Beginning

 My parents met at a Christmas party. 

He offered to walk her home but she declined,

Living, as she did, just across the alley. 

I guess she’d made an imprint on his mind.

Emu

I emulate an emu 

I met at the local zoo. 

Whatever he does, I do, 

Except for certain things, 

Such as flapping my wings, 

That make me look too cuckoo.

Eve

The serpent whispered that the tree of knowledge would confer

Godliness upon them both, knowing good and evil. 

She tasted of the fruit, and then self-consciousness came to her,

And she glanced around the garden as her heart thumped with upheaval. 

Grasping that she was naked, which felt both good and bad,

She made a garment out of leaves, but still felt poorly clad,

Then she gazed upon the serpent and asked: are you the devil?

He hissed: I’m just a messenger, telling it on the level. 

Welcome to your future, leave the animals behind. 

Accept that you must now live with the burden of your mind. 

It will weigh on you at times, but it’s a gift that keeps on giving,

And all of your descendants, for their untold years of living,

Will second guess themselves at times, and ask: did I do right?

And ponder moral quandaries deep into the night.

Into the Midst

We are born in medias res, 

Amid stories already proceeding. 

We sift through what everyone says, 

And try to discern where it’s leading

Coming to Life

She told me that at first reading, 

The script did not seem funny. 

She saw conflicts, hearts bleeding 

On the page, but nothing sunny. 

Then the actors came, 

And things were not the same. 

Amid relationship strife 

The jokes sprang to life. 

Comic catharsis - it's hard to graph, 

But sometimes we need to laugh.

Watching

I know some playwrights can’t stand to watch
Performances of their plays.
They hold to some ideal standard
And prefer to avert their gaze.
 But my standards run to the practical,
So I think it’s fun to see
Actors bravely tackling
Lines written by me.

Common Measure

They say that poems by Emily, 

So measured, terse, and sure, 

Are suited to the melody 

That tolled the Minnow's tour. 

And though I pleaded with my tears, 

And though I remonstrated, 

Because I could not stop my ears, 

I've heard it demonstrated.

Silly Puns

What kind of dial can bite your hand?
A crocodile - they ought to be banned!
What kind of key throws poop at your head?
A monkey, of course - I’d duck instead!

Anti-Nouns

Pronouns may be well and good, 

But anti-nouns are best. 

In English you just pin a "not" 

Upon a pronoun's chest. "

Not me" is my favorite anti-noun 

When accusations fly: 

Who did this stupid thing? I'm asked. 

"Not me!" is my reply.

Going Rogue

Going rogue

May be in vogue,

But if everyone does it,

It wasn’t rogue, was it?

Rhinitis in Pachyderms

When an elephant has a cold,

I bet that that gets old…

Real fast. Who wants a trunk

That’s stuffed with gunk?

The Beats

In my youth, I always liked the way

Beat poetry cavorted on the page...

Rhythms all irregular, of course,

And not a rhyme scheme there to save your soul!

But with a chanting quality - unprosaic -

Of never becoming merely a boring stream

Of less-than-consciousness lined up discreetly

To please a crowd of academic critics,

Instead, an onslaught of outrageousness

Up in your face and catching at your ears.

With zero fear of speaking loud and clear.

Pennies

I find pennies on the street 

And I toss them in the fountain. 

This makes my luck complete 

In some mythical accounting.

Stoicism

Stoicism has its virtues

But it certainly asks a great deal

When it asks you to suppress

The way that you naturally feel.

Possible

It’s possible to write a sonnet which is so prosaic in its subject matter, that though its meter flows without a hitch, it sounds so much like ordinary patter that if you write it without breaks in lines the unsuspecting reader may not see the format follows classical designs, quite suitable for soaring poetry, but here constricted to dull observations about the fact that verse forms without feeling do little to ignite imaginations and nothing to set tender spirits reeling.  Real poetry requires a certain drive, a pulsing power to make you feel alive.  

One Hundred Feet

How do all those wiggly legs

Fit inside of centipede eggs?

Admittedly, they can run like champs,

But I bet they’re all born with a bad case of cramps!

On the Audit Trail of Kitties

 Yes, Excel was used. Computers leave such nice audit trails of when things got written.

