767 Humor poems

I Said the Duck to the Kangaroo, ‘Good gracious! how you hop! Over the fields and the water too, As if you never would stop! My life is a bore in this nasty pond, And I long to go out in the world beyond! I wish I could hop like you!’ Said the Duck to the Kangaroo. II ‘Please give me a ride on your back!’ Said the Duck to the Kangaroo. ‘I would sit quite still, and say nothing but “Quack,” The whole of the long day through! And we’d go to the Dee, and the Jelly Bo Lee, Over the land, and over the sea;— Please take me a ride! O do!’ Said the Duck to the Kangaroo. III Said the Kangaroo to the Duck, ‘This requires some little reflection; Perhaps on the whole it might bring me luck, And there seems but one objection, Which is, if you’ll let me speak so bold, Your feet are unpleasantly wet and cold, And would probably give me the roo- Matiz!’ said the Kangaroo. IV Said the Duck, ‘As I sate on the rocks, I have thought over that completely, And I bought four pairs of worsted socks Which fit my web-feet neatly. And to keep out the cold I’ve bought a cloak, And every day a cigar I’ll smoke, All to follow my own dear true Love of a Kangaroo!’ V Said the Kangaroo, ‘I’m ready! All in the moonlight pale; But to balance me well, dear Duck, sit steady! And quite at the end of my tail!’ So away they went with a hop and a bound, And they hopped the whole world three times round; And who so happy,—O who, As the Duck and the Kangaroo?.

We liked to stick it in a bb gun and shoot it. We tattooed with it. We said hallelujah, the poor man’s tanning lotion. Then the frack wells began, something black capping the water and we got high watching a green-backed heron die. We got funny at Clarion, flung each other’s underwear into the trees. Why was it we got naked there and nowhere else? Maybe we knew we were getting good and ugly, rusted inside as the trucks we rode into the water. Maybe we knew we only appeared to be floating, but soon and wholly we’d go under, and there would be nothing of return.

The idea was. At least in theory, Dust was a bad thing. There was a bowl Of it. At another Point in time The conclusion Was reached That everything Was of it. No season, no Nothing to measure To measure against So no love or hate. Left us without no Moorings or so my Father told me Vanity tables of it? Isn’t that what a vanity Table is for? What happens to As its failings accrue? No mission but to be clean. Of itself. But existing (time) And problems there – The problem of now We are back here. See the whole dust problem’s No measure. All’s dust, check. All’s virtuous, check. So why not live it up then? And thus, YOLO etc. etc. {These fok whirr pretty smart. Thing is, even in The dust bowl, the Idea, a very American One was that something Wasn’t dust. I wasn’t. The Bowl wasn’t. The dust wasn’t. Since Ecclesiastes, Been trying this one on. (how’s that working out for you?) One needn’t be geologically Or for that matter Psychologically trained to Begin unpacking the diffident And sometimes strained Relation the nation holds with All that is vanity.

Early to bed and early to rise: If that would make me wealthy and wise I’d rise at daybreak, cold or hot, And go back to bed at once. Why not?

Mudman in earth cafeteria, I eat aardwolf. I eat ant bear. I eat mimosa, platypus, ermine. “White meat is tasteless, dark meat stinks.” (The other white meat is pork, triple X.) Rice people vs. bread people. White bread vs. wheat bread. White rice vs. brown rice. Manhattan vs. New England. Kosher sub-gum vs. knuckle kabob. “What is patriotism but love of the foods one had as a child?”* To eat stinky food is a sign of savagery, humility, identification with the earth. “It was believed that after cleaning, tripe still contained ten percent excrement which was therefore eaten with the rest of the meal.”** Today I’ll eat Colby cheese. Tomorrow I’ll eat sparrows. Chew bones, suck fat, bite heads off, gnaw on a broken wing. Anise-flavored beef soup smells like sweat. A large sweaty head bent over a large bowl of sweat soup. A Pekinese is ideal, will feed six, but an unscrupulous butcher will fudge a German sheperd, chopping it up to look like a Pekinese. Toothless man sucking a pureed porterhouse steak with a straw. Parboiled placenta. To skewer and burn meat is barbaric. To boil, requiring a vessel, is a step up. To microwave. People who eat phalli, hot dogs, kielbasas vs. people who eat balls. To eat with a three-pronged spear and a knife. To eat with two wooden sticks. To eat with the hands. Boiling vs. broiling. To snack on a tub of roasted grasshoppers at the movies. *Lin Yutang **Mikhail Bakhtin

Since I’ve decided to revolutionize my life since ” decided ” revolutionize ” life ” How early it is! It is eight o’clock in the morning. Well, the pigeons were up earlier Did you eat all your egg? Now we shall go for a long walk. Now? There is too much winter. I am going to admire the snow on your coat. Time for hot soup, already? You have worked for three solid hours. I have written forty-eight, no forty-nine, no fifty-one poems. How many states are there? I cannot remember what is uniting America. It is then time for your nap. What a lovely, pleasant dream I just had. But I like waking up better. I do admire reality like snow on my coat. Would you take cream or lemon in your tea? No sugar? And no cigarettes. Daytime is good, but evening is better. I do like our evening discussions. Yesterday we talked about Kant. Today let’s think about Hegel. In another week we shall have reached Marx. Goody. Life is a joy if one has industrious hands. Supper? Stew and well-cooked. Delicious. Well, perhaps just one more glass of milk. Nine o’clock! Bath time! Soap and a clean rough towel. Bedtime! The Red Army is marching tonight. They shall march through my dreams in their new shiny leather boots, their freshly laundered shirts. All those ugly stains of caviar and champagne and kisses have been rubbed away. They are going to the barracks. They are answering hundreds of pink and yellow and blue and white telephones. How happy and contented and well-fed they look lounging on their fur divans, chanting, “Russia how kind you are to us. How kind you are to everybody. We want to live forever.” Before I wake up they will throw away their pistols, and magically factories will spring up where once there was rifle fire, a roulette factory, where once a body fell from an open window. Hurry dear dream I am waiting for you under the eiderdown. And tomorrow will be more real, perhaps, than yesterday.

