Furor Scribendi
I waste paper,
I waste ink,
Just to see just
What I think.


Insecticide
"Cleanliness was rudimentary; one of the highest
paid members of the hospital (Guy's) staff was
the bug-catcher."
        --John Keats, The Making of a Poet, Aileen Ward
'Ere's me bucket, Mr. Keats. See wot a good day I've 'ad:
Nineteen roaches, big around as yer thumb in size,
Forty beetles, an', Lord luv us, two hundred and ten
Of the very worst of all--them fuckin' pesky flies.


A Cold Dish
Ms. Ruth Lilly left a fortune
To a poetry magazine
In the hallowed pages of which
No verse of hers was ever seen.

Year after year from Chicago
To Indiana rejections came.
Still, Ms. Lilly wrote on and on
While lesser poets tasted fame.

Dejected, did she weep and wipe
Tears away with Kleenex tissue?
No. She cracked the whip of her will.
Now her name's in every issue.


The Old Formalist at a Picnic
Eating little, he drank a lot of warm wine.
It affected his speech, his use of words.
Eventually he saw in a nearby meadow
Nothing but hummingflies and butterbirds.


Six Characters in Search of an Author
Juliet and Romeo
In their balcony scene
Othello being jealous
Iago cunningly mean
Hamlet in his castle
Lear upon the heath--
Always William Shakespeare
Lurking underneath.


The Miracle of Paper
With it we can safely preserve
The thoughts of great minds,
And also, more importantly,
Cleanse our bare behinds.


Consciousness
A mystery that will always be
Forever and forever unknown:
How did mind arise in such a bag
Of meat, blood, gristle, and bone?


Sligo Verse
Not sure, they took some bones
And sank them in Sligo ground.
Auden put them in a poem,
Pleased with its rhyming sound.

For all we know the bones
Irish gravel and dirt cover
Are those of some French villager
Murdered by his wife's lover.

No matter. The poet said to lie
Under an admonishing stone
Had he been live and told of it
Would have made the tale his own.