[Laura Heidy-Halberstein]

"Women. They all want us!!"

John Ruskin on "Phallic Fantasy"



[This message has been edited by Laura Heidy-Halberstein (edited January 27, 2008).]

[Dan Halberstein]

Woman, get in the kitchen and make me a pie!

Cartman, on South Park

[David Anthony]

Wede Away
(For JMA)

Wisteria soft against a deeper blue,
and hyacinth, youth’s talisman: those bright
creations filled my wakening world with light.
I miss the flowers of spring and all things new.

Fulfilment followed promise to a time
rich with the scents and ripeness spring foretold—
honeysuckle, poppy, marigold.
I miss the flowers of summer in its prime.

Sparse as the season fades towards December,
pale soldier roses, rearguard in retreat,
still blossom as they face an old defeat,
while asters linger late into November
to hurl their small defiance at the fall.
—I’ll miss the flowers of autumn most of all.

[Frank Hubeny]

I figure most fallacies are pathetic. David definitely likes plants. I hesitate to put this next to such fine examples, but I am now trying to practice the technique.


Empathy for the Stone

O stone, upon whom I now sit,
Are you so sad because of it?
Are tears extruding from your heart
Since I just let another fart?
It is not I who put you here.
The weather wears your soul, I fear.
My farts don't help, I hear you say.
I know, but I had beans today.

[Frank Hubeny]

This one is about animate creatures, so it probably doesn't count.

Goodbye, Ants

The ants, in line, are on the floor.
I spray, then watch them die.
Their bodies writhed in pain before
I thought I heard them cry.

[Roger Slater]

THINGS

What does bouncing feel like to a ball?
What does eating feel like to a cake?
What does climbing feel like to a wall?
What does snowing feel like to a flake?
Can such things feel anything at all?
What does swimming feel like to a lake?

[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited January 28, 2008).]

[Donna English]

Just Drop It!


It tainted our supper with its aspirin taste,
writhed in the seersucker fabric of your face,
and tugged at whip-stitched line of your lips.
Just drop it! You said.

But it clung, hot and itchy like mohair sweater.
You opened the window, but the air flowed out
like your beer money and my biological clock.

It twisted the bedsheets and knotted my pillow. I heard it
pop and clunk in the floor boards and roof joists
as it settled into the cracks in our fixer-upper home.

[Kate Benedict]

Just to confuse y'all, I quite enjoy personifications in light verse, children's verse, fables and persona poems. A number here come under those categories.

Here's Hairy Mole, with apologies to those who may have already seen it on my site. It's the nuttiest thing: every month a goodly number of people find this poem because they've Googled "hairy mole," meaning, I suppose that they have one and are looking for a cure. I get a kick out of that.

Hairy Mole

On your chin
is where I stay,
put there by
your DNA.

Unsightly dot!—
I’d rather hide
in privacy
on your backside,

inside your thigh,
behind your knee.
Instead I’m set
for all to see.

From my pore
one bristly hair
grows long and brown.
See it there?

Straight as grass,
the hair I sprout,
long as an eyebrow’s.
Pluck it out.

Wax it off,
shave or hack.
The root is deep.
The hair grows back.

I have darkened
in the sun
in the fifty years
since you’ve been one.

I’ll be with you
even when
you’re in your coffin.
Even then.

Until that time
if you can’t prize me,
look away
but don’t despise me.

[Martin Elster]

OFFENSIVE FOLIAGE

While we made food for trees
And whispered with the breeze,
Folks thought we looked as fine
As clothes by Calvin Klein.

Now that we’re on the ground,
We spawn the deafening sound
Of demons everywhere
That blast us into air.

While above the land suspended,
We were green and grand and splendid!
Now that we’re down and dead,
They have it in their head

That all of us must go
Just to be replaced by snow.

[RCL]

Submitting for publication
------------------
Ralph



[This message has been edited by RCL (edited February 21, 2008).]