The Truth of the Matter

BLOGGER.COM HAS LOST ITS MIND

As far as I can tell, my blog-publishing service, blogger-com, has gone crazy. All of a sudden, it's stopped doing any kind of line-spacing, e.g., indents, line breaks, blank lines between paragraphs, etc. Instead all text appears as one non-stop stream from beginning to end. Consequently poems can have no line breaks and look like this: Roses are red Violets are blue Sugar is Sweet And so are you. So far I've been unable to figure this out and solve it. Last night I dreamt that I should take a photo of a poem and post that. So that's what I plan to do for a while, starting today. :>(

All About Iko

 

The Orphan 

Iko grew up in a house of  ill repute  

A seedy motel in Mid-City

The ladies of the night thought him very cute 

Iko grew up in a house of  ill repute

Then he ran off one night in a raucous dispute 

Our family saved him from a life that was gritty 

Iko grew up in a house of  ill repute

A seedy motel in Mid-City

Iko the Sniffer 

Sniffing, we agree, is Iko’s best trait

The stop sign, the hydrant, the pole 

Who are the dogs who have passed by of late?  

Sniffing, we agree, is Iko’s best trait

His ears are okay but his nose is great 

That’s why he enjoys a good stroll 

Sniffing, we agree, is Iko’s best trait

The stop sign, the hydrant, the pole 

The Marker 

Iko is serious about leaving his mark 

Each of his walks, fifteen times or more 

His favorite location, our Dunore Park

Iko is serious about leaving his mark 

Sometimes he’ll toss in a high-pitched bark 

Just to let big dogs know the score 

Iko is serious about leaving his mark 

Each of his walks, fifteen times or more 

The Fighter 

Iko goes crazy to have a good fight 

He rolls on his back, kicks his feet in the air  

He does bare his teeth but he’d never bite 

Iko goes crazy to have a good fight 

He pushes on my forearms with all his might 

I go rub-a-dub-dub on his hair 

Iko goes crazy to have a good fight 

He rolls on his back, kicks his feet in the air

Pandemic Dog Thoughts 

For me the pandemic’s a marvelous thing 

It means we’re together all of the time 

Staying at home makes me want to sing 

For me the pandemic’s a marvelous thing 

All this attention I feel like a king 

The hugging, the petting, it’s so sublime 

For me the pandemic’s a marvelous thing 

It means we’re together all of the time 

Iko Brightens Our Lives  

With Iko our house is a happier place 

He’s like a fount of good cheer 

He wakes in the morning with a smile on his face  

With Iko our house is a happier place

His bed on our floor is his favorite space 

So long as the humans are near 

With Iko our house is a happier place

He’s like a fount of good cheer

Farewell

RIP, Alex, that’s it for your run

We watched you at dinner for years 

Right or wrong, we had oodles of fun 

RIP, Alex, that’s it for your run

For millions of fans the world is undone  

So many sorrows, so many tears

RIP, Alex, that’s it for your run

We watched you at dinner for years 

 

Digital Friendships

We’re pretty good friends, me and Stephen Colbert  

He tells me new jokes every night 

Disgust with Trump, that’s a main thing we share 

We’re pretty good friends, me and Stephen Colbert  

Steve could know me better but I don’t care 

When he comes to Cincy we will be so tight 

We’re pretty good friends, me and Stephen Colbert  

He tells me new jokes every night 

Shaggy Visage

Untouched for eight months, a pandemic beard 

Three oldies mistook me for Gabby Hayes 

The message: We’re stuck in a time that is weird   

Untouched for eight months, a pandemic beard 

By New Years I hope that I’ll have this beard sheared

But only if first I’ve reduced my malaise   

Untouched for eight months, a pandemic beard 

Three oldies mistook me for Gabby Hayes 

Crusty Old Guy Triolets

                 Eighty-Three

My eighty-third birthday to me was a fright

Who could imagine I’d still be around? 

The perils of old age still leave me uptight 

My eighty-third birthday to me was a fright

Though reaching eight decades I’ve done something right

Thanks to whiskey and Miltown I’m still above ground 

My eighty-third birthday to me was a a fright

Who could imagine I’d still be around? 

