Three days home, plus Christmas Eve and Christmas–
Sorry, you two, Aunt Flo’s here on business:
“Thou: deny your nuptial rights and fitness.”
Swollen men! Must we endure this witness!
How it was on Holiday
In Peterson’s Year of Hell
Oh fever’d night of sleepless hues!
Know I now of duty’d dues
Unto ones word-wracked neural paths
Churned and spun on Lethos’ lathes.
How to close my brain—each strain
Of thought, then verse, how to restrain
These mental heats that burst and show
Me as the cud-chewn spotted cow
That stalks myself like Ahab’s brow?
Pray hie thee hence away from me!
Allow some peace, some fraughtless space
Wherein verses, strain’d, shall be
O!
Hide me, lobster’s carapace!
Speak Me
How doth a man with words to speak
Enjoin his comp’nied fans to word?
Roll my words round ‘stonish’d cheek.
Poetry’s not read–it’s heard.
So speak aloud my sound, my sense!
Crafted, wrought to finest grace;
‘Scape thy silent indolence–
Else pass me by and shut thy face.
Adobe Stock
Off the top. I purse my lips
And plead each newfound wench to kiss–
Follow me in corset slips?
Adoring, winsome lovely Miss?
How dost a man with words so rare
Gain gentried favor, derrieres?
I type into the ethric air
And gain, thereby–friends–borne of airs!
Prison Teacher
Winter’s olden, damn-dawn fog–
Teacher glow’ring ‘mid the bog.
Earthen eyes at soulless stares:
Inmates fastened to school chairs.
Stare I back, heart stake at stanchion;
God has stated His injunction.
Do that deed I dare not mention–
Face His dread eternal truncheon.
Note: I found this deep in some records from an especially dark day at work. It may be 18 months old. I mean the good Lord no ill will. In fact, I don’t quite understand what my meaning was. Comments would be, in this entry’s case, most welcome.
For the Bride’s Name
Liza Minelli’s first name is said wrong.
The long Ī’s a ruinous, clumsy diphthong.
But Liza’s—like Pisa’s name—soars like a tower
And leaningly swages with love and with power.
Avunculus Unwed
My uncle gives me pause, a scare:
He frets to stare at Fred Astaire.
Miss Haze’s Talent
Humbert.
“Hum.”
Hum’s humble Haze’s home.
A waif is here
Who has high hems
And hame-like nettings
Down her gams.
Hum hums.
Hum hums hymns to her.
Hum hums inside himself.
Horrific Hum
Wants to make
Her do his own name’s
Homonym.
Clemency Maintained
Clement grew potent, got caught in the moment.
He swelled out his monument—started to foment—
As Ms. Clement donned an erotical garment.
He: “Quotients of marriage are my just emolument.
“My seeds need to vomit a certain emollient.”
She: “Don’t froth so, dear—for me it’s a condiment.”
Indian Forgetfulness
