Tickled Poetry

Wobbling Through The Universe

A pile of poetry for today's ancient times:

1. Breathing-In Poems

2. Poems For Young Lovers

3. "I Like My Head"--a song

4. Limericks

5. Poems You Couldn't Possibly Live Without

Breathing-In Poems

Take me back to that summer of lost melon seeds
which danced out of Tommy's red nose
He laughed so hard he shook them on down
And we laughed till our faces pruned up,
Oh, yeah,
We laughed till our faces pruned up.

And the Urinal Summer at Ol' Mammoth Cave
A lone vacant fixture I spied
And I did the wrong number, then noticed I'd erred
And they laughed till their loonies were sore,
Oh yeah,
They laughed till their loonies were sore.

These were the Glory Days, days of my youth
The innocent days of sugar
When Jesus remembers my noodle-head summers
He laughs till his halo gets bent
Oh no!,
He laughs till his halo gets bent.

In his dreams he floats and spins
falling, rising
High above the Jungle spinning
Boy in his best Dreams, he Flies.

No more drops fly from his face
No head-scratching
High above the Jungle grinning

puzzlin' Dreams, he floats, he flies.

Cut him loose to float these Jungles
join in Progress
Dreams he dreamt he'd dream some moment
Cut him loose to feel and fly.

Sheldon's Afternoon

Snow comes alive for my kitty
He bats at it, for our protection
Today's St. Lavender's Day
So we sing about wagonloads of suns

The 'sicle you speak of—
No 'sicle of pop!
Nor of ice, nor cream!
Nor for cutting back weeds.

A 'sicle of nonsense!
A slippular, fabbery, tubulous thing
that forms from our thoughts when our minds are left open.
They slip through the cracks of our brains
when we're dreaming,
and, gleaming, they burble down into our mouths
where a 'sicle is born (take a look -- can you see one?
I think there might be one just east of your lip
--and don't you deny it.)
It's starting to gyre and gimble again.

Now, don't ever squander,
(my dad said to me),
the pleasure of nonsense by vainly ignoring
a bright nonsensicle.

No, let it add color to your best perspectables,
suffer it gladly,
don't scratch it or break it,
and bear this in mind:
It's there for your grinnies.

Hugh

Draw me a hippo named Hugh.
A real sweetie pie, with glasses.
An urban hippo who wears sweaters
and carries a tiny piccolo in his huge teeth,
as if to play it someday.

Draw Hugh with a bad habit of
spending too much time watching the street buskers,
gently swaying giant limbs to their provocative rhythm.

A hippo named Hugh who stays downtown all afternoon
then goes home to the projects,
where his sweaters are drying on the line.

No one messes with him--he's as big as a damn house.
(Some kids make cruel beeping noises when he backs up.
He hears them, but he doesn't get it. He's a hippo.)

I believe in Hugh.
And Hugh believes in you.

Under My Porch

The world moves under my porch
and smiles sideways there, little hideaway
The world is laying down under my porch
Kind of shy
It must be nice and cool there

When it's time to get up
I'll bring out some iced tea and rub the world's head
and we'll watch the universe slowly wobble

My friend Sherry's wedding party. That's Sherry & Jak 2nd and 3rd from left, disrespectfully.

Poems For Young Lovers

Macaroni Salad

It was a standard industrial romance film
--The Unbeatable Likeness Of Bearings--
I reached over to touch her face in the dark

Then I remembered:
she didn't come to the movie with me
She stayed home to make macaroni salad
(Shhhh: I later found out she'd whipped the macaroni into a frenzy
and it went flying onto an expensive painting.)

I wonder what that old lady next to me thought
She smacked my popcorn
It went flying into someone's hair two rows up
Then we cracked up
That night I had a strange dream:
There were these people in their pajamas
They thought I was a bible scholar named Bernie
I took my shirt off and hid it in my sock
So they'd never know:
I was a recovering polkaholic

Whales

We are not bacteria.
That seems to be relatively clear.
We are something much, much bigger than that.
Like blue whales are bigger than us.

For instance, there's some evidence that
to some bacteria love actually stinks.
Even to the ones that have never been divorced.
On the other hand, scientists have found that blue whales are nothing but giant bags of love.
We seem to be halfway
between the bacteria and the whales
most of the time.

