767 Humor poems

Dear Doctor, I have read your play, Which is a good one in its way, Purges the eyes, and moves the bowels, And drenches handkerchiefs like towels With tears that, in a flux of grief, Afford hysterical relief To shatter'd nerves and quicken'd pulses, Which your catastrophe convulses. I like your moral and machinery; Your plot, too, has such scope for scenery! Your dialogue is apt and smart; The play's concoction full of art; Your hero raves, your heroine cries, All stab, and everybody dies; In short, your tragedy would be The very thing to hear and see; And for a piece of publication, If I decline on this occasion, It is not that I am not sensible To merits in themselves ostensible, But—and I grieve to speak it—plays Are drugs—mere drugs, Sir, nowadays. I had a heavy loss by Manuel — Too lucky if it prove not annual— And Sotheby, with his damn'd Orestes (Which, by the way, the old bore's best is), Has lain so very long on hand That I despair of all demand; I've advertis'd—but see my books, Or only watch my shopman's looks; Still Ivan , Ina and such lumber My back-shop glut, my shelves encumber. There's Byron too, who once did better, Has sent me—folded in a letter— A sort of—it's no more a drama Than Darnley , Ivan or Kehama : So alter'd since last year his pen is, I think he's lost his wits at Venice, Or drain'd his brains away as stallion To some dark-eyed and warm Italian; In short, Sir, what with one and t'other, I dare not venture on another. I write in haste; excuse each blunder; The coaches through the street so thunder! My room's so full; we've Gifford here Reading MSS with Hookham Frere, Pronouncing on the nouns and particles Of some of our forthcoming articles, The Quarterly —ah, Sir, if you Had but the genius to review! A smart critique upon St. Helena, Or if you only would but tell in a Short compass what—but, to resume; As I was saying, Sir, the room— The room's so full of wits and bards, Crabbes, Campbells, Crokers, Freres and Wards, And others, neither bards nor wits— My humble tenement admits All persons in the dress of Gent., From Mr. Hammond to Dog Dent. A party dines with me today, All clever men who make their way: Crabbe, Malcolm, Hamilton and Chantrey Are all partakers of my pantry. They're at this moment in discussion On poor De Staël's late dissolution. Her book, they say, was in advance— Pray Heaven she tell the truth of France! 'Tis said she certainly was married To Rocca, and had twice miscarried, No—not miscarried, I opine— But brought to bed at forty nine. Some say she died a Papist; some Are of opinion that's a hum; I don't know that—the fellow, Schlegel, Was very likely to inveigle A dying person in compunction To try the extremity of unction. But peace be with her! for a woman Her talents surely were uncommon. Her publisher (and public too) The hour of her demise may rue, For never more within his shop he— Pray—was she not interr'd at Coppet? Thus run our time and tongues away; But, to return, Sir, to your play; Sorry, Sir, but I cannot deal, Unless 'twere acted by O'Neill. My hands are full—my head so busy, I'm almost dead—and always dizzy; And so, with endless truth and hurry, Dear Doctor, I am yours, JOHN MURRAY

I, too, know the science of building men Out of fragments in little light Where I'll be damned if lightning don't Strike as I forget one May have a thief's thumb, Another, a murderer's arm, And watch the men I've made leave Like an idea I meant to write down, Like a vehicle stuck In reverse, like the monster God came to know the moment Adam named animals and claimed Eve, turning from heaven to her As if she was his To run. No word he said could be tamed. No science. No design. Nothing taken Gently into his hand or your hand or mine, Nothing we erect is our own.

I’m here, one fat cherry blossom blooming like a clod, one sad groat glazing, a needle puling thread, so what, so sue me. These days what else to do but leer at any boy with just the right hairline.Hey! I say, That’s one tasty piece of nature. Tart Darkling, if I could I’d gin, I’d bargain, I’d take a little troll this moolit night, let you radish me awhile, let you gag and confound me. How much I’ve struggled with despicing you, always; your false poppets, relentless distances. Yet plea-bargaining and lack of conversation continue to make me your faithful indefile. I’m lonely. I’ve turned all rage to rag, all pratfalls fast to fatfalls for you, My Farmer in the Dwell. So struggle, strife, so strew me, to bell with these clucking mediocrities, these anxieties over such beings thirty, still smitten with this heaven never meant for, never heard from. You’ve said we’re each pockmarked like a golf course with what can’t be said of us, bred in us, isn’t our tasty piece of nature. But I tell you I’ve stars, I’ve true blue depths, have learned to use the loo, the crew, the whole slough of pill-popping devices without you, your intelligent and pitiless graze. Everyone knows love is just a euphemism for you’ve failed me anyway. So screw me. Bartering Yam, regardless of want I’m nothing without scope, hope, nothing without your possibility. So let’s laugh like the thieves we are together, the sieves: you, my janus gate, my Sigmund Fraud, my crawling, crack-crazed street sprawled out, revisible, spell-bound. Hello, joy. I’m thirsty. I’m Pasty Rectum. In your absence I’ve learned to fill myself with starts. Here’s my paters. Here’s my blue. I just wanted to write again and say how much I’ve failed you.

