Chapbook - "The Family Business"

It's been a good year of poeming for me.  I have gathered some of my favorites written in 2010 in a small chapbook titled "The Family Business."  I did a limited run of 50, and have already sold or given about 30.  They are going fast.  If you would like to get a copy from this first run, you can get one for just $5, sent to you anywhere in the USA and autographed by the author.  Overseas friends, we can haggle on the shipping!

Live Video - Flying lessons

Here's a video of "Flying lessons" from a reading at the Electric Brew, Goshen, Indiana, in December 2010.

Live Video - Road rage

Here's a video from my reading at the Electric Brew in Goshen, Indiana, in December 2010. This poem is a true story...

Gastrointestinal Limericks

(a real-life email duel with a poet-who-shall-remain-nameless)


Tuesday

The gastrointenstinal tract
Is the greatest yawn since Rome was sacked.
It’s simply not funny
If a poo’s thick or runny,
It’s a bore as a matter of fact!

Wednesday

The GI tract is only a part
Of a system whose primary art
is to edify boys
with the eloquent noise
of a seismic grandiloquent flatulation.

You started it.

Thursday

The best G.I. doctors all pass
At the top of their medical class
They expertly seek
Every bubble and squeak
That proceeds from our head and our bottom.

Back atcha. This is war.

Friday

As a theme the GI tract is fit
for treatment by poetic wit
But the sum of it all
Is a mountain that's tall
And composed almost solely of nonsense.

I rest my case.

Saturday

When dueling rhyme-writers scrap
They do well to steer clear of the trap
Of waxing ironic
On matters colonic
For such writing’s invariably rubbish.

Tag


And here, both poets finally lost the will to go on...

Chauncey Avenue

Can it be

Possible that a
Smile remains –
A birthmark –
After over thirty years?
This photo says so:

On these steps
Once high as mountains
We sat down
Together
Smiling soft in black and white
Gazing up at God

Now we come
Again, full grown, to
Recreate
That moment.
We are worn at the edges

But the smile endures.

Turkey time

So there I was, painting a barn with Luke,
Up at Farmer Bob’s place, late November
Just before the snow flew. And I looked down
From my ladder to see a huge turkey
Wander across the yard to watch me work.
They say those birds are thick as two short planks –
Even drown in rainstorms is what I heard –
But I was still amazed to see that girl
Rub her backside against the fresh red paint,
Like some rouged-up feathery street-walker
Daring the world to take her liberty.
Free for a day – so live without regrets!
Perhaps we all embody irony
Like that blood-red hen, heedless of her fate.
If so, then I will not go quietly
Like her, I’ll sashay, brazen, through the rain
Teasing the future with my hot red cheeks.

Lawn decorations

(a villanelle)

If it is true you love me as you say
(And please don’t think this is a test)
You’ll do what’s right – and throw that thing away.

You may not like to do as others say,
But sometimes you must act at my behest
If it is true you love me as you say.

And this is where that rule comes into play:
If you don’t want your honeybunch distressed,
You’ll do what’s right – and throw that thing away.

That ten-foot lighted Santa on a sleigh
Will disappear into eternal rest
If it is true you love me as you say.

For while a bachelor thinks it’s okay
To keep such tacky junk around the nest
You’ll do what’s right – and throw that thing away.

I have a headache coming on today,
So please don’t think I say these words in jest:
If it is true you love me as you say,
You’ll do what’s right – AND THROW THAT THING AWAY.