767 Humor poems

I am the last Napoleonic soldier. It’s almost two hundred years later and I am still retreating from Moscow. The road is lined with white birch trees and the mud comes up to my knees. The one-eyed woman wants to sell me a chicken, and I don’t even have any clothes on. The Germans are going one way; I am going the other. The Russians are going still another way and waving good-by. I have a ceremonial saber. I use it to cut my hair, which is four feet long.

I don’t understand why everyone stares When I take off my clothes and dance down the stairs. Or when I stick carrots in both of my ears, Then dye my hair green and go shopping at Sears. I just love to dress up and do goofy things. If I were an angel, I’d tie-dye my wings! Why can’t folks accept me the way that I am? So what if I’m different and don’t act like them? I’m not going to change and be someone I’m not. I like who I am, and I’m all that I’ve got.

He can’t stop putting the dead flowers, the deadhead nails, the deadweight sacks of flour in his mouth. He can’t stop writing about the mouth. The way he woke up to his mouth full of bees, their dead crunch still stinging his gums. He writes:There’s something beautiful in the way a mouth can be broken by saliva and cold air

He laughed with a laugh that he wished was his laugh, but everyone knew it wasn’t. When he laughed he would ask, "Does that sound like my laugh?" and everyone said, "It doesn’t." The laugh that he laughed that wasn’t his laugh went "Hardy har har, guffaw!" The laugh that he laughed that he wished wasn’t his went, "Hruck, sniffle-hick, hee-haw!"

I am a bold Coachman, and drive a good hack, With a coat of five capes that quite covers my back; And my wife keeps a sausage-shop, not many miles From the narrowest alley in all Broad St Giles. Though poor, we are honest and very content, We pay as we go for meat, drink, and for rent; To work all the week I am able and willing, I never get drunk, and I waste not a shilling. And while at a tavern my gentleman tarries, The coachman grows richer than he whom he carries; And I’d rather (said I), since it saves me from sin, Be the driver without, than the toper within. Yet though dram-shops I hate, and the dram-drinking friend, I’m not quite so good but I wish I may mend; I repent of my sins, since we all are depraved, For a coachman, I hold, has a soul to be saved. When a riotous multitude fills up a street, And the greater part know not, boys, wherefore they meet; If I see there is mischief, I never go there, Let others get tipsy so I get my fare. Now to church, if I take some good lady to pray, It grieves me full sore to be kept quite away; So I step within side, though the sermon’s begun, For a slice of the service is better than none. Then my glasses are whole, and my coach is so neat, I am always the first to be called in the street; And I’m known by the name (’tis a name rather rare) Of the coachman that never asks more than his fare. Though my beasts should be dull, yet I don’t use them ill; Though they stumble I swear not, nor cut them up hill; For I firmly believe there’s no charm in an oath That can make a nag trot, when to walk he is loath. And though I’m a coachman, I’ll freely confess, I beg of my Maker my labours to bless; I praise Him each morning, and pray every night, And ’tis this makes my heart feel so cheerful and light. When I drive to a funeral I care not for drink; That is not the moment to guzzle, but think; And I wish I could add both of coachman and master, That both of us strove to amend a bit faster.

Forty little polliwogs Swimming in a ditch, Each so near alike, They don't know which is which. Round and shiny bodies, Wiggly, waggly tails, Just like little fishes All except their scales!

Would you rather hear the louche pun drawn from glory hole, lip wrap or fingering or hear a tiny hammer striking wire? Would you rather see the molten birthing glass? Seat Eros next to Kronos, for the banter.I heardshe’s yet unplowed — I heard your quiver dangled down — I heard you dwell in borrowed forms — love’s nothingbut glimmer-to-wither, dawn’s fireflies expired. In this place we sift & bounce the words like dice thrice dip a pipe into the magma,o my stars. Lear & Gloucester walk into a bar debating again the color of bluffs or moors or cormorants:like craquelure     like damp tea leafdriftwood    no, peat steam    no, brined sand-apple ink Were all your letters in fact suns? Forgotten, after all that trouble — Are those bellows blowing some? A field of broken bottles, fragments blue. A tune invented to divert a girl.

