sweet
light
crude

Will all great Neptune's ocean brood these fish
Clean for our nets? No, algae blooms will rather
The multinational seas incarnadine
Making the ink run red.

Classical dawn goes down to day,
One more shelf of books to learn,
While the Pierian Prudhoe Bay
Serves up drink to burn.

Hoof and horn, human form,
William Gates is not the norm.
Vine and grain, market gain,
He has kudzu on the brain.

(Everybody now!)

Joy to the world
On the tilt-a-whirl.
Joy to the soldiers when we fight again
And joy to CNN.

Headless Saint Valentine,
Buried in clover,
Don't you dare tempt me to
Do it all over!

Let the firebrand awake!
Call on demon, duck and drake!
There's no time to rape and pillage
As we charcoal every village,
But still we'll slaughter like Stallone,
Till these ashes are our own.

Be or not be to beweep,
Miles to go like tremulous sheep.
Doom is dark. Dingle's deep.
Constellations o'er us beep.
Now I know my ABC.
I think I'll write some poetry.

Long may the turtle hurtle
Maternal and diurnal in her vernal kirtle.
May she turn eternal!
That's not bad. I'll write it in my journal.

When does dissent descend into dissension?
When the well-meant can't mend their good intentions,
Or good intent's extent is in descension.

I'm leery of the Mainstream.
They're stupid, like the frog
Who turned to peer at Ellis Isle
And ended up in Prague.

We shall not cease from deprecation
And the end of all our deploring
Will be to deride what our heart is
And love ourselves for the first time.

I saw a purple dinosaur.
I hope the ratings minced it.
I don't know what Barney's for,
But I'm against it.

Tell all the slants and call it truth.
Successive circus lies
Will brighten up informed Duluth
Like spotlights in the eyes.

The right dares not to have a dream.
The left's dream kingdom
Dares not disappear.
Leftly, the right is
Sundered in broken calumny.
Rightly, the left-thinking
Are vices with
Their minds blinking.
More thought and more salami
Than the Midnight Star.

By my so potent art, as full as opera,
Boasting of placards in the noontide sun,
I am the one
Who found the way
To bring the song and dance to light of day.
Weak masters that they be, the dead lie down before me.

First Witch:
Why do we three draw the sea
With perigee and syzygy?

Second Witch:
To get the media enthused,
The viewers used and disabused.

Third Witch:
That will be when they're confused.

First Witch:
Where's the orbit?

Second Witch:
Round the bend.

All:
Let the destined show begin.

Blasting through the sky
Like a nuclear device,
Through the towns I fly
Blinking once or twice.
Rudolph's nose is hot
With meteoric light--
What fun to visit every tot
Within a single night.

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
No one else can hear.
My jolly sounds are swallowed in
The vacuum to my rear.

The glorious backlit marmalade slides down the sky
at the end of the day at the end of a thousand years
while up behind the unprotected crowd
sweeps the terminator. That's a wrap!
Launch the fireworks! Nobody will remember
to look beyond our brilliant works and days
and see ourselves in a spinning cloud of stars.

The Acceptance of Neoformalism

Stop this behavior at once!
That's a command to you both.
It's illegal to rhyme
Any serious poem
In National Poetry Month.

Swift as a chimney swallowing a barn,
We swallow down the governmental yarn:
Let's knit our network of prescription plugs;
We who fly freely need to live on bugs.

A. I'll fall in love like falling in Jupiter.
The overwhelming crush will draw me in,
down through the rainless storms spiked with lightning
vaster than worlds, down through the turning layers,
down to the white-hot core where we will mingle
joyous forever.

B. You may be a winner!

Three counts for mountebanks out of the eye,
Seven for the turf lords with their telephones,
Nine for candidates, doomed to lie,
One for the media with its high tone,
On the television where you learn to buy.
One count to fool them all, one count to blind them,
One count to fix on so they'll never look behind them.
On the television where you learn to buy.

