American-Style Hide-And-Seek

Ready or not, once 
The countdown starts, 
We’ll have plenty 
To say after “it” finishes, 

When we find we've nowhere
To hide any longer,
And a home base
Crawling with finks.

For Better or Worse

The poem 
You just put down 
Has a life of its own, 
Forgiving no one for words 
Put into its mouth by one 
Who should know better, 
Save that someone be a suicide 
Speaking strange tongues. 

Lost Cause (#45)

In this proverbial 
Race against time, how 
Lucky we are indeed to be 

Always on the verge of being 
Continually great, if only 
We weren’t always so 

Habitually late. 

Take That, You Dirty Rat! (A Tragic Farce in Five Acts)

1. 

The saucy mouse said tit, 
The sassy rat said tat; 
Seductive in the kitchen, 
Lady de la Roquefort, sitting pat. 

2. 

The gnawing was ferocious, 
Le dame delicious, too; 
Enamored with their gnawing, 
They gnawed till they were bleu.

(A classic case of biting off 
More than you can chew.)

No sign of consternation, no inkling of chagrin, 
No reining in of hubris—O overweening sin! 

(By Zeus! Such uninvited cheeky din 
Was doomed to do our duo in.) 

3. 

His catnap abruptly truncated by the ruckus, 
Our couch potato Tom exclaimed 
Sounds like hocus-pocus woke us!

With drat and drat and double-drat, 
That’s quite enough of this and that, 
He went gumshoeing to the kitchen. 

 4. 

Zounds! 

Brazen raiding scoundrels out-of-bounds 
Ravishing our Lady Roquefort! 

To arms! To arms! 

5. 

And with that, dear denizens of the land 
Of cheesy fictions, his Tommy gun 
Reverberated—ratta-tat-tat! 

Cut the knaves down 
To modest wedges, 
Just like that.

Renewable Energy

The refugee from who-knows-where who spent all night freezing 
On a park bench while you were feeding your fireplace 
With presto logs does not want to hear what you’ve been doing 
To save the planet; he wants to see you walk over a bed of hot coals
Holding your head on a silver platter and not get burnt. 

Loss Is

what remains 
when you find nothing 

but grieving 
remains 

Divination of Evil

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want
and deserve to get it good and hard.”—H.L. Mencken


I bet you ten will get you twenty 
Men wiser than I have said 
The pursuit of liberty starts 
As innocently 
As a child wanting 
What it cannot have, 

And ends with it 
Having what 
It doesn’t need; 
Indeed, most 
Of the time, it feels 
It just doesn’t 

Know what it wants 
Or needs, then gets it 
Good and hard 
In the gut when 
Least expected, 
Its entrails found lacking, 

While knowing bloody butchers 
Lick their chops in the end. 

Just Us and the Chickens

Not living as long as we do, 
Chickens do not have the time 
Nor our bird-brained inclination 
To piddle over whether or not 
There’s some kind of god working 
Wonders way up there above the weather; 
You can see an example of this 
When their gullets are parched 
And the nearest watering 
Hole’s dry as all get-out, 
Soon as they hear the rumbling 
Of nimbuses rolling their way, 
Straightaway they tilt 
Their dusty, wide-open beaks 
Upwards, look God square 
In the face and before you 
Know it—by thunder— 
Start gurgling 

Grace. 

One of These Days: A Parable of the Field Mouse

Little man, 
Just when you think 
You’ve made it through 

One more great, 
Simply fantastic flying 
Red white and blue day, 

A crepuscular screeching 
Flash of a hoot owl turning 
Your pinky moon face pale— 

How do you like that?
No more being 
Carried away.