Republished with permission of "The Wall Street Journal," July 16, 1993
#HumorousQuatrain
,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,
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…
Relativity at the foundry Behold the scene at the iron works Where whirls of girls and harried… Surround the boss, a man of vision… Who, visualizing a new division,
The Jacaranda in Spring (Near Rhyme) What discount art inspired this ta… Eleven months a year you’re quite… Too dark and gaunt, we thought, to…
Kings once favored beheadings; and when it was their turn, so did angry peasants America chose a different tableau: Black hoods, elaborate nooses
Elephants, Lawrence wrote,* let love bloom slowly “in their vast shy hearts.” But Lawrence dreamed. The beasts, it’s true, were once
Give Me More Light Give me more light I’m getting desperate here, you kn… show me what you’ve got is Ann Landers still around?
Levels of Innuendo The cosmos may contain a constella… That holds a jealous planet, one t… To hurt some stars with black insi… And smudge with covert smears thei…
I see the merit in Hemingway’s ch… the sudden casting of oneself upo… but I would like to go more slowly… from different categories: first p… then, one after another, lower bac…
Gimme That Ole-Time Religion I As one New Yorker said, the guy w… You in New York, your wallet as h… At least has goals, unlike the oth… Who kill and maim and have no aim…
Two Little Ironies* Suggest an early death deserves our envy, *Hardy wrote a book of short...
Times there are in dreams and days when you behold a busy horde hastening away,
The Golden Yoke On this, our fiftieth, we find We’re Siamese twins conjoined by… To share all things of heart and m… Like blessings, curses, smiles and…
He with pregnant wife, Sneaking out the back And down the broken stairs, To score some grass or crack. Threading through the alley,