When all the other mutants
Built a rocket mind game toy,
They never let the moron
Decoy the joyful hoi polloi.

Then that famous Christmas eve
The mutants came to me:
"Moron with your head of bone,
You'll be our re-entry cone!"

They bolted me onto the rocket
As I sang along with them,
"Moron the red-hot nosecone,
You'll go down to Bethlehem!"

I will go down to DC again, to the crowded Mall and the Pool,
And all I ask is a mandate and a Hill without a fool,
And some calm polls from the newsrooms and the end of the correction,
And the great luck of a swan song before the next election.

Double, double, cosmic bubble
By the Law of Edwin Hubble.

Out of the nightie that covers me,
Black as the Pit like Horace Walpole,
Something or other happens then
To my more and more dubious soul.

Most people will go ahead and misquote. That's why the internet contributes so little to human progress. If you care about truth and social justice, you'll spend a few minutes to look up the correct wording:

I think that I shall never discover
A sofa lovely as a slipcover.

As when the fisher, lost in the wine-dark wine,
Misses the slow-upcreeping siren song
Until, with a piercing note (reminding him
Of when the mermaid tangled in the nets
At last came free, and with a final fillip,
Flinging the foam full into his face,
Vanished into the deeps), the catchy number
Sets its hook--so with a fatal jerk
Ends the classical simile.

Higgledy piggledy
George W. Bush
Couldn't write poetry
To save his life.

Leftwardly brainwise, his
Mediolateral
Lobes have been lost to the
Speechwriter's knife.

Higgledy piggledy
President Double-You
Utters his speeches to
Utter delight.

Misunderestimate!
Neighborhood hemispheres!
Partial aphasia was
Never so right.

Find a way to write in Aeolic Greek that
Works in English? It's a completely different
Rhythmic system! You, young woman, are plainly
Some kinda genius.

Say the white implacable textbook authors,
"Iambs, trochees, dactyls and anapests are
All there is." But where is the wild disorder?
You and me, let's offer the prosy dogs a
Kick in the booty!

I'm through with romaine
I'm through with leeks
I'm into truffles
And fine antiques.
And what's the reason
That it's all free?
My loving lunchmeat
Is feeding me.

CHORUS: Buy my lunch....

Put out your eyes as if they were a fire.
Put out your eyes as if they were the trash.
Put out your eyes: They're just a metaphor.
Now let's get down and mosh.

I'm lucky like I can't believe.
Here's how I count the score:
Moving is all we know of hell,
And all we need helicopters for.

There's one birthday that I'm pretty sure pretty much everyone will pretty much forget,
To their regret,
And I don't mean the day that brash lllama logged in,
No, I mean the real birthday of the real Nash, comma, Ogden,
Than whom no writer wrote less bashfully
Or more Ogden Nashfully.

Burning and burning in the whitening pyre,
The lucid never notice Lucifer.
Things hang together; sinners cannot know
How heaven's arch will loose us like an arrow.

I set the goals that make the whole world run.
I keep a database on everyone.
I change the future when I make the fads.
I write the ads, I write the ads.

I'm getting out
Of here! The television seems
To offer visions of defending teams,
So curious, inscrutable, and true,
And yet has neither maids, nor aides, nor brooms,
Nor any other friend to ease my brain;
And I am here as on a sparkling plane
Swept for shoes, with unarmed luggage in flight,
Which indigent airlines crash by night.

Hang your head up on the wall:
Summer goes before a fall.
All that growth is lush as Eden,
And you're packing up for Sweden
To collect your Nobel Prize...
When they recognize your lies.
Tripping goes before a fall:
No one's always on the ball.

O Christmas Tree:
Oh Eastertide, oh Eastertide,
The breeze is sweet with deicide.

The Twelve Days of Christmas:
On the one day of Easter
The bunny gave to me
A pagan ceremony.

