767 Humor poems

The folk who live in Backward Town Are inside out and upside down. They wear their hats inside their heads And go to sleep beneath their beds. They only eat the apple peeling And take their walks across the ceiling.

I just didn’t get it— even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand and a lemon (the moon) in the other, her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight. I just couldn’t grasp it— this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly no one could even see themselves moving. I used to think if I could only concentrate hard enough I could be the one person to feel what no one else could, sense a small tug from the ground, a sky shift, the earth changing gears. Even though I was only one mini-speck on a speck, even though I was merely a pinprick in one goosebump on the orange, I was sure then I was the most specially perceptive, perceptively sensitive. I was sure then my mother was the only mother to snap, “The world doesn’t revolve around you!” The earth was fragile and mostly water, just the way the orange was mostly water if you peeled it, just the way I was mostly water if you peeled me. Looking back on that third grade science demonstration, I can understand why some people gave up on fame or religion or cures— especially people who have an understanding of the excruciating crawl of the world, who have a well-developed sense of spatial reasoning and the tininess that it is to be one of us. But not me—even now I wouldn’t mind being god, the force who spins the planets the way I spin a globe, a basketball, a yoyo. I wouldn’t mind being that teacher who chooses the fruit, or that favorite kid who gives the moon its glow.

Popped from the womb, he began gathering property extorted from his wet nurses by threatening to turn blue in the face and die. Everyone gave in. His mother dressed him in guava-colored lace crinolines his father obligingly retired to the Côte d’Azur siblings were disposed of by the Beast of the Bassinet. Coextensive with the world, his hands become The Hands, his mouth The Mouth, his dingus The Dingus. Absolute power corrupts absolutely said Lord Acton. Absolute corruption set in: a foot revolted and proclaimed democracy and universal male suffrage the hairs of his armpit began drinking heavily and all over his body an asexual budding produced nodes of himself, his genetic encumberment replicated and replicated, an oblique hysteria. The absolute corruption of self is community. The absolute corruption of the mouth is to taste its tongue over and over, to be continually filled.

