Bruce Bennett: Barking By My Door
On A Sunny Morning
What dog that is I’m sure I know.
He’s walking through my village, though.
He acts as if he’s free to mark
My territory. I will show
Him whose it is. A simple bark
Will not suffice. A warning, stark
And clear, will send him on his way.
He isn’t walking in some park
Where dogs are free to romp and play.
I am the one who gets to say
Who gets to walk here. My domain
Is mine, and if he won’t obey
That simple rule, I’ll make it plain
His trespass here has caused me pain,
So I will drive you all insane.
Yes, I will drive you all insane!
⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎
G. B. Pilferidge: An Octopus’s Gourmand
(With apologies to Ringo Starr)
I’d like to be below the sea,
Far from the sidewalk and the city sewer.
No vegan snob, I’d shish kebab
The gardening octopuses on a skewer.
And when I’m done, it would be fun
Postprandially to taunt my dinner partners
By telling them that they-ahem-
Had eaten food as smart as kindergartners.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎
Julia Griffin: Beside Remote Shalott
(For my sisters)
And as the mazy web she whirls (1833 version)
There the river eddy whirls (1842 version)
The web’s looking thready,
The river looks hazy:
The first gives us Eddie,
The second gives Maisie.
Although it seems crazy,
The fact remains steady:
You cannot keep Maisie
Without losing Eddie.
The mix is too heady:
It’s not that they’re lazy,
Though Maisie bars Eddie,
And Eddie bans Maisie;
Don’t cry “Upsy-daisy!”
They’re whirling already:
Here, maidenly Maisie,
There, edity Eddie.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎
Terese Coe: Soggy Soggy Night
(With apologies to Don McLean’s
“ Vincent" (Starry Starry Night)
Soggy soggy night,
now the bog is in the air,
no one going anywhere,
sewer water floating in the streets.
Coming down in sheets,
mud inside your boots and bags,
leaky roof that creaks and sags,
lightning cracking deep into the streets.
And now I understand
what you tried to say to me,
how you suffered from insanity
in flooded rooms with all the power down.
They could not dry out, they did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll dry out now.
Soggy soggy night
moving in to end the drought,
one more thing we cannot flout
and roofs that can’t keep out the sodding rain.
Here we go again –
nothing for it but to sink or swim.
Don’t be delicate but don’t be grim,
crushed and broken in the pouring rain.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎
Max Gutmann: Poking At The Hokey-Pokey
(With apologies to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”.)
In and out and in and shake,
A game of jacks or patty-cake,
That lovely clapping sound they make,
I've looked at hands that way.
But now they only wave goodbye.
They squeeze and grope and make you cry,
Or simply poke you in the eye.
Hands think that that's okay.
I've looked at hands from both sides now
From out and in, and still somehow,
No matter if they're in or out
I don't know what it's all about.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎
D. A. Prince: Wordsworth Considers Sex Classes
Behold her single in the field
The worthy sex-instructor lass,
With visual aids and flip-chart pens
Preparing for a class.
Alone she maps her subject, straight
With male and female, Eden’s state,
And worries that they’ll laugh at ‘sperm’
while sniggering at the rhyme with ‘worm’.
Has no one told her it’s old hat
These binary old-fashioned ways,
That gender fluid this-and-that
and IVF bring kids these days.
Mission’ry position is no more,
Things are not as they were before.
I wished her well in her intent
And sadly on my way I went.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎
Marshall Begel: Doggerel by a Senior of Penzance
(With apologies to Auden and Gilbert)
I am the very model of a modern senior citizen.
I'd recognize a beatnik quote regardless of the bit it's in.
I know my words per minute on electric and on manual.
My cottage garden uses heirloom seeds for every annual.
I pay long-distance charges on my rented land-line telephone.
But worked part-time through college so I wouldn't need a student loan.
I don't need avocado toast, my water porridge suits me fine.
I wish that kids had manners like we did in 1969!
⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎
Dominic Palmer: Stopping by Bikes on an Autumn Evening
Whose sheds these are I think I know,
But he'll have gone home long ago.
He will not see me here, irate,
Amongst his bike racks in a row.
My metal steed would curse my fate
If it could talk or ruminate:
Shut in, a rather scary plight
As time goes by and it grows late.
I twist the handle left and right,
But no, the door is still locked tight.
The only thought that comes to me:
Will I be stuck at school all night?
Then through the Plexiglass I see
A fellow cyclist – and I'm free!
It’s time to go and have my tea,
It’s time to go and have my tea.
⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎ ⸎
Bruce McGuffin: Pando
I think that I shall never see
Another such enormous tree.
It’s forty thousand trunks display
Exactly matching DNA.
For every single trunk’s a shoot,
All growing from a common root.
The root spreads ever outward, and so
Those who know it call it Pando*.
And folks in Utah note with pride
That Pando’s spread out two miles wide.
In Oregon they roll their eyes
When Utahns try to claim that prize,
For though this tree may be humongous
It’s smaller than their giant fungus.
* I don’t know Latin but I’ve read
That Pando’s Latin for “I spread”