Loneliness

 

All my friends have gone away 

A fact that leaves me lonely 

No chums left with whom to play  

All my friends have gone away

I wake each morn to loss, dismay

Finding myself only 

All my friends have gone away

A fact that leaves me lonely 

The Worst Idea  

This is the worst idea of all 

Each hour that we’re here, one hour closer to death

The very thought of it casts a dark pall 

This is the worst idea of all

The truth is we need to confront our downfall

Every creature on earth has to breathe their last breath 

This is the worst idea of all

Each hour that we’re here, one hour closer to death

Polymalgia Rheumatica 

I wake each morn in abject pain 

My arms, my legs, my shoulders, my spine

To walk ten steps, a cruel strain

I wake each morn in abject pain

By afternoon I’ve made some gain 

My knees, surprise, now feel just fine

I wake each morn in abject pain

My arms, my legs, my shoulders, my spine

Too Many Docs  

It seems like I go to a doctor each week

The lung doc, the heart doc, the skin doc and more 

My body’s turned into a creaky antique

It seems like I go to the doctor each week

Each visit I’m sure that my prospects are bleak  

But the doc always says he finds life in my core

It seems like I go to the doctor each week 

The lung doc, the heart doc, the skin doc, and more 

Burnet Woods: A Love Song

The number one thing about where we live

We’re three blocks from Burnet Woods park

The museum, the lake, the civil war cannons

And the bandstand's a Clifton landmark

 

Burnet’s been there for a century and a half

The lake, Eighteen Seventy-Five

There’s a pink granite monument at the southern edge

And a trapeze on MLK Drive

The woods have a network of hiking trails

We forget that we’re still in the city 

One hikes up and down in the hills and ravines

Each view that we see, still more pretty

Our park also has an old-time playground

With its swings and a tall concrete slide

Built in the thirties by the WPA 

Cardboard speeds up each little kid’s ride 

The bandstand has concerts each Wednesday eve 

Maybe folk or classical or rock 

Fantastic fireworks on the Fourth of July

People watch from the lakside sidewalk

A hippy built a labyrinth in the park

It was hidden far off in the trees

The authorities forced him to take it all down

The labyrinth man said they were sleaze

 

Fishermen hang out at Burnet Woods lake

Hunting catfish and bass and brown trout

A guy once showed me his three-foot catch

The size of it made me freak out

  

One winter I gathered some kindling from the woods

And filled up the rack on my car

The cops were watching, said put it all back

I still think their policy bizarre

When J was a kid we would sled at Burnet

The best spot, right near Skyline Chili 

You have to watch for the trees at the end

The sleds almost fly, it’s so hilly 

To me Burnet Woods is a slice of heaven

It’s freedom and beauty and rest

Most of all, it’s escape from the trials of life

Pay a visit, you'll soon be de-stressed

Kitchen Horrors

“Wake up, wake up

We caught the mouse

But he is still alive

Please please go down to the kitchen”

“Stop poking me

I’m sound asleep

The mouse will die soon

This can wait until morning”

Then it was morning

I made my way downstairs

The mousetrap, empty, upside down

The mouse a foot away

Lying on his  back

Kicking, jerking

Squirming, writhing

Unable to right himself 

I slid a New Yorker under the helpless body

Laid an AARP magazine on the top

Rolled the bundle in a coffin-like cylinder

And carried the package to the driveway

What does one do when the mousetrap fails?  

I tossed the crippled body into my neighbor’s garden

Watched as the leaves shook about

What now?  How long?  

I walked away, stoop-shouldered, head down 

The demeanor of a guilt-ridden murderer    

My Hearing Aid Chronicle

My father-in-law hated his hearing aids

Once a week the batteries went dead 

They made screechy sounds at the opera

Which filled his poor wife with such dread 

I myself never thought about hearing aids

Because I never planned to grow old

But at fifty my ears became dodgy

An unpleasant truth, when all’s told 

I noticed this first as a teacher

Mishearing what students would say

This mean girl spoke softer and softer

A fiendish prank some students play 

I checked with my chums about hearing aids

Morris leaves his at home in the box

Catherine still doesn’t hear her hubby

Though she rarely seems to listen when he talks 

My spouse had a more upbeat vision

Her friend Martha’s hearing aids changed her life 

Martha said she became more outgoing 

A prospect that appealed to my wife 

She sent me to the audiologist and I got a test 

He said he could definitely help

But he charged twice as much as the Big Box

And the Big Box got smiles on Yelp 

 

