A vegetable sufficiently boiled
And buttered and salted and oiled
Can taste just like meat
Off a parakeet
Or platypus flambéed then broiled.

This sleep has sunk to catacombs
Where dreams are dreaming of themselves,
And where they slump to deeper shelves
A dim and voiceless banshee roams.  
Interlopers jostle memory,
And pressing on his signet ring,
Take on the seal of realer things.  
Truth’s rejected for hyperbole.  
Delusions stack in strata, drowned,
Lives never lived, in parallel,
That puzzle sleepers who can’t tell
Where waking lies, so lies confound.

Because even a long summer day
Isn’t long enough to harvest hay.
We modern folk must lose
A lovely hour to snooze
Or botch our Sunday reveillé.

A matron of Memphis poured toffee
In water and orange juice and coffee.  
Her drinks were so sweet
She thought them a treat,
But a sleeve, if rested, ripped off me.

A spinster from Flint once opined
In her day the suitors were kind.  
Though sister was gone,
They didn’t stay long.  
An overfull parlor can grind.

In Scotland painters favor plaid
Though tartans are likely just a fad.  
When dabbing on the wall
The hand can’t slant at all.  
Glaswegians think diagonals bad.

In welcome old Fido is barking
But cats are too haughty for marking
If tenants are home,
Or off on a roam.  
A shut-in gets cranky and carking.

In mainland meadows, flowers tempt,
Yet spurn those animals they tease,
Except caprificating bees.  
Here, whatever’s edible’s unkempt.  

There is an isle more fortunate
Where nettles sow chrysanthemums,
And farming isn’t wearisome,  
And where what tempts must satiate.

An hour-glass stands up nice and straight
On a flat, polished end,
While bells suspend like carrion
On rods that never bend.  
Grains of sand in a transparent bulb,
Mustered in a smooth cone,  
Slip through a graceful crystal neck
To toll in silky tones.  
But as bells swing and clang, they gulp
From a meridian,  
One sideways to the zenith zone,
And fill themselves again.    
A bell will always know the time,
But still politely wait
For eager hands to yank their cord,
Even when slightly late.  
But a depleted hour-glass sits
Until impatient hands
Can flip it over on its crown
And fill its heads with sand.

The town shone cleanest in the mist.  
The clerk rushed for his train,
And if he dallied on his course,
The mist would clot to rain.  

Because he didn’t know the time,
He couldn’t find the way.  
The tower clock was crowing six,
But spires lead clerks astray.

Humbler clocks are best for humble folk;
A fob swung by his flank.  
But he’d forgotten to wind his watch,
And so the dial lay blank.

The sheets and blankets are too big
For such a little bed.  
They drape their fringes on the floor,
And dribble dreams with red.

The brain can’t sluice the nightmares out
Though a grate stopped with cloth.  
Thick curtains collect spiderwebs
And flutterings of moths.

The scaup is searching for a shore
To build her nest, a lonely beach,
Or rocky cliff no fox can reach.  
Egg-gobblers and roosting mothers war.  
There is no land, just churn and spray,
The billows heave and wave-crests foam,
Nowhere for her to make a home,
If there’s a coast, it’s far away.  
From hovering and fluttering, her wings
Are weary, and her soaring droops.  
Neither scanning, nor her endless loops
Find shelter from cold blusterings.  
And soon she’ll drop, and soon she’ll drown.  
Unless she finds a landing spot.  
And there, out there, a blip, a dot.  
A floe, an island made of ice,
Too big to bob, and just as firm
As any continent, a berm
Bears, seals or penguins would think nice.  
Not great for birds, but she’s no choice.  

She lands, she rests, she lays her eggs.  
Her frigid roost has numbed her legs,
But it’s a nest, so she’ll rejoice.  
Her eggs are warm, and soon they’ll hatch.  
Hatchlings can sip from melted snow,
But grubs don’t squirm on this bare floe,
And there’s no fish around to catch.    
Icebergs are barren and they’re hard.  
But far beneath the ice and sea,
Rich bottomland, a cozy lea,
The sea-bed makes a better yard.  
Born to water, they will breathe
Water, as their mother did the air.
And though aquatic birds aren’t rare
Gilled scaups are scarce as hens that teethe.  
A separate species, her lost young
Will never know their mother soared,
Or dropped the offspring she adored.  
In ocean depths unwarmed by sun.  
In that strange element they’ll thrive,
Becoming what has never been,
A species hitherto unseen.
Unknown to her, but they’ll survive.  

