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MAN'S BEST FRIEND, THE NOBLE DOGGEREL

10/8/2014

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Going South

 My friend Edward

Headed home.

He went drawlward

to Palindrome.

--


Maudlin Verses on Reaching Eighty


     with apologies to A.E. Housman

 

Brightest of trees the maple now

is flaming red along its bough,

and counsels in its autumnal way

to number each remaining day.

 

So: of my three score years and ten

I’m overdrawn, and in the red again.

And since my years surpass four score

I dare not hope for many more.

 

So to the village I shall go,

where the healing spirits flow;

there to sip a glass or two

of our local micro-brew.

 

Until supernal voices come to say,

“It’s time for you to go away.

Please, Go away.

 Just GO AWAY! “

 
--
AMERICAN LANDSCAPE

 Charles Sheeler

Makes me feel a

Sense of what is fine

In industrial design.

 
NONSENSE VERSE, OR WORSE

 I grew a sense of humor on my nose,

Big and bulbous, bright it glows.

Other senses in retreat

Have taken refuge in my feet.

 

Sight, and smell, touch, taste and so

On, each has its distinctive toe.

A sixth sense lives elsewhere,

Perhaps amid my orange hair.

 

A sense of  where I’m at

Is enfolded in my belly fat.

But no clue to who I am

Comes from my ‘well-taut diaphragm’.

 

Prurient folks, I must suppose,

Wonder what’s beneath my clothes:

“Any sense of wrong or right,

He surely keeps well out of sight.

 

“Love of beauty, sense of awe

Are stuck, no doubt, within his craw.

His skin with pustules festers red

With thoughts of exploits in the  …

 

[Here several verses I excise,

As quite unfit for virtuous eyes.

What’s left you may find boring

But still worth some time exploring.]

 
Do those motley sleeves conceal

The scabs of entrepreneurial zeal?

Or are some marks of vestigial wit

Tattoo’d where he is wont to sit?"



To such queries I here reply

Not with evasion, nor a lie:

‘Pay me dollars; pay me cents.

Silence is just common sense.’

--

Bob Hellenga’s response:

Connor's gone over the top;

Will someone please tell him to stop.

Take away his computer,

Or get him a tutor,

 Or else call a poetry cop.

 

--

 

 

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