To Do List

Whether or not it meets with your approval,

My goal today is mostly snow removal. 

I’ve cleared the whole thing twice but it’s still falling,

And so I hear my blower duty calling.

Headrest

 Before pillows were invented

People sometimes used rocks

And woke with faces dented,

Which often came as a shock.

Not So Noble

Scientists have recorded the sound 

Of helium atoms joking around. 

Typically when there's only three 

The sound you hear is: HeHeHe.

Speculative Investment

I buried my bucks behind a row of bushes. 

Somehow I never made a gosh darn dime. 

Now I find out - that's not the same as "Hedge Fund". 

Misleading name! I tell you, it's a crime!

Diagrammatic

I once believed I was a grammatical menace, 

Able to diagram every possible sentence, 

But then I started to sweat, and things got hairier 

When I encountered this: "The more the merrier!"

Too Friendly

Friend requests

From bikini-clad ladies,

I must confess

I regard as shady. 

And if they’re bubbling 

In hot tub dreams,

I find it troubling 

In the extreme!

Reductio Ad Adbsurdum

I weigh much less in kilograms. 

 So I switched my digital scale. 

 I look the same on conference cams, 

But the numbers tell the tale! 

I resolved to lose weight in ‘21, 

I thought it might be tough, 

But now that resolution’s done - 

It really wasn’t rough!

Q

I did not follow Q-anon. 

I take it Q-anon is gone. 

At least the mysterious Who, 

Presenting himself as Q, 

Whose views got so much traction 

Is mostly missing in action.

Rumors

The 25th amendment puts the bar high 

To evict the elected White House guy. 

If he says, "I'm capable. I'm staying in it," 

You need two thirds of the House and the Senate.

Advertisers Love These Two

Nutritious and delicious -
What a convenient rhyme!
But they overlap on dishes
Less than half the time.

YIP

 In ‘68 my dad said no,

To the downtown riots thou shalt not go!

The prez nomination was in contention -

The Yippies besieged the big convention,

But their revolution proved short and fleeting 

And I missed out on the tear gas and beating.

A Walk

 It was just above freezing, temperature-wise,

And clouds were supposed to be clogging the skies,

But somehow they cleared, and the power called solar

Lit up my face - how perfectly polar -

To walk through the snow, while basking in sun,

Briskly enjoyable - glad when it’s done!

Resolution

New year’s dietary resolutions 

To be thin

Cannot begin

Until all the Christmas candy

Is consumed...

I am doomed!

Plunging Into 2021

I drove to the lake. 

I took a dive. 

Cold water makes

You feel alive!

At least I felt

Highly motivated -

To get myself 

Evacuated!

Inside the car

Was toasty and warm,

Which I prefer

As a general norm.

Lingua Latīna

In Latin America, Latin is not spoken, 

Which makes it clear: our naming system is broken. 

Latin does retain a national home, 

A tiny city-state surrounded by Rome, 

A place it's difficult to be democratic in - 

Since there's just one ruler at the Vatican.

Yule

They say the source of “Yule” is Norse.

The Vikings overran England, of course.

These rugged ransackers, scrappy and scary,

Invaded our vocabulary.

Loophole

If Trump were to pardon Pence
And then resign,
Could Pence then pardon Trump?
I've boggled my mind.

Dehydrated

I bought a dehydrated water packet. 

It looked kind of empty - was this just a racket? 

But I emptied the empty packet into a glass, 

Mixed in some water - and Lo! What came to pass! 

I sure enough had a nice glass full of water, 

Just like the instructions said I oughter.

Free Advice

Excuse me if I seem a bit aloof, 

But In the drama, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, 

I twice have played the doc - and it went to my head. 

So please, just take two aspirin and go to bed!

Context

 Being on the bench:

In sports it suggests you’re not a star,

But at a piano concert 

It means you are.

Digital

 It’s a question so dumb

But somehow it lingers:

How can your thumb

Be one of your fingers?

Pink Hat

Some context makes excuses. 

Other context offers damnation. 

Personally I prefer

The kind that yields explanation. 

 My life advice here is to not get photographed wearing a swastika or the hammer and sickle. And everyone has a camera with them nowadays, so just do not wear a swastika or the hammer and sickle. Because you will have explaining to do, and it's unlikely your explanation will satisfy everybody, unless maybe you're acting in a movie.

