Forest Chums: Part Two

Porcupine Eddie

Is honest and steady

He’s the guard at the hardware store

When the bad guys come in

Eddie pricks them on the shin

And those bad guys aren’t seen any more

Portnoy the skunk 

Has a penchant for junk

So he moved to the city dump

He scours the trash

Finds the stuff that’s worth cash

And piles it up in a clump

Millicent the otter

Lives down by the water

Where she likes to go fishing for lunch 

She waits in the sun 

While the minnows have fun

And then she scoops up the whole bunch

Bexley the possum 

Picked a bright yellow blossom

And brought it to his girlfriend-to-be

She said it smelled sweet

And was tasty to eat

“But you’re not the right possum for me” 

Melvin the fox

Enjoys bagels and lox

In his spare time he reads Arthur Miller

He goes to the show

To see Marilyn Monroe

Melvin hopes she’ll soon star in a thriller

Alvin the mink

Makes a very big stink

If he gobbles too many baked beans 

His friends move away

Or get out perfumed spray

They’re tired of his stinky routines

Gertrude the turtle

Wears a very tight girdle

To flatten the bulge in her tummy

It’s not that she’s vain 

Or has water on her brain

She’s annoyed when they think she’s a mummy

Rex the raccoon 

Lives behind the saloon

Where he sniffs empty six-packs of beer 

At first he is dizzy

Then gets in a tizzy

And eventually falls flat on his rear 

Edna the weasel

Loves to paint on her easel

She does sunsets and still lifes and faces 

Most weasels are artistic

And tend toward the mystic 

Sweet Edna has so many graces

A Deluge in Blue

April sixth started out as a normal day

We drove to U.C. and did OLLI

Then picked up Chinese on the way back home

Though our world would soon be less than jolly

We walked in the house and to our surprise

A rainstorm was gushing through the ceiling

A pipe had burst on the second floor

I panicked and Katja was reeling

The cleanup crew arrived in an hour

Their blowers were massive and loud 

They sucked up the moisture for six long days

We huddled beneath a dark cloud

The walls finally dried but to our dismay

The house had turned totally blue

Not the joyous blue of a sky in July

But a dishwater blue through and through

The chimney was blue and the windows too

The stove and the fridge and the doors

Even our plaster cast rabbit was blue

And the stuff in our dining room drawers

I was shocked when I looked at Katja

What was this, her blue face and blue hair?

And her hands and her feet and her outfit too

The two of us, now a blue pair

Our neighbors felt sad for our house and ourselves

But they couldn’t stop staring at our pallor

They had never seen people so blue before

They prayed we’d recover our valor

The workers arrived and they rehabbed our house

They moved all our goods to their truck

They tore out the floors, replastered the walls

And began to haul out the blue muck

This story has a fortunate ending

Six months and the work’s nearly done

I still have some strands of blue in my hair

But our new life has clearly begun

This tragedy could have been much much worse

Our kids lived through Hurricane Katrina

They lost their new home in the Mid-City flood

While our blue house just had a patina

Life's Vicissitudes: Three Sonnets

          Life Passions

Passions make up the gist of one’s life

At age ten it was comic books

Plus bikes and baseball cards and backyard strife

Like Hopalong battling the crooks

I took up hoops in junior high

Steve and I played for hour upon hour

Then tennis became my pie in the sky

And jazz gave me spiritual power

Most of these passions have faded from view

Late seventies, line dancing’s my craze

Poetry has its own fervor too

And workouts help anchor my days

There’s one obvious moral to this story

No passions, no meaning, no glory

          Morning Ritual

           

Our clock goes off at a quarter past eight

I lie awake, hear news on NPR

The nation’s now the opposite of great

I brush my teeth and ponder the bizarre

I go downstairs, fry bacon in a pan

Page through the Times and get news from the coast

The wall, the leaks, Sean S., and Kellyanne

All scrambled up amidst the eggs and toast

Computer on, I open up my mail

I check my tweets, perhaps send off a few

Then struggle with my poems — such travail

And play a game of solitaire or two

My sister asks, “Are all your days the same?”

They better be or else I’ll go insane!

          Misbegotten Youth

I wish that I could live a second life

I’d be more close to friends and to my dad

And, yes, be kind and caring to my wife

My brother Steve…I wouldn’t be so bad

I’d spend more time on learning how to dance         

And be a better student when in school

Perhaps I’d even take a trip to France                       

I’d be more careful toward the Golden Rule

Another thing, I’d never start to smoke

And likewise I’d imbibe a little less

I’d spend more time with different kinds of folk

I’d ferret out the secrets of less stress

Bad news, I know I’ll never get this chance

But, that’s okay, I still have time to dance

Theda Bara, Cincinnati Vamp

I’ve always had crushes on movie stars

Theda Bara was one of the first 

A beauty of the silent film era

(Though my mother said she was the worst)

Theda’s characters seduced rich middle-aged men

She was known from the start as “the Vamp” 

She led her victims to ruin and death

Nowadays we would say her style’s camp

They claimed she was born in the shadow of the Sphinx

Her mother, a French actress; her father, a sheik

The letters, Theda Bara, spelled “Arab Death”  

Occult powers lent to her mystique

In truth, Theda was born in Cincinnati

She grew up in Avondale 

Her birth name was Theodosia Goodman 

As a child, little Theda was frail

Theda’s father was an immigrant tailor

She finished Walnut Hills in ’03

Drawn to the theater from an early age

She studied two years at U.C. 

Then off she went to the New York stage

“The Devil” was her first Broadway part

From Broadway Theda moved to Hollywood

Where she quickly was cast as a “tart” 

She did forty films in her first four years

“The Galley Slave,” “Tiger Woman,” “Sin”

Her fans called Theda “The Queen of Vampires” 

A vampiress who showed lots of skin

At her peak Theda earned four thousand a week

In the Twenties she wed a director

They moved to a mansion on Victory Parkway

Her life became that of a specter

Theda Bara died in 1955

She is buried in Forest Lawn Park

One of Cincinnati’s most illustrious stars

Theodosia carved out her mark

Bigfoot Lives

Last month I went on a U.P. trip

I found a motel near Birch Creek

I hadn’t been home for years and years

The land still had its mystique

I hiked for miles in the wilds of the forest

Woods teeming with cedar and pine      

The snow on the ground made walking a struggle

Dead deer were an ominous sign

I found large tracks heading off to the north

Two feet long and nearly as wide

It couldn’t have been a bear or a cougar

It had moved with a gigantic stride

I followed those tracks to the heart of the woods

A loud wail burst forth from the trees

At a distance I saw a blurry shape

I felt myself flinch and then freeze

The creature started to come for me

I couldn’t believe my own eyes

He must have stood over eight feet tall

And he bellowed great howls and cries

           

I started to run as fast as I could

But the beast was much faster than me

He knocked me to the ground with a piercing blow

Then he pinned down my chest with his knee

He had blazing red eyes and horns on his head

He was covered with matted black fur

I kicked and struggled and tried to break free

But his foul breath made my eyes blur

The monster pummeled my head with his arms

He was snorting like a bull through his snout

My heart was pounding like a battery of drums

It was then that I must have passed out

When I finally came to, the beast was gone

I’m amazed I survived my ordeal

Some people still wonder if Bigfoot exists

This poem surely proves he is real