Republished with permission of Midwest Poetry Review, 1997
#RhymedSatirical
,The Honky-Poet Blues (With apologies to Bessie Smith) I’m sittin’ at my keyboard almos’… I say, I’m sittin’ at my keyboard… The wife want rent money,
He makes a mild volley, teasingly, with a wry smile, condescending to her female fragil… but she strokes a rather sharp ret… whereupon he responds a little har…
Kinkade Faces Reality* To coda played by lonely whippoorw… A tiny cottage dons its dusk-dark… And snuggles into undulating hills… Its chimney twisting just a curl o…
Don’t Tell Me Birds are Kin to… The birds of course, are kin to yo… I’ve seen a lover-loser, proved to… Attack the ground, as Xerxes span… He bruising water, the bird, its t…
I know you mean the best for me, But why is there this urgency? If once you really had the time To praise my attributes in rhyme, I wonder if procrastination
The Futility of Action Our lives are sprawled in a meanin… where aims benevolent or evil, sel… eventuate in tortured remnants of… where Christ’s counsel of love to…
The Billionaire’s Apologia I pass this wretch sprawled agains… and idly but with studied bonhomie drop into his cap a dollar bill, while wondering at the deep dispar…
Just off a country road a balding… Reclines in spring upon a pinkish… Of dogwood, which on any better da… Supports, at least in poems, a “fe… Or, worse, that “lifts to God its…
Guidebook for Immigrants Part I. Making Your Vocabulary… “On sale!” “Reduced!” and “Absolu… Are usually milder forms of larcen… “Adult” means “dirty films” and g…
Coffee Table Books A coffee table book’s not there to… it’s there to stupefy your curious… who read the titles surreptitiousl… to sneer in secret at your shallow…
System Restore I punched one day a strange comput… That spawned an endless lunatic pa… Across the screen of visual debris That I could not remove, still wo…
Autumn in Florida Smug live oaks drop a leaf or two, Acknowledging the time of year; Droll cypress take from this their… Turn rust as if their end is near.
The score now even after Jordan’s… up yours, you punk, confess before… she’d deceived you, Lance, her pre… see the Bible, frayunds, Isaiah f… four-car wreck on Hempstead, now t…
The meter of this poem will be like ticks of a clock — no, I mean, ticks of clocks. On contemplation of my navel I see only what appears to be
Electrocutions show our love of ri… We give the favored one a kingly f… As well as pen and ink so he can w… The thoughts we all will prize whe… We see his every need is now addre…