So I shelled out a fortune for hearing aids

Then I only had worn them one week

When I lost one while camping in Michigan 

All the squirrels were distressed by my shriek

I still don’t hear well at the movies

I struggle to follow the story 

Monsters and car bombs are what I like best

Less talk and more images gory 

In the past my hearing was terrible

But now I would say it’s just bad 

“Just bad’s” an improvement after all

For small things one ought to be glad 

Lizard Observations

About eighty million lizards

live in California's Mojave Desert

I know this to be true 

because I found it on Google

although they failed to report   

the total lizard population of North America

My final guess, 1.2 billion

which would mean more lizards 

than human beings and dogs combined

One of these colonies

is located outside our house

on our steps

the sidewalk 

the patio deck

in the driveway

next to the garage 

under the recycling bin 

here and there in the flower beds 

Our little guests love to relax in the sunshine

where they slumber with their eyes shut tight

then retreat to their lizard dens at sunset 

Cincinnati lizards are neither angry nor obstreperous

They never bare their tiny sharp teeth

or make unpleasant growling noises 

Quite the reverse, they are exceedingly shy

and flee at the first sign of human intruders

You would not believe how speedy these lizards can be

though they are only four or five inches long

The dog has never been able to catch one 

despite trying so many times 

They zoom straight up walls

scurry into minuscule holes

vanish in the tall grass or the rock pile  

Five years ago not a single lizard lived on our block 

but now dozens of them 

maybe hundreds 

share our space 

I am pleased they have joined our family 

We are lonely and bored during the pandemic 

and, thanks to our lizard friends 

we live in a more lively and exotic place

This Is A Poem I Wrote In My Sleep Last Night

  

D e t e r m i n e D    D e l i g h t e D    D e m e n t e D    D e c e a s e D

e                 e    e               e    e             e    e             e

t                 t    l               l    m             m    c             c

e                 e    i               i    e             e    e             e

r                 r    g               g    n             n    a             a

m                 m    h               h    t             t    s             s

i                 i    t               t    e             e    e             e

n                 n    e               e    D e m e n t e D    D e c e a s e D

e                 e    D e l i g h t e D

D e t e r m i n e D

The Best of Times

When I was just a kid in forty-nine

The world was a much more hopeful place 

The automat — the finest place to dine

Bob Hope and Jane starred in “The Paleface”

Our town had yet to see a TV set

Our telephone was on a party line

One penny, you could buy a cigarette

We viewed the House and Senate as benign

We rode our bikes to school every day

And milk arrived in bottles made of glass

We whiled away the hours at croquet

Latin was the language used for mass

Those times now seem the best of all and yet

How did we live without the Internet?

Twelve Years Ago This Autumn (An Ode to Retirement)

Half past six, our alarm screams out 

My spouse lays out my jacket and tie

Rush hour, gridlock, stops and starts  

My daily commute, a chance to die 

Who needs this? 

I scan yellowed notes, get primed for class 

One hundred deadpan undergrad faces  

My deepest fear, they’ll find me boring

No way I can gain the crowd’s good graces   

I feel a migraine coming on 

Tuna salad, I lunch at my desk  

Then off to the weekly faculty meeting

We pick at the rules for the umpteenth time 

Searching for an answer to stop student cheating  

Beating a dead horse

I meet with a grad student about her thesis

No way I can think of a workable topic 

Failing to give even subpar advice

I fear that my brain is becoming myopic

Anxiety and shame, doldrums

Back to my office, an hour of my own

I work on an obtuse research paper 

The findings are bland, the conclusions obscure 

Time ill-spent on a dead-end caper 

What is the point exactly? 

Postscript (Twelve years later, here and now) 

My biggest worry when I retired 

How will I ever survive without work?  

It took two days to make my transition  

Surprise, surprise, I’m no longer berserk  

Life is gentle, life is kind   

Old Dog, New Tricks

A new world, truly.

Because I have fewer underlying conditions 

I volunteered to be  

head grocery shopper for our household. 

