It's a Small World After All
"Lake Buena Vista FL...performers who play
Snow White must be trained to deal with men
who occasionally grope or talk dirty to them"
--News Item, New York Times, October 6, 1996

Okay, girly-girls, that's it
For today's Snow White class.
Now you know what you've go to do
When some guy grabs your ass.

Tomorrow will be easier.
Be here at ten-thirty.
Tomorrow you'll learn what to say
When they start talking dirty.

Oh, and girls, one final lesson?
I'll make this one a quickie--
When you're walking out on Main Street,
Don't turn your back on Mickey.

In Lieu of a Christmas Card

The Bellboy's Christmas
The Biblical scholars assembled.
At the hotel I watched them convene
And heard them assert in their seminars
How false was the Bethlehem scene.

Not a single shepherd appeared, they said,
Much less a miraculous star,
And as for the Magi, they murmured,
What a marvelous myth they are.

But out with the rats in the hotel's alley
Where the dumpsters block the sky,
I swear on that cold December morning
I heard Christ in a newborn's cry.

Marlboro Man
I strip the cellophane and rip the foil
And see the tops of tubes where Death
Is advertised to crouch and coil.

Body tells Soul another dirty joke:
It strikes a match, takes a breath,
And sucks in again some dirty smoke.

Entia Non Sunt Multiplicanda
You don't know me, Dr. Ockham,
But I represent Gillette,
And we think your marvelous old razor
Has some profit in it yet.

Now, we're a company respectful of
Lines with a long tradition--
Especially ones with a universal
Brand-name recognition.

We've learned through our market research
That yours is a snob-appealer
Which could be sold through every sort of
Neiman-Marcus kind of dealer.

Our focus groups inform us that you're known
To the college educated,
And that entia slogan of yours--
It will never be outdated.

And to think you've made your way this far
Without a hint of TV time!
To grow so famous by mere word of mouth
Approaches the sublime!

If you let us purchase the subsidiary rights
To the tool that you've devised,
Gillette's got the wherewithal to see
That it's properly advertised.

We'll get us a celebrity spokesman--
Michael Jordan comes to mind--
To tell the world that Ockham's Razor
Is the best a man can find.

Did I hear myself say "a man" just then?
How terribly narrow-minded!
Not to see the world's half female
Is totally to be blinded.

Oh yes, in case you haven't noticed,
Women grow hair upon their legs.
Between us we can make those lovely limbs
Smoother than robins' eggs.

Not to mention their underarms, Dr. Ockham:
Each woman has a pair of pits
Where day by day superfluous hair
Grows out by starts and fits.

Foresighted, surely you can see that ours
Is a Merger Made on High.
The market share we could command is...
As unlimited as the sky!

Allow us to make you rich, Dr. Ockham,
Beyond your wildest dream.
Just put you signature on this contract
And join the sharpest team...

And what did William of Ockham say
In the face of this hard sell?
True to his Principle he told the man,
"Take the shortest road to Hell!"

PROGNOSIS

Death will likely come for me

Cackling and joking

(On his face a hunter's leer)

And find me finally

With a cigarette smoking

And a can of cold cheap beer.

PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION

Why is it that man is so

Given over to pondering?

Isi it because there is or is not

An ultimate yondering?

THE LOOSE TOOTH

Like an old Amsterdam whore

In a dockside red-lit window,

All bawdy wink and leer and giggle,

It says to the passing tongue,

"Hey there, sailor, lighten up--

Come on over and give me a jiggle."

Whitman, Thou Shouldst Be Living...
Oh, my profligate America--
So many acres of grass set aside
For those who play golf
And those who have died.


On Biographies
I love to read the big fat lives
Of the poets finally dead:
It's so much easier than reading
The life in the lines they said.


Genesis Fragment
Adam had a single son.
Then begat a second.
They grew apart together,
And so The Serpent beckoned.

One turned out a farmer.
The other one a herder.
O primal Western movie!
What issue else but murder?

Curriculum Vitae

Gone are my feverish boyhood years

And those of my adolescent rage.

Ah, grown up now I maturely move

Toward my serene and senile age.

Another Southern Spring

I watch the magnolias flower this April

As the days go by from wet to warm,

Waiting again to see how the blooms

Pass from a phallic to a vulvate form.

Saeva Indignatio

You think the Irish are all dreamy poetry,

Blarney, Guinness, and nothing more?

I remind you: they invented the boycott, kneecapping,

And urban guerrilla war.

The Enthusiast

A bee in his bonnet?

Sakes alive!

That boy, he got himself

A goddamned hive.

Melvillean

There is in each of us somewhere

When told You've Got To

A Bartleby who wants to say,

"I would prefer not to.

Keeping Up with the Oops
Conspicuous consumption is a human constant:
A fact that archaeology reveals.
Even prehistoric man wanted wider caves,
Thicker clubs, and bigger, rounder wheels.



Moralists
Ah, the preachers of my youth--
What a negative crew!
They rained on me, "Don't! Don't!Don't!"
And never a single "Do!"

The First of the Jewish Cowboys

I emigrated from Russia.
The pogroms drove me off.
I came down the gengplank at New York.
Oy, I had such a cough.

They said, Iz, go out to the Vest.
It's vild, but the air is tame.
I'm the foist of the Jewish cowboys.
Izzy Cohen is my name.

And I sing Ki-yi-yippee-ki-yi
And a Hava Nagila, true.
If you vas a Jewish cowboy
You'd sing the same vay, too.

I got me a shooter vot shoots six
And I leased myself a horse.
I named half dot horse Nicholas
After the Tsar of course.

And I sing, etc.

I ride and rope the longhorns.
I drive 'em to Santa Fe
And as I drive them dogies along
I yell out a loud, "Oy, veh!"

And I sing, etc.

I vent with the boys to Miss Kitty's.
Dere was shiksas everywhere
And vot's vorst of all, them shiksas,
Dey ran around half bare.

And I sing, etc.

I'm buying me some kettle.
I've got two dozen head
I'll use the Mogen for my brand
The day I own a spread.

And I sing, etc.

Yes, I'm going to have me a rench
And bring Rachel from New York.
We'll eat brisket cut from our own cows
And never cook up pork.

And I sing, etc.

I'm going to raise me up some sons,
A dozen, maybe more
And ven they're grown I'll set them up
In a Dallas drygoods store.

And I sing, etc.

I'm glad I live here in Texas
And not in a Russian town,
'Cause if I vas to see a Cossack here
I could up and shoot him down.

And I sing Ki-yi-yippee-ki-yi
And a Hava Nagila, true.
If you was to see a Cossack here,
You'd shoot the bestard, too.

Thoreauvian
Contrariwise, contrariwise
Is how you should lead your life:
Told to march to a different drum,
Listen for a fife.

Alternate History
How different things would be
On this sorrowful globe
If Mother Eve had been
An ophidiophobe.

A Metaphor for Irony

A metaphor for irony?

Nothing simpler, nothing neater:

Having diabetes makes

One's ice cream all the sweeter.