump like wits: But vicious fancy coupled fast, And still appearing in contrast. I pity wretched Strephon blind To all the charms of female kind; Should I the queen of love refuse, Because she rose from stinking ooze? To him that looks behind the scene, Satira’s but some pocky queen. When Celia in her glory shows, If Strephon would but stop his nose (Who now so impiously blasphemes Her ointments, daubs, and paints and creams, Her washes, slops, and every clout, With which he makes so foul a rout) He soon would learn to think like me, And bless his ravished sight to see Such order from confusion sprung, Such gaudy tulips raised from dung.

Ladybird, ladybird, Fly away home, Your house is on fire And your children all gone; All except one And that's little Ann, And she has crept under The warming pan.

Look in the mirror. Let us both look. Here is my naked body. Apparently you like it, I have no reason to. Who bound us, me and my body? Why must I die together with it? I have the right to know where the borderline between us is drawn. Where am I, I, I myself. Belly, am I in the belly? In the intestines? In the hollow of the sex? In a toe? Apparently in the brain. I do not see it. Take my brain out of my skull. I have the right to see myself. Don’t laugh. That’s macabre, you say. It’s not me who made my body. I wear the used rags of my family, an alien brain, fruit of chance, hair after my grandmother, the nose glued together from a few dead noses. What do I have in common with all that? What do I have in common with you, who like my knee, what is my knee to me? Surely I would have chosen a different model. I will leave both of you here, my knee and you. Don’t make a wry face, I will leave you all my body to play with. And I will go. There is no place for me here, in this blind darkness waiting for corruption. I will run out, I will race away from myself. I will look for myself running like crazy till my last breath. One must hurry before death comes. For by then like a dog jerked by its chain I will have to return into this stridently suffering body. To go through the last most strident ceremony of the body. Defeated by the body, slowly annihilated because of the body I will become kidney failure or the gangrene of the large intestine. And I will expire in shame. And the universe will expire with me, reduced as it is to a kidney failure and the gangrene of the large intestine.

—for George Shelton Sometimes everything feels like a trick. Some days things seem to have been stolen from you. Cash to pay the bills, your sense of humor, friendship. You could almost believe those are what you look for as you walk around your neighborhood. But, no, instead, you get splashes of zinnias against stucco, cactus wrens, a pack of kids who ignore the sodium amber streetlights which just stuttered on, because it means their mothers want them home right this minute. And, on the corner variety store’s wall, a crude, sun-washed mural of the angel Gabriel defaced by thick black sideburns so he looks like a street punk, a strutting cholo, so he seems the only creature on earth who hasn’t heard the news that everything can be lost. His strong upper arms curving naked and graceful as the tan thighs of a slender, athletic girl. A girl he’s after, though she’s gotten bored waiting on the stoop and watching the sun set behind the foothills. Sky reddening until it slams into a blue that blesses anyone oblivious to all the negations, including the one, pal, where you think it’s possible to step out of your heart and leave it empty as an egg shell or a cardboard box. When you finally return home the tint of sky more or less matches the flash of a thrush as it swoops from limb to branch, acacia to willow. Standing at the kitchen counter, you pick through a carton of strawberries. Good juicy ones from the moldy and over-ripe. Choices that are easy. What do you trust anymore? The aproned man in the mercado said California strawberries, they’re the best this time of year. In bed, later, you remember the grocer, round belly under his apron, but as you start, nearly asleep, to tell your wife about him, how he talked about his deals, she starts reading aloud from a tattered bird guide, that the wood thrush is “essentially useful and worthwhile.” What is worthwhile?                      Now, remember.

The girl in the green ski chasuble hasn’t yet graduated from radio school. Let’s pay attention. Looking ahead, why, he waved his mouth along. Doesn’t life get difficult in the summer? The divine medicine for it collapsed in front of the shortstop, who took off like a battalion. Crowds of older people who would read this happily, willingly, then walking into night’s embrace, then kiss.“To turn you out, to turn you out!” Sometimes an arm is accused: You could have felt it, the blue shirts, phlegm central, four times a night. But what does that get me? Light refreshments. When the suburban demonstration kind of shrunk you put your foot out, leave it or kiss it or even two years ago, Charmaine here tells us. I think I should stay ... Cross-eyed sonofabitch ... He liked him, he could tell. A de-happening. The gangster no longer wanted to sleep with him, but what the heck. With time off for actual fuzz collected ... All right, boys. Cheap murders, peach driven ... I seen enough of those samples along the way.

