767 Humor poems

The stage is set for imminent disaster. Here is the little tramp, standing On a stack of books in order To reach the microphone, the Poet he’s impersonating somehow Trussed and mumbling in a Tweed bundle at his feet. He opens his mouth:Tra-la! Out comes doves, incandescent bulbs, Plastic roses.Well, that’s that, Squirms the young professor who’s Coordinated this, No more visiting poets! His department head groans For the trap door. As it Swings away The tramp keeps on as if Nothing has occurred, A free arm mimicking A wing.

All the sexually active people in Westport look so clean and certain, I wonder if they’re dead. Their lives are tennis without end, the avocado-green Mercedes waiting calm as you please. Perhaps it is my brain that is unplugged, and these shadow-people don’t know how to drink martinis anymore. They are suddenly and mysteriously not in the least interested in fornicating with strangers. Well, there are a lot of unanswered questions here, and certainly no dinner invitations where a fella could probe Buffy‘s inner- mush, a really complicated adventure, in a 1930ish train station, outlandish bouquets, a poisonous insect found burrowing its way through the walls of the special restaurant and into one of her perfect nostrils—she was reading Meetings with Remarkable Men, needing succor, dreaming of a village near Bosnia, when a clattering of carts broke her thoughts— “Those billy goats and piglets, they are all so ephemeral ...” But now, in Westport Connecticut, a boy, a young man really, looking as if he had just come through a carwash, and dressed for the kind of success that made her girlfriends froth and lather, can be overheard speaking to no one in particular: “That Paris Review crowd, I couldn’t tell if they were bright or just overbred.” Whereupon Buffy swings into action, pinning him to the floor: “I will unglue your very being from this planet, if ever ...” He could appreciate her sincerity, not to mention her spiffy togs. Didymus the Blind has put three dollars on Total Departure, and I am tired of pumping my own gas. I’m Lewis your aluminum man, and we are whirling in a spangled frenzy toward a riddle and a doom—here’s looking up your old address.

One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago as I waited for my eggs and toast, I opened the Tribune only to discover that I was the same age as Cheerios. Indeed, I was a few months older than Cheerios for today, the newspaper announced, was the seventieth birthday of Cheerios whereas mine had occurred earlier in the year. Already I could hear them whispering behind my stooped and threadbare back, Why that dude’s older than Cheerios

god my darling do me a favour and kill my mother-in-law —Janabai, tr. Arun Kolatkar Chewing slowly, Only after I’d eaten My grandmother, Mother, Son-in-law, Two brothers-in-law, And father-in-law (His big family included) In that order, And had for dessert The town’s inhabitants, Did I find, says Kabir, The beloved that I’ve become One with.

It’s like being lost in the forest, hungry, with a plump live chicken in your cradling arms: you want to savage the bird, but you also want the eggs. You go weak on your legs. What’s worse, what you need most is the companionship, but you’re too hungry to know that. That is something you only know after you’ve been lost a lot and always, eventually, alit upon your bird; consumed her before you’d realized what a friend she’d been, letting you sleep-in late on the forest floor though she herself awoke at the moment of dawn and thought of long-lost rooster voices quaking the golden straw. She looks over at you, sleeping, and what can I tell you, she loves you, but like a friend. Eventually, when lost in a forest with a friendly chicken you make a point of emerging from the woods together, triumphant; her, fat with bugs, you, lean with berries. Still, while you yet wander, you can not resist telling her your joke: Guy sees a pig with three legs, asks the farmer, What gives ? Farmer says, That pig woke my family from a fire , got us all out . Says the guy, And lost the leg thereby ? Nope , says the farmer, Still had all four when he took a bullet for me when I had my little struggle with the law . Guy nods, So that’s where he lost his paw ? Farmer shakes it off, says, Nah , we fixed him up . A pause, guy says, So how’d he lose the leg ? Farmer says, Well , hell , a pig like that you don’t eat all at once . Chicken squints. Doesn’t think it’s funny.

And now, Mistress Mummy, since thus you’ve been found By the world, that has long done without you, In your snug little hiding-place far under ground— Be pleased to speak out, as we gather around, And let us hear something about you! By the style of your dress you are not Madam Eve— You of course had a father and mother; No more of your line have we power to conceive, As you furnish us nothing by which to believe You had husband, child, sister, or brother. We know you have lived, though we cannot tell when, And that too by eating and drinking, To judge by your teeth, and the lips you had then And we see you are one of the children of men, Though long from their looks you’ve been shrinking. Who was it that made you a cavern so deep, Refused your poor head a last pillow, And bad you sit still when you’d sunken to sleep, And they’d bound you and muffled you up in a heap Of clothes made of hempen and willow? Say, whose was the ear that could hear with delight The musical trinket found nigh you? And who had the eye that was pleased with the sight Of this form (whose queer face might be brown, red, or white,) Trick’d out in the jewels kept by you?

after Billy Collins, "Silence" You have the right to remain silent. That is your job. A ball gag plugs your mouth, and the immigrant girl with her loud sewing machine has been deported. So tell us about the mind of China. We want to hear the silent blooming of its cherry blossoms, the quiet unfastening of its gowns, its songs of soy sauce and tiny bound feet. Its trains have been blown up by dynamite, its factories bombed into silence. Its mewling puppies have been smothered and its gods are suffocating inside specimen jars. Shanghai has been evacuated and each inhabitant issued an edition of Gary Snyder. So tell us about your ancestors, your grandfather in his bamboo cage, your grandmother drowned in the well. Let’s hear about the unmoving clouds, the stunted trees. Read the poem we have placed in front of you. The Pacific has been drained, and even Ezra Pound has burst from his grave, his moldering hand poised to translate what you do not say.

