767 Humor poems

Their ruler is elected state by state, and no one cuts his heart out as he drowses. Their senior citizens still copulate. Their convicts are allowed to change their blouses. In this backyard there hangs a gutted deer, and in that driver's seat there sits a wife. They have their MMR and Retrovir. They have their quarter-century more life. Each commoner receives a welcome mat. The maids have maids, and plumbers go to Paris. They call their waiters "sir." The poor are fat. They eat. They do not easily embarrass.

Come my little Robert near— Fie! what filthy hands are here! Who that e'er could understand The rare structure of a hand, With its branching fingers fine, Work itself of hands divine, Strong, yet delicately knit, For ten thousand uses fit, Overlaid with so clear skin You may see the blood within, And the curious palm, disposed In such lines, some have supposed You may read the fortunes there By the figures that appear— Who this hand would chuse to cover With a crust of dirt all over, Till it look'd in hue and shape Like the fore-foot of an Ape? Man or boy that works or plays In the fields or the highways May, without offence or hurt, From the soil contract a dirt, Which the next clear spring or river Washes out and out for ever— But to cherish stains impure, Soil deliberate to endure, On the skin to fix a stain Till it works into the grain, Argues a degenerate mind, Sordid, slothful, ill inclin'd, Wanting in that self-respect Which does virtue best protect. All-endearing Cleanliness, Virtue next to Godliness, Easiest, cheapest, needful'st duty, To the body health and beauty, Who that's human would refuse it, When a little water does it?

I smell the blood of low-definition attorneys. I smell the blood of low-definition attorneys.

look like birds. Scrawny winter   birds   balanced by   two   sarong tail   feathers.   Some   look west, others north- east   toward   the mountain.   Stiff in the   cold & remote.   They  haven’t  been   loved enough.   They grow thinner   and thinner   in their   woody streaked   feathers,   held together  only   by the exposed   spiral   of   internal organs.   After  a  while ,   the sun comes out and   all o f   the birds,   clutching   wire,   turn an     electric            silver. This is     hopeful,,    but doesn’t   last.         Clouds take a  break   from   one   another , , re- convene.   A half-inch of snow is rolled out   with   perfect    evenness across               the picnic   table,   as though someone made a blank for what was coming.    The nice thing about   clothespin    birds   is             they   don’t “excrete.” Jays   &   grosbeaks   &   finches &      mourning    doves    + ravens   leave their   paintings everywhere , on   benches & limbs ,, , on fallen pine needle fascicles \|/ feldspar & quartz _ __ though   all  has  now   become gesso    beneath    snow.   After   a  certain amount   of feeling hopelessly under- accomplished,   you look at   your   nails and   want   to paint them.         Is this how   birds feel?                 No.         Birds fly and   don’t    look down.      Or,   they   sit   `’’   amid branches and    peck   at the   brittle   waffled   bark & tiny    bugs    buried in   the marrow.  .<sszt sszt sszt.<   You, too, peck.  Familiar letters    on t he   keys have   lost their    definition        and   resemble   finger- tip-size   daubs of   bird   paint   on back- lit platforms.   You   recall the s   e&m only   via   entrenched   neural   pathways , while   the l and c continue to morph   into tiny   archaic symbols.    As though,  the  unconscious is forming      a message.       ( Always   “it”   has   something unearthly     to say. ) Except the unconscious is the earth ,    it’s   just   we don’t  know   how   she               does it. St. Thomas of Aquinas  got  a delirium hit of   t hat   at the end and decided  to   marry   it.   Each day your thumbs   grow   paler,   nails   coarser,   evolving toward   the ptero- dactyl: part  reptile,  part   bird. As  a  child pterodactyls   scared you,         which meant they   had  your             attention.   Refusing to stay in   the   lineage,         they became their  own            form. They had  an  iguana       for     a     father and  a   pelican   for  a    mom, crispy  and  dipped  in  molasses. If you were big enough you could   eat   them the  way   some people   eat grass- hoppers.  Compulsive hole- punchers,  if less   manic could be    sculptors, though it requires d-e-t-a-c-h-m-e-n-t to see  it    that way , , if  you  are a   lilac   leaf   sketching   outside the   library   window.        What are those    books doing   in there   together ?!                  Nothing ! When a   new    one arrives,   they   fall  in love,,  one   by one.  Inside  their  covers, a   million   leaves, each w/  black   growth.     A pattern of       fungus , the  shed  skin  of          snakes  &  dna traces.   Like   bird   poop, but   more orderly     and the message is   see- through. Don’t you wish    you   could   lift   the   letters and   release them       halfway back   to the  liquid   state ,, ,   before they   got   connected   to the   circuitry?   It might be    kind   of relaxing.  You might be as good of a painter as a         cuckoo    bird.    A few nights   ago you  dreamt   you were very     pregnant & in need of    a  place       to give   birth.   Your  boyfriend had   left         you     and  2    therapists let   you    live         w/ them because   you    resembled   their     daughter  — though they were     suspicious.   Who    can blame  them? As for your nails, find  a     mani- curist,   someone  who   knows   what they are doing.  Druids never  lived   here, that was    Europe,    but  you and   the   sage- brush are   distantly   related      via     microbial ancestors;         in spite of    yourself,   you are surrounded by   family.   \\|/

