COMICALVERSESERNEST SLYMAN

 

Giraffe

Short-horned colossus
It's perfectly obvious.
You're one part spindly legs,
Nine parts esophagus.

Lightning Bugs

In my backyard
They burn peepholes in the night
And take snapshots of my house.

The Mouse Who Sees The Devil In The Yard

Consider the mouse.
It lives in a tiny madhouse
In the big madhouse, where sometimes it dares
To go and all night in the dark prowls.
Outside, it must keep a lookout for owls.
Though ordinarily the mouse scares Seldom.
Its business is burglary, for sure,
Safecracking, and cheese connoisseur.
The rodent species knows well
The mutabilty of mouse affairs,
It has a hole in every room,
But scarce feels a sense of doom,
Though death purrs
And dozes in the guest room
And swishes its tail at the ones so frail,
The mouse who has no soul,
The mouse who sees the devil in the yard,
Who scurries up the stairs, and eyes the hard
Impenetrable light of each dawn with scant disregard,
The mouse the escape artist,
The pillager, the poet, hero unsung
Its tiny pink tongue murmuring secrets, passions,
Bemoaning the rising hemlines of modern fashions--
The wisdom that man cannot begin to comprehend,
For only the mites in the carpet listen when mice speak,
The wonders of the universe in its squeak.

Chicken Feed

Asked why his chickens were exploding
Farmer Dodge told a reporter
He thought it had something to do
With that new feed he bought.
"They eat that stuff and get round
and fat, so fat they just blow up."

This is the exploding chicken ranch.
People come from all around the world
To watch chickens explode.

Don't make much of a ruckus
Most any other time.
But come afternoon one
Of them will pop. Sure enough.

So why do you suppose
That interests folks?
They like weird stuff,
They enjoy violence, I suppose.
They live maybe that real quiet life
And wish maybe
They could explode sometime.

Maybe they see something
In the blood and feathers
When the bird swells
And bursts like that.

They see God maybe.
Or Elvis. Could be.
All that blood and gore
Shock you.
Them bones fly out pretty quick
And show you things you never seen.

Mostly folks come to hear
That awful ominous burst.
Somebody say it's like a hand grenade
When two of them
Go off together.

You hear a chicken explode
You better cover your ears.
It ain't nothing to take lightly.

Burst your eardrums,
Scare your soul clean out of your body
When that noise come round.
Slap your face and grab you
Like it know you.

What you suppose it means?
They study it. They record it
At the college. They listen.

They say it means
Maybe chickens don't know much.
But you hear it
And you suspect chickens know plenty.
That's the sound of the truth.

And who listens nowadays, anyway.
And when people do hear
Something you bet they don't
Want to hear a chicken explode.
But they do. They come round.

Tickets all sold out for last week.
Five dollars for the matinee.
(Earplugs two bits.)
Come on and listen to them
Chickens blow up, America.

What makes it terrible
Is that eerie clucking sound the chickens
make right before they pop
Like a ghost coming straight for you.
Makes you feel funny, strange.

Make you think. And you know
For the first time you scared
Of everything in this world,
And you don't even know
Why you was born.

Destiny


Heaped upon Canadians' souls
Burdens so burdensome and manifold,
The fate of a great nation precarious, rocky--
Decided by a game of ice hockey.

Looking Backward At Richard Milhous Nixon's Resignation Speech

Thursday, August 8, 1974



.me elected you which to office of term
the complete to effort possible every make to,
persevere to duty my was it felt have I,
Watergate of period difficult and long the Throughout

....effort that continuing justify to Congress
the in base political enough strong a have longer
no I that me to evident become has it,
however, days few past the In

....involved have would it agony personal
the whatever finish the to through carry to preferred have would I
....Congress full-time a and President full-time
a needs America .first America of interests
the put must I President as But
.body my in instinct every to opposed is completed
is term my before office leave To
.quitter a been never have I


.home at inflation without prosperity
and abroad peace of issues great
the on be should focus entire our when period
a in Congress and President the both of attention
and time the absorb totally almost would vindication
personal my for ahead months the through fight to continue To.


