767 Humor poems

For John Ashbery We pullmaned to Peoria. Was Gladys glad, Skippy missed Sookie so. So Peru-ward, home. “I’ll sew buttons on dresses yet.” Nike’s peach-knife nicked little finger Chinese straw finger-cuffed to Minna’s Siamesed. Hartford, how are your wheres, our whens? Or extirpated traumas’ gifted guilt smothered aboard a club car. Lake Ontario spilled Jo Jo’s knapsack: “Pasternak.” An alligator ate an alligator- trapping monkey. We ate because “it’s dark, it’s air-conditioned” like lurching to the movies, shot marbles in lobbies. What interests? Takes? Escapes? Eat, moth-light, part and apart, slowly we slow waiters serve hot plates.

Last night this commercial came on TV. It was this white lady making a nice dinner for her husband. She made him some baked chicken with potatoes and gravy and some kind of greens —not collards, but they still looked real good. Everything looked so delicious, I just wanted to reach into that television and snatch a plate for myself. He gave her a kiss and then a voice came on saying He'll love you for it and then the commercial went off. I sat on Miss Edna's scratchy couch wondering if that man and woman really ate that food or just threw it all away. Now Ms. Marcus wants to know why I wrote that the lady is white and I say because it's true. And Ms. Marcus says Lonnie, what does race have to do with it, forgetting that she asked us to use lots of details when we wrote. Forgetting that whole long talk she gave yesterday about the importance of description! I don't say anything back to her, just look down at my arm. It's dark brown and there's a scab by my wrist that I don't pick at if I remember not to. I look at my knuckles. They're real dark too. Outside it's starting to rain and the way the rain comes down — tap, tapping against the window —gets me to thinking. Ms. Marcus don't understand some things even though she's my favorite teacher in the world. Things like my brown, brown arm. And the white lady and man with all that good food to throw away. How if you turn on your TV, that's what you see —people with lots and lots of stuff not having to sit on scratchy couches in Miss Edna's house. And the true fact is alotta those people are white. Maybe it's that if you're white you can't see all the whiteness around you.

To the piano of ragtime music, Paul Newman plunges his head into a basin of ice and water. A consummate conman, with Robert Redford, he's up and ready to take on the Mafia. The Sting is on. Hollywood redresses the wrongs of the world. From my proscenium seat, it is Newman's awakening into action that catches my imagination. Cool. So cool. Outside NAFDEC cinema, Kipling's Great Game rages on. Yet, I am barely away. My basin of ice cold water is going tepid. The con of it all. But to them it's jazz. It's all cool, for jazz makes them look cool. As for ragtime, just a last minute anachronistic improvisation, for good cinema's sake.

Great are the Hittites. Their ears have mice and mice have holes. Their dogs bury themselves and leave the bones To guard the house. A single weed holds all their storms Until the spiderwebs spread over the heavens. There are bits of straw in their lakes and rivers Looking for drowned men. When a camel won’t pass Through the eye of one of their needles, They tie a house to its tail. Great are the Hittites. Their fathers are in cradles, their newborn make war. To them lead floats, a leaf sinks. Their god is the size Of a mustard seed so that he can be quickly eaten. They also piss against the wind, Pour water in a leaky bucket. Strike two tears to make fire, And have tongues with bones in them, Bones of a wolf gnawed by lambs. * They are also called mound builders, They are called Asiatic horses That will drink on the Rhine, they are called My grandmother’s fortune-telling, they are called You can’t take it to the grave with you. It’s that hum in your left ear, A sigh coming from deep within you, A dream in which you keep falling forever, The hour in which you sit up in bed As though someone has shouted your name. No one knows why the Hittites exist, Still, when two are whispering One of them is listening. Did they catch the falling knife? They caught it like a fly with closed mouths. Did they balance the last egg? They struck the egg with a bone so it won’t howl. Did they wait for dead man’s shoes? The shoes went in at one ear and out the other. Did they wipe the blood from their mousetraps? They burnt the blood to warm themselves. Are they cold with no pockets in their shrouds? If the sky falls, they shall have clouds for supper. What do they have for us To put in our pipes and smoke? They have the braid of a beautiful girl That drew a team of cattle And the engraving of him who slept With dogs and rose with fleas Searching for its trace in the sky. * And so there are fewer and fewer of them now. Who wrote their name on paper And burnt the paper? Who put snake bones In their pillows? Who threw nail parings In their soup? Who made them walk Under the ladder? Who stuck pins In their snapshots? The wart of warts and his brother evil eye. Bone-lazy and her sister rabbit’s-foot. Cross-your-fingers and their father dog star. Knock-on-wood and his mother hellfire. Because the tail can’t wag the cow. Because the woods can’t fly to the dove. Because the stones haven’t said their last word. Because dunghills rise and empires fall. * They are leaving behind All the silver spoons Found inside their throats at birth, A hand they bit because it fed them, Two rats from a ship that is still sinking, A collection of various split hairs, The leaf they turned over too late. * All that salt cast over the shoulder, All that bloody meat traveling under the saddles of nomads ... Here comes a forest in wolf’s clothing, The wise hen bows to the umbrella. When the bloodshot evening meets the bloodshot night, They tell each other bloodshot tales. That bare branch over them speaks louder than words. The moon is worn threadbare. I repeat: lean days don’t come singly, It takes all kinds to make the sun rise. The night is each man’s castle. Don’t let the castle out of the bag. Wind in the valley, wind in the high hills, Practice will make this body fit this bed. * May all roads lead Out of a sow’s ear To what’s worth Two in the bush.

