Lamentations of a Dutch Boy at the Peasant Wedding Feast (with thanks to Pieter Bruegel the Elder)

Woe is me, Oh woe is me

This wedding is pointless and crazy

My sister has married a maniac

He’s not only brutish but lazy

I’m the only boy at this wedding

Why are they torturing me?

Yorick is out playing soccer

I’d cut off my nose to be free

I thought that the preacher would never stop

And then he invited them to kiss

People shouldn’t do stuff in public

Especially if kissing my sis

And what will they do on their wedding night?

Yorick claims they both will get nude

I myself don’t think that would happen

My sister has said that’s so lewd

The food at this wedding is awful

I’m tired of eating pigs’ tails

The kidney soup had the strangest smell

Even worse were those rabbit entrails

I’ve seen that young girl at the table before

Hilda, I think, is her name

I could ask her to sit and talk with me

But probably she’d say that’s too lame

Old Lars de Groot is off by himself

Yorick says that he’s losing his mind

He’s wearing his trousers inside out

So his front is at his behind

Mrs. De Vries is talking too loud

She thinks that she’s ever so clever

But no one has heard a single word

She tells the same story forever

Mr. De Jong looks so gloomy

His wife ran away with a stranger

They say his house has fallen apart

I heard he sleeps in the manger

This music is made for old fogies

The bagpipes are scorchy and squeaky

We’re in the sixteenth century, you know

You’d think they’d play something less freaky

My father has drunk too much liquor

The grin on his face is so sappy

My mother is flirting with the butcher

What on earth has made her so happy?

All in all, the adults are boring

They sit and they guzzle and chat

I’m tired of hearing about weather and crops

Or how Mayor de Groot got so fat

I doubt if I’ll ever get married

If I do, I hope it’s Matilda

Of course, Matilda’s quite popular

That’s why I should go and meet Hilda

Pencil Tale

We got our pencils September seventh

The very first day of first grade

That very moment we joined the big kids

My new pencil, I felt less afraid

My pencil was a Ticonderoga

Actually, Ticonderoga No. 2

No one ever saw a No. 1

They must have produced just a few

The lead in my pencil was black as coal

Its wood, more yellow than the sun

The tip had a perfect eraser

Any errors were quickly undone

Our teacher had rules about pencils

Never run with a pencil in your hand

Don’t poke or stab at your classmates

And carving on desktops is banned

The bad kids chewed on their pencils

The shaft would be covered with bites

Their pencils, they claimed, still worked perfectly fine

But that was the saddest of sights

The sharpener was mounted by the blackboard

We asked for permission to use it

Some of the boys tried to make lots of noise

Our teacher, Miss Gries, would excuse it

With my pencil I learned to write cursive

First “A’s” and then “B’s” and then “C’s” 

By Christmas I wrote my entire first name

Though sometimes I had backward “D’s” 

The U.S. had entered the World War

My father was in the Pacific

With my pencil I drew pictures of Hitler

That helped to calm feelings horrific

I also drew hearts with my pencil

Each one said “DL + MC”

“MC” stood for Mary Carter

The winner of our class spelling bee

My pencil did other amazing things

I’d add numbers and also subtract

I learned how to draw a cat and a fish

And locate my house on a map

June came and my pencil had shrunk to a stub

It was only five-eighths of an inch

Saying goodbye brought a tear to my eye

As we know, first grade is no cinch

An Ode to the Lemon

There are three things that make life worth living

And lemons are ranked number two 

The mere thought of a lemon makes me salivate 
And I'm sure that that's true for you too

When I was a kid in Menominee

Our dairy was right down the street 

A double dip cone cost a full five cents
I'd say Lemon Flake couldn't be beat

The bottling plant was on Ogden Ave.

They had seventeen flavors of pop 

Lemon Fizz was their number one seller
After school we would stop at that shop

Each evening my mother cooked dinner 

Her whitefish was something to savor

She added paprika and almonds

But lemon juice brought out the flavor

On Sundays she'd fix us a scrumptious dessert

A pie made with lemon meringue
A slice of that pie was a work of art
Filled through with the tartest of tang

When we children got desperate for money

We’d set up a lemonade stand

We charged a nickel for a  six-ounce cup

Our customers said, “It's so grand!” 

My wife orders lemon in her water

Though I like my lemon with gin 

The lemon cuts the flavor of the alcohol

Three shots and that lemon makes me grin

When spring arrives with its allergies

I stock up on lemon drops

The druggist said lemon’s the very best cure

That's so true  — my runny nose stops

Lemon pudding, lemon gum, lemon milkshakes
Lemon juice will preserve a cantaloupe
The British put lemon in their pancakes
You can even get lemon in soap

Lemons freshen your sink or disposal
Young girls put the juice in their hair
A few droplets at the doorway keep the ants away
You can use it to scrub copperware

Sohat would life be if there were no lemons?

I imagine we’d somehow survive

But lacking that delicious yellowish fruit

There’s no chance that we humans would thrive