Last night I reviewed how Kitties got written,

How it all started off as a ten minute kitten,

How I soon began to try to extend it

Without much of a clue as to how I might end it.

Feeling my way, an uneasy man,

Writing chunks out of order without a real plan,

But with some vague sense of a story arc

Glimmering distantly in the dark.

Moon

Moon, you hunk of rock, 

You spin around the earth 

Like a big old monthly clock, 

Like a finely tuned machine. 

And… for what it’s worth, 

It would be a nasty shock 

If you altered your routine!

Misleading

I believe that lying by statisticians

Often depends on judicious omissions.

Blocked

When a play is “blocked” that’s good - it means 

The actors know how to move through their scenes.

It’s one of those things that directors do

To make the story and meaning come through.

Kitties and Crumb

I came across this quote from the cartoonist, R. Crumb: "All that stuff I did in the late '60s... I didn't really know what it was about when I did it. It was all very instinctive. Somehow, the L.S.D. liberated me in this way... that allowed me to just put it down and not worry about what it meant. I had some vague idea that it meant something... but it's only later that I'd look at it and kind of analyze it and see what it's about." 

I had been thinking about Crumb, because he wrote and drew the original Fritz The Cat cartoons, which involved a misbehaving humanoid cat in adult adventures. Because it bears a sort of family resemblance to my characters in Kitties In Space, who are also poorly behaved humanoid cats. No one has ever mentioned a resemblance to me. But I've thought of it. 

But, really, it was his reflection on HOW he wrote that struck me, because how I wrote my Kitties was something like that. I did it without benefit of LSD. My imagination is wild enough without adding chemicals to the cauldron. But, nonetheless, Kitties was written in a way where I didn't worry much about what it meant. I felt what I was writing was idiotically silly. So I'd have a strong plot line, and silly characters who took themselves very seriously, and I'd just charge ahead with the humor. 

It often seems 

That serious themes 

Pop out in humorous plays. 

You can argue about them for days, 

Or just accept that it's funny 

And stupidly punny.

The El

Train tracks built

On iron stilts

Let you loop around 

Chicago’s downtown. 

But the track’s clatter

Makes it hard to chatter

Beneath the El. 

You have to yell!

Or else, just wait

Till the noise abates.

Meditating on the Declaration

There's no guarantee of happiness, 

You just get a right to pursue it - 

But when given a chance to grasp it, 

I recommend that you do it.

Denial

I am not a robot

But sometimes I wish I were. 

I wouldn’t need to sleep

Or shave my facial fur.

Ursine

The lair of a bear 

Is a where to beware.

Hard to Describe

Words which once spilled out of my brain 

Onto a page, where they sat, very plain, 

Are played with by actors, and rapidly change 

From familiar... to charmingly strange.

Helpful Advice

Told my doc I had insomnia,

The worst I’d ever had!

He said don’t lose any sleep over it,

It doesn’t sound that bad.

4D

Mathematicians sometimes speak 

Of 4-D Euclidean space

But nowhere in Euclid’s Greek

Can we actually find any mention 

Or diagrammatic trace

Of figures in four dimensions.

In Michigan

The wind at the beach 

Blew sand in my teeth. 

Which was sort of good - I've been meaning 

To bring them in for a cleaning.

Father’s Day

 My father wrote humorous verse

And I got that family curse.

Good Deed

My good deed for the week: told young family with luggage where

They could find the elevator to the Blue Line so they could get to O’Hare.

Traces

I'm related, 23-and-me thinks,
To Niall of the Nine Hostages.
But I'm holding out for genetic links
To Saul of the Seven Sausages.

Long Days, Need More

Chicago summers are too short. 

I’m suing to lengthen them in court. 

Can it be done? Let me count the ways…

August will now have 32 days!

Concerto

The orchestra has the numbers 

To generate the thunder,

But defiance is exciting 

So the soloist brings the lightning.

Violence in the Country

 There's an article today in the Wall Street Journal about violent crime having spiked in rural America — during "the pandemic". Which makes sense to me. Suicides were up. Drug overdoses were up. I knew about those. Those are already forms of doing violence to yourself, in my book. So to me it's intuitive that violence in general would climb.

