767 Humor poems

7-Eleven’s a misnomer, like “mind- body” problem. They never close. The hyphen’s a dash of form. Sure,this mind-body’s a machine, if you want, plowing across town to the steak house. American Spirit. Give us the yellow pack. No matches? This dollar fifty-nine Santa lighter, too. Big Grab bag of Doritos. No, the “engine” is not separate — it’s part of the machine. Sure, paper’s good, container for recycling. Rain’s no problem. I eat the Doritos, smoke up — one for you? The chips are part of my machine — matter inside matter — smoke fires my lungs, gives me that slap of pleasure in my tailbone, maybe stimulates a thought. I’m prime matter informed by the soul. No, I didn’t just slip the word in there: that’s a spade — it digs through bullshit. Lean close, under the awning, cover up, you want a light. The mist can’t decide if it’s rain or fog. Streetlight moons, clouds around the neon signs. Pink as the steak we’re heading for. The comfort of a red leather banquette. No, your engine exists as part of and powers its machine; separated, both are just scrap, bunch of gears, rusty sprockets. An unlit oven. Unbaked potatoes. Sour cream inside a cow, chives growing mostly underground. “Engine” is a bad analogy. I’m one thing, not two, no intermediaries. I don’t have a body, I am one. A hollow one at the moment. What’ll it be? Filet mignon? Slab of prime rib, don’t trim the fat? Twelve oz. T-bone, two inches thick? No, I’ll wait until after I eat for another, but you go right ahead. Here’s a light.

A stick of carrot is equal to a gillyflower. A gillyflower is equal to a drum of gasoline. A drum of gasoline is equal to a stick of carrot. “For the sake of my offspring, I think I’ll marry an outsider.” Tamerlane has been sighted in Northern Italy. Jesus has broken out in Inner Mongolia. They like to kiss outside and piss inside. We like to kiss inside and piss outside. A mosquito has a mouth but no asshole. After three drops of blood, he falls asleep. He only gets up to bite another mosquito. He sucks and he sucks. Inside this balloon are ten thousand mosquitoes. In my left fist is a fossil of the first butterfly. In my right fist is a theory of why blood trickles down men’s legs. A man gains a drop of blood per day from eating. Each night, he gets up to slash himself Across the face and wrist. He must be bitten by ten thousand mosquitoes. He sucks and he sucks. Where would all that blood go otherwise? Once a month, a woman drops a teacup on the floor, A fine teacup with bones inside it. Vietnamese and Germans now speak the same language. Prussians and Bavarians cannot understand each other.

Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting you were beautiful; goodbye, Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain brown envelopes for the return of your very “Clinical Sonnets”; goodbye, manufacturer of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues give the fullest treatment in literature yet to the sagging breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin, who wrote, “Being German my hero is Hitler,” instead of “Sincerely yours,” at the end of long, neat-scripted letters extolling the Pre-Raphaelites: I swear to you, it was just my way of cheering myself up, as I licked the stamped, self-addressed envelopes, the game I had of trying to guess which one of you, this time, had poisoned his glue. I did care. I did read each poem entire. I did say everything I thought in the mildest words I knew. And now, in this poem, or chopped prose, no better, I realize, than those troubled lines I kept sending back to you, I have to say I am relieved it is over: at the end I could feel only pity for that urge toward more life your poems kept smothering in words, the smell of which, days later, tingled in your nostrils as new, God-given impulses to write. Goodbye, you who are, for me, the postmarks again of imaginary towns—Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell— their solitude given away in poems, only their loneliness kept.

I see you once I’ve got you down to size: a two-day-stubble squatter; jailbait eyes; the bottle-headed trophy mom; the mentor always angling his face down from the center of his universe to shine a light on yours. The fated anorexic, whose allures shimmer in the mirror for her eyes only, denying what her denial denies. Once you become a cliche I can hate you— or, treat me tenderly and let me date you. But that only retards the writing-off that comes with boredom, amour propre, or (cough) irreconcilable differences, i.e., those things about you that are least like me, yet just slightly different, my foible’s homophone, so in hating yours I really hate my own. This keeps the focus where it wants to be— On whom, you ask? Invariably on.... See? I didn’t even have to say, did I? I love you so much. No need to reply.

