for Crazy Diamond Kristy, who makes life fun...

One exclamation mark is right and proper
Add any more, and your thought comes a cropper!

:)

Cheers!

Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux 1

That wicked liar offers us a poisoned cup
In whose sheeny surface we see ourselves
Reflected in his cold imaginings
And not our own, in what we ought to be

There is another Cup for us, not this one
Just as there is a stone that must be moved
A bird of night to be repudiated
A thorny bush that burns, but not itself

A blessing breaks that false and bitter cup -
We share the one that God has lifted up


1 In English, let not the dragon be my guide; it appears on the medal of Saint Benedict as NDSMD.

Children shot daily despite our stern laws
But at least they are safe from plastic straws

Children shot daily, caught in street-gang fights
But at least they are safe from 100-watt lights

Children shot daily, high death rankings
But at least they are safe from parental spankings

Children shot daily, murdered by crooks
But at least they are safe from The Little House books

Children shot daily, may God bless their souls
And too our regulated toilet bowls

O Dear Heart...or pancreas...or some vital *****...

When I gaze into your ear canals
And cuddle you in my comforting feet
Oh, yeah, I wanna hold your earlobe
You make my sella turcica skip a beat

Your nostrils are so very soft to the touch
Your toenails are like silver-pale moonlight
Your elbows smell like roses in the spring
Your hair follicles are so sunrise bright

And when I meditate upon your liver
Cupid shoots every arrow from his quiver!

That lopper-thingie on the end of a pole
Indelicately intrudes among the leaves
Telescoped out, its harsh geometry
Unnatural among the greenery

There seeking out an elusive apple spared
The nightly browsings of the day-shy deer
Or the nightly pillagings of raccoons
Who destroy more than they will ever eat

But there’s that apple – careful, careful – snip:
And down it falls, with an apple-saucy flip!

Let the childhood dose of cod liver oil
Perish from its own sour smell and foul taste
Send yellow squash to the poor children in China
May Popeye keep his spinach to himself!

But not bananas!

The appeal of the peel, yes, what a deal!
A wrapper that children may throw away
A summer-yellow star sky-spiraling
Onto the garden grass (it’s good for the soil)

Alas, poor banana, joy to eye and tongue:
Why is it that the Cavendish dies young?

Marlowe!  Dark and dangerous Kit Marlowe
Whose hooded eyes, like a subtle serpent’s, held
In mysterious charms Hero, and too
Leander, perhaps, in the ways of night

And in the councils of foul Walsingham
Where innocence and guilt knew not each other
Through sly reptilian tangles of false oaths
Among the pale queen’s writhing coils of shame

Beneath which altar, then, or perhaps none
Was the famous reckoning paid, and done?