To A Once Budding Romantic Poet Now Out On A Limb

Do not be crestfallen, 
Bard, a mere leaf trembling 
In a mean autumn wind— 
Brief as your flowering was, 
Surely you bloomed long 
Enough to sense it wasn’t 
Meant to be forever spring.

Pox Magazine Poetry Submission Guidelines

We do not need and thus 
Do not seek work suitable 
For public consumption— 

The last time we checked, 
Poetry was not listed 
As a communicable disease. 

With Back to the Wall

For all its breathtaking beauty, 
Our country has many flaws, 
Some of them deadly— 

The more we speak of them, 
The better we’ll face 
The stark muzzle 

Of deadening reality. 

Laughter Is The Best Medicine

Gagged inside 
A dumb gentle beast 
Lies another like 
Beast inside 
Another like one, 
And so on, myriads 

Not wanting
To break out 
Of the barrier 
Of muteness
That's muzzled them;
Therein lies 

The key to the puzzle 
As to why these silent,
Docile creatures need
Nothing but guffawing
Clownish despots
To entertain them. 

Bus Stop: Spring Is Icumen In

Oh, devilish joy frenetic! 

There where one hum- 
Drum bus comes 
And pulls out one 
After the other, now 

Alighting on a wire above 
An oblivious queue, two birdies 
Making mad whoopee looking 
Like a goddamn double-decker one!

Anamnesis

Coming up for air— 
Lungs foundering 

On the bottom, fishing 
For whatever’s still 

Down there. 

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.