I wish I could keep my thoughts in order and my ducks in a row. I wish I could keep my ducks in a thought or my thoughts in a duck. My point is that we all exist, wetly, in the hunt. The ducks are aware of this in their own way, which is floating. The way of the mind is brevity. There may be other thoughts on other days in the minds of other and better men and their constant companions, the women, but these same tidy capsules — never. This is just one of the things I noticed about my thoughts as they passed easefully by.

These be two Country women. What a size! Great big arms And round red faces; Big substantial Sit down places; Great big bosoms firm as cheese Bursting through their country jackets; Wide big laps And sturdy knees; Hands outspread, Round and rosy, Hands to hold A country posy Or a baby or a lamb— And such eyes! Stupid, shifty, small and sly Peeping through a slit of sty, Squinting through their neighbours’ plackets.

Miss Nancy Ellicott Strode across the hills and broke them, Rode across the hills and broke them — The barren New England hills — Riding to hounds Over the cow-pasture. Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked And danced all the modern dances; And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it, But they knew that it was modern. Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, The army of unalterable law.

In Stetson and calico vest, spandex and Calvin jeans, she was the best at the bar. Does Gucci make range boots? Hers were snakeskin with heels like railroad spikes. The rest you could guess: eyes the blue of West Texas yonder, complexion like hot coffee with cream. All night I gave her slack but kept my dally-knot tight, hoping she’d like the stories I could tell—drunk Indian twins fighting with icepicks in Cheyenne, Carolina moonshine, deer breaking open watermelons out of crazy hunger. Regular as breath she’d say, “Damn!” or “Yes!” and stomp a heel through sawdust to the pine floor. I nearly had the rest of my life planned out, downing Coors and forking out for God-knows-whose, till a dude in a Brooks Brothers suit moved in, flashing a wad of Andrew Jacksons like cold cash grew on trees, and she said to me—she fairly spat it— “Get lost!” So I did, prostrate all night in a roadside hay field, watching the sky sleek as a coal-black stallion’s flank. Damn if every star wasn’t a spur burning its wheels into my foolish eyes.

Because we are so stupid, the prizes in Cracker Jacks are now paper so they can be swallowed, ladders spackled with warnings. No getting within a hundred feet of Stonehenge because everyone wants to hack off a souvenir and the way home is clogged to one lane so whoever wants to can stare into a pothole until coming up with a grievance. I’d vote the greatest accomplishment of mankind is the pickle spear. God created paradise to tell us Get out! which is why we probably created God who doesn’t much like being created by ilk like us. No wonder it’s pediatrics every morning and toxicology by happy hour. Is it all in the mind, the dirty, dirty mind? Maybe God tried to turn you into a garbage can so you could be lifted by the truck’s hydraulic arms and banged empty. Maybe a snow cone so you could be sticky-sweet and dropped. Maybe a genital-faced bivalve to be dashed with Tabasco and eaten whole or, to his glory, produce a pearl.

It appeared inside our classroom at a quarter after ten, it gobbled up the blackboard, three erasers and a pen. It gobbled teacher's apple and it bopped her with the core. “How dare you!” she responded. “You must leave us . . . there's the door.” The Creature didn't listen but described an arabesque as it gobbled all her pencils, seven notebooks and her desk. Teacher stated very calmly, “Sir! You simply cannot stay, I'll report you to the principal unless you go away!” But the thing continued eating, it ate paper, swallowed ink, as it gobbled up our homework I believe I saw it wink. Teacher finally lost her temper. “OUT!” she shouted at the creature. The creature hopped beside her and GLOPP . . . it gobbled teacher.