.tomorrow noon at effective presidency the resign shall I, Therefore


Man of Science


Winston Mills was a modern man of science.
The epitome of defiance and self-reliance,
He was round and plump,
Frequently unhappy, brilliant and drunk.
He was disorderly, loud or lewd, though fanatical.
And every other year he took his sabbatical,
And immediately set out to prove the mathematical impossibility
Of numbers that reached beyond infinity. He was world famous.
Everyone knew his name. And because he was genius,
No one thought he was crude. Even though he boasted
He had belched in the face of the three American presidents
And twelve members of Parliament.
He had once or twice threatened to be nice,
But he never delivered. He heard in his conscious
A jumble of voices, all of whom called to him at odd moments
And their queer wisecracks made all the little happy thoughts disappear,
Which was why he drank so. That terrible day he dropped,
Lying face down in the snow, his heart suddenly stopped,
The headline in the newspaper mourned his passing,
He was the mad scientist, the gaunt faced genius with wild hair,
A great man who once professed a distaste for gravity.
He had a exceptional gift for depravity,
For science, numbers, gin, despair.

Reflections In A Full-Length Mirror

In full-length mirrors, we are weightless,
Shimmering, bobbing in the shiny cool surface
Of Caribbean lake, our tiny island inhabited by tailors.
The ghostly spectacle of innerselves
Haunts so utterly, so perfectly,
Scarcely visible the human body--
And what state of transparency lunges
Forth from the glass to brush the vanity
Impulse away?
And why are we all mysteriously soothed by the emptiness
That swirls around us, behind us, the many scented rooms
Filled with flowers and endless permutations
Of tenderness and surfaces flickering,
A good portion of ours souls missing, misplaced--
A limb taken by surprise, our head lopped off,
The disappearance of ourselves entirely,
And yet we can see someone there.
He mourns our passing,
Brims with a sense of dread
For the loss of an admirer
Who came and fondly found
Something long forgot and finding it, fled.

Seltzer


Hear the fizz
remark upon the eternal verities,
when twist the lid
undone such murmurs soft
wash the body clean
and sparkling cool
of guilt, greed,
tidy the brain
and refresh
the dead fields
upon which stand
the weary soldiers
of sovereign foreign land.

The Poetic Foot

Verse’s basic unit of measurement ---
the foot consists of one accented syllable
accompanied by one or two unaccented syllables.

The accented syllable may precede
or follow either one or two unaccented syllables
in a regularly recurring sequence throughout the line.

The iamb or iambic foot --- the most common in English verse.
Various principal types of foot found in English verse
include trochee, trochaic, anapest, dactyl feet,
each consisting of 26 bones ---
Seven thick, short, tarsal bones
compose the heel and back of the instep;
five parallel metatarsal bones,
which form the front of the instep,
spread toward the front of the foot
to form the ball. A verse may have
a unlimited number of feet.

One foot has fourteen smaller phalanges
which makeup the toes; the large toe is composed of two,
and each smaller toe is made up of three.

All the bones are firmly connected
by tough bands of tissue called words.
The verse proceeds on foot,
on good footing or bad,
foot by foot the verse moves.

Some tenderfoot or crow’s foot.
Some verses have one foot in the grave.
Some poets on poor footing.
Web footed club footed barefooted
hop around on one foot
for an interminable time
and get no where.

The verse with its splay foot,
the verse with the hot foot,
light footed nimble footed
with a foot in the stirrup.
The sure-footed verse.

When one writes verse
one puts one's foot down
and underfoot one may get trampled.

The verse written well enough
to wet one's feet.
Verses wear slippers on their feet.
One’s feet should not stink too much.
If feet are sore they should be soaked
in a tub of Epsom salts.

With the thick layer of fatty tissue
under the sole, these flexible arches
absorb pressure and the shocks
of walking and jumping.

Foot. A unit of rhythm or meter,
the division in verse of a group of syllables,
one of which is long or accented.

The most common poetic feet used in English verse
are small pink and with little toes.
Though there are large feet with big toes.
Many feet have musical qualities,
and are so named for their bird-like calls.

The spondee is speckled and lives in Brazil.
Since immersion into modern civilization,
harshly influenced by industrial society,
and the rising rate of illiteracy ---
some feet have taken on unsavory characteristics ---
for example, the snapping amphibrach,
red-breasted antibacchius, flying antispast,
horn-rimmed bacchius, nocturnal choriamb,
hooded cretic, siamese diiamb, lop-eared dispondee,
double-crested dochmius, scarlet molossus,
the proceleusmatic builds its nests in pine forests,
the saliva-spitting pyrrhic as well
and the gum-chewing tribrach,
plus two variations of the web-footed ionic,
four variations of the white-winged epitrite,
and four variations of the man-eating paeon.