after Billy Collins, "Monday" The Italians are making their pasta, the French are making things French, and the Chinese cultivate their silence. They cultivate silence in every Chinatown on the persimmon of earth— mute below the towers of Toronto, silently sweeping the streets of Singapore clear of noisy self-expression. The Americans are in their sport utility vehicles, the Canadians are behaving reasonably, but the Chinese remain silent maybe with a cup of tea or an opium pipe and maybe a finger puzzle or water torture is involved. Or maybe the Chinese are playing the Chinese game of ping-pong, the pock-pock of the ball against their tight-lipped mouths as their chefs dice scallions and bean curd. The Chinese are silent because it is their job for which I pay them what they got for building the railroads. Which silence it is hardly seems to matter though many have a favorite out of the 100 different kinds— the Silence of the Well-Adjusted Minority, the Girlish Silence of Reluctant Acquiescence, the Silence that by No Means Should Be Mistaken for Bitterness. By now, it should go without saying that what Crocodile Dundee is to the Australian and Mel Gibson is to the Scot, so is silence to the Chinese. Just think— before I invented the 100 Chinese silences, the Chinese would have had to stay indoors and gabble about civil war and revolution or go outside and build a really loud wall. And when I say a wall, I do not mean a wall of thousands of miles that is visible from the moon. I mean a noisy wall of language that dwarfs my medieval battlements and paves the Pacific to lap California’s shores with its brick-hard words.

Oh, dear! The Christian virtues will disappear! Nowhere on land or sea Will be room for charity! Nowhere, in field or city, A person to help or pity! Better for them, no doubt, Not to need helping out Of their old miry ditch. But, alas for us, the rich! For we shall lose, you see, Our boasted charity!— Lose all the pride and joy Of giving the poor employ, And money, and food, and love (And making stock thereof!). Our Christian virtues are gone, With nothing to practise on! It don’t hurt them a bit, For they can’t practise it; But it’s our great joy and pride— What virtue have we beside? We believe, as sure as we live, That it is more blessed to give Than to want, and waste, and grieve, And occasionally receive! And here are the people pressing To rob us of our pet blessing! No chance to endow or bedizen A hospital, school or prison, And leave our own proud name To Gratitude and Fame! No chance to do one good deed, To give what we do not need, To leave what we cannot use To those whom we deign to choose! When none want broken meat, How shall our cake be sweet? When none want flannels and coals, How shall we save our souls? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! The Christian virtues will disappear! The poor have their virtues rude,— Meekness and gratitude, Endurance, and respect For us, the world’s elect; Economy, self-denial, Patience in every trial, Self-sacrifice, self-restraint,— Virtues enough for a saint! Virtues enough to bear All this life’s sorrow and care! Virtues by which to rise To a front seat in the skies! How can they turn from this To common earthly bliss,— Mere clothes, and food, and drink, And leisure to read and think, And art, and beauty, and ease,— There is no crown for these! True, if their gratitude Were not for fire and food, They might still learn to bless The Lord for their happiness! And, instead of respect for wealth, Might learn from beauty, and health, And freedom in power and pelf, Each man to respect himself! And, instead of scraping and saving, Might learn from using and having That man’s life should be spent In a grand development! But this is petty and small; These are not virtues at all; They do not look as they should; They don’t do us any good! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! The Christian virtues will disappear!

Must be entered through the sharpener every Sunday, else your name will be lovingly written in the Book of the Down Arrow. The One Steeple to Every Church rule breaks in half in the Church of the Open Crayon Box; the One Bell to Every Steeple rule breaks off its tip. “Climb stairs to the steeples,” the preacher commands, “and let every belltone ring out!” You can see the whole town from the steeple, and you exit the church through the view, and you walk through what calls itself Flagpole—the town is a blot on the town, but the railroad is coming out this way and we must give them a smear to see through the windows: now you pass the General Store, that even your vaguest stick figure can enter, now you pass a vacant lot: the post office isn’t here yet, is only a set-aside space in the center of the country’s envelope; now you pass the voting- place, where we stuff our handwriting through a slit. Tall trees fall in the pinewoods, tall telegraph poles are raised, and words inch along our wires: text text text stop, text text text stop. And now you pass the Feed Store, which sells carrot and turnip and sugar-beet tops—only the visible parts—and now Whitey BaLavender’s Hardware, where everything hangs off the hook of its color, or color hangs off the hook of its all, where you work your hands into cool washers, and work hands into nailheads of the color blue, and watch Whitey BaLavender busy himself pouring crayons into bullet molds. You show him a list that says “ax,” and he sells you a red line through it. All up and down Main Street ponies are covered with strokes as coarse as horse blankets. And once you have drawn the ponies you begin to draw the saddle shop, you grip the right color like a saddle horn and somehow keep from falling off, and you ride to the edge of town, where you draw the fur trading post, where they sell tails of any shy animal, the rest of the animal gone down a hole, where you trade in your skin for a possibles bag and wear possibles bag where your skin was. Fat geese fly in any letter you like but you need red meat for once, and write a splayed- hide word like “Deerslayer,” and take hold of the ending and drag it home, and now you are almost there, now you are building the home with hand-drawn Log Cabin Font, you are building it log by log of course and smoothing the logs with a color called Adze, you are biting the crayon to notch the logs and driving in dots of nailheads. Stumps of umber surround you, and the sky is beginning to look like sky. You are hoping a man can be really alone here; you are hoping your father can tell what it is; and now only the doorknob is left to draw and in your enthusiasm you shout at the paper, and the weather changes just in time, not raining, beginning to spit.