767 Humor poems

As I am Catholic I have never played. *       *       * I've had thirty-six lovers plus tax. *       *       * I am the most chaste woman in Italian literature. *       *       * I am completely asexual not counting errors and omissions. *       *       * Mount Sinai is sometimes confused with the Mons Veneris. *       *       * No one can know what is between me and God.

The maple syrup's full of ants. A mouse is creeping on the shelf. Is that a spider on your back? I ate a whole pie by myself. The kitchen sink just overflowed. A flash flood washed away the school. I threw your blanket in the trash. I never lie————I———— APRIL FOOL!

You only have to make her one grilled cheese in the suffocating heat of summer while still wearing your wet swim trunks to know what it’s like to be in love. And you only have to sit once for a haircut in the air conditioning with the lovely stylist to forget all about it, and to forget that anything in the universe ever existed prior to the small, pink sweater now brushing softly against your neck. In this world, every birth is premature. How else to explain all of this silence, all of this screaming, all of those Christmas card letters about how well the kids are doing in school? We’re all struggling to say the same old things in new and different ways. And so we must praise the new and different ways. I don’t like Christmas. I miss you that much. For I, too, have heard the screaming, and I, too, have tried to let it pass, and still I’ve been up half the night as if I were half this old, and like you, I hate this kind of poetry just as much as my life depends upon it. They’re giving away tiny phones for free these days, but they’ve only made a decent conversation more precious. One medicine stops the swelling, another medicine stops the first medicine. Just like you, I entered this world mad and kicking, and without you, it’s precisely how I intend to go.

My foot’s asleep, my seat is sore. You said “another hour” before. You say “an hour” every time. Your hours are much longer than mine.

Ye poets ragged and forlorn, Down from your garrets haste; Ye rhymers, dead as soon as born, Not yet consign'd to paste; I know a trick to make you thrive; O, 'tis a quaint device: Your still-born poems shall revive, And scorn to wrap up spice. Get all your verses printed fair, Then let them well be dried; And Curll must have a special care To leave the margin wide. Lend these to paper-sparing Pope; And when he sets to write, No letter with an envelope Could give him more delight. When Pope has fill'd the margins round, Why then recall your loan; Sell them to Curll for fifty pound, And swear they are your own.

5-2001 (as on TV) Welcome to this special edition double cortege for Galbraith, Kenneth— Friedman, Milton— ssstately cortege... efffusively-shiny like your kids teeth— ...such éclaircissement on this beautiful morning lustrum (kids, that’s Latin, we mean to say “wow”) ...directly behind the caskets—is that —it’s the Macy’s Rat (in mid-air)...neat, real neat... in front the lead-coated horses don’t seem to mind the officers’ droppings... is that a gigantic molar, with worms popping out? —such a variety of colors! ...look, some Teamsters are in a tussle with some scab teletubby over on 23rd St. and Madison ...ok, now, now they’re under arrest... if you look carefully you’ll see there’s two pre-funeral exercises for Fukuyama, Francis— Soros, George— on 24th —not, not as stately... a delegation of mainstream poets! and behind them, this year’s NPR security-clearance float!...ooh... ya, they’re rather new at this but...wait— there’s a lone guerrilla girl running through the crowd now she’s she’s managed to get the Cultural Studies delegation to strip and dress up as squeegee-bearing babushkas it looks like ...it’s 20 degrees so, that’s rather—ok, she’s, she’s under arrest now... ...those are neat, those little plastic thingies, aren’t they?... The Bill Gates (My Charter) High School Marching Band! The Steve Case (My Charter) High School Marching Band! behind them the post ’89, post-historical acrobat academics on mini-lawnmowers... that’s smart... The Yucky’s! The Yucky’s, yeah, they’re an interesting group... they do things like suppress that Sidney Poitier is the best American actor ever ...oh look, the Fahd ibn Abdel Aziz al-Saúd float ...the F14’s behind him are real ...now,that’s smart! ...I think he just waved at me ...who’s that man with the Monocle grabbing his— that’s Mister Modernist! he’s been a regular at these events for over 90 years now ...Saga of The Blank Page float a real favorite... ooh, he just dropped his—wait a babushka—her, her boot’s— crkkkk... oh, that’s, that’s not good...but —did you know that these are the first 100% soy caskets ever made? some people have actually run up to nibble at them... kids, if you’re watching this... make sure you never think of any other social arrangement other than one that Militarily Has To Dominate Three Quarter of The World

I realise it’s not all salad sandwiches at pinewood picnics, endless volleyball. I’ve heard the argument that talk of shame and how our forebears thought their bodies dirty; how we've all got one. Seen one, seen ’em all. But it’s not for me, beneath my double load of Calvinist and voyeuristic tendencies. For me, I have to see the clothes come off: the way a button’s thumbed through cotton cloth - a winning move in some exotic game with no set rules but countless permutations - or how a summer dress falls to the floor with momentary mass and with a plash that stirs us briefly as we ply our passion; a hand pushed through the coldness of a zip, three fingertips that follow down the spine to where a clasp is neatly spun undone amidkiss, by prime legerdemain and who cares that it happens once in four and never, never on the first undressing, it must be better than a foreskin snagged on gorse thorns or a cold, fat nipple jammed in the scissor drawer, the bounty and the blessing, the mystery of nakedness reduced till on a par with go-go palaces where goosebumped, grinding strippers strut their stuff in the birthday clothes of backstreet empresses, down on a par with the oncologist who gropes for lumps, the night-morgue man who clips his nails amongst the naked, bin-bagged stiffs. So, stranger, what I want to say is this: if you’re to join me in a little sinning (and this is my place up here on the right), please understand I’d value some reluctance, a cold-feet shiver, as in the beginning when Eve discovered modesty and slipped in and out of something comfortable. For there are many ways to skin a cat, but ours is human nature - things come off so rarely. Come in. Let me take your coat.

Think of a self-effacing missionary Tending the vices of a problem tribe. He knows the quickest cure for beri-beri And how to take a bribe. And so the mind will never say it’s beaten By primitive disturbance of the liver; Its logic will prevent its being eaten, Get it across the river. But faced with this assured inconsequence That damns the very method that is used, It leaves the heart unproselytised and hence Admits that it’s confused. I know I’m acting, but I still must act. I melt to foolishness, and want it ended. Why it continues is this simple fact: I’d hate to end it. For now the jungle moods assert their terms And there’s no way to check them if they lie: The mind attempts to solve the thing, but squirms And knows exactly why. The world is everything that is the case. You cannot see it if you are inside it. That’s why the tortoise always wins the race: the very terms decide it. I cannot help it if I am contented With being discontented that I falter: That’s why psychology was first invented So that we needn’t alter. It is a strange position to be in. It would be different if I didn’t know Why the unlikely animal should win, Which cannibal should row. You’d think there’d be a way of cutting out Those self-destructive layers of introspection. To reach the truth at last without a doubt Of making the connection. That’s why the missionary, on his guard, Is wondering why the cannibal’s so merry, And why it is so very very hard To be a missionary.

Am I lovely? Of course! Breathlessly I taste the subtle compliment of a handmade caress. Chop me into tiny bits, caress and tame my soul, that godly swallow you love to no end.

put yr cup on my tray the stewardess said 40,000 feet up. (well i’ve never done it that way. what have i got to lose.) i climb into a cab & the woman driver is singing along with Frank Sinatra “how was your flight coming in?” (another one. these americans, only one thing on their minds).