WHARVED

Oh, No

It came past
to never or not
in the eyes
of the big one
in the sky,
but that didn’t
quite do it
anyhow anyway,
now did it?

Oh, no.
You can’t get away
that easy around here,
mister.

Rat Tippers

“Where do you keep your rat tippers?”

“I keep my rat tippers with my cow flippers, in the back-right corner of the pantry next to the party fixins. Why do you ask?”

“I really need something to get these rats off my case, especially because of this ingrown toenail I have. I can’t risk being caught with such vermin on my case, if you know what I mean.”

At this point, the two friends
must risk being caught in public
discussing rat matters,
which is a certain cause
for social suicide around these parts.

They are either totally secure
in their position
or unaware that such talk
could land them in the looney bin.

Our Common Enemy

What are we melting here
when all the cheese
has been stolen anyway?

We need a common enemy,
or at least someone
to complain about

while we try out
new galoshes
in the mucky weather.

As long as our common enemy
has some kind of cheese stash,
I can absolutely get behind

verbal torture, like the kind
they had in the olden days,
the townspeople tossing tomatoes

and ethnic slurs
at the unfortunates
trapped in stocks

right in the middle of town,
the communal clock chiming
9am while the time is actually 8:47.

A cold little crouton prefers to be somewhat frozen over being baked into a melange of messes, and I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had to dignify these oddball questions with suitable responses. I mean, half of my time has been spent trying to describe a heron’s flight patterns to preschoolers, and I can see that they’re really not getting it at all. No matter what color the heron or the wingspan, there is no way I can have an intelligent conversation with these ungrown little future senators and hot dog vendors. I might as well try to make friends with people my age and just be done with it already. I never thought building a giant monument to salad would be so damn tough.

His Granting of Favors

Hounding the rose garden
with a turnip-snouted affair
could lead to regret
as long as you flub up
the orders coming in
at a mile a minute.

If you bring out
the best of the vichyssoise
for our esteemed colleague
on the day of his daughter’s wedding,
I’d say you’ll have
plenty of opportunities
to capitalize on his granting of favors.

First on the docket:
get that petty Ms. Nightingale
to put a lid on her trombone practice
between 8 and 9:30pm on Tuesdays.

Our Friend Fido

Something is amiss in this situation,
like a dog without a bone
or a dog who just buried one
and forgot where it even went.

Now our friend Fido
will go around
digging up holes
in all the neighbors’ yards
without any prize
at the end of his grimy toenails.

He’ll still be satisfied
from the act of digging anyway,
but at what cost?

Any Day of the Week

Sticking a smock
in a smoke-filled sauna
sounds so silly to me
when I think of it,

and I’d rather
shell out some simoleons
to Miss Sandy
for a liberty steak
any day of the week.