I’ll take a bath when it snows, when I can look out the window up high and see the sky all pale and blank like a fish’s eye. And I know the boats won’t go out tonight, the fishermen drinking whiskey, locked in a bar-dream, the music rocking them deeper. It doesn’t snow enough here, though some would say otherwise, fearing accidents. But the paper boy, skidding uphill on his bike in light snow, knows better, making S-tracks when his wheels slide sideways. We really needed this snow, the old men will say, putting to bed the surface roots of trees, putting to bed the too-travelled streets. When everything is covered the earth has a light of its own; the snow falls down from the moon as everyone knows, and brings that light back to us. I needed this light. All day I kept by the window, watching the sky, a prisoner in my clothes, the wind felt dry and mean. Starlings stalked the yard with evil eyes —I hated them, and hated, too, my neighbor’s house where sparks from the chimney fell back in a stinking cloud—black ashes bringing no blessing. When the roads are covered, when the water is black and snow falls into the waves, the birds’ hunger swirls the air, dark lovely shapes. All hungers are equal now. I'll give them bread and seeds. I have no money; the whiskey is gone, and I must bathe in water. Fishermen, please do not go out in your flimsy boats tonight to chase after the cod and mackerel, to hook the giant eels. Go safe, go free. Let your feet leave trails through streets and yards, wandering home, your crooked voyages to bed.

I wove myself of many delicious strands Of violet islands and sugar-balls of thread So faintly green a small white check between Balanced the field’s wide lawn, a plaid Gathering in loose folds shaped around him Those Princeton mornings, slowly stage-lit, when The dawn took the horizon by surprise And from the marsh long, crayoned birds Rose up, ravens, maybe crows, or raw-voiced, Spiteful grackles with their clothespin legs, Black-winged gossips rising out of mud And clattering into sleep. They woke my master While, in the dark, I waited, knowing Sooner or later he’d reach for me And, half asleep, wriggle into my arms. Then it seemed a moonish, oblique light Would gradually illuminate the room, The world turn on its axis at a different slant, The furniture a shipwreck, the floor askew, And, in old slippers, he’d bumble down the stairs. Genius is human and wants its coffee hot— I remember mornings when he’d sit For hours at breakfast, dawdling over notes, Juice and toast at hand, the world awake To spring, the smell of honeysuckle Filling the kitchen. A silent man, Silence became him most. How gently He softened the edges of a guessed-at impact So no one would keel over from the blow— A blow like soft snow falling on a lamb. He’d fly down from the heights to tie his shoes And cross the seas to get a glass of milk, Bismarck with a harp, who’d doff his hat (As if he ever wore one!) and softly land On nimble feet so not to startle. He walked In grandeur much too visible to be seen— And how many versions crawled out of the Press! A small pre-Raphaelite with too much hair; A Frankenstein of test tubes; a “refugee”— A shaman full of secrets who could touch Physics with a wand and body forth The universe’s baby wrapped in stars. From signs Phoenicians scratched into the sand With sticks he drew the contraries of space: Whirlwind Nothing and Volume in its rage Of matter racing to undermine itself, And when the planets sang, why, he sang back The lieder black holes secretly adore. At tea at Mercer Street every afternoon His manners went beyond civility, Kindness not having anything to learn; I was completely charmed. And fooled. What a false view of the universe I had! The horsehair sofa, the sagging chairs, A fire roaring behind the firesecreen— Imagine thinking Princeton was the world! Yet I wore prescience like a second skin: When Greenwich and Palomar saw eye to eye, Time and space having found their rabbi, I felt the dawn’s black augurs gather force, As if I knew in the New Jersey night The downcast sky that was to clamp on Europe, That Asia had its future in my pocket.

I just had the old Dodge in the shop with that same damned front-end problem, and I was out, so to speak, for a test run, loafing along, maybe 35 m.p.h., down the old Corvallis road, holding her out of the ruts and potholes. That’s out in Montana, the Bitterroot Valley. Long ways from home is how they say it. Long ways from home, boys, long long ways from home. Might as well not put this clunker in the shop and keep my hard-earned in my pocket, she wobbles and humps like a scared rabbit. But it’s a real fine summer day in Corvallis, and I’m loafing along watching the sprayers do their slow drag on the fields of alfalfa, and I come to a side road with a little green sign says “Kurtz Lane” and I said to myself out loud, “Mistah Kurtz—he alive. Him doing just fine,” because of the sign, you see, and because I’m lonesome and maybe kind of bitter in spite of the sunshine. It’s still a goddamn long ways from home. That’s one thing, though, that Heart of Darkness, I read that story every year, I never forget that crazy old son-of-a-bitch, that Kurtz. And the next thing I see about a quarter-mile down the road is somebody small on the shoulder, a kid looking for a ride home, I figure. And he’s a kid all right, maybe ten or eleven, but no Montana boy, he’s an Oriental, one of those Laotians that got resettled. Can’t figure why they brought them to Montana. He’s got those big eyes and caved-in cheeks like the pictures on the TV during Vietnam, and his mouth is open a little. I say to myself, I’ll give him a ride if he wants, and I even begin to slow down, but he didn’t put up his thumb. Just when I went by, he waved, real quick and shy, but still like he was trying to reach me. I drove on. Then I bust out crying.