Poems

If life is but a comedy of errors,
then surely there's a happy at the end?
Our torments, struggles, difficulties, terrors,
are all of them, we are to understand,
a way to raise the narrative's raw tension?
The storyteller must maintain suspense,
so we must misinterpret, fail to mention,
tell pointless lies, be genuinely dense --
stupidity is currently in season,
as popular as stubbornness and gall.
Try acting as if you're defying reason,
and being warned, refuse to take the call,
yes, there's no better way to stir the pot.
Such comedies must have a proper plot.

Hyperbole -- it's not an understatement --
enjoyed exaggeration to the fullest,
demanding no reduction or abatement
in any measure where she was the coolest,
or deemed herself to be, at any rate,
insisting that her monologues be heard,
and rumored to be growing quite irate
when losing the attention of the herd,
but nonetheless continuing to prattle,
since as we know from history and books,
persistence's half the key to any battle,
the other half, some do believe, is looks,
so she went on and on, beyond the end,
though surely just exactly as she's planned.

Was Cleopatra smuggled in a rug,
determined to seduce and capture Caesar?
Man gives the rolled up gift a proper tug,
and there she is, dolled up, and when he sees her,
he rids himself of whiny Ptolemy,
no, she will be his empress instead,
and ancient Egypt, now a colony,
will promise Rome her flour and her bread.

The Romans called the queen a witch, and worse.
Caesarian was groomed to be the Pharaoh.
Wise Cicero died warning of the curse
that straying from the path of straight and narrow
would bring onto the crumbling republic.

All swept under the rug to fool the public.

Inevitable quarreled with Farfetched,
debating probabilities and odds,
remarking that the latter were quite stretched
and risked the ire of the forgotten gods
that govern, unbeknownst to humankind,
the heavens and the lands that lie below.
Farfetched, though, paid the argument no mind,
considering Inevitable slow,
and generally held to his opinion:
most probable is rarely what you need.
Unsatisfied with being just a minion --
unenviable circumstance indeed --
it's best to heed the following advice:
you must, if on occasion, roll the dice.

As smooth as silk, your lies, or is it velvet,
so pleasant, and so soothing to the touch.
The truth lost and forgotten, did you shelve it
by accident, when things became too much?
Dispose of it as tedious and trite.
an inconvenient, unpleasant burden,
obstructing might from making itself right,
its triumph made a little bit less certain?
And now, just look at you, you're in control,
so practiced that you might as well believe it;
there's hardly any damage to your soul --
at any rate, you're sure you can retrieve it,
whenever it is needed, on demand.
And just in time, so you can make a stand.

Aristotle liked to prattle
and was partial to the bottle
Archimedes measured titties,
was responsive to entreaties
Leonidas, though a tight ass
worked it hard to reunite us
and though Cato followed Plato
neither tasted a potato

There's a place near Inverness
where it's anybody's guess
as to how and as to why
all the lassies you'll come by
hair as red as kindled fire
beauties all, they rule the shire

Author notes: image from Facebook

if time is both money and sand
it's easier to understand
though both slip through your fingers
regret often lingers
and leaves you with nothing in hand

Diogenes was searching for a man.
An honest one, if we're to be precise.
If all had gone according to his plan
or had he taken pertinent advice,
he wouldn't have run into Alexander,
but as he was a cynic, he kept going,
and so it was the genius commander
demanded, though the cynic was annoying,
to meet him in the flesh in ancient Greece.
Diogenes, as ever hard to handle,
aware the king now ran Peloponnese,
refused to bow, and went on with his candle.
It's said that Alexander was impressed.
Diogenes? He shrugged, as you'd have guessed.

Pygmalion is staring at the rock.
The adage that the sculptor sees his art
as something he must labor to unlock,
to clear all but the necessary part,
until the sculpture's rescued from the rubble.
No, he does not believe it. No, it's stone,
a hunk of quartz and marble worth the trouble
of chiseling and polishing to hone
the shape of it. To execute his vision,
to bring forth that which wasn't, to create
with subtlety and skill, and with precision --
yes, that's why he's Pygmalion, the great --
He works it, till the rock yields Galatea.
And later, when he's asked, says: no idea.

Abandoned by his brethren downstream,
a lonely salmon searches for his shoal.
He's driven by an elemental theme,
an overriding, fundamental goal,
but somehow chose a different tributary,
so now he swims alone against the odds.
How potent his resolve, extraordinary --
he's earned the admiration of his gods,
who let him get much higher than the others.
With rapid after rapid left behind,
no sign, though, of his sisters or his brothers.
Denied his chance to mate with his own kind,
exhausted, and the pain too much to bear,
he's rescued from his struggle, by the bear.

Stars spilled across the sky like so much candy.
The Milky Way as M&Ms, not Mars.
The latter would have surely come in handy
if God had filled the sky with chocolate bars,
but as it is the stars hide deeper flavors,
though color's a predictor of their heat.
Is there a special kind that God most favors?
A peanut butter star, won't that be neat?
A happy, carefree child, God splashed his laughter
as tiny specks of light across the void,
with utter disregard for the hereafter,
but strict instructions: it's to be enjoyed!
Best rush to taste this multi-splendored feast.
A fire soon consumes it from the East.