a moose and squirrel
loiter around the same tree
I find it suspect
“Nevermore Raven,
You’ve sullied your last bust, Sir!”
[Feathers everywhere]
parrot’s bright green back
head stuck in a bore burrow
take it like a bird
a park: ducks floating,
who wins if there be bloodshed?
Donald or Daffy?
Donkey or robot?
Whose sadness rivals human:
Eeyore or Marvin?
“He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
5.) Sound Seeking: If anything looks more insane than walking down the street talking to oneself out loud, it’s talking to oneself out loud in rhyme and alliteration in a disjoint fashion while counting off beats on one’s fingers.
4.) Emotion Evocation: If your writing comes across as a cry for help, you may be a deeply troubled individual. Or you may be a poet trying to induce a reader to feel.
3.) Clarity & Codes: Because there may be no literal meaning to your verse, the reader may suspect that you’re writing in code to your imaginary pink bunny rabbit. Faced with the humbling possibility that he or she may “just not get it,” most people prefer the alternative explanation that you’re a rambling lunatic.
2.) Playing the Odds: Let’s be honest, there have been a lot of poets who slipped into the abyss. Poe, Pushkin, Plath, Pound, and several poets whose last names didn’t begin with the letter “P,” were all afflicted by mental illness.
1.) Violent Reactions to being Interrupted: A poem under development is a house of cards that needs only the subtlest gust of wind to be obliterated. Poems in the works are gauzy and fragile. So, as one is trying to wedge words together into a solid construct, one is occasionally interrupted. When this happens, one may instinctively pimp slap the interrupting individual like a Zen master trying to make the point that there is no point.
“This is going on your permanent record, young man!”
“All is impermanent.”
“I want you to get up there and clean your room.”
“Desire is the root of all suffering.”
“There’s a big spider in the corner, kill it!”
“Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts.”
“My left sock has static cling.”
“You only lose what you cling to.”
“HELP! My sleeve got caught in this threshing machine.”
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and…[cringes]”
“I wonder where the Professor is, he’s usually not late.”
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
“I’m feeling like a jelly doughnut.”
“What we feel, we attract.”
“I’m thinking a jelly doughnut would be good, too.”
“What we think, we become.”
“I’m furious with you.”
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
“Well, speak up. Explain yourself!”
“He who doesn’t understand one’s silence will probably not understand one’s words.”
“HELP! My sleeve got caught in this threshing machine.”
“Be patient. Everything comes to you in the… [cringes]”
“It’s time to take the trash out.”
“If anything is worth doing, do it with all YOUR heart.”
“No. I’m sorry, I can’t go to your Solar eclipse gala bash. I have to take my grandmother to chemotherapy.”
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
So now, tell me, Mister Giraffe:
How come I never hear you laugh?
Are you too tall to hear the joke,
or are you just an uptight bloke?
Human humor is elation
vis-a-vis
circumvented expectation.
Since I never do misconstrue,
I never need let them know I knew.
Hey, there, Mr. Millipede.
Shall I judge you by word or deed?
If by word, you’re big, stinky liar.
I counted 200 feet, not one higher.
“1000 feet” is pure exaggeration.
I say with no intended defamation.
By deed, now, that’s a different story.
You deserve all the accolades and glory.
I trip and stumble on just my two feet.
With 200, I’d never make it across the street.
How can your tiny brain keep feet moving?
Does each step need pre-approving?
[National Poetry Month: Poem #13]
You’ll never see a guy
shake his fist at the sky
and let fly the impassioned cry,
“I just want to fix typewriters.”
Some dream of escaping life in the hoi polloi,
pretending to be a princess, wearing a tiara toy,
but no one applies for the post of “whipping boy.”
[To take the beatings for said mischievous princess.]
And should you flush your ring down the toilet bowl,
you’re on your own, bless your plague-fated soul,
cause you’ll not find a tosher to jump down the sewer hole.
[Unless your time machine is set for London, circa 1850.]
When I look back at the sea of me’s.
I grin with glee and I’m quite pleased,
feeling totally at ease…
Because they’re all happily obsolete.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #10]
“Punch that word into proper position,”
the angry god of grammar cried.
It started surgically.
Teams tapped in pry bars,
popped out words,
and spackled in a space or a substitution.
Then they found rot,
and it’s all wrecking balls and dynamite from here.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #6]
I rue the hearing of that tune
like a sandworm from planet Dune
it burrowed from ear to brain
where its bouncy pop egg was laid
but when the alien overlords arrive
fresh out of intergalactic drive
sitting parked up in our Thermosphere
we’ll offer them a welcome beer
they’ll think us weak in being kind
until we lodge that f@#%ing tune in their hive-mind
watching them gyrate in a spastic dance
their minds melted in a Zombie trance
like lemmings they’ll plummet from the ship
with that infernal tune on all eight lips
[National Poetry Month: Poem #5]
I read you like a person reads
his blender manual.
It’s a necessity–legally obligatory.
But meaningless because if a word falls
in a blender manual, does anyone read it?
No one cares until someone loses a thumb.
Words are nudged and danced
into perfect clarity in seven languages.
But it’s 100 pages for a three button machine.
“Frappe” must have a long and convoluted definition.
[Poem #2: National Poetry Month]
I called you on the telephone.
It turned out weren’t at home.
“How can this work, if you won’t pick up.”
I messaged, sipping coffee from my cup.
“I’m right here,” a voice did say.
A hallucination as clear as day.
This was no time to go insane.
Hitting redial, I tried her in vain.
No answer. I feared I’d become unstable.
“Hey, lunkhead, I’m right across the table.”
The voice matched by a pounding sound.
The angry poltergeist had me spellbound.
Then a splash of water hit my face.
Lashing out, angered at the disgrace.
“Oh, hey, how long have you been there?”
Rolling her eyes in a dumbfounded stare.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 