1. Prurient tapirs gamboled on our lawns, But that was quite some time ago. Now one is accosted by asthmatic bulldogs, Sluggish in the hedges, ruminant. Moving through ivy in the park Near drying waterfalls, we open every gate; But that grave, shell-white unicorn is gone. The path is strewn with papers to the street. Numbers that once were various Regarded us, were thought significant, significant Enough to bring reporters to the scene. But now the bell strikes one, strikes one, Strikes one—monotonous and tired. Or clicks like a sad valise. 2. Note to Be Left on the Table This ghost of yours, padding about the upper halls, Given to fright-wigs Burbage might have worn, Moaning in doorways, jumping out at maids, Has not convinced me even yet. Can this be you? Your life was frightening enough, but this Poor pallid counterpart who fuddles in its role Is inexcusable. Go haunt the houses of the girls You once infected, or the men who bore Your company far oftener than I; annoy the others For a change. Is this, my house, the medieval hell You took to at the grave’s edge, years ago, After a dozen other hells had burned themselves away, Or are we purgatory here? If not, You make it one. I give you until noon. 3. Ruined travelers in sad trousseaux Roost on my doorstep, indolent and worn. Not one of them fulfills despised Rousseau’s Predictions. Perhaps they are waiting to be born. If so, the spot’s been badly chosen. This is a site for posthumous investigations, Pillows stuffed with nettles, charnal notions: Apoplectic executioners, bungled incisions. Indeed, our solitary midwife fondles the hemlock. We welcomed one poor hackneyed Christ, Sad bastard, croaking of pestilence. The basement Holds him now. He has not as yet arisen. The tickets are ready; the line forms on the right. Justice and virtue, you will find, have been amazingly preserved. 4. As water from a dwindling reservoir Uncovers mossy stones, new banks of silt, So every minute that I spend with you reveals New flaws, new features, new intangibles. We have been sitting here for hours— “I spent that summer in Madrid, The winter on the coast of France— The Millotsons were there, and Farnsworth. My work has perished with the rest Of Europe, gone, all gone. We will not see the end.” You said goodbye, and your perfume Lingered for hours. At first it seemed Like summer dying there, then rank and sharp. And yet I did not air the room. 5. Among Victorian beadwork and the smell of plush, The owls, stuffed and marvelously sinister, Glare from dark corners, waiting for the night. High up, the moose’s passive eyes explore Candles, unlit, within cut-glass. A door Is opened, and you enter with a look You might have saved for Pliny or the Pope. The furniture has shrunk now thirty years Have passed (with talent thinning out, and words Gone dead), and mouths of friends in photographs Display their hopeful and outmoded smiles. You counted on at least a sputter of nostalgia, However fretful. That was a mistake. Even the moose Regards you with a tired, uncomprehending stare. 6. Signboards commemorate their resting place. The graveless of another century Came and were conquered; now their bones Are dust where idiot highways run. Land in their eyes, unquiet ancestors (On fences yellow signs clang in the wind) Unstirred by suns drying the brown weeds Above them now in parched and caking land. But when they speak of you, they feel the need Of voices polished and revised by history, The martial note, words framed in capitals. It is good to be deaf in a deafening time With the sky gone colorless, while the dead Thunder breaks, a cracked dish, out of the mind. 7. The eye no longer single: where the bowl, Dead in the thickened darkness, swelled with light, Transformed the images and moved the artist’s hand, Becomes a framework for our mania. And haunts the stairway. Friends depart, Taking their last look from the roof, Saying goodnight and carrying their view Of grapes the model ate in Paris years ago. Blue in the morning, green some afternoons; The night, ambiguous, forgets the signature. The dust in attics settled and his stove Grew cold. About the model nothing much is known. It ends the wall and complements the view Of chimneys. And it hides a stain. 8. And when your beauty, washed away In impure streams with my desire, Is only topic for ill-mannered minds, Gifted and glassy with exact recall, Gossip and rancid footnotes, or remote despair, Let ruined weather perish in the streets And let the world’s black lying flag come down. Only in calendars that mark no Spring Can there be weather in the mind That moves to you again as you are now: Tired after love and silent in this house, Your back turned to me, quite alone, Standing with one hand raised to smooth your hair, At a small window, green with rain.

Let it be said that Tim's year was divided into two seasons: sneakers and flip-flops. Let us remember that Tim would sometimes throw a football with all the requisite grip, angle and spiral-talk. Let us recall that for the sake of what was left of appearances, my mother never once let him sleep in her bed; he snored all over our dog-chewed couch, and in the mornings when I tip-toed past him on my way to school, his jowls fat as a catcher's mitt, I never cracked an empty bottle across that space where his front teeth rotted out. Nor did I touch a struck match to that mole by his lip, whiskery dot that—he believed—made him irresistable to all lovelorn women. Still, let us remember sweetness: Tim lying face down, Mom popping the zits that dotted his broad, sun-spotted back, which, though obviously gross, gets the January photo in my personal wall calendar of what love should be, if such a calendar could still exist above my kitchen table junked up with the heretos and therefores from my last divorce. Let us not forget how my mother would slip into her red cocktail dress and Tim would say, "Your mother is beautiful," before getting up to go dance with someone else. In fairness, let me confess that I pedaled my ten-speed across the Leaf River bridge all the way to Tim's other woman's house and lay with that woman's daughter beside the moon- cold weight of the propane tank, dumb with liquor, numb to the fire ants that we spread our blanket over until I stopped for a second and looked up because I wondered if her mother could hear us, or if Tim might not have stood in the kitchen, maybe looked out the window and saw my white ass pumping in the moonlight, and whispered to himself, "That's my boy."