Salem

The plot line of Miller’s The Crucible:

When basic protections are losable,

Everyone ends up accusable.

Derminology

There was an ad on TV where the actress 

Said something about "my derm", 

Meaning her dermatologist. 

This usage made me squirm. 

Is that for for real, is "derm" the slang 

For this medical specialty? 

I need to get up to date on this stuff. 

I only know: "O B G"!

Positive Attitude

You can lower the positivity rate
By only testing those who feel great.
My plan will work - I know it will:
Just stop testing folks when they're ill!

Reflecting

Unless you’re a lip reader
Looking in a mirror
You cannot “watch what you say” -
The facts couldn’t be any clearer.

My Mother Tongue

The plural of knife is knives,
So I figured the plural of fife would be fives!
It turns out that fives IS a word,
But not the plural of fife - quite absurd!
I’m glad that I learned English first,
Since learning it later would just be the worst!

Safety

If everyone were locked in a cell, 

For a year of isolation hell, 

Would that be enough 

To kill off this stuff? 

Or would virus particles remain here and there 

To infect us again when we stepped out for air? 

Will this ever come to an end? 

Asking for a friend.

American Theatre in the Twenty-First Century

 

Two of my short plays will be in this book, due out soon.
Needless to say, I'm over the moon.

You can preorder here.

Strong Conjugation by Back Formation

Heard someone say froke
As the past tense of freak.
Sometimes I'm amused
By the way people speak.

This was while watching Made In Heaven, a sort of soap-opera-ish streaming show on Amazon, about high-end wedding planners, which is set in India, and which you have to watch with subtitles because the language is a mix of English and Indian language or languages.

But this use of "froke" is apparently not strictly an odd Indian thing. When I looked it up, there is American usage too.

There's also a completely different usage where it's a noun meaning a "frozen Coke".

Pun-ish-ment

Use fascinate in a sentence? Of course!
I'd love to, in fact, I can hardly wait:
I have nine buttons on my coat
But I can only fascinate.

Forecast

Weather’s much too nice. 

Where’s the snow and ice? 

What? It’s on its way? 

Stay, fair weather, stay!

Kennedy-Nixon

During the Kennedy-Nixon election of 1960, Illinois was a closely contested swing state. I was 8, and I was in favor of Kennedy, as my parents were. 

Kennedy's electoral college victory was narrow, and dependent upon Illinois. There was some question, at the time, about the honesty of the elections in Illinois. My father suggested to me that the Democrats stole votes in Chicago, and that the Republicans stole votes Downstate, and that it roughly balanced out. I suspect this is correct. 

Normally, you can only steal so many votes, because there are a lot of safeguards in place. The relatively small volume of stolen votes only makes a difference when the election is close. 

Nixon conceded. There were people who thought that was a mistake. I don't know. 

What I remember puzzling me at the time, is that the Chicago Republican newspapers, the Tribune and the American, kept running headlines, maybe for a week, about various ballot audits finding additional votes for Nixon in the aftermath. 

So, even though Nixon conceded, audits went on. But the audits never added up to enough to get Nixon declared the winner of Illinois. 

I imagine that's what's going to happen with Trump in Pennsylvania. But, hey, run the audit, do the investigations. We have laws in place for all this. It was an unusual election, particularly with the heavier-than-usual mail-in voting. 

So, let the president sue. 

Let the courts do what they do. 

Let plenty of light be shined 

And we'll find what we can find.

Oops

Pollsters swear on the bible 

That their numbers are reliable, 

But on election day 

You often hear them say: 

Opinion shifted in the final week, 

We’ll get it right next time - with just one tweak!

Lost and Found

When UPS loses a package of mine 

I never suspect an evil design, 

I simply assume that the darn thing got stuck 

In a crack in the back of that big old brown truck.

Emergent Properties

I ask myself, do I like pancakes, 

Or maple syrup and butter? 

Or is it the combination 

That’s simply utterly utter?

Piece of Silver

I’ve retrieved a bit of silver 

From a failing filling; 

It’s really just a sliver, 

Do you think it’s worth a shilling? 

I don’t know what that is, 

Except it’s British money, 

And somehow or other the sound of it 

Always struck me as funny.

Bayesians

Bayesians like to change their beliefs. 

It’s one of their fondest desires. 

New facts make them itch, and the only relief 

Is reexamining priors.

Contrast

You cannot see the Milky Way 

During the day. 

Darkness allows light that is faint 

To paint the sky.

