Nonsense verse
1
Dwaky shaped a house of corn
Beneath the trees of green bamboo
Snarkley made a rude remark
To the lady with a shoe
“Snarker’s corners is the other way,”
remarked the horn-rimmed toad.
“Just follow all the blue blank signs
on the old Branker’s Road.”
The silent child named Jointless Chin
Tried not to laugh out loud
As tree drunkard piano-playing Sam
Passed on his yellow cloud
“Yo ho!” said Blinker Noon
“Does this road go very far?”
“No, Joe,” said Louker Tune,
“Not if you have a car.”
“If I had a car would I ask you now?”
said Blinker Noon surprised.
But Louker Tune just looked at Noon
Then flew up to the sky.
And Blinker Noon would just as soon
Walk away in shame
Than ask the Tune if it would be his ruin
He could not pronounce his name
The spiffy new joint at Maker’s Point
Should have some pecan pie
But Blinker Noon looked at Louker Tune
High up in the sky.
“Never you mind, I’ve got the time
and it’s time for me to go away,”
for the lady with a shoe named Paradise Sue
boarded a ship named Chainy Tray
Blinker Noon just stared at Tune
At that platform in the sky
“What’s a blanket house with a wooden mouse
doing up so very high?”
Then Louker Tune came down to noon
Asking “Do you want to go up there?”
So he and Tune and a man named Lune
Went swimming in the air.
“Now I can see you don’t believe,”
said poor old Louker Tune
“But now that you’re here,
you have nothing to fear
because they’re all calling you high noon.”
2
Everyday when the sun goes down
I look and listen and scurry round
For some sight or sound or smell of him
That walks at night when lights are dim
He’s grosser than a bowl of pits
With eyes of green and lips of spit
And hair that snaps with a finger’s touch
Or melts like wax if it rains too much
When his sliding step whispers here
My bones freeze up; I block my ears
To the scream and gargle he calls a laugh
Or the swift bad slap upon my back
He stinks of gin and juice and hops
And wonders why he’s not on top
A bath might give him more appeal
To a lizard, spider or wasteland seal
But not to me who he calls a friend
Or to other doomed to an equal end
We wiggle and wither under weary grins
And offer to buy him yet another gin.
3
When the world congregates inside your bowls
You tell me we should travel out of town
Boarding a shimmering People’s airline plane
To live among hot peppers and coffee grounds
You’ll wear a sombrero and tote a hound
Put horse radish of everything that you see
And me, I’ll follow behind with baggage in hand
Waiting for tip or stop or another place to feed
Waiting outside the bathroom door for any fee
Your cries sneaking under the door in pain
Gold streets, milk and honey will not do to
Hear the rapid condition imported from Spain
You shout “I know why we sank the Maine”
Then crumble in a child in ruin
“Help me please,” you whisper over the toilet roll
and I, in a kind mood, bring in a prune
4
So you got ants in the pants, do ya?
Jiggling round thinking nothing will move ya.
But an old car rumbling down dark road
Dangling panty hose
There’s always a girl sitting in your back seat,
Or one to meet walking on the street
And you cruise – slowly – windows down
Till they all come around
You polish that car from dusk to dawn
Till it shimmers brightly as you move along
You think they think good of you
Sitting there as you do.
So you got ants in the pants for sweet romance
Thinking that you stand a chance
As bigger, brighter cars pass by,
The men in those spitting in your eye.
5
In shoes of my bard I’m wading
Across brooks and trickles of mud
Italian leather and fine soft linings
Deeply soaked in river crud
And when I get my bard at home
I’ll yank him off by the ear
And show him the damage he’s done
While knowing he doesn’t care.
6
The military in their wise expertise
Have found a new and mean police
I don’t mean dogs or wolves or moles
Those things are all extremely old
The idea came up in Germany
Where the army had this great need
It seems some villains with merely feed
Had slipped around the canine breed.
“What we need is a lot of noise,
to guard America’s nuclear toys
something to wakeup when someone comes
which can’t be bribed or broke or flung”
which, of course, brings us the new police
a feathered, fretted flock of geese.
7
I always treated him like a dog, too
You know the way of the whip and chain
There wasn’t a lot he could really do
But moan in the corner and complain
Oh,. he couldn’t even think of escape
Not locked in the house like he was,
ONLY his eyes dared express his hate
Dripping like tears of acid or puss
Don’t let anyone fool you with a dog’s life
It stinks of more than shit and piss
It’s like living each day under the knife
Too scared to talk or take a risk
Well, he died today, too sick to care
Knowing that a dog’s life isn’t fair
8
It was not all that long ago
In the jungle near the sea
That a widow sat that you don’t know
By the name of Cannibal She
And this window she sat with plate and fork
And with thoughts of devouring me.
And I smiled and she smiled
In the jungle near the sea
But her stomach grumbled with more than hunger
As she said, “I’m Cannibal She
And there she poked at my middle parts
With thoughts of dividing me.
And this was the reason that I had to go
From the jungle near the sea
With a pot on the boil and steam rising
Behind my Cannibal She
And her two large sons stood right beside her
And laid their hands on me
And it isn’t that I was born away
From that jungle by the sea
But my feet still attached pulled me along
Away from Cannibal She
Leaving that widow to her empty plate
Without any part of me.
9
Dan stands like a wire brush
Tall as a small pine in a poor house hall
Skin tawny and sun brown blushed
And out-door rough over all
He can shriek like a diving eagle
Or sniff like a good fox hound
Tongue smacking over a potential mean
Or shimmering coin he’s found
Sometimes he’s old as the mountain itself
With a ten-year-old’s grin missing teeth
A lovable cur with the wickedest mouth
Of whom even the toughest men speak
But where he comes from nobody knows
We can only pray for when he goes
10
Beer doesn’t wear right on my tongue tonight
Too snug around the shoulder and heavy of head
Smelling of unhappy hops when I pull tight
and in bar light winks like an old friend dead.
Your voices wisps from the beer foam flat
Tastes so tragic as the juke box moans
And fingers of scotch take me all the way back
To fresher drinks I had when young
Tight like a rope is tight around my too thick neck
Each flat bubble popping with a strangling urge
A uniform of bad taste and last night regrets
Salty sickly smell of a lover’s purged
I wish you here I so could drink to you
When all old beers were still brand new
11
It isn’t enough to taste honey anymore
Too sticky to spend time lapping it up
And that faint order bumble bees adore
As addictive as the poppy’s drug
No, boy, you’ve got to keep ear to ground
These days when sweet rings can turn sour
You’ve got to feel out the market and look around
Before sticking your nose in the bucket of flowers
Be like me son, with my high look of success
I listen for the click of clock before investing
I sample with pinky before making a mess
Sniffing out fault first before protesting
Ah, how I wish you’d grow like me son
Honey can be as deadly as any gun
12
She said I tasted like salt water taffy
The sticky kind she used to buy on the pier
Just the smell of which would make her happy
Riding slowly in the back seat, ocean in her ears
She’d look straight in my face and sigh
And say I tasted sweet – but not too sweet
The sweat slipping beneath her long dry
Fingers, but then, too, I smell of street
Of grease and oil, stains shimmering asphalt
Motor humming anxious over ground
Tongue grainy and rough touching all
Of her at once, leaving her unwound
She believe I am Satan love
For whom her lust is not enough