I have a brief confession that I would like to make. If I dont get it off my chest I'm sure my heart will break. I didn't do my reading. I watched TV instead— while munching cookies, cakes, and chips and cinnamon raisin bread. I didn't wash the dishes. I didn't clean the mess. Now there are roaches eating crumbs— a million, more or less. I didn't turn the TV off. I didn't shut the light. Just think of all the energy I wasted through the night. I feel so very guilty. I did a lousy job. I hope my students don't find out that I am such a slob.

O UR P ATRON OF F ALLING S HORT , W HO B ECAME A P RAYER I used to sneak into the movies without paying. I watched the stories but I failed to see the dark. I went to college and drank everything they gave me, and I never paid for any of that water on which I drifted as if by grace until after the drownings, when in the diamond light of seven-something A.M., as the spring was tearing me up in Cartajena, only praying on my knees before the magnifying ark of the Seventh St. Hotel could possibly save me, until falling on my face before the daughter of money while the world poured from the till brought the moment’s length against the moment’s height, and paying was what I was earning and eating and wearing.

What is he buzzing in my ears? "Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears?" Ah, reverend sir, not I! What I viewed there once, what I view again Where the physic bottles stand On the table's edge,—is a suburb lane, With a wall to my bedside hand. That lane sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden-wall; is the curtain blue Or green to a healthy eye? To mine, it serves for the old June weather Blue above lane and wall; And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether" Is the house o'ertopping all. At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper, There watched for me, one June, A girl: I know, sir, it's improper, My poor mind's out of tune. Only, there was a way... you crept Close by the side, to dodge Eyes in the house, two eyes except: They styled their house "The Lodge." What right had a lounger up their lane? But, by creeping very close, With the good wall's help,—their eyes might strain And stretch themselves to Oes, Yet never catch her and me together, As she left the attic, there, By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether," And stole from stair to stair, And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, We loved, sir—used to meet: How sad and bad and mad it was— But then, how it was sweet!

I used to be a plastic bottle I used to be scads of masticated wattle I used to be epic spittle, aka septic piddle I used to be a pleasant colleague I used to be a radiant ingredient I used to be a purple polyethylene pony I used to be a phony upload project I used to be a stony blue inhalant I used to be a family-size turquoise bottle I used to be a domesticated pink bubble I used to be a pleasant red colleague I used to be a beaming cobalt emollient I used to be a convenient chartreuse antidepressant

Darwin. They say he read novels to relax, But only certain kinds: nothing that ended unhappily. If anything like that turned up, enraged, he flung the book into the fire. True or not, I’m ready to believe it. Scanning in his mind so many times and places, he’d had enough of dying species, the triumphs of the strong over the weak, the endless struggles to survive, all doomed sooner or later. He’d earned the right to happy endings, at least in fiction with its diminutions. Hence the indispensable silver lining, the lovers reunited, the families reconciled, the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded, fortunes regained, treasures uncovered, stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways, good names restored, greed daunted, old maids married off to worthy parsons, troublemakers banished to other hemispheres, forgers of documents tossed down the stairs, seducers scurrying to the altar, orphans sheltered, widows comforted, pride humbled, wounds healed over, prodigal sons summoned home, cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean, hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation, general merriment and celebration, and the dog Fido, gone astray in the first chapter, turns up barking gladly in the last.

(to JK) Those scars rooted me. Stigmata stalagmite I sat at a drive-in and watched the stars Through a straw while the Coke in my lap went Waterier and waterier. For days on end or Nights no end I crawled on all fours or in My case no fours to worship you: Amoeba Behemoth. —Then you explained your DNA calls for Meaner genes than mine and since you are merely So to speak its external expression etcet Ergo among your lovers I’ll never be ... Ah that movie was so faraway the stars melting Made my thighs icy. I see: it’s not you Who is not requiting me, it’s something in you Over which you have no say says no to me.