She drops the eggs, and trills goodbye.  
Then, mournfully, the scaup takes wing.  
To cross what’s past accomplishing.
The coast’s too far, but she will try.

Though thimbles are rigid and heavy and tight
Getting gouged by pins is no delight.  
A finger jabbed enough
Gets calloused, horned, and tough,
But why suffer needless pain from spite?

The boy-king wanted to incinerate
A fell and meretricious thryrus.  
His grandfather would venerate
The same staff, terrified of curses.  
His mother’d slandered the drunk god,
But regretting feckless blasphemy
She counseled them to spare the rod,
Until they heard the divine decree.  
Once the summoned prophet had appeared,  
Blind, and clad in a frayed, goatskin cloak,  
The monarch sputtered “It’s cursed, weird,
And wrong, burn it down to ash and smoke!”
The former monarch begged, “Appease
Bromius with primeval rite,  
A lord who smites his enemies
A lord too terrible to fight.”
The daughter next, “His worshipers
Run mad, and slaughter their own kin,
Even children.   The god massacres
Those who dispute his origin”
The prophet lifted up the staff
And tore the ivy from its tip.  
“Rites, massacres, don’t make me laugh,
And immolation’s sponsorship.”
He swung the staff to test its heft,
And said, “I need a walking stick,  
The drunkard has no bacchics left,
****** the goatish lunatic.”
At this, the grandfather turned pale,
And the repentant mother winced.  
Matched severity cannot avail
If fear and butchery convinced.  
A proverb soothes the quondam king
And the dowager, “He frightens you,  
But moderation in each thing,
And that in moderation too.”

The trouble started on the day
After the day before.  
Youth and hope and love decay,
And regret won’t restore.
It seems this old and weary world
Holds much more bad than good.  
I’d have assayed, but I was hurled
In this life before I could.  
A world of cloud and bitterness,
A life of scrape and thorn,  
So who would ever acquiesce
Ever to be born?  
Because briars outnumber flowers
By ten to one at least,
Weakness humbles mighty powers.
Famine goes before the feast.  
But feasts are more than fillings ups,
And hunger’s just a pinch.
And emptiness can’t stopper cups,
And straitening can’t cinch.  
Bounty and joy are plenitude,
And destitution lack,
So revel in what’s nice, or lewd,
No loss can take it back.  
A single flower fortifies
To brush away the burs.    
Striving wins because it tries.  
Forlorn despairing errs.

A toggle is so fun to twist
While buttons pivot like a wrist.  
Rotating through a slit
Gives a much snugger fit.  
Toggles swaddle a contortionist.

A diuretic’s the best juice
To glug before those long commutes.  
If coffee makes you ***
That is a paltry fee
For the elation it’s produced.

The squishiest mattress is a cloud,
So soft it shouldn’t be allowed.  
To stiffen the vapor
They take our their scraper
To shave off of sleet’s brittle shroud.

Because zippers cruelly pinch the skin
I use velcro for my fastening.  
Those hooks are much too small
To puncture me at all,
Twisting barbs into crooks blunts pins.

Because ankles are bound to get hot
In underwear collars why not
Raise up the stall door,
To ventilate more?
You’ll feel like you’re on board a yacht.

A hungry alphabet will flock
One word to several things.  
Taut meanings have diverged
From verbal hankerings.

All phrases that are pleonastic
And too redundant are bombastic.  
Verbose prolixity
Makes plodding poetry,
A sluggish, limping limerick.

When things go wrong I like to whine.  
Complaining’s free and feels so fine.  
So when I do find fault,
It’s moaning I exalt.  
Sip vinegar instead of wine.

The Wit is nimble, and can skip
The longest distances with ease.  
It flits on an extended trip,
One day, and back from overseas.  
The Wisdom hasn’t cleared the dock, 
A wide, and long, and sluggish ship,
Her cargo a tremendous stock,
And filled as if by faucet drip.  
But such a huge displacement packs,
What takes a flimsy, skimming skiff
More than a hundred there’s and back’s,
A bounty to save Tenerife.