Stirring

A troubled conscience robs the rest,

Pressing the pillowed heart to motion.

Fretful signs of troubled times

Pry the puffed eye open.

Bed bugs prick the mouth and skin

And bring the prone physique to life

And I have heard by muffled word

That so might do a wife.

Langor drowns in tropic sweat

Burnt baking stabs the snoring nose

But if insomnia is, once more, to score

Let a lightning storm take my repose.

INSOMNIA, n. A prerequisite for sleeping in.

The Well Designed Man

My fingers cramp, my arms don't bend

My neck is sore, I'm near the end,

My teeth are loose, my ears are waxy

My stomach's fraught and hot and laxy

My feet are blistered, toes grown furry,

My knees are stiff, sometimes I worry

My soul's grown vacant, skull has too

It's a shame what years will do

Hollowed, hardened, round and dangled

Thirsty, falling, unfilled, tangled

Yet I know rising, buoyant hope

As a bucket on a rope.

LEAK, n. A supply-side sip.

Versity Training

Some rhyme, some meter, perhaps a point

And then our jests we must anoint-

Behold, a new authority,

Listen, now, at last, to me:

A misty forest's just the place

To wander in a state of grace,

Where death and lilies wander 'bout

On paws and metaphors for doubt

Where love and thorns and meadows nourish

The Condors, tribes and pegasi who flourish

In the oft trod land of plaintive verses

Or funny rhymes and snores and worstest.

VERSIFIER, n. A diligent babbler. High mukmuk and secretary-treasurer to the Glossolallians.

A Redneck Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers;

I've known rivers as long as long that start as mountain dew and that distill handily in all the things I brew.

My wisdom has grown damp like the rivers.

I bathed in the Colorado, just yesterday it seems

And build deer blinds by the Chattahoochee in all my better dreams

I looked down upon the Platte to reflect Hank, Junior's face

I sang Kern River by the Kern River and imagined lands of native sons where rivers run too wide to jump, and there's no work that needs done but tools every place.

I've known rivers:

Bubbly, lady rivers.

My wisdom is wet like the rivers.

RIVER, n. A natural border, dividing mice from fish.

Dawn of the Fall

The day has come to change the season

Though years like this, there seems no reason

No gold nor rust or scarlet's expected

From leaves that summer ne'er detected.

And the shafts of autumn cannot wither

What shoots in Spring did not deliver.

AUTUMN, n. A season for humility located between the seasons of sloth and disappointment.

A Redneck Love Song

I hauled my ol' gal off the porch

Yee-haw, darlin! Yee-haw!

And sawr her grinnin' 'neath the torch

Yee-haw, darlin, yee haw.

We puht 'ur signs an' t-shirts on

Jump-start the truck and then we're gone

Yee-haw, darlin! Yee-haw!

The skoal we dip is cool and moist

Yee-haw, sugar, Yee-haw!

And Sarah Palin's in fine voice

Yee-haw, honey, yee-haw!

The angus bull' s nary as proud

As I git when my gal protests loud.

Yee-haw, darlin! Yee-haw.

I look at her peepers, she caught mine, too!

Hot dog, darlin, yee-haw!

And I reckoned what we oughter do:

Yee haw, sweetheart, yee-haw!

Is pawn her fourteen carat pendant,

Sell hogs, pitch hay, vote "independent,"

End the FED an' repeal the fourteenth amendment.

Yee-haw, Darlin, Yee haw!

TEA PARTY, n. A do si do to quote De Toqueville.

This is my stab at Susan's microfiction Monday, but not concise and on the intermittent Wednesday. You can (and should) read the original of this poem by clicking the post title. And TLP gets her wish here.

Dividing by two

Noah filled his might ship

With pairs of he and she,

And no record from that trip

Upon that wrathful sea

Suggest he suffered confoundation

O'er any critter's assignation.

And yet it seems we modern brothers

Despite our gentle waves

Have trouble telling some from others

Or comparing cribs and graves.

God blessed Noah with more than warning

To know first night from fortieth morning.

And as we struggle to discern,

What distinctions now elude us?

The more we know and more we learn

The more the wise neighbor colludes

The more the scholar deeply delves

The less comes between objects and ourselves.

The stormy, wrath-roiled, boiling sea

That washed the ark to Ararat

Or the modern, gridhewn clarity?