Because you're getting on my nerves,
and I on yours,
may we become whales very, very soon.
Hopefully, like, by lunchtime.
(Inwardly, that is)

Because we know we can do it,
and we aren't really fooling anybody.
And somewhere inside us, some cell
in our pancreas or something
remembers when we swam the oceans
and dived way deep
and pitched and yawed
and knew we were in it for the long haul.

Willie's Reverie, Pt. 1

Woke up in the Darkened Hours of Morn,
the grey exhaust of Mrs. Finafrock's diesel
wafting slowly past my window
A tiny whistling sound was in my nose.
That was pretty funny.
That's when I thought of you
size 12 Converse as blue as February's toes.
Silk bonnet wrapped around your head like
scum on a walnut
Dressed for church, in other words.

As we later rolled in the hay
my gum fell out of my mouth
and beaned you on the eye.
Hope you feel better about that.
Then that whistle in my nose woke me up again.
Made the cat look outside.
And I laughed.

Scooter's On A Roll

Reaching, I reach for your soft...
"Oh my! Don't violate me, Scooter!"
Tiny bumps of geese pepper my helloing skin.
Your hair, soft as broom bristles, with the afternooning scent of fine vinegars...
Loving words burp forward, beckoning.
We are the citizens of the new Rennaissance.
We are the Winners of the Fish Rodeo.

Is It Polite?

Knickers thump and rhumba merrily
about the head and neck.
Eyebrows give each other that "?" look.

Is it polite?
To be waking at the gnarlies like this?

Like ornery bread dough?
With an agenda?
I mean, even the Jardine Juniper's had a
Woody Supreme for the last 400 years.

Swishy, Swishy Tails

Your question marks -- flippy appetite-fish,
diving down deeper and staying longer than any answer.
I cry, each giggle pushing out a tear of This Is My Waterloo.
But, a lass, I can't help it!
I have to answer with millions of wiggly, flippy fish
taking their shimmery appetite down, down, going down,
swishy, swishy tails.

Hallelujahs

A slide smiles across my face.
Are you as hungry as the air needs honesty?
Does your fragile boat smooth across that thin film of pleasantries,
hoping to capsize and release its load of hallelujahs?

My fingers arrive to help out.

A Wedding

I speak, not of sinister footwear,
but of periwinkle toadolescents,
flitting shiftlessly as if they were
anticipating a wedding,
the groom a greenish thing from the tar pits
with a glorious hellstink,

The bride?
a tiny fly in azure;
a miniscule veil of pond scum
over bright compound eyes.
Vermillion leaf-decay eyeliner.

A trout spits tobacco in slow motion. Now, no
pond-thing remains mateless.

There once was a man in St. Pete
Who spent fourteen days on his feet
Now his heels give him hell
Cause his arches both fell
And he quacks when he walks down the street

I once wore a codpiece to mass
and sang the hymns just like a lass
and when Sister Alice
drank wine from a chalice
I yelled, "SISTER! Show us some CLASS!"

As Roxanne removed her blah-BLAH-blah,
I reached out to her blahbby-BLAH-blah.
Then, just as she squealed,
my blahbby-blah healed,
and up came my big blahbby-BLAH-blah!!

A limerick from Carol or Scooter
Rolls smartly off his/her computer
But limericks from mine
have a HELLuva time
(Would you hand me that mind roto-rooter?)

I write from experience, Spanky
while clutching a pic and a hanky
The picture is me,
age 30 and 3
(The last time I made hanky-panky.)

I once wrapped my butt in a flag
and tore off the flagmaker's tag
I danced like a looney
the stars stickin to me
the stripes going jiggedy-jag

I had a sweetheart in Regina
who lived with a talkative mynah
whose words reigned obscene
on the answer machine
of a parrot in North Carolina

A guy named Felonius Mung
Once dressed up to ape Connie Chung
then blew "Ahhnold's" cover
in talks with his mother
(It turns out he's not that well hung)

MPoems You
MCouldn't
MPossibly Do
MWithout

My Dream Home

When I dream of that special Somewhere that lies
over the Rainbow Diner
transported to where-the-heck
(nobody knows)
('cept me),
and nothing is finer,

when I dream of that Somewhere I mentioned above,
I dream of a dumpy apartment
where you walk in and think,
How to exit the loo?
And how not to stick to the carpet.

