Published with permission of "Light," Autumn, 1999
#HumorousQuatrain
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…
Academic Editors I hate the callow ones who think t… And have therefore the right to cr… I hate the ones who charge me twen… So I can try to win a ten-buck pr…
I am a horse, a patient, plodding hack harnessed behind a chromed cart — a cart I push when told to go and stop when told to whoa.
,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,
Aroused by thee, I misbehave, afire with lust while thou art coo… and thou then seem a microwave and I a zap-ped molecule.
A Grecian corpse’s mouth containe… Placed there by kin who thought he… To pay the toll required to cross… (A job that Charon got through po… He sold another chit for their ret…
They all seem old, with huge, bushy beards, their soiled rags incongruous in the sleek, polished chairs. Not allowed bundles
A Disney creature has soulful eye… Inhales the posies, gnaws no flesh… Knows sin from virtue in a flash And sobs a quart when Mother dies… A Disney creature lacks an anus,
The Afghan women, dreading stones… don sacks of baggy black, concealing them from crown to sole… excepting narrow Brink-truck slots through which the men folk let the…
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… Much like irrational brutes, our…
Elephants, Lawrence wrote,* let love bloom slowly “in their vast shy hearts.” But Lawrence dreamed. The beasts, it’s true, were once
Ask Not Whom the Toll Bails A Grecian corpse’s mouth containe… Placed there by kin who thought he… To pay the toll required to cross… (A job that Charon got through po…
He could not paint a world that g… For his shimmered softly. His cliffs, cathedrals, seas appe… congenial things of liquid light; and even locomotives seem
The plank is narrow, more narrow than when he started; he could slip off at any time. The wood is slick, too, threatening again a premature plun…
Intellectual Insecurity When I must read reports I really don’t feel too slick If I can’t see what’s wrong When I encounter a [sic].