I put "the pandemic" in quotes because it wasn't just the disease, it was the response to it, including the overhyping and the lockdowns, that hurt people emotionally and spiritually.

I think a lot of people's brains
Lost control under the strain.

Key Bored

If you make lots of keyboard errors,

You may have to face the reality

That you have inherited 

A Type O personality!

Glass

Gravel full of glittering broken glass,

Seems like it should be pretty in its way,

But somehow my eyes would rather take a pass -

I prefer looking at gravel that’s dull and gray.

Stable

Apparently Mars lacks 

Continental drift. 

Lacking continents, in fact, 

It kind of gets short shrift.

Octal

If there were eight days a week

What would we call the new day?

And would it be for working 

Or would it be for play?

The Saga

 What began as a ten minute adventure 

For two wacky augmented cats,

Became more stand-alone episodes

About their outer space spats,

And that was welded together 

In a stunning story arc

To create the Kitties Saga:

Funny, and light, and dark.

Calendar Cutover

 May, you must go away,

June is arriving soon,

And lacking a Tardis, I’m…

Required to live just one month at a time.

Distance

When running in the USA

In contests such as a 5 or 10 K,

There are mile markers along the way. 

Kilometers set the length of the race,

But with miles we measure our pace.

The Mystery of Acquired Taste

 Why does stinky cheese

Have the power to please?

First Sentence of Anna K.

Happy families are all alike.

That’s  what Tolstoy famously said. 

I suspect happy families simply bored him,

So he wrote about the others, instead.

Track Me

I try to accept every tracking app that’s sent.
So if I disappear, someone will know where I went.

Delayed

 It’s cold.

The train is late.
I stand
And refrigerate.

At last,
The train is here.
I sit,
And thaw my rear.

Purchase Plan

I'm buying the Brooklyn Bridge - 

I have a secret goal: 

Once I purchase it, 

I'm going to charge a toll. 

I'll make it free on Sundays, 

Just because I'm nice, 

But if you honk your horn, 

I might just charge you twice.

Flashback

Soviet student of ichthyology

Was good at studying sharks

But struggled with political philosophy 

In which he got low Marx. 

Drama

A slapology is an apology 

That adds to the first offence: 

"Sorry for calling you stupid, 

It's just that you're horribly dense." 

A slapologist is not an expert 

On whether a slap was real - 

For that you must ask Mr. Rock, 

"Exactly how did that feel?"

Fine Dining

I opened a restaurant on the moon, 

But it was a failure, I fear. 

I found the reason, rather soon: 

It had no atmosphere.

Dogstacles

Let sleeping dogs lie 

They like to say. 

But what if said dog 

Is right in your way? 

Then you just might 

Be required to wake 

That snoring pooch 

With a shout or a shake.

Midmonth

Under an arch 

On the Ides of March 

Poor Caesar met his doom. 

A really smart guy 

Not ready to die 

But he failed to read the room.

Origin by Dan Brown, and the Origin of a Saying

I finished this book yesterday and I am here to complain about it, or at least about part of it. Dan Brown is the guy who wrote the Da Vinci Code, which I very much enjoyed in an alternate-universe kind of way. This book has the same hero, a professor at Harvard who is supposed to have written a book called "Christianity and the Sacred Feminine". So you might think this professor character would be familiar with the gospels. 

However. On page 349 of the paperback, an artificial intelligence program declares: "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword." 

And what does this expert on Christianity think to himself? "Langdon did a double take. Did Edmond's computer really just paraphrase Aeschylus?" 

I did an eye roll. Does this author really not know that this commonplace phrase comes from Jesus?

Aeschylus apparently did say something similar, sort of, maybe, depending on how it gets translated. But as quoted, it sounds just like what Jesus said, according to the Gospel of Matthew. And it's the version from Jesus that is a commonplace saying throughout our culture. There is nothing remarkable about someone knowing that phrase! 

This is a mainstream best seller by a popular author who makes a point in his afterword of thanking all his wonderful editors and the helpful historians and religious scholars who went through his text. Has no one in this collection of editors ever read the gospels? 

The editors he hired 

Were less than divinely inspired.