Juggling

Now things are different
I must learn to juggle my whole family
won't be no oysters rockyfeller picnic
I'll spend my time
wandering the pet food aisles
my glasses hanging half off my face
like Gale Gordon after the time he got rolled
in an L.A. alley

A Flapjack For Kiddo

A flapjack for kiddo.
And sling a hot pepper for the King.
Don't deny it -- you've been rattling
pots n' pans all day long, Velma.

Where's the can? I gotta go.
Oh yeah, end of hall, left at Biff The Mercenary's room.
'Scuse me, Little Death Man, can I get past?
Thanks, dude.

It's Easter.
The first flies of Spring appear around the dumpster.
And joy rides on their wings.

Finding Fault

A piece of jerky disappeared
from a warehouse in Argentina.
What did I have to do with it?
Very little. Very little.

A document in Rome
says something completely different now.
A hundred thousand new recipients of crop subsidies.
Wasn't me. Not really.

An airplane wing gleams, a door clicks open.
156 clowns land on the roof of the headquarters.
An urgent voice in a darkened room: "Bill?"
My involvement? Marginal.

Men shout over each others' pony tails.
A whale's weight in black tea splashes, then floats.
13 hallelujahs, one pissed-off king.
3 or 4 motives. Very few of them mine.

The Blobbies Come Whomping Down

Helicops chop a safe distance away
'Till the Blobbies come whomping down
Men in gray suits with dark furrowed brows
'Till the Blobbies come whomping down

A decision is made, the stage is all set
'Till the Blobbies come whomping down
"Columbia region, -- your district or mine?"
'Till the Blobbies come whomping down

A mark on a map, a glance at a watch
'Till the Blobbies come whomping down
A clank and a shout -- "C-Ten, are you THERE??!!"
And the Blobbies come whomping
Stomping and Bomping
The Blobbies come whomping down

Spodee & Darvon

Let's remember Spodee Hampton.
Yeah, you remember Spodee --
The old fish-bone vendor down at the docks.
Spodee grew pumpkins on his roof.
The pumpkins got heavy, the vines got old, and
next thing you know, all Hell broke loose.

He kept a mean old pig named Darvon
in the front yard.
He ate my Pink Floyd hat one time,
so I threw him a pack of Ex-Lax.
He couldn't move for 4 days.
Lost weight -- looked like a greyhound.

Let's remember Spodee and Darvon.

My Tooth And Its Journey

I dreamt of my tooth and its journey,
from deep in my gum, out the door,
to, let's say, the dumpster out back in the lot,
to wait for a Wednesday, the trashman to cometh.

Then let's say my tooth rode with Bernie,
with TV Guides, baby wipes, half-empty jars.
All over the city they toured every sight,
Some gave at the "office", like Willie and Pecker.

Last stop: Cahoots, the attorney,
gave packages, puffy things, puppy-food cans,
all leaky with green stuff, smelled worst of all.
Then let's say my tooth went up to get air.

A crow saw my tooth on its gurney
and lovingly nabbed it and flew it straight home
and let's say my tooth is now lining that nest
you see over there, above your garage.

I Knew You

I knew you when the buildings were just dirt.
I knew you when our teeth were only tiny pearls
in our tiny heads.
I knew you when the earth rattled
like a piece of candy,
excited at the birth of the moon.

In fact, I remember borrowing a cup of
sugar and a lemon from you
when God was still in Huggies.

The Crystal Dogs Know Everything

Some day, when time has blown up in a fiery hell,
causing destruction and everyone walks around
all black and charred and flaky,
I'll get out my motorcycle
and we'll ride as free as the wind, forever
and hang out at McDonald's
and then I'll give you my Transformers
I like 'em when I was a kid

(I think that when you give away your toys in a post-apocalypse scenario, it's the nicest thing you can do! I have this little leather holster I'm saving until after Armageddon. You should all make similar plans.)

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