I thought the guy dressed up like a kingfisher
Didn’t really look like a kingfisher
His beak too long
His legs not yellow enough

But still he did a pretty good job of diving into the water
And coming up with a guy dressed up like a fish
Even though his fins looked a little too stiff to me
(No wonder the kingfisher caught him)

And the bull facing that matador
(who even had a pigtail like the one Hemingway kept mentioning --
Oh, I mean the real man not the man dressed as a bull)
He just looked too scared for a bull
Well that’s what I thought
And I’ve been to a lot of bullfights
Real bulls got more bravery than that
Sure they’re confused
But I’ve never seen one turn tail and run
Oh yeah -- and he forgot to put a tail on his bull suit

All in all it was a wash wasn’t it
Wetter than the guy in the kingfisher suit.
Still it was nice for us to dress up in animal costumes
To give the animals at least one day to have a day off

Maybe next year we’ll figure it out better
Both in our costuming and their cries

The street named after the Spaniard who discovered the Pacific

The drive named after the Spaniard who conquered Mexico

The lane named after the Spaniard who blessed the Americas’ first Thanksgiving

Yielded enough rubber bands from newspapers

To twine a ball

Round enough

Bouncy enough

For a good game of stickball

Until the kid tasked

With finding rubber bands

From the circle named after the Spaniard who painted pictures

An oddball among all those adventurers

And a cluster of dwellings that didn’t subscribe

To rolls of paper

Hit it into the backyard with the dog on a chain

But fear kept us on a chain

As we stood over the rock wall

Looking for a manila spot

On unwatered St. Augustine

And spotting it

Disdaining it for

The angry barks

Bared teeth of the restrained beast

Letting it wait

For an archeologist centuries hence

(Maybe even a few decades from then)

To find it and marvel

“Even back then humans played games -- or so we assume --

With round objects.”

I was just being silly in art class
Me a comedian at age 11
But then on the lawn outside
The kid I thought was my friend
Told me he wanted to fight me
Because he hated me for being a fool
So we grappled shoulders, wrestled
Rolled on the ground
It wasn't much of a fight
But I was still sad that he hated me

Years later I heard he became a doctor
A psychiatrist perhaps
And if he meets a bipolar in a manic state
He says, "Do you wanna fight me?"
So they grapple shoulders, wrestle
Roll on the ground
Maybe one of them,
Maybe both of them
Feel better afterwards

Every employee's name was listed in the address field
Except for one
The one I never noticed
That we never noticed

We all marched into the meeting room as ordered
Found the CEO on an extra tall stage
To tell us
"Today is Emma McGurk's last day
But she says it's the first day
Of her tenure
As Director of Forecasting of Unintended Consequences
She's not going
So I need all of you, all 300 of you,
To help me terminator."
(Or was that terminate her?)

So we gave each other Brady Bunch nods
I had to look up to make eye contact (or is that I contact?) with superiors
Then we marched to
The cubicle of Emma McGurk
Me remembering what Santa Ana had said:
"With a few hundred more men like the San
Patricios, Mexico would have won the battle."

And the battle wasn't to be won by us
It was to be won by Emma McGurk
The CEO tried to move her
Ten of us tried to move her
Then one hundred
And then all three hundred
Even I made an effort
But she wouldn't budge

So we had to move...
To another building
Hearing that Emma McGurk was still ensconced
In the position existing only in her noggin
Until finally the old building had to be imploded
A fifth-grader winning the honor of triggering
That dusty downfall of Emma McGurk's cubicle
And the building that sheltered it

It wasn't until Signing Day Eve
That I saw her again
Pouring ink at a haiku-con
"The pay wouldn't be that bad," she told me.
"If it was by the snicker instead of the word."