I quit med school when I found out the stiff they gave me had book 9 of Paradise Lost and the lyrics to “Louie Louie” tattooed on her thighs. That morning as the wind was mowing little ladies on a street below, I touched a Bunsen burner to the Girl Scout sash whose badges were the measure of my worth: Careers . . . Cookery, Seamstress . . . and Baby Maker. . . all gone up in smoke. But I kept the merit badge marked Dangerous Life, for which, if you remember, the girls were taken to the woods and taught the mechanics of fire, around which they had us dance with pointed sticks lashed into crucifixes that we’d wrapped with yarn and wore on lanyards round our necks, calling them our “Eyes of God.” Now my mother calls the pay phone outside my walk-up, raving about what people think of a woman—thirty, unsettled, living on food stamps, coin-op Laundromats & public clinics. Some nights I take my lanyards from their shoebox, practice baying those old camp songs to the moon. And remember how they told us that a smart girl could find her way out of anywhere, alive.

Blue numbers on my bedside clock tell I forgot to change the hour. This sets routines on haywire. Like a domestic goat staked to its circle of earth. I don’t do well untethered. I have no hunger for early dinner, become confused by the sound of children who seem out too late for a school night. They’ve found an extra helping of daylight to romp on new grass and can’t contain themselves, strip off jackets, scatter like a rag of ponies. Whatever time says, their joy insists on springing forward.

The giant Slinky of  Spring approaches & I have nothing to sport after spending a fortune on hooded sweaters that make me look like I’m searching for the Holy Grail. Struggling with granola & soy milk, dental bills accumulate like snow & the potatoes I forgot have rotted. I’m broke & broke & broke & broke & broke, a bowling ball spiraling down a middle-aged staircase of doubt. The night I crazily fled for the gentrified grids of  14th Street. A pinball, I landed in Playbill. I left Brooklyn tossing televisions & futons like bombs in the bowels of  hipster bohemia. In the piano karaoke bar, I met Kevin, a Peter Pan Tennessee man who spun quips & wit like pixie dust about me. A puckish chariot fueled by moxie, this lean tambourine of charms leaned over me, a hot flamingo in the midnight light & admitted his once-upon-a-time fetish for Laotian men in his youth. I wanted him to fall for me as if  he stumbled into the inside of an Oriental mansion shaking the tchotchkes in my heart, steeping my crush into sweet green tea. Kevin would be my model of elegance, unabashed confidence, a dragon fierceness. He said, There’s more to Rainbow Pride than RuPaul & Stonewall kickball & I finally felt I belonged in DC. November, Kevin’s jaw ached. He showed up at The Black Fox mumbling  jumble garble through tears. His feature canceled. After the first break from winter gray to blue, Facebook alerts Kevin’s wheeled to hospice, liver cancer. I teach Donmike how to make pancit noodles. We become the curse of gossiping Filipina spinster aunts. How have we become giggling little lily pad princesses behind invisible hand fans, waiting for our potential suitors to make the first move? I wonder whether you’re afraid my hug lingers a little too long after I rub your feet or maybe you’re just a Scorpio expressing affection & I know I have 3rd world Daddy issues but I don’t want to bring up hopes & fuck ups. Maybe I’m in love with you like that baby weasel riding the flying woodpecker’s back. It’s an Avatar magical, sci-fi, unexpected flash of  bliss when really, the woodpecker is fighting for his life. The weasel doesn’t know what it’s gotten itself into but a thrill that will never come again, something better than a feathered Baby Jane din-din. Tomorrow, you’ll want to go to Rehoboth & kite surf at the beach house of the guy who lusts after you. The priest’s sermon makes no sense: Forest Fires in the Bay, Water Well Maidens &“Let It Go” from Frozen. It’s not that I hate white people or that we’re soul mates. It’s that you’re beginning to wash off me like ashes in holy water.

I said cake I said top hat I said microphone four little golden baby heads wait I said pirate ghost wait wait I said closed eye smiling cat he scrawled back oh my god I thought fuck yeah I can read this at the marathon he said Eileen smiles ehhh I can use it the bell of my computer rang same message wait the cat is crying with relief the cat is a devil now the cat is not mad the cat making racialized jazz uh or not my white hands I’m talking to everyone now. and I’m using a filter. No I’m not I acknowledge that there is an image of me twice. I only recently learned the term jazz hands if we fucked Pennsylvania up what is our hope to live in a stolen country that was always stolen and worked largely by stolen people. Out of a conservative diaspora came I mongrel poet from Massachusetts to make my mark love& these things and opportunities to speak. We can’t fall down we teem in the new opportunity we discover what resistance means our time & blowing up the inside of my computer buck studies the phone says delivered what is. Adam says did you see my beard. We talk about money awhile I ride my bike. Get off the phone goes ding. It’s his beard calling. I go oh. you have what I want. he says lol then skull then rocket then turkey green pistol and a flame. I don’t know what to say back to that I say bike and go.