I just want five hundred grand
Is that too much for me to ask?
It is a lot. Probably too much.
But I am prepared for the task
Of spending that much dough.
I have it completely planned out.
I know where every dollar goes.
It’s all over but the last shout.

Right away, I want a house
And a decent one here on Kauai.
I also want a brand new truck
For my husband to drive and try.
I also have a few trips to plan
Like floating down the Rhine
And then up by train to Denali
That would suit us both just fine.

That ought to do it, I believe;
A secure home all paid for
And decent new cars for us
And a world out there to explore.
That should spend that money
And have a bit of change left over.
Satisfying the homebody I am
And the man I married is a rover.

I am very willing to write a book
And have it sell a million copies.
I have several started and am sure
They would each be a hit in shoppes.
There can be about eight books
Carefully edited by me, for sure
Those alone should make my rep.
That would be my poverty cure.

A woman I once worked with
Was ordinarily quite intelligent
But when it came to pronunciation
She could become belligerent.
Her way was the right way
And she brooked no question.
Braving her ire, I decided there
Was one I had to mention.

She said the word comf-tubble
And I said that was incorrect.
She got so very irate with me
That I feared for my own neck.
She called it socially acceptable,
Her ghastly mispronunciation.
I said it was a sign of the times
The slippery ***** of our nation.
If people were to go on and cease
An honored way of speaking
Then, we are all of us adrift
In a doomed skiff that is leaking.

She said some more to me
But I quit paying much attention.
There were too many “I means”
And “you knows” to mention.
There were ‘haftas’ and ‘ominas’
And the sad utterance, ‘wannabees”.
This poor soul would not pass
The first hour of a spelling bee.
I wondered if this poor soul
Had seen on a computer screen.
The words just as she was saying
On some website she had seen?

I accept that nobody in the USA
Or even in Merry Old Blighty
Says words like Wednesday
Comfortable or February rightly.
It’s like there is an international
Formal and binding declaration
That nobody need say these words
Correctly in English speaking nations.
We can lapse into hickbonics,
We jess *** tah stumble along
And say set instead of sit, and
Others we so often say wrong.

We kin say double pneumonia
And quay’s eye and nukeyoulurr,
Irregardless and even *** cans,
And nobuddy questions wut fur.
We c’n say thangs like reel utter,
SimmYooLurr, BennaFishErAiry.
Innerest, furrmillyurr, Mason Airy,
Flustration and shudder LieBerry.
But as sure as there is air to breathe
And that every day will follow night
Most people pronouncing words
A certain way doesn’t make it right.

To be part of my tribe
I bought all the hype
And social mystique
Of clean white jeans,
How they set a guy apart
In matters of the heart
In the highly fickle world  
Of the dating scene.

Practicing my walk
Still not prepared to talk
Trying to look like
The cover of a magazine
Standing just so,
Hoping nobody knows
I feel like a fraud
In my clean white jeans

No one here to meet me
Nobody greets me
Suddenly invisible
I’m sure anyone has seen
How **** I look
Or the trouble I took
To come here this evening
In my clean white jeans.

Watching everyone dance
Not sure this is romance
It is obviously a way  
To see and be seen
Enjoying a hit song
I sort of dance right along
On the sidelines
In my clean white jeans

Now it’s two a.m.
I’m home alone again
Still not sure  
What popularity means
I still don’t know the score
I guess I expected more
Of my investment  
In my clean white jeans.

I told him often and
I couldn’t have made it clearer.
He needs to stop looking
At himself in funhouse mirrors.
His nose is too wide
His body is just too skinny.
Good looking body parts
He believes he hasn’t any.

He seldom smiles
Even when a comic falls down.
He doesn’t like comedy.
Not even good circus clowns.
He doesn’t read poetry
Unless it is written about him
And his taste in music
Is all based on a passing whim.

He’s thirty years old
But he acts like an adolescent,
Playing the same games
From childhood to the present.
He still dresses like he did
When he was ten years old
And doesn’t clean his room
Not ever, unless he is told.

He plays on the computer
And keeps dead-end employment,
Then gripes about his life
And his total lack of enjoyment.
His ambition level wrecked
Because his family still pays his bills
And lets him hide in his room
That’s the kind of situation that kills.

He has no ups or downs
And takes pills to keep his mood.
He buys toys and gadgets
And lives on his mother’s food.
But, nothing in life calls him
To achieve or excel or to win
In the halfhearted game of life
That he finds himself stuck in.

The man stood on a box
In the middle of the park,
When people walked by
The old boy would bark
“It’s in the Bible,” he cried.
And some people would ask
What is in the Bible, sir?”
Prepared to take him to task.

“Everything’s in there, friend!”
He answered with a smile
Feeling the people there
Would stay and listen a while.
“Well, that’s an easy answer!”
One of the onlookers said.
“You have left nothing out!”
The orator nodded his head.

“The Bible has answers for you
To any question you can say.
It will be your salvation, sir
No waiting until Judgment Day.
It tells you what to eat and then
Tells you how to choose a wife.
It tells you how to go to heaven
When you reach the end of life.”

The questioner replied, “Yes, sir,
And it tells of women made of salt,
And a fellow who walked on water
Another brought the sun to a halt.
It tells of a boat quite big enough
To have two each of every animal.
And people floating up to the sky.
Don’t you find these things incredible?”

“Not all,” the soapbox man said,
“God can do any holy thing at all.
He has made the planets, the sky,
The heavens and the waterfalls.
God knows everything and he is
Who speaks to you in your heart.”
The onlooker shook his head, said
“So, when does that stuff start?”