When you wish upon a neutrino
Doesn't matter if you're in Mendocino.
When you wish upon a particle
Your dreams are farcical.

Mirror, mirror, on the ball
Who's the flashiest of all?
What immortal carbon date
Decides who is a fashion plate?

Sing low, sweet yellow dingo,
Comin' for to bury these bones.

What we hear:

Status quo, wee cherry yurt,
Comma forte boomer t-bone.

Humpty Dumpty lies in state
Like a glycerin-shiny fashion plate,
And all the King's loyally breakfasting men
Will never photograph food again.

Who and when, where and why,
What does the pain of life imply?
Almost as blue as God's blue eye,
Aim your lasers at the sky,
And with a ringing battle cry
Sharpen the vision of the big old guy.
Me oh me, my oh my,
That should straighten out Captain Bligh;
He'll be as soft as a Windsor tie,
And give us candy and rhubarb pie.

Bring me my prose of turning cold.
Bring me my narrowing of ire.
Bring me my beer, O crowds unpolled.
Bring my extinguisher of fire!

For all the bird's misgiving,
From all the beaux esprits,
We thank on this Thanksgiving
The heavenly emcee
That turkeys spring eternal,
That corn grows from the kernel,
That death, the gate nocturnal,
Locks with a vernal key.

Roses are rose and violets are violet,
But freedom's expensive and violence inviolate.

The age of opportunity,
When the net was paved with gold,
When anything went and fortunes were spent
As favored by the bold,

Is past, and all that still remains
In the years-long bubble burst
Is no champagne, and real pain,
And a lot of stuff that works.

Thunder rolls from pole to pole
And the nations turn as one,
Lit in mind and struck in soul
By the seventh pun on a seventh pun.

What everybody else thinks:

Heh, that's pretty funny. Where's the remote?

Stand in the young light of an ancient star,
or fall in war, your armor clattering--
the same old stuff. Fill in the formula.
Oh ye peace protesters, give it up:
We are under the sun, where nothing new
was ever found, not even penicillin
or special relativity. The rule
of law can give no light within the vast
space between nations.

Over the hills and over,
Under the darkest sky,
I fly in a batwing bomber,
And nobody asks me why.

To George it is for the voters.
To the colonel it's for the dead.
To me it's so that my daughter
Can grow up free of dread.

There are the flames of Baghdad,
Aligned with the target grids.
I know as we kill the terror
We terrify the kids.

Fell Fell, fell Fell,
Will we ever see thee dead?
I'll be buried in yon hillside,
In yon hill.

Pipe a merry tune,
Pied or crucified,
And lead believers to
The hillside.

A. They sing:

99 species of frog in the bog,
99 species of frog.
Stomp one flat as a welcome mat,
98 species of frog in the bog.

B. They celebrate their great successes:

"And with only those twelve cartons of documentation, I was granted the permit!" "That's nice, but did I ever tell you how I got financing for the Swampworks project?"

1 species of frog in the bog,
1 species of frog.
Blow it to bits with missile hits,
No species of frog in the bog.

No species of frog in the bog,
No species of frog.
File that forest-devouring Environmental Impact Report
And get the bulldozers moving before the Sierra Club can retort,
1 parking lot in the bog.

1 parking lot in the bog....

The boy flew off the burning deck.
He fell to Earth I know not whether.
But everywhere that Mary went
Were little bits of leather.

This land is spandex, this land is nylon
From the superheroes to the power pylons
From the Broadway starlets to the Vegas harlots
This land is made of PVC.

Itsy, Bitsy, Tiny and Few,
We have a nuclear weapon or two.
Itsy, Bitsy, Tiny and Free,
If you are cowed you'll listen to me.

What do you get when you conquer the Earth?
Way too much cash and a sense of self-worth.
How do you act when you're such a fat cat?
Who do you think's at fault for that?
Always the United States.