The structure of a poetic
classification of verse is determined
by the dominant foot.

Do not, please, step on my feet.
My foot is sprained.
My cat dozes at the foot of my bed.

I have given the lacker the foot.
I found a volume of verse in a footlocker.

Pigeon-toed feet.
Athlete's feet infected by fungi.
Some lint my take up residence between feet.

The foot is subject to numerous deformities
and disabilities, including flatfoot,
which is caused by weakened muscles
and ligaments of the arch.

Deformities can result from shortening of muscles and tendons.
The foot is also a frequent site of arthritis, including gout.

We should not let the grass
grow under the verse’s feet.
Some verses have pig's feet,
crow's feet.

Cut the ground from under the verse’s feet.
Verses light on their feet,
Verses that land on their feet;
or suffer the cold feet.

Bunions on their feet.
The verse springs to it feet.
Verse as lovely as these,
as lovely I shall never see.
Pale bloom the lovely
flat rosy feet of free verse,
and my nose the martyr be.

Le Trough

Avez-vous turnip greens? You got?
Roast chicken gizzards smothered with truffles?
We hungry, eat a horse raw in french sauce or not.
It the grand opening at Le Trough, one them fancy
restaurant chains
specializing in southern dishes
fixed in the traditional french style.

It gall-dang, gosh-darn, mighty powerful,
lip-smackin finger-licking good.
Union of the haute cuisine of two great countries.
Le Trough is French-Dixie. Exquisite and rare entrees—
polecat a la normande, porkchop sur le plat,
pickled ham aux fines herbes, cauliflower cake,
skunk Newburg, dandelion au gratin,
tadpole flamed in brandy, turkey giblet
aux duselles or just plain meatballs des nouilles?

Avez vous, hamhocks, sil vous plait?
Some fried clam omelet, plate of scratch biscuits,
bowl of gravy, a whole bunch of Charles DeGaulle corndogs,
trois juicy Johnny Jumbo burgers with a heapin' tall
side order of Giant Jacks onion rings, tout de suite.

Mess of Bobo pie, fried green tomatoes
swimming in blue cow-tail cheese.
Give me a helping of them sour cream fritters?
Glazed ham. A bag of them tasty Davy Crocket barbecue
des pommes frites, and I'll wash it all down with a glass
of Snake Eyes beer.

At breakfast, a bowl of Colonel Quacks rice cereal,
the breakfast of good ol boys. Two dozen frozen Fat N Fancy cinnamon rolls,
three scrambled eggs, a side of Smoky Mountain grits,
six pork sausages, two stacks of flapjacks
and a pot of Robert E. Lee coffee,
the preferred hot beverage of the confederate army,
endorsed by Robert E. himself
and 'still the best dang stuff that ever wuz'.

Le Trough is buzzing with hungry southern people.
The butter and egg kind of folks who don't count calories
or fat content. They love to eat up a storm.
Pretty much you can count on their appetites being large.
You taste them stompers, a kind of meatloaf made from squirrel,
blended with cornmeal and whiskey, fried on a grill
and served between two slices of cornbread.

Appetizers at Le Trough include acorn cookies,
owl crackers, sweet tweeties and nutty pops,
and down the line on a highly successful array
of snack foods from Big Belly enterprises,
which include Frosty Finger candy bars,
Boo-Hoo crackers, (the cracker so good it makes you cry)
and Mystery mints and Fink gumballs
and Juicy juice, a carbonated beverage,
and a chocolate drink called Muddy Moo.

Delightful and exotic southern delicacies
as squirrel pate, turnip de frois gras,
Grandma Huddles tangy chicken wings
simmered in moonshine sauce, apple oil,
goober peas, bubble gum, honeysuckle soup,
pecan pie with a crispy mooncrust,
rabbit bouillon cubes, dandelion mustard,
Daniel Boone baked beans, Jimmy Dean greens
and Elvis Presley fishsticks.

Not to mention, Big Foot peanut butter,
crunchy and smooth.