“What stuff, sir?” the orator asked.
“The part where God speaks to me.
I haven’t heard a word from God
And I have been listening, you see.
That would be a truly wondrous thing
For this God person to finally do.
But, if God speaks to all of us
Why the hell do we need you?

Pretending a day is forever
Then watching you hurry away
It’s a game we play together
We are strangers in the light of day.
I’ve learned to lie with my eyes
To act like we never were lovers
When I am nobody you ever claim
We won’t walk in sunshine together.

The love of my life is a stranger
And this is the price I have paid
I smile when my heart is a wasteland
And, my life is a dance masquerade.
I’m dancing with a shadow
It looks so very real.
It moves with the rhythm
It does everything but feel.

I can only get so much reward
From rewriting each scene
From what it really was today
To what it might have been.
I am settling for a fantasy
Of what love is really about.
Picking up the scraps of dreams
That anyone else would throw out.

The love of my life is a stranger
And this is the price I have paid
I smile when my heart is a wasteland
And, my life is a dance masquerade.
I’m dancing with a shadow
It looks so very real.
It moves with the rhythm
It does everything but feel.

I’m not quite right today.
I’ve a thoroughly gasted flabber.
The milk of human kindness
Seems to have begun to clabber.
I got plussed but now it’s minus,
I’m so chalant I am nearly flat.
I am almost as spaced out
As a modern day Schrodinger’s cat.

Catch my phrase, please
If you think you can.
I am what became of
The Muffin Man.
The son of no mother
Who never had a dad.
I’m the reason that
The March Hare went mad.

I was once a pillar of immunity
But lately I am wagging a scally.
But somewhere along the line
I became a cat in some alley.
I‘m at five sixes and sevens
I lost the war and the battle.
My creek is totally full of ****.
Here I am without a paddle.

Catch my phrase, please
If you think you can.
I am what became of
The Muffin Man.
The son of no mother
Who never had a dad.
I’m the reason that
The March Hare went mad.

My last leg hurts a lot, and
My pooch is rather *******.
I’d say I am a bit ******,
But then, that would be lewd.
I’m a scant one barrel short
Of being a real son of a gun.
My **** has started whiffing
And is no longer much fun.

Catch my phrase, please
If you think you can.
I am what became of
The Muffin Man.
The son of no mother
Who never had a dad.
I’m the reason that
The March Hare went mad.

You’re turning me on, now.
I don’t know what to do with it
If you’re not going through with it.
Now that I am burning up
You know that I’m really not
Confused about you being hot.

I am burning here inside
There is nothing I can do
The cure for my condition
Is completely up to you.
I’m burning, I’m turning
Into a shivering being.
And you are the reason
For visions I am seeing.

I’m smoking and I’m choking
From the smoke you are emitting.
A night I won’t soon be forgetting.
My ego is getting a stroking.
It’s like an internal bell is sounding
It’s only my heart that is pounding.

I am burning here inside
There is nothing I can do
The cure for my condition
Is completely up to you.
I’m burning, I’m turning
Into a shivering being.
And you are the reason
For visions I am seeing.

No doctor can ever help me
The cause for it all is you.
You are the only thing possible
To fix what I’m going through.
I’m stumbling and mumbling
I’m stammering and stuttering.
I am experiencing the feeling
Of an ecstatic kind of suffering.

I am burning here inside
There is nothing I can do
The cure for my condition
Is completely up to you.
I’m burning, I’m turning
Into a shivering being.
And you are the reason
For visions I am seeing.

Love is so very much more
Than a funny paper cartoon
It’s more than nursery rhymes
About June, spoon and moon.

Everybody needs love
Love is a word like God
And it is used every day
So you may find it odd,
It can be used by a friend
And you will both agree
You know what it intends
But really don’t, you see.

We hear the words love or God
And we act as if we both know
The feelings the words mean
And we behave as if it were so.
But, each word has so many
Meanings and feelings and thus
It is a comforting thing to say
The words calm and gratify us..

Love is so many good words
Of things that warm our heart.
It’s so many wonderful things
We hardly know where to start.

We love having holidays off,
We love our puppies and cats.
We love cheesecake and pie
And other sweet things like that.
We love well composed music
And a lovingly created movie.
Or saying things like ‘whatever’
“BFF, “The Bee’s Knees and “groovy”.

We loved new boots and shoes
And love opening our presents
On Christmas in the morning
With our family and our parents.
We love sledding and sliding
On snowy days in the winter,
Tree climbing but not the splinters.

Love is gold at rainbow’s end.
Love is our dreams come true.
Love is everything perfect in life.
Love is me, and of course, you.

Where were you when you heard
First heard some legendary song?
Does it get permanently hooked
To that time in life as it went along?

When I was twelve years old
I was coming home on the bus
A car radio playing Elvis singing
That’s “All Right Mama” passed us.

Freezing my *** in a weapons plant
When I first heard “Everybody’s Talking”.
I had no money and no good car
But I almost started walking.

All the time I was driving
“Light My Fire”, was always playing
With that bridge you couldn’t ignore.
I always link going west on I-40 to
My introduction then to the Doors.

T’was almost fifty years ago today
Sergeant Pepper and his band did play.
I was working as fry cook in KC
Wishing I could afford to run away.

I heard Yes singing “Your Move”
In Hollywood on Sunset and Vine.
I had no idea who that group was
I only knew they were new and fine.

Bopping down Hollywood Boulevard
And fashionable in Frankenstein shoes
I was styling with my pleated bells
Singing “Staying Alive” as I would cruise.

Music changed for me again, for the better
With the opening of Yellow Brick Road.
Elton made that dramatic opening bit
Opposite of a country *****-backed toad.

Barbra and Donna in great duet called
Were wailing out “Enough Is Enough”.
I was thinking finding a better team
Than those two divas would be tough.