Itsy, Bitsy, Tiny and Bomb,
Give us the cash and you can stay calm.
You will starve in poverty too
Just like Itsy, Bitsy, Teeny, Tiny and Few.

All that we seem or scheme
is but a gleam within a beam.

Am I a gamer
dreaming I am a marine,
or vice versa, dude?

Churning and churning through the data store,
Technicians say what bureaucrats will hear.
Patches knit up; the edges cannot shred;
Organization overruns the world;
The red-tape tie is bound, and everywhere
The wells of spontaneity run dry;
The best hew to procedure, while the worst
Largely follow procedure.

I hope you did not miss the beautiful moon.
Let heaven's clouds stand in for your tears.
The moon is the same to all times and all people,
only our thoughts are different. Think this:
The unchanging moon symbolizes change.
Coal black and bone white, the moon can mean
climate stability, fertile ocean tides,
one small step to magnificent desolation,
night and the charming silver light of night,
lunacy, which is wandering from the path,
and love and joining what is far apart.
Let heaven's clouds stand in for your tears,
brush your eyes and look back at the shining
monument of stone, the cat's-eye moon.

Ours is not to reason why.
No one does that any more.
Ours is but to bomb from high
Till everybody else is poor.

Come on people now
Put on your leather
Everybody shorten tether
Push and shove one another right now.

A. Wait until it's fully cut-and-dried.
B. Hold off till you're sure that no one died.
C. But claim you were and write the field guide.
D. We can all try at once and not collide.

Just slept when I awoke.
Just let the world go on.
Just stirred to face the breakfast and commuting,
Then hit the snooze
Forgetting self-esteem
While traffic noises merge into my dream.

Next time, to wake.
Next time, like John Glenn,
To slowly roll in space and
Hit the snooze again.

You don't care that I am going bald.
When I collapse you stay till I revive.
You hold me close while everybody else remains appalled.
I'll always love U-235.

Glory is a circle in the water
To mark where something trivial went down,
Never again to skim above the wavelets.

Modern View

Glory is a line in the sand.

Split the hair - when you face the music -
Blow after blow - will roll aside -
Violence dealt to the batted belfry
Spent on your hair and not your hide.

Loose the flood - like a snake oil seller -
Gush after gush, and swear it's true -
Cro-Magnon creditors! Credulous cretins!
You'll escape yet from the peer review.

Why get off your lazy butts?
You might as well just stay in bed,
For he on vindaloo hath fed
And drunk the milk of coconuts.

We shall not cease from extirpation,
And the end of all our extirping
Will be to empty the universe
And see our home for the first time.

Brain, brain, come to stay.
Welcome to the U.S.A.
The other nations may decay
Without you, but it's all OK.

The Internet loads mysterious codes
Its wonders to perform;
It plants the kernel with its stacks,
And seeds ideas in dorms.

Blind believers, ants with pants,
We build more than we planned;
The network is its own compiler,
That we can't understand.

Neither a follower nor a leader be,
For leaders lead themselves and friends astray,
And following dulls the edge of secrecy.

Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating his curds and whey.
Along came miss Muffet
Who gave him a Buffett
And frightened the SPDR away.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a fence.
Humpty Dumpty is weak and dense.
And all of the winds, and all of the foes,
Refused to predict the direction of blows.

Lady Liberty came to me last night,
wearing the red dress of grievances
and earplugs for the scream of consciousness.
"I went to see my friend from Rhodes," she said,
"Father of Homebodies. Now that I've fallen too,
I'm really brazen! It was fun, I'm off
to visit again." And then she stumbled away,
kicking the chains that clung around her ankles
and holding her torch down low to see the way.

Don't you know it's gonna go
All wrong?

(Repeat for each Middle East crisis.)

nothing depends
upon

a red seal
blaring
phrases of high
terror

on the blue
web site

Better safe than storied,
Better shade than glory,
Better homes and gardens
Until you get your pardons.