I cannot choose 'tween ours and that

Though the foaming waves reflect much clearer

Than the peaceful lake flat as a mirror.

-Friedrich Schiller

DISCRIMINATION, n. The faculty to behave differently towards distinctive entities, such as discretion and bigotry or subjects and objects.

Juggling

An ancient art of flame or pin,

Juggling grants relief from sin

For what could ever be more pious

Than to keep aloft the weights that try us?

But the objects we raise with the hand

Don't err nor grieve on air or land

While as our tribulations mount

It's we who are held to account.

So I wonder if, when heaven's scoring,

Bouncing ain't as grand as soaring.

JUGGLE, v. To deprive a planet the company of its kin.

Mingent

Just the other night,

On bright moonlit bluff

O'er a river bedotted with boulder,

I met Assemblyman Smythe

Looking pale, talking tough,

And growing each moment both madder and older.

The wind gave a yowl,

In the distance wolves bayed,

And the pillar pulled the cigar from his tongue.

He jiggled his jowl,

Lowered eyes like he prayed

And recalled when his office was but recently won.

"I answered the call,"

His voice rumbled and wavered,

"That the people sent me to protect them-

I sheltered them all,

Returned every favor

And dispatched hordes of functionaries to inspect them."

He looked down at the foam

And the hard stones below,

Gave a sigh and let out with a shiver.

He lowered his dome,

But I pulled him back fro

and cried, "Sir, you mustn't, or you'll pollute the river."

MINGENT, adj. Self-wetting, as voters in a dry county.

Little leviathan

Was it not Hobbes who said that fancy

Is decaying of the sense?

And the dreams that come come along

As our sense relents?

Invention is that fancy

As it's copied into being

When hands describe the fading thought

Of objects we'd been seeing.

So what is this creative spark

That quickens blogging bards?

The decaying of our own sweet selves

Into dots on memory cards?

CREATIVITY, n. The final flourish of a fading complaint.

Avernus

AVERNUS, n. The lake by which the ancients entered the infernal regions. The fact that access to the infernal regions. The fact that access to the infernal regions was obtained by a lake is believed by the learned Marcus Ansello Scrutator to have suggested the Christian rite of baptism by immersion. This, however, has been shown by Lactantius to be an error.

Facilis descensus Averni,

The poet remarks; and the sense

Of it is that when down-hill I turn I

Will get more punches than pence.

Jehal Dai Lupe

2010 Update: A lake in southern Italy by which the Italians entered Hell before there were roads to Rome.

O Avernus, thy mirrored waters shew mine face and God's sky,

I trust thou'lt carry both under whene'er I die.

-Narcissus Smytheberry

Advice to my mother, after her birthday

No one would get appendicitis

Without vestigial organs still inside us.

A century since cart and dray

Horses still kick folks for play.

Abaci defy our youth,

Fifty years since such were couth,

Though Terpsichore no longer touches,

Dancers hobble on on crutches.

I guess that what I'm trying to say

Is relics still may rule the day.

VESTIGE, n. The looming tyrant of an earlier age.

Macrobian

MACROBIAN, n. One forgotten of the gods and living to a great age. History is abundantly supplied with examples, from Methuselah to Old Parr, but some notable instances of longevity are less well known. A Calabrian peasant named Coloni, born in 1753, lived so long that he had what he considered a glimpse of the dawn of universal peace. Scanavius relates that he knew an archbishop who was so old that he could remember a time when he did not deserve hanging. In 1566 a linen draper of Bristol, England, declared that he had lived five hundred years, and that in all that time he had never told a lie. There are instances of longevity (macrobiosis) in our own country. Senator Chauncey Depew is old enough to know better. The editor of The American, a newspaper in New York City, has a memory that goes back to the time when he was a rascal, but not to the fact. The President of the United States was born so long ago that many of the friends of his youth have risen to high political and military preferment without the assistance of personal merit. The verses following were written by a macrobian:

When I was young the world was fair
And amiable and sunny.
A brightness was in all the air,
In all the waters, honey.
The jokes were fine and funny,
The statesmen honest in their views,
And in their lives, as well,
And when you heard a bit of news
'Twas true enough to tell.
Men were not ranting, shouting, reeking,
Nor women "generally speaking."

The Summer then was long indeed:
It lasted one whole season!
The sparkling Winter gave no heed
When ordered by Unreason
To bring the early peas on.
Now, where the dickens is the sense
In calling that a year
Which does no more than just commence
Before the end is near?
When I was young the year extended
From month to month until it ended.