Unbelievable

If your hard drive has stuff 

That would make heads pop, 

Don't abandon the thing 

At some random shop.

Hadron Collider Contacts Parallel Universe

The headline is too clickbaity to click, but I love it: 

Researchers At Large Hadron Collider Are Confident To Make Contact With Parallel Universe In Days

The people from the parallel 

May perhaps be able to tell 

How poor Columbus ran aground 

Which meant the new world never got found. 

 And don't tell me that the new world would have been found by someone else. Nope. It turns out that Western Civilization collapsed again in about 1530, all because they failed to get to America.

Nominate Me

It may be true I didn’t go to law school, 

Or “pass the bar”, whatever that may mean, 

But I have spent some time upon a barstool, 

And studied Law & Order on the screen, 

And I believe I’d like to be a justice - 

I’ll just face down those senators’ long faces, 

And say: “Why do you find it hard to trust us? 

I’ll know the answers when I've heard the cases!”

Mildly Disappointed

I'd like to be told that I already had
This thing that is spreading, this bug that is bad.
I'd like to believe that it did once infect me,
And somehow or other did not much affect me.
But do I have antibodies to show?
You've already guessed it - my tests all say NO!

Round

They say at King Arthur's Table,
The roundest of the round,
Was a certain Knight who was able
To really pack on the pounds.
I mean the great Sir Cumference,
Who loved to gobble Pi.
His belt more than tripled his radius,
And Pi was the reason why.

Experimental

Can someone on the internet send
A sample of the Chinese vaccine?
I’m just asking for a friend,
If you know what I mean.

Dominance

 I say that I’m right handed

But if we’re being candid 

I’m told that it’s the brain

That’s driving the hand-preference train. 

Donation

Gave blood. 

Did not fall with a thud. 

I hope that someone else gains 

From this stuff that ran through my veins.

Plagiarism!

I wrote a little play involving Iago and Othello in the afterlife. At the gates of hell, actually. And I wrote it in verse. So someone asked me if I had worked in any lines by Shakespeare. I didn't think I had, but I had written it a while ago, in a hurry. So I thought I would feed the play through some online plagiarism-detection software. And it found something. But not from Shakespeare. It found this:

"It’s a lesson that I learned the hard way."

I thought to myself, that's practically a cliche, anyway. How can that be plagiarized? But it turned out they only had an 80% match. They had:

"Lessons I learned the hard way readings: Some modest advice for graduate students"

This plagiarism detective
Seems to be defective. 

In a Hole

When you’ve dug yourself in a hole, 

Consider halting the dig. 

Unless you are a mole, 

In which case, it’s your whole gig!

Inadequate Surveillance

I'm registered to vote. 

I got my shot for the flu. 

But ads online keep telling me 

That these are things I should do. 

They need to do a better job 

Of keeping track of my actions. 

Pointless redundant reminders hurt 

Customer satisfaction.

Recovering

Post-race, my mitochondria 

Seem to feel apathetic. 

Might they have hypochondria? 

Beware of endeavors athletic!

Chemical Evidence of Life on Venus

The Russians sent probes a couple of times 

Which probably carried bacterial slimes.

Now they’ve gotten planet-sized 

And simply need to be sanitized!

Mother of Invention

When human language 

Was first invented, 

Did the inventor 

Feel contented? 

No - it made her 

Kind of blue: 

She had no one 

To speak it to! 

So she taught it 

To a friend 

And this continued 

Without end.

A Theory of Something

I'm told time crawls 

When reading Rawls. 

You find your alertness failing 

Into a sleepy veiling.

Thinking Ahead

I believe that the Covid vaccine 

Should have a marketing mascot. 

I propose that we name her Maxine, 

And give her a hat from Ascot.

Next Sunday in Holland, Michigan

To satisfy the Health Department powers, 

The marathon start is spread across three hours. 

The race director had to jump through hoops, 

Breaking the race into several separate groups. 

My hat is off to him. He got it done, 

And opened the way to 26 miles of... fun?

The Other LIst

There's an opposite to a bucket list. 

It's what you might call a ****-it list. 

Ponder it as extreme eschewing - 

Stuff you'd rather die than start doing.

Call Me Samson

A woman without a mask 

Lured me to cut my hair. 

In case you have to ask, 

She buzzed my noggin bare. 

Well yes it was my wife 

But still it was a set up! 

