Bird in the Bush

You can hedge

All you want

But I bet that bald

Eagle won’t be there when

You put your money

Where your beak was.

A Vazambam Exclusive: Incredibly Virtuoso Hellenic Rat Hurdles Another Language Barrier!

Believe it or not, this linguistically gifted, high-achiever of a mighty big mouse jumped from LOWER level to HIGHER—an ordeal usually requiring anywhere from 180 to 360 classroom teaching hours—after only 60 hours of intensive language instruction at one of the many RAT RACE SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH that have overrun the private language school sector in Greece—how did he perform that difficult task, you might ask. Elementary, my dears—He bamboozled his teachers by pretending English was not all Greek to him!

[Transcript of teacher instructing pupil] OK, Let’s try it again. C’mon buddy, there you go, eh, there you go, jump up again, c’mon!

NB: The few language schools that have remained loyal to cherished old teaching methods are now using the following poem as a stopgap teaching aid and rallying cry to ward off any more assaults on their turf. Suffice to say, these language schools—including the Zambara School of English—admit only cats, or in case English is all Greek to you—γάτες!

THAT’S ALL SHE WROTE, FOLKS!

(A 5-ACT TRAGIC FARCE FOR LANGUAGE SCHOOLS)

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,

The 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 students,

His Tommy gun reverberated—

Ratta-tat-tat!

Cut the knaves down

To modest wedges,

Just like that.

Heraclitus

Brooking changes

By a river, not in

Anybody’s book.

Summer

insisting

song

of

thr

u

mm

ing

ci

ca

da

ca

u

ght

in

cup

pd

hands.

Momentum

Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight ahead, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.

--Newton’s First Law of Motion

Hurrying out

Of the baker’s

To bring the still

Warm daily bread home,

This somebody comes close

To missing

The funeral notice tacked

On the light post

But does pause long

Enough to see

It’s nobody

He knows or else

He would’ve been stopped

Right there and then,

Cold too—like you

Or me.