These words of two, three years ago returned. — Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, tr. by Will Petersen one day, Coyote sees Duck walking her ducklings, Coyote asks her how she keeps them in a straight line, Duck says she sews them together with white horsetail hair every morning and tugs on the line gently, until the horsehair disappears, that is how she keeps her ducklings in a row as usual, Coyote leaves smiling, she sees a white horse grazing in a nearby field, she plucks a few strands of tail hair and returns to her burrow the next morning, one by one she begins to sew her pups together when she finishes, she gently tugs on the horsehair and drags their little bodies along the ground, Coyote tilts her head in dismay and becomes distraught, she realizes she has killed her little pups

His eye was wild and his face was taut with anger and hate and rage, And the things he muttered were much too strong for the ink of the printed page. I found him there when the dusk came down, in his golf clothes still was he, And his clubs were strewn around his feet as he told his grief to me: “I’d an easy five for a seventy-nine—in sight of the golden goal— An easy five and I took an eight—an eight on the eighteenth hole! “I’ve dreamed my dreams of the ‘seventy men,’ and I’ve worked year after year, I have vowed I would stand with the chosen few ere the end of my golf career; I’ve cherished the thought of a seventy score, and the days have come and gone And I’ve never been close to the golden goal my heart was set upon. But today I stood on the eighteenth tee and counted that score of mine, And my pulses raced with the thrill of joy—I’d a five for seventy-nine! “I can kick the ball from the eighteenth tee and get this hole in five, Bit I took the wood and I tried to cross that ditch with a mighty drive—” Let us end the quotes, it is best for all to imagine his language rich, But he topped that ball, as we often do, and the pill stopped in the ditch. His third was short and his fourth was bad and his fifth was off the line, And he took an eight on the eighteenth hole with a five for a seventy-nine. I gathered his clubs and I took his arm and alone in the locker room I left him sitting upon the bench, a picture of grief and gloom; And the last man came and took his shower and hurried upon his way, But still he sat with his head bowed down like one with a mind astray, And he counted his score card o’er and o’er and muttered this doleful whine: “I took an eight on the eighteenth hole, with a five for a seventy-nine!”

Do nothing and everything will be done, that's what Mr. Lao Tzu said, who walked around talking 2,500 years ago and now his books practically grow on trees they're so popular and if he were alive today beautiful women would rush up to him like waves lapping at the shores of his wisdom. That's the way it is, I guess: humbling. But if I could just unclench my fists, empty out my eyes, turn my mind into a prayer flag for the wind to play with, we could be brothers, him the older one who's seen and not done it all and me still unlearning, both of us slung low in our hammocks, our hats tipped forwards, hands folded neatly, like bamboo huts, above our hearts.

I don’t say things I don’t want to say or chew the fat with fat cats just because. With favor-givers who want favors back, I tend to pass on going for the ask. I send, instead, a series of regrets, slip the winding snares that people lay. The unruffledness I feel as a result, the lank repose, the psychic field of rye swayed in wavy air, is my respite among the shivaree of clanging egos on the packed commuter train again tonight. Sapping and demeaning—it takes a lot to get from bed to work and back to bed. I barely go an hour before I’m caught wincing at the way that woman laughs or he keeps clucking at his magazine. And my annoyance fills me with annoyance. It’s laziness that lets them seem unreal —a radio with in-and-out reception blaring like hell when it finally hits a station. The song that’s on is not the one I’d hoped for, so I wait distractedly for what comes next.

A morning's silver announces sky Speech bent the tree into a new posture My smile is becoming different from you. —becoming—and you crave an earlier affection Where was the silver becoming from? Who forgets that we dream—who forgets we dream The dark is near! That loss was dark; there that's darker! A page, we become *         *       * You read the page —you read this page Once upon a once there was a once and that once evaporated into air it was said it once was all over the sky then once came back and died You understood what I saw You understood everything —close the door now It knows where to be Here, can you explain? A light bulb replaced the silver *         *       * The page is silvery—almost as silver —announced a child— When it went to the town —it had changed When it became the town —it changed its shape Afterword said it didn't have its own way It didn't have a once in its life— a once and for all It took a wife . . . The end, the ending *         *       * Children ran from the tree Silver poured from the sky —in the garden birds bathed— bathing in the garden birds sang It was dizzy in the air and rosy on the wind Once once came along and spoke to the bride It thought the wood enchanted Afterword said it was empty Afterword came too and spoke to the groom It thought the world was wide Afterword said it was narrow *         *       * Syntax bent the child —playing on the page Speech—be quiet! To see you reflected in the smudged window now. Night reminds one of fingerprints— unlike a face —in its orbit Tips of hair sweep by like fronds —"just like fronds!"—you exclaim —show me the fronds if you please *         *       * Becoming a tree —the children . . . Becoming a page —the birds in unison From here to the nervous system—A body sang Suspended above the page Above the total mass of trees Willows bend to console the child From here to . . . —a lovely thing— Becoming a tree *         *       * Let us return to speech— Silver morning—bent to break —syntax Up there on a stage Children carry silver leaves —carry birds on their heads You fasten me with your songs The Fables say— where a page is a page and a tree tree I used to be a book Now I am a book All the endings say All the dreams say All the children say *         *       * Once upon a once there was a once and that once evaporated into air it was said it once was all over the sky then once came back and died It was said— my smile is becoming a page —becoming an adventure It sang— my smile is what the children say