Performing Art
by Michael R. Burch

Who teaches the wren
in its drab existence
to explode into song?

What parodies of irony
does the jay espouse
with its sharp-edged tongue?

What instinctual memories
lend stunning brightness
to the strange dreams

of the dull gray slug
—spinning its chrysalis,
gluing rough seams—

abiding in darkness
its transformation,
till, waving damp wings,

it applauds its performance?
I am done with irony.
Life itself sings.

One suspects the typical American poetry professor and/or workshop instructor would advise birds to give up singing for mostly inaudible expressions of jaded irony. Keywords/Tags: performing, art, poetry, song, singing, music, irony, cynicism, parodies, dreams, imagination, chrysalis, butterfly, transformation, natural, performance

Winking, Stinking and Clod,
Each with a gross ugly ***.
Each a miserable  thief
With greed past belief
And all were hatched out of a pod.

Two hundred silly baboons,
So like unfunny cartoons,
Overpaid and mindless,
They call them a congress.
We won’t be forgetting them soon.

Floppy, Tipsy and Cottonhead
Three bunnies talented in bed.
They rake in the gold
Doing what they’re told
Repeating to no one what’s said.

Hakey fakey Doctor Duck,
Gives glowing reports for a buck.
Not much they’ve done
Was anything like fun
But his hush money fills a truck.

Liar, liar, pants on fire
How does your bank account grow?
We hastily must warn
The banks are foreign
So Americans have no way to know.