Pare a Pair of Pears, Please
Image
10
Tag Archives: rhyme
One in a Million
Homage to Popularity
My Distinction
If I should need some camouflage, should want to truly blend,
I’d better watch my persiflage and learn not to offend
By wearing last week’s trendy style, my hair too short or long,
Or failing, yet, to reconcile which Party’s Right (or wrong)
To run the government; which church is favored most by God,
How not to leave you in the lurch when I have been a clod,
Appalling with my social gaffes, faux pas and frightful fouls;
I may accept I’m built for laughs, but using the wrong towels
Or forks or traffic lanes, That Word in company unfit—
I hope I don’t seem too absurd as-is, but that’s just it:
My imperfections, my unique design as Me, are such
As might make me appear a freak if I am Me too much.
But, truth be told, while I may work to fit in with the rest,
I hope you won’t think me a jerk for liking myself best!
I will blend in, keep pace, behave, up to a point, to please,
But lest you think me fashion’s slave, I think it a dis-ease
To seek conformity and bow to other people’s rules
When I’m quite nifty anyhow, and others may be fools.
Fingerprint Beats Homage
Here in the Attic
Treasury
Click and clatter,
chuckle, chatter,
in the attic,
nascent natter
tells a tale of
bits and bobbins,
delicate as
little robins’
eggs and feathers,
soft as heather,
sings of history
and hidden
secrets dusty
and ghost-ridden,
‘mid the bones
and bolts and buckles,
be they sweet as
honeysuckle’s
scent remembered,
or the laughter
in the rafters
heard hereafter,
recollections
of old treasure,
holding motes of
passing pleasure—
sneeze, and all the
atoms scatter
to the corners,
click
and
clatter.
Sonnet for Sisters
My Sisters’ Names
Three sisters, three have I, each one a star
to light the night or day with brilliance new,
a spark these shining few, though rare, bring to
the darkest, deepest places where they are–
Fair Wisdom bears a gleaming cup, as thirst
for knowledge waits in ev’ry darkened realm
to sip the learning springing from her helm,
sweet Wisdom bringing in this treasure first–
The next is gracious Kindness, in whose charms
of sympathy and care is safety found
when she with gentle strength wraps all around,
encompassing the world within her arms–
The third with equal radiance inclines
to lighten hearts as much as sun can do;
Laughter‘s her name, and like the other two,
her sparkling wit enhances how she shines–
All three, my sisters light the corners of
The universe: their other name is Love.
Final Residing Place
Residential Issues
The beaver builds a dam-fine house,
The mouse, a hole-in-one,
The moose and goose, while on the loose,
Take shelter in the sun;
The pigeon curls up in her nest;
Raccoon believes his den is best.
It seems that every one abroad
Creates his ideal home,
Yet every head at last, when dead,
Will end up in the loam.
Therefore, I say, enjoy your port,
Your burrow, hovel, cubby, fort,
And be advised that what you’ve prized
Won’t be your utter last resort,
But rather you’ll take company
With all the beasts moved on
To their reward under the sward,
And to the dirt begone!
Airy-Fairy
Possibilities
I think I have a hankering for things both rich and strange
To the degree that anything I love requires a change
From normalcy into a state you might consider odd
Or simply having no real weight upon the native sod
Of humankind–that is, not kin to mortals and their sort–
And if you find my life herein just makes you give a snort
Of disbelief (maybe disdain), I’ll not call it affront,
But pity you the sad refrain of living such a blunt
And circumscribed existence as mere ‘normalcy’ implies,
While I, adorned in fairy dust, take to the endless skies.
I Don’t Mean to Scare You, But . . .
Even though Halloween itself has never been a huge event in my life, you may, just possibly, have noticed a rather dark tinge to my humor (if such a thing exists) that pervades the year regardless of its official celebrations. So I’m hardly above taking advantage of the approach of a publicly sanctioned excuse for some of my own cheap brand of funereal jocularity. I plan to shower you with gloomy silliness as the holiday nears, so if you’ve any fearful tendencies, pull up the covers and plug your ears.
A Grackle
May cackle
Creeping down into October and its necromantic nights,
thrilling, chilling masqueraders revel in the season’s frights,
both imagined and uncanny, sweets in surfeit, pranks and scares,
work to raise each other’s hackles, catch out courage unawares–
And the bat and spider, ghostly visitors and ravens reign;
even crows can briefly boast the power to enchant the brain
with a Halloweenish horror, freeze the unsuspecting nape
the suggestible door-knocker turns to sky while dressed in crape–
All a-cower, cowards wander in the dim light of the moon,
hold hilarious their hauntings lest they all prove true too soon,
everyone immersed in darkness, celebrating cyclic fear
as the month and season trickle, bloodied, off to end the year–
All this rampant spookiness, however, leaves the Grackle cold:
black and iridescent bird, she perches, watches, and of old,
knows the crows‘ and ravens’ moment passes, quick as life, is gone,
and her rule o’er earthly foment, like her tail, goes on and on . . .
You Name It, It can Get You in Trouble
Call Me Crazy
Oliver doesn’t like olives
And Mary thinks marrying’s odd
And Colton’s allergic to horses
Divina believes in no god
And don’t get me started on Philpott
And Sunshine and Robin and Mame
‘Cause whatever their parents were thinking
They didn’t think What’s in a Name
Of Dire Days and Nebulous Nights
Missing You
The kettle on the hob is hissing
Without cease, for Kettie’s missing—
She dashed out to check the door
And hasn’t come back anymore;
Although we saw a pair of shoes
And stockinged legs amid the ooze,
Heels up, in yon green murky swamp,
We dasn’t get our own shoes damp
By plunging toward her in the rough
Glutinous muck, and soon enough
The heels stopped kicking anyhow.
No one will come for coffee now,
For though ‘twas us stood at her door,
She slipped; shan’t visit anymore.
Slightly Bent
Emmylou and Louie went
To town together long ago—
They went to town, for all we know;
Although they both were slightly bent,
We think they just went off to town,
Not that they were bumped off, ambushed,
Stabbed, poisoned, or shot down;
But given they were slightly bent,
Our finding them quite stone cold dead
Was not a shock, it must be said,
So we’re not certain where they went
Or what they did or what it meant
Or whether in the town or out,
Or if some others were about
That had a slightly different bent,
But anyway, the two are dead,
Both of them, Emmylou and Louie,
And lest I should become all gooey,
That’s the whole that need be said.