Taking Off From Phoenix

Sitting in the airport on a jet, 

I sometimes find I viscerally forget 

Just where I am. It’s like a movie set - 

A space apart - but then the plane takes flight 

And there below me, whether day or night, 

Some city sprawls, recalling to my sight 

My current location 

Just as I abandon it for my next destination.

Reading Rilke

When reading through Rilke I go on a difficult journey, 

And twist in my core over things that I love and detest. 

He freely associates like an aeolian harp, 

The winds of experience buffet his delicate soul, 

Or sometimes caress it and he cannot summon the strength 

To feel any certainty over the things that he feels, 

Finds questions, not answers, and so he goes rambling forth, 

Keeps hoping for some revelation to seize him and hold him 

But always the angel takes wing - and leaves him bereft.

Phillis Wheatley

I'm a Words With Friends player. They have themed robot games, with a new roster of robots on a weekly basis. 

This week the theme is Black European Heroes, where you are "playing" famous black Europeans. Alexandre Dumas is one. He was, indeed, part black. As was Alexander Pushkin, who did not make it into this particular list of luminaries. 

But you know who made the cut? Phillis Wheatley. This startled me, because, as a rule she is counted as African American, not European. Born in Africa. Died in America. But her book of poems was published in England. And that's about as close to European as you can get her. 

If you say that Phillis Wheatley 

Wrote cleverly and sweetly, 

I'm readily agreeing. 

But calling her European 

Is something I'm not seeing.

"Today's the day for an online play."

Escape

If you want to escape the fact checkers, 

Stay away from facts! 

Ever since giving them up, 

I feel much more relaxed.

Meaning to be Found

Many meaningless jobs 

Are more meaningful than we think. 

The person who flips a burger, 

The person who cleans a sink, 

Perform in the great machine 

That furthers life here on earth, 

And you need to grasp that big picture 

To see most work has deep worth.

Addictive

I like pre-shriveled raisins,

Otherwise known as grapes. 

They come in various colors,

And a number of curious shapes. 

I’m not sure why I like them. 

I guess it doesn’t matter. 

I fear they’re loaded with fructose,

And might just make me fatter!

I fear, but keep on munching. 

I tell myself they’re healthy. 

Their price is shooting upward

So I may soon be less wealthy!

Other Side

The moon does not have a side that’s always dark. 

It simply has a face it does not show 

To people who are firmly planet-parked. 

When I was a child, we simply did not know 

This other side, admittedly harsh and stark, 

But part of the place providing that friendly glow.

Like Keeping Them Home For More Than A Year

People keep saying that children are very resilient. 

Are they? Were you? Or are they rather susceptible? 

I don't have an answer that's crisp or especially brilliant, 

But worry some things should not have been acceptable.

Calendar

An examination of history, 

Even one that’s fairly cursory, 

Reveals that every date

Is a major anniversary. 

The calendar is too crowded!

The solution is simple and clear:

We need to stop using the same months 

Over and over each year!

Second Opinion

If you talk to two physicians 

About the same condition 

Let's say... the chickenpox, 

But you find they disagree 

That's no big deal - you see, 

It's just a paradox.

Twelfth, Fifth or Sixth?

My friend Denise reminds me it’s the twelfth day of Christmas.
And I’m glad for the reminder because it’s so easy to miss,
Especially with the abandonment of the business
Of giving people rings and birds to match the day it is!

In Darkness

Tonight I saw a blind young woman walking 

The busy sidewalks of downtown Chicago. 

Her cane came into contact with a pile 

Of shoveled ice. I told her what it was. 

She just said yes, and stepped around the ice 

And waited at the curb while cars sped by. 

I told her when the light had changed to green 

And walked beside her while she crossed the street. 

Ahead of us a truck rushed through its turn, 

Cutting a corner right across our path, 

Impatient to be on its looming way.

I found it slightly frightening but the woman 

Seemed totally oblivious and I thought 

What bravery, what trust, coursed through her veins.

I Visited The Nearest Beach

I visited the nearest beach. 

I take some comfort in large bodies of water. 

I feel they put infinity within my reach. 

I like the way they seem to yawn on forever. 

I hear no mermaids calling each to each,

And yet I hear something magic in the drumming 

Of wave upon wave, as if they were trying to teach 

A song about days gone by and still to come.