To fish from a cloud in the sky You must find a comfortable spot, Spend a day looking down Patiently, clear-sighted. Peer at your ceiling: Where a light dangles, hook & line Could be slipping through. Under the hull of a boat A fish will see things this way, Looking up while swimming by — A wavering pole’s refraction Catching its eye. What will you catch? With what sort of bait? Take care or you’ll catch yourself, A fish might say, As inescapable skeins of shadow Scatter a net Over the face of the deep.

On the news tonight, a presidential colonoscopy — a tale of   how for three whole hours the chief  exec of   trouble handed trouble to his vice (although no double trouble came), but then no more details revealed: no bacterial armies multiplying in a flare of  war among kingly polyps & no kinky creases. Welcome to the presidential gut, bubble gum pink, not a spot of  shit (after a quick administrative cleanout) where global decisions stir & sit in state, and the first physician’s mighty pointer traces only microdrops of   blood in secret places.

Stick that bumbershoot in elephant’s-foot brolly stand behind the big door. Mind your manners at High Tea. Hi, you. High ve- locity hailstones cream passersby beyond the panes. I dream of Jeannie, starring Bar- bara Eden, of Eden, star- ring Eve and Adam, of Adam Cartwright, a.k.a. the let-'

Momus, to be a Poet Laureate, Has strained his wits through an iron grate. For he has rhymes and rhymes, and double strains, And golden verses, and all kinds of veins, Now to the press he presses hastily, To sell his friends stinking eternity. For who would be eternal in such fashion, To be a witness to his condemnation.

Sextus upon a spleen, did rashly swear, That no new fashion he would ever wear. He was forsworn, for see what did ensue, He wore the old, till the old was the new.

Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured, Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell— We, who have sung the praises of the lord With every fiber in us, every cell. We, who did not manage to devote Our nights to spinning, did not bend and sway Above a cradle—in a flimsy boat, Wrapped in a mantle, we’re now borne away. Every morning, every day, we’d rise And have the finest Chinese silks to wear; And we’d strike up the songs of paradise Around the campfire of a robbers’ lair, We, careless seamstresses (our seams all ran, Whether we sewed or not)—yet we have been Such dancers, we have played the pipes of Pan: The world was ours, each one of us a queen. First, scarcely draped in tatters, and disheveled, Then plaited with a starry diadem; We’ve been in jails, at banquets we have reveled: But the rewards of heaven, we’re lost to them, Lost in nights of starlight, in the garden Where apple trees from paradise are found. No, be assured, my gentle girls, my ardent And lovely sisters, hell is where we’re bound.