It’s a wave, isn’t it? Not a particle. A fresh, cool wave, so why am I flushed and not washed? Why dirtier than before? 1. Etymology On the subject of our names. They’re so embracing, thinking they’re all us and swallowing themselves into our nausea. Yet we never quite die on the spot. We put off being what we’re called, we take the hint. Time is never wasted. It is always spent. 2. Teleology Sheer fabric trailing through 4 a.m. I thought it was opaque and earlier. 3. Mathematics I know you know I know. And the mirror multiplies inside. The world is no bigger, but next time do the math, because I wanted to know none of what I now know twice. 4. The Principle of the Borg Saying “There’s no one like me” accomplishes the exact opposite of what you mean. It is true only insofar as it is true for everyone equally. So it means you are not special in any way. Which should be enough for you. 5. Documentary This clothing, a maladaptive wrapping, cuts me up. I am a vignette, floated knowingly since I pulled myself through myself, like a unitard. Too many eyeholes have been cut and pieced together to make flesh less various with others. 6. Medicine The cure for embarrassment is substitution. Strap, don’t pluck. Baldness makes headlines. Use grass. Use less. Shorts under your skirt for recess. Redo the surfaces of your wrong turns to make taking them smoother in the future. 7. Cosmology Things are less embarrassing at the cellular level. Remember? We were a whole part of the universe before Mother busted the party. Before we were ourselves. Now, like dirty soap, we attract what we repel. 8. Apology Even the clumsiest fate is perfectly shaped, so the view took over looking but the sweetest thing I’ve ever known is obscene with a beautiful sugar rotted down to its truth. Loving you a serious accidental shame and day flatulates into night, trips and falls in front of millions into morning. In thrall to this pocus: the end of fear starts with such an annihilating blush, with such a stutter.

To think I used to be so good at going to pieces gobbling my way through the cops and spooking what’s left of the girls. How’d I get so far, sloughing off one knuckle at a time, jerking my mossy pelt along ruined streets? Those insistent, dreadful thuds when we stacked our futile selves against locked doors. Our mumbles and groans! Such hungry nights! Staggering through the grit of looted malls, plastered with tattered flags of useless currency, I’d slobbered all over the busted glass and merchandise of America ... But first you’ll have to figure out those qualities separating what’s being alive from who’s already dead. Most of you will flunk that. Next learn how to want one thing over and over, night after night. Most of you are good at that. Don’t get tired. Don’t cough into your leftovers. Don’t think. Always stand by your hobgoblin buddies. Clutch at whatever’s there. Learn to sniff out sundowns.

After some years Bohemian came to this— This Maenad with hair down and gaping kiss Wild on the barren edge of under fifty. She would finance his art if he were thrifty.

This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.

It ever was allow’d, dear Madam, Ev’n from the days of father Adam, Of all perfection flesh is heir to, Fair patience is the gentlest virtue; This is a truth our grandames teach, Our poets sing, and parsons preach; Yet after all, dear Moll, the fact is We seldom put it into practice; I’ll warrant (if one knew the truth) You’ve call’d me many an idle youth, And styled me rude ungrateful bear, Enough to make a parson swear. I shall not make a long oration In order for my vindication, For what the plague can I say more Than lazy dogs have done before; Such stuff is nought but mere tautology, And so take that for my apology. First then for custards, my dear Mary, The produce of your dainty dairy, For stew’d, for bak’d, for boil’d, for roast, And all the teas and all the toast; With thankful tongue and bowing attitude, I here present you with my gratitude: Next for you apples, pears and plums Acknowledgment in order comes; For wine, for ale, for fowl, for fish—for Ev’n all one’s appetite can wish for: But O ye pens, and O ye pencils, And all ye scribbling utensils, Say in what words and in what metre, Shall unfeign’d admiration greet her, For that rich banquet so refin’d Her conversation gave the mind; The solid meal of sense and worth, Set off by the desert of mirth; Wit’s fruit and pleasure’s genial bowl, And all the joyous flow of soul; For these, and every kind ingredient That form’d your love—your most obedient.