You’re right. I meant “midst,” not “mist.” I don’t know what I was stinking, I mean thinking, soap speaks intimately to my skin every day. Most days. Depending if darkness has risen to my skull like smoke up a chimney floe. Flue. Then no stepping nude into the shower, no mist turning the bathroom mirror into frosted glass where my face would float coldly in the oval. Picture a caveman encased in ice. Good. I like how your mind works, how your eyes inside your mind works, and your actual eyes reading this, their icy precision, nothing slips by them. Even now I can feel you hovering silently above these lines, hawkish, Godlike, each period a lone figure kneeling in the snow. That’s too solemn. I would like to send search parties and rescue choppers to every period ever printed. I would like to apologize to my wife for not showering on Monday and Tuesday. I was stinking. I was simultaneously numb and needled with anxiety, in the midst of a depressive episode. Although “mist” would work too, metaphorically speaking, in the mist of, in the fog of, this gray haze that followed me relentlessly from room to room until every red bell inside my head was wrong. Rung.

Dear Tourists, You can grope for moist souvenirs in the basement, but you'll need patience because nobody down there will warn you about the floor. In the street you'll find squirrels; on my scalp, bumps. If you want proof for the folks back home that you've surged like a seagull, print your name and number in the bathroom. If you want a seagull for a pet, talk to my therapist. If you find her, tell me where she lives, and where her daughter goes to school. If you want a piece of me, suck my dick. If you want to sell trips to the general public, take my pulse or my coffee-table picture-books about Italy. If there's a house in the trees, throw up a hammer and see what falls down. The bleeding kid isn't the best prize and you can't return it, so be careful where you walk when you've had a few. If there's a nettle between your shoulder blades and you're having trouble breathing, tell the teacher, but don't tell her it was me cause it wasn't. I was just watching, maybe even laughing at your gurgling sounds. That incident belongs to somebody else's amusement park. I don't ever want to see it again on this side of the blunt tracks.

At 1:03 in the morning a fart smells like a marriage between an avocado and a fish head. I have to get out of bed to write this down without my glasses on.

Our substitute is strange because he looks a lot like Santa Claus. In fact, the moment he walked in we thought that he was Santa’s twin. We wouldn’t think it quite so weird, if it were just his snowy beard. But also he has big black boots and wears these fuzzy bright red suits. He’s got a rather rounded gut that’s like a bowl of you-know-what. And when he laughs, it’s deep and low and sounds a lot like “Ho! Ho! Ho!” He asks us all if we’ve been good and sleeping when we know we should. He talks of reindeers, sleighs, and elves and tells us to behave ourselves. And when it’s time for us to go he dashes out into the snow. But yesterday we figured out just what our sub is all about. We know just why he leaves so quick, and why he’s dressed like Old Saint Nick in hat and coat and boots and all: He’s working evenings at the mall.

Deep in our refrigerator, there's a special place for food that's been around awhile . . . we keep it, just in case. “It's probably too old to eat,” my mother likes to say. “But I don't think it's old enough for me to throw away.” It stays there for a month or more to ripen in the cold, and soon we notice fuzzy clumps of multicolored mold. The clumps are larger every day, we notice this as well, but mostly what we notice is a certain special smell. When finally it all becomes a nasty mass of slime, my mother takes it out, and says, “Apparently, it's time.” She dumps it in the garbage can, though not without regret, then fills the space with other food that's not so ancient yet

Jim just loves to garden, yes he does. He likes nothing better than to put on his little overalls and his straw hat. He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim." But then doubt begins to set in. He says, "What is a garden, anyway?" And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve. He stands in the driveway a long time. "Horticulture is a groping in the dark into the obscure and unfamiliar, kneeling before a disinterested secret, slapping it, punching it like a Chinese puzzle, birdbrained, babbling gibberish, dig and destroy, pull out and apply salt, hoe and spray, before it spreads, burn roots, where not desired, with gloved hands, poisonous, the self-sacrifice of it, the self-love, into the interior, thunderclap, excruciating, through the nose, the earsplitting necrology of it, the withering, shriveling, the handy hose holder and Persian insect powder and smut fungi, the enemies of the iris, wireworms are worse than their parents, there is no way out, flowers as big as heads, pock-marked, disfigured, blinking insolently at me, the me who so loves to garden because it prevents the heaving of the ground and the untimely death of porch furniture, and dark, murky days in a large city and the dream home under a permanent storm is also a factor to keep in mind."

The crocodile, with cunning smile, sat in the dentist’s chair. He said, “Right here and everywhere my teeth require repair.” The dentist’s face was turning white. He quivered, quaked and shook. He muttered, “I suppose I’m going to have to take a look.” “I want you”, Crocodile declared, “to do the back ones first. The molars at the very back are easily the worst.” He opened wide his massive jaws. It was a fearsome sight— At least three hundred pointed teeth, all sharp and shining white. The dentist kept himself well clear. He stood two yards away. He chose the longest probe he had to search out the decay. “I said to do the back ones first!” the Crocodile called out. “You’re much too far away, dear sir, to see what you’re about. To do the back ones properly you’ve got to put your head Deep down inside my great big mouth,” the grinning Crocky said. The poor old dentist wrung his hands and, weeping in despair, He cried, “No no! I see them all extremely well from here!” Just then, in burst a lady, in her hands a golden chain. She cried, “Oh Croc, you naughty boy, you’re playing tricks again!” “Watch out!” the dentist shrieked and started climbing up the wall. “He’s after me! He’s after you! He’s going to eat us all!” “Don’t be a twit,” the lady said, and flashed a gorgeous smile. “He’s harmless. He’s my little pet, my lovely crocodile.”