I know not why the world has changed
To something dark and dreary,
And everything is now arranged
To make a fellow weary.
The Weather Man — I fear he
Has much to do with it, for, sure,
The air is not the same:
It chokes you when it is impure,
When pure it makes you lame.
With windows closed you are asthmatic;
Open, neuralgic or sciatic.

Well, I suppose this new regime
Of dun degeneration
Seems eviler than it would seem
To a better observation,
And has for compensation
Some blessings in a deep disguise
Which mortal sight has failed
To pierce, although to angels' eyes
They're visible unveiled.
If Age is such a boon, good land!
He's costumed by a master hand!

—Venable Strigg

2010 Update: One whose span exceeds her grasp. A 47-year-old.

When I was young and spirits holy,

The earth revolved for my sake solely

But as I've since grown lined and gray

The world has turned another way,

Corrupt with greed and debauchery-

Nothing that it learned from me!

Cruel people with mendacious friends,

The missionary who now lends,

Among these, senior to an elephant

At last aware, now I'm irrelevant.

-Anne Bronte

Now, happy birthday for reals to Actonbell.

The Routes of Laredo

I crossed a man upon the road

In cloak and hat and glasses,

He stepped and leapt from shade to tree

And whispers as he passes.

We came upon, the sneak and I,

A third man in the ditch

Mugged or stabbed or well run-down,

I couldn't tell you which.

Alarmed we were, the spy and I,

To that I can attest,

By the bruises on the third man's head

And the cuts upon his breast.

"Go send for the doctor and the preacher as well,"

The hidden man's nod did imply.

And seeing the paranoid by the came-to-harm,

I gladly ran off to comply.

When I returned, their senses had left them

The injured lay dead under cloak

The sneak, in his skivvies, was stuck in the boughs,

Hiding, I think, though we never spoke.

Beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,

There's a lesson if you'd like to hear it-

If you're scared or unlucky, stay quiet and home,

Wherever you're heading, it's right that you fear it.

DESTINATION, n. The stop past your station.

Happy birthday eve to Actonbell!

Temptation, and its causes

Temptation holds a pride of place

In man and his endeavors

Gold and flesh e'er turn our knobs

And pull on all our levers.

In youth the shining, soft or certain

Drives the young to draw the curtain

And conspire against the very things

To which our hearts appert'in.

And then as we grow sad and wiser

Eternity inspires the miser

To prepare a lasting legacy

As life churns him to fertilizer.

But with my youth by now gone by

Through older eyes I see,

A sinful motor may turn my eye

But the devil driving is irony.

-Cyrus Moody

TEMPTATION, n. The nearest thing out of reach.

Returns

There are prices that never get bought

And wishes that never get caught

But old gamblers bet

That all their regret

Turns to chips in the next table's pot.

RETURN, n. The profit accumulated when a staggering fool meets a regimentary public.

Bloodthirsty

BLOODTHIRSTY, adj. Addicted to the wanton wasting of blood- which is probably very good to drink.

2010 Update: Sanguine, as a stranger. Unfamiliar.

A hangman told me, over beer,

"My job I can do free from fear."

I asked him, then, to tell me good,

Why cloak the sinner in a hood?

He answered, "Well, before I frees 'em,

I dress 'em as the jury sees them."

-Dresden Snappletort, Esq.

The Greater Grouch

A man I met upon a trail,

Bearded, bent and grim

He seemed so weary and so frail,

I thought at once of him,

That age will neuter every male

And so it's always been.

Sympathy rose in my eye

And must have reached the brim

For the old man looked up to reply

And raising a withered limb

Growled "youth falls from an empty sky

And thus it's ever been!"

-Labfej László

TRADITION, n. Coiled novelty.

Ruba'i for FIFA

Soccer joins our separate shores
And brings our world together.
A sport that cleaves us, man from man,
Is one that I'd like better.

-Gandhi

UNITY, n. Distance.

Independence Day 2010

As once again, July 4

Comes a-rapping at the door

The patriot's dilemma quickens

Beaks of macaws, eagles and chickens.

As we, chirpy, contemplate

Our nation's most auspicious date,

Consider flying in unity,

To form a letter besides "V."

-Winston Franklin

HONOR, n. Humility.