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.