When will this Covid strife 

At last begin to let up?

Choke it Down

I guess those stickers you get for voting 

Are like a sugar coating

For a pill

That doesn’t thrill.

But Who's Counting?

Venus has none. 

Mars has two. 

Moons are fun, 

But what can you do? 

At least we have one.

Destination Dubious

I bicycled to Kenosha once 

From beautiful Highland Park. 

I wouldn’t mind doing that ride again, 

But I don’t want to stay after dark.

Indefinite

The English indefinite article lacks a plural. 

So while it’s proper to say, “Look - a squirrel!” 

If there are more, you have to switch to “some”: 

“Look - some squirrels!” Somehow this seems dumb. 

But, hey, it’s just the way our language evolved, 

And “some” is the workaround by which it’s solved.

Putin Has Met 3 Popes

One of these days, when I am pope 

And Putin asks for a meeting, 

I’ll just say nope, and quietly hope 

He leaves without a greeting.

Two Meanings

In math, the study of "calculus" 

Concerns continuous change. 

But over in Renal Medicine, 

It means kidney stones - how strange! 

They both derive from a Latin word 

Which means "little pebbles", you see - 

The kind that just might help you to count, 

But surely will hurt you to pee.

Due to Arrive Just Before Election Day

It's just a little asteroid, 

Mostly likely a near-miss fail, 

But just in case the earth is destroyed, 

I recommend voting by mail.

The

I'll go along - I'm not urging defiance. 

But when did "science" 

Turn into "the science"? 

We need a definitive article 

About this definite article!

At The Zoo

They say there's a baby boom at the average zoo 

During this time when the animal missing is you. 

Lots of us thought the critters didn't care 

About the visitors who point and stare 

But maybe they do.

Tonight

Saw three of Jupiter’s moons
Through my own telescope.
The truth, as they say, is out there.
Galileo was no dope.

Tonight

Saw three of Jupiter’s moons
Through my own telescope.
The truth, as they say, is out there.
Galileo was no dope.

Mid August

Late summer, and the sun is setting sooner, 

The grass is not so green as once it was, 

Children wonder whether school is scheduled, 

While mothers mutter that the world’s gone wack.

Old Glory

Lots of countries have stripes 

And plenty have stars 

But rarely so many 

Of either as ours. 

It’s a busy design, 

Way out of hand! 

I think it is time 

For us to rebrand: 

One red stripe, one white, 

One star on some blue! 

But whoops, Texas took that, 

So what can we do? 

I guess we are stuck 

With this flag from B. Ross, 

Bizarre in its way 

But too classic to toss!

Stronger Together

Here’s a secret. 

Please don’t blab. 

My running mate 

Will be a Lab.

Democritus Meets Bohr

Philosophers worked out the idea of the atom, 

A solid tiny object, quite un-splittable. 

But physicists proved if you throw the right stuff at ‘em, 

They burst apart. How very inhospitable!

Hard to Figure

If two plus two

Does not make four, 

Is it less 

Or is it more?

Thank You, Inventors

Sometimes I like to bike in the heat,
But when I am done, the a/c is sweet.
It always feels great to work up a sweat,
But then cooling off - seems better yet.

40th Anniversary of Caddyshack

It takes a real work horse,
Not a mere loafer,
To blow up a golf course
Hunting a gopher.

Cycling

What is it like
To ride a fast bike?
On balance, it feels
As if you’d grown wheels.

Anecdata

I’m going into beta
With saying “anecdata”.
So - is it my invention?
Or did I just purloin it?
A neighbor I could mention,
Swears she heard me coin it,
And anecdatally,
That’s good enough for me!

Diet Paradox

If I take up intermittent fasting
On the theory I might take off weight,
Can I also do intermittent feasting?
Because that sounds first-rate!

Encrypted

Some believe your brain retains
Every password in your history.
But nonetheless your brain refrains
From telling you. It’s a mystery.

Thesaurus Rex

I was too lazy
To think of a synonym for stir-crazy,
But became an over-achiever,
When I remembered cabin-fever.

Challenging Times

It’s hard out there for porch pirates today!
Despite more deliveries than ever,
People at home bring stuff in right away,
Frustrating the pirates’ endeavor.

Three Incidents

An odd story in 3 incidents:

1) A foreign friend, who once had Amazon ship a package to my house, had their Amazon account hacked.

