Last updated: January 7, 2006

Light Verse Poems About Places:

The Inuit Knew It

How sad to be a Minnesota poet -
As lost in snow as any Eskimo, yet
Of it can say but little - or ignore it,
Poor Anglo, with but just the one word for it.

Too Trippy

When Kim saw glazed-eyed Haight,
She cried out "This is hippie?!
Excuse me, I've a date
East of the Mississippi..."

Dry Run

Don't dam the Colorado there!
The rift without the river is bare.

[Note: Refers to James Russell Lowell's line, "The gift without the giver is bare."]

Recipe for an Ocean

Roll it and roll it out; add in fin item -
Little ones first, then the big ones to bite 'em.

Ruth-less Time

The beams grow rotten, year by year,
Till Yankee Stadium sheds a tier.

Aladdin, the Mermaid, et. al.
in Disneyland

Dreams that lived on the page --
we could hear 'em, BE 'em --
Now preserved in a plastic
Mickeymausoleum.

A Flight of Fancy

Looking up from the endless arid plain,
For a little romance, he
Sips fine champagne on a fancy plane --
Fancy that! A plain fancy.

From Plain to Fancy Free

Dear Elmer, I tried to be true,
But a farm on the plains raising PORK...!?
Dear, I once took a fancy to you;
Now I've taken a plane to New York.

Febrile Wary

I'll bet that's a Minnesotan--
That one, there, without a coat on.

Grand Canyon

A mile deep and a mile wide,
It will take a while to fill,
But human nature's on our side:
Where there's a hole, there's a will.

If The Stones Remember, Can We Please Forget?

Israel is so steeped in history, said the poet,
That even the stones know it;
Through this land swept prophets, sages, bloody suppressors;
The rocks have memorized it all like a committee of professors.
The stones remember in Israel,
Scholars without parallel.
It must be pleasant to step on tedious pedagogues all the way to the synagogue,
Pausing to watch a know-it-all rock get pissed on by an old skinny dogue
Who'd rather chaw on a dry bone
Then have all the memories of a stone.

Sigh...Gone!

Pushed back to Saigon, we
Suffered Pentagony.

Nit-Pickers in Nashville

Afraid to rhyme?
Don't be bashful.
It's no crime --
Just be Nashful.

No, not Nashful,
Tennessee!
OGDEN-Nashful:
Menace, he

To orthography
And rhythm,
Which none can more zanily transmogrify...
What's whythm?

Yet who can, with
Such suavity
And vinegar and pith,
Banish grauvity?

So don't be bashful --
Assume ascendency
Over line length, meter and spelling, which is the Nashful
Tendency --

Nashful, not bashful
(Are you glad to see me or is that a pen I see?) --
And no, not Nashful,
Tennessee.

Blvd. Rag

Hollywood Blvd:
(You just haven't lvd!)
Main drag;
Mainly in drag;
Mainly a drag.

An Assimilated Jew Visits New York

Roses are reddish,
Violets are bluish,
And (curious fetish)
Some Jews are Jewish.

Hieroglyphics

New media
For Numidia.

Near the Corner of Tobias and Hateras Streets,
Van Nuys, Van Nuys Indeed!

A few doors from Hateras
We bounce on our materas,
Then watch time go by us
From our bed on Tobias.

[Note: I lived on Tobias Street a few house from Hateras Street in Van Nuys, CA, 1979-82. It seemed a shame not to use those rhymes.]