And don't forget the puree de grits de terre,
Dixie pommes in robe des champs,
plateau de pork sausages, cuisses de grenouilles,
specialite du chef possum souffli, cabbage ratatouille,
chicken gizzard au pistou, sur commande pigfeet,
varmint vol-au-vent, salamander supreme and beaver bordelaise.
Southern cuisine kicking up southern-style dishes---
cornbread muffins, green bean casserole, hickory nut pie,
fried chitlins in brown sauce, rabbit gizzards
swimming in buttermilk, possum belly rice,
roast duck, poached carp and chicken neck stew.

In the giftshop, grab a bag of Appalachian Trail mix,
which comes in two flavors. Mild and wild.
The milds has gooseberries, pecans and beef jerky in it.
The wild's full of everything from pulverized bullhorn,
cornflakes, buzzard bits to pig rinds and dried fruits
like smoked apricots, raisins. A scattering of sunflower seeds
dipped in snuff, and once in a while you'll taste a pinch
of gunpowder, a sprinkle of jalapeno pepper to keep away
the mosquitoes and, in general, makes you feel strong as a grizzly bear.

Le Trough is east Tennessee's first drive-in Dixie-French Truckstop.
Reservations are recommended, as the crowds of folks get wind
of the unique combinations of them cultures thrown together.
Mixed up and jumbled sideways to amuse and confuse the tastebuds.

Right nicely.

Footnote

No one will
ever be around to hear
the cry of the footnote
and for the best reasons,
it knows and tells
about such secrets
that would lift
a city, as upon its back
now bearing away
the best of reasons,
hard, heavy as an historical fact
the footnote turns into an animal,
a psychical
conditioned reflex,
a transformation
which is characteristic
of a great truth.
It is something else --
a star that falls
to the earth,
its life short
as a snowflake.

Banjo

One hears in its yammering
barnyard sound
God's hoot in the ear,
sets loose the lunatic fool
inside us,
and we're the barefoot plowboy
chewing on a straw,
high-voiced, peculiar naivete
finds in us the good life.
Ain't nothing like a banjo,
tell your fortune, suck
you toes, heart squawk
like a plucked chicken,
somebody twisting its neck,
you one shocking stringed instrument
of the lute family,
twang me a perfect world
scarcely inhabited by sin,
mad child gone skinny-dipping,
yokel spitting tobacco, sliding down
the hills of Appalachia,
dixie in our intestines,
kidneys wearing a strawhat,
all green meadow that tune
that makes us jump,
grow them long rabbitears,
and come out that plink
the holy gosh darn truth
which only hillbillies know.
World be saved by the clink
that come from strings
and the circular wood hoop
over which is stretched a vellum belly
on which the world dances
along a moonshine sky.
The Holy Ghost's a hillbillie,
we all ache to believe
like that, yelp, gulp,
kissing horses, bobbing up and down
in that bluegrass joy,
shouting for somebody come
save us. The way he holds
your up by long, narrow, fretted neck;
and you a banjo. You a plink
and you a pig out of the barn,
you throw back your head and yodel,
and children come running,
yapping metal
wound goat gut strings.
The strings all angel gut,
Christ in there, yeah,
(what he doing?)
he gone and come back,
them three wisemen, Mother Mary,
Joseph, they burst out
and kiss you,
they fire and mind you
don't nobody know what they mean,
plink live in heaven,
gotta hang out in the square dance,
cry for mercy, squeal. Proud profound,
giggling banjo
plinking at death and love --
showing off your big soul
that bring the shock of birth,
that wonder plum full
of commonalty, the low life,
the great unwashed swinish multitude,
ragtag, one of the people,
churl, chuff, clown,
every clodhopper, bumpkin,
hayseed, lunkhead, tiller
of the soil, hewers of wood
and drawers of water, gaffer, loon,
lumpkin, nobody one knows,
sorry, scrubby, beggarly salt,
yodel up, plink me.


Ten Commandments of Poetry

1. Cling to the phrase not there.
2. Bear astonishment everywhere.
3. Keep a lookout for wild metaphors.
4. Hide the bodies of your victims.
5. Know the precious light that renders a work whole
is the thing that turns it pale.
6. Make yourself invisible. Lose your soul.
7. Leap into the fire. Be indestructible and frail.
8. Keep the peace. Start a war.
9. Abscond the perverse. Favor extremes.
10.Enter the next life by any means.

Southern Dracula

This time he's a good ol' boy,
got a big belly,
lives in little house
on a dirt road.