2) The other day, an Amazon package arrived at my house addressed to this friend. Because we were home, we brought it in immediately and puzzled over it. We didn’t know about incident 1.

3) Later that day a stranger came running up to our porch, and then left in a hurry, empty-handed. Our house is being painted and the painters puzzled over this. Our guess is that he was a porch pirate trying to get the package from incident 2.

So, this seems like a globe-spanning scam. I don’t really understand the logistics. But they were foiled this time.

The items in the package are not super valuable. Conceivably they are worth a couple of hundred dollars. It seems like a lot of trouble to try to obtain these things.

As you can see, I lack
Proper insight into this hack.
Also - does Amazon want these items back?

Boom

Fireworks in private hands
Hereabouts are mostly banned,
And this year, because of the virus,
There are few public displays to inspire us,
But somehow the neighborhood din
Is the loudest it’s ever been.

Blowback

The experts and politicians and press terrify people and tell them to stay indoors and not socialize. It disproportionately affects the young and the poor, partly because they don't have jobs they can work remotely, partly because they don't have a savings cushion, and partly because they are young people who, by nature, desperately want to socialize. They get worked up about a horrible incident which gets everyone's emotions amped up to 11, and they charge outside in massive, exultantly angry devil-may-care protests - with the blessings of the establishment who recognize an unstoppable force when they see it.

They sow the wind
But express surprise
When the whirlwind rises
Before their eyes.

Vocab Rehab

When I was young, it was not yet systemic
For everyday people to say pandemic.
Epidemic, back then, somehow sufficed
For worldwide plagues that did not play nice.

Need Ticket

I wish that Southwest ran a ferry
To places interplanetary.
I've got some credits I'd like to use
For a jolly Jovian cruise.

Work at Home

Observation: I've taken to shaving at random times.
Rumination: (Now I must think of something that rhymes.)

Flutterby

White butterfly, you with the flappy wings,
Flitting around the flowers in the sun,
Going about your business in a way
That calms my agitation, tell me now,
What’s up in your world? Recent caterpillar,
Reborn after a snooze in your cocoon,
Now whizzing in a hurry to get done
Whatever urgencies consume your brain.
I suppose it’s mostly eating and mating.
The world of insect life goes on and on!
As does the human one, but you have brought
Without intending it, these happy thoughts.

In the Plaza

Statue of giant red alien lobster
Marked safe, so far, from toppling mobsters.

Legacy

The famous academic was so precise,
He thought footnotes on his headstone would be nice.

Whihala Beach

Beloved behemoth lake, tranquil today
Along the coast of Whiting, Indiana,
Between the refinery and the big casino,
Working class beach that takes me back to childhood.

Towers of steel loom distant, obscured by smog.
Muscular city, engine of employment.
Nobody moves to Chicago for the climate.
But when a gorgeous day arrives in town
We drink it down, devouring all its goodness.

My wife is in the water, like a porpoise
Gliding and diving in her element,
Retrieving a football that some boys had thrown
Beyond their own ability to swim.

And I stand watching, stringing out these words
Attempting to record in one brief sketch
This ordinary love of life on earth.

Memories

Way back in March, the original goal
Was just to flatten the climb.
The caseload would stay the same, we were told,
We'd just spread it out over time.

Jazzing It Up

I'm forming the John Autonomous Zone,
A region I can call my own.
Its acronym is really snazzy.
You might even say it's JAZzy.
I set the rules behind my wall,
Where I can do anything at all!
I am the master of my life!
Except - when given advice by my wife,
I have been known to modify
The laws I issue from on high.

White Winged

Flocks of gulls with greedy gullets
Swallow cicadas with glee.
Nature in action - again I mull its
Beauty and cruelty.

Bugged

If you are a cicada,
I’d rather see you later.
But there’s so many now,
I’ll just endure somehow.

If Only

If I could just go back to last November,
I’d tell the Chinese not to hide the bug,
And then I’d tell a certain police officer,
Don’t kneel on necks, you overconfident thug.

Lacking in Both, Personally

Ringing in your ears is bad,
But earrings in your ears is rad.

Close to Home

I got a text that my pharmacy
Is temporarily closed.
It causes little harm to me -
I can drive to one less exposed.
But others, I’m sure, will suffer more.
It’s a cruel thing, to loot a store.

Also True for Dinner Too

Whenever I delay my lunch,
Instead of eating hastier,
My mouth reports, amid the munch,
That everything seems tastier.