Published with permission by "The Wall Street Journal," Sept.12, 1993-
#HumorousPersonal
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
System Restore (free verse with incidental rhyme,… Last week, not thinking, I punched a strange computer key and spawned unceasing lunatic para…
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…
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 Minister Speaks: “Our chastened knees and pressed p… Father and Son, you said, were co… the water to wine, the stinking co… mere legerdemain, you claimed,
A Sixtieth Anniversary: Oedipus… Attraction through the eye, the li… Portrays the blazing start of this… For years that magnetism did not w… Remained the stuff to move a sonne…
Two Little Ironies* Suggest an early death deserves our envy, *Hardy wrote a book of short...
The Pathetic Fallacy Mitigated (An exercise in near-rhyme) To liken buying blue-chip stocks To squirrels hoarding nuts is bosh… As wrong as claiming dogs can blus…
“Saint Chris’s statue on my dash Will surely keep me safe,” he said… But then one day he struck a pole And hit the dashboard with his hea… Oh, woe! Six-inch Saint Christop…
Sure, ask who died, and ask why J… Won’t have Brad’s baby, whom she’… Read how the princess slept with h… See Mary’s image on a slice of br… Get proof that so-and-so’s a murde…
The role itself arouses smirks. I picture mine in a doorway, slightly stooped, worry-faced, hands wringing an apron, peering at the thing she hatched,
She believes in doing things right… She would do anything for anyone i… it helped a person be closer to he… She would never eat a lamb chop wi… just as pork hocks must accompany…
Poetry Editors To Poets Don’t send us dull pentameters; That stuff’s for Keats and other… Submit no rhyme, but heaven knows We hate a poem that sounds like pr…
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
A magic trick will awe the laity, So though it make of me a vile par… I say if he had lived Year One A… Copperfield might be today’s Mess…