The best advice I ever got was, “Don’t give unsolicited advice!” It surprised me a little because I wasn’t even talking to the guy. A stranger just came up to me out of the blue and shouted it in my face… but it is wise advice.
Tag Archives: silly
POEM: On the Way to Chennagiri, or: A Silly Line of Thought
On the way to Chennagiri, I passed the military dairy farm, and wondered if they also grew blackberries and raspberries. Or, on the contrary, was it strictly a dairy — that would be so like the military. Stick with the primary, don’t distract with a secondary. But then — for the military — milking cows would already have to be tertiary, and, so, growing wild cherries would be quaternary, or — more likely — quinary [because, of course, they’d also need skills, veterinary.] But maybe the veterinary clinic is a subsidiary, or maybe they hire labor, temporary — maybe former service members volunteer — veteran veterinarians, so to speak.
Then I had a thought that was very scary, what if armed revolutionaries or radical reactionaries made a play for that dairy. The military would have to call on the constabulary, because the cows would be no help at all.
POEM: They Spiked My Punch
They spiked my punch.
I had no lunch.
I got so drunk, so very drunk.
Drunker than I thunk
that a man could ever be,
and I don’t know if I can trust what my eyes did see:
I saw: two elephants riding pogo sticks,
the Taj Mahal made of Lego bricks,
Ned Flanders as a creepy voyeur,
A lady talking to an honest lawyer,
goats doing kung fu in the park,
a talking dog and a man who barked,
a traffic cop with a great big smile,
the line for kicks formed in single file,
two geese played a wicked ping-pong match,
I got hit by a bus–look not a scratch.
TODAY’S RANT: The War on Rhyming Verse
it’s my cross, my curse
this rhyme in my verse
rhymers aren’t taken seriously
and are berated furiously
“Oh, your poem is so cutsie,
like little baby bootsies.”
call it banal or call it niche
but “cutsie?”, please!, step off bitch
just because my verse ain’t free
don’t act like I’m a perp to slavery
I spare my words the sting of the rod
they’ve never tasted a cattle prod
I’ve never waterboarded my “ands” or “buts”
or kicked a pronoun square in the nuts
I don’t whip my adjectives to get ’em in line
I stand waiting patiently holding a sign
Why steer my words like some stern brigadier?
because it scratches an itch somewhere in my ear
I know my rhymes sometimes lack cachet
because they’re little too Ogden Nash-ay
but from the hilltops I sing
like that guy Rodney King
hear the words of my song
“Can’t the poets all just get along!”