Ain't he pretty? That him
in his overalls and suspenders.
He one dixie redneck, chaw-chewing,
cussingest fella,
spit on the ground,
grin and burp.

He get that tingly feeling,
can't hep himself,
evil get the best of him,
come that zesty, mouth-filling
itch to suck
on people, cows, pigs, slurp!

He sleep during the day
up in the hayloft.
Come down the ladder
and bite the mule
on the nose,
an unctuous smoky flavor
and afterward, he clean his palate
with a swig of horse urine.

He been dead long time.
Seem only last month
come the civil war.
He bit Robert E. Lee.


Once, he seen dawn,
craziest thing,
light eat him up
like a deluxe plate of grits
at the Betty & Bob diner,
his innards squirm,
boil, gurgle, spit,
give him a headache,
break a bone in his big toe,
cause he run into the wall.

Dark make him feel big,
nights he goes dancing,
once at the VFW
he was wiggling
the two-step,
got his eye on this red head,
when her husband snapped,
Dracula turned into a possum.

Hang from a tree
by his tail, you know.
Wait, there on a limb,
eye the pickings
and come by he leap down,
get you. Sure enough.

Slup your blood,
it got a lemonie taste,
some blood like an onion,
make him cry,
preacher blood make him laugh,
a mouthful of it, squirt
down. Burp.

Gotta watch his weight,
cause fat in the blood
of hillbillies.
That incredible flinty aroma
of a whole truck full
of hayridin' born-again Christians
which he bit one after the other
fast, done give him a hangover.
That lingering acidic buzz
which make him walk crooked.

He got so drunk
he went to church on Sunday evening
and sudden, come upon him
the holy spirit, and he ain't
bit nobody since.
Lessen they was real sweet-looking.

Dog cherry-blood
and horse raspberry-blood,
either way you got
to bite country people
when they ain't
expected it.

They throw rocks at him,
if they see him coming.
Them bible-beating country people
can throw rocks.
He turned into a polecat.

Country folks got the most delicious blood.
Very subtle nuances,
really interesting. Burp.

Yeah, he's a little odd,
he love the south,
traded Transylvania
for Smokey mountains, country music.
Conway Twitty, Johnny Cash,
Ernest Tubb, Dolly Parton,
it's in his blood.

He hate the blood of city folk.
them sour apples.
He'd rather eat a squash.

Ever After

In Las Vegas,
Everyone's on their honeymoon.
Each Saturday night
It's the month of June,
And everybody's either
Bride or groom,
And around every corner,
Up and down the street,
There's a parish,
Gaudy and garish,
Where you may promise to cherish
One another. Or, all the more nightmarish,
Charter a boat and gurgle I do underwater
Or your vows breathless repeat
While falling from an airplane,
Faces white as a bedsheet,
The groom with half a brain,
The bride two-thirds,
And between the two
Be happy as birds.
Tweet, tweet.

Common Personality Disorders In Fruits & Vegetables

In Mrs Hubble's kitchen,
oranges like old men in raincoats.
Peaches long to be a lamb chop.
Celery wants to be rabbit.
Lettuce loves a girl named Mary.

Plums hold life holy.
Pineapples want to feel
the sadness of cantaloupes,
the life of old grapes.
Potatoes dream of girls in bikinis.
Yams want only to save the world.

Zucchini believes in the hereafter.
Radishes wake to sunlight of heartburn.
Jalapeno peppers close their eyes
and whisper soft obscenities.
Cucumbers wince at the chimes
of the living room clock.
Squash doesn't know why it was born.
Carrots read books.
Corn craves a shot of liquor.

Her Ladyship

How gentle the gentleman,
How fair her ladyship,
Her mainsail, her boom,
Her rigging fore-and-aft.
She sails around a room,
A self-propelled seacraft,
The wind her beau to please--
She has seldom met rough seas.
And graceful drift her fingers
In the waves of her hair,
And many drowned sailors
Can be found there.


Ernest_Slyman@worldnet.att.net


Born in Appalachia, Ernest Slyman lives in New York City. He is a member of the Alsop Review.
He has been widely published in The Laurel Review, The Lyric, Light: A Quarterly
of Light Verse (Chicago), The NY Times, Reader's Digest and The Bedford Introduction
to Literature, St Martins Press, edited by Michael Meyer, as well as Poetry:
An Introduction, St Martins Press, edited by Michael Meyer)



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