An honor though not without its own perils.  

I like to think of myself as a type of domestic first responder. 

This morning Katja gave me the weekly list

and I set out for Clifton Market.

Most items were a snap:

Peanut butter, black olives, greenish bananas, 

dog food, unsalted butter, Bounty paper towels. 

More challenging, the unsweetened cocoanut, 

but I enlisted a shelf-stocking lad 

who guided me straight to my item.  

I eventually found the vinegar department myself

but had to call home on to see 

if “apple cider vinegar”

were the same as the

“cider vinegar” on my list. 

(It was.) 

Two avocados made up the final items

on my scavenger hunt 

and I asked a masked pale-skinned clerk 

where the avocados were.

She pointed to the end of the produce aisle

where I found a variety of exotic fruits

organized symmetrically in cardboard boxes.

Unfortunately only the mangoes and the kiwis were labelled.  

Not entirely confident in my judgment

I picked out two dark green, lumpy, ovular fruits

and carried these back to the masked clerk.

“Would these be the avocados?” I asked hesitantly. 

She looked at me strangely

and nodded affirmatively.

“Would you like my help in choosing some?” she volunteered.

Though appreciative, I graciously declined.

Walking home I reflected

how much I’ve grown 

in my new responsibilities 

as head grocery shopper.  

My Pugilistic Career

All the Antioch freshmen had to take Phys Ed 

Maybe golf or horseshoes or squash  

I picked badminton,which sounded most gentle

But my roommate picked boxing, omigosh

Al was a chemist, a nerdy guy

Short, uncoordinated, even flabby

But each time he came back from his boxing class

He raved about his fights, oh so gabby 

Winter quarter arrived and I’d had enough

I was sure I was more manly than Al

I signed up for boxing, the first class I picked

I just knew it would boost my morale 

The first class meeting came as a shock

From the whole campus, all the biggest guys 

At least six foot two, two hundred pounds

I knew I’d never win a prize 

Class sessions were brutal sparring bouts

Monstrous brutes were on the attack 

A punch to the cheek, a blow to the gut

Thud, Crash, Whomp a Domp, Nasty Smash 

There was only one guy the same size as me 

When paired up we’d both go insane 

You’d never know we were mild-mannered 

We went all out, heck with the pain

I told Al my class was a nightmare 

The weekly pummeling left me sad 

Yes, Al said, it was the same for him 

“What?” I yelled, “that is so bad.”

Months later I got drunk at a party

I told Al, “Let’s go out and fight” 

He laughed and thought I was kidding

But I meant to show him my might 

Nowadays my gym has a punching bag

My left jab is still pretty quick 

But I’ve never once used my boxing skills 

Badminton, a more practical pick

On the Graduate Student Bulletin Board: A Found Poem (2019)

No Wall.  No Ban.  No Fear

Black Lives Matter

“Please don’t let me die”

LGBTQ Activist

Queer Spirituality

Know Your IX

#Sayhername

No Justice No Peace

Safe Zone Ally

Trans Umbrella

#Notnormal Resist

Bodies without borders

Speak Up….

We Believe Anita & Christine.  We Believe Survivors.

“Why did you shoot me”

Stop Profiling Muslims

Resist

Being an ally is about listening

Gun violence ends now

Seize the means of production

Help Pass Issue 1

Cincinnati March For Our Lives

Free the Slaves Cincinnati

United We Stand

Moms Demand Action

LGBTQ Safe Zone

Black history is everyday

Prisons are bad for health

My favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy

My favorite gender neutral pronoun is comrade

Stand up.  Speak out.  Walk out. 

“It’s not real”

Covid Chit Chat

Cooped up forever, it’s driving me insane 

I have to get out, maybe go to a store 

A store?  What store?  And go there what for?   

Please shelter in place, stick with the campaign

But we're out of pickles and cottage cheese 

And I’ve barely one six-pack of Coke 

Coca-cola, pickles, is this a bad joke?

The store is Grand Central for killer disease   

I'll wear my new mask, it’s bulletproof protection

Stay six feet away, no kisses, no hugs

Just keep this in mind, no vaccines, no drugs 

They've no way of taming this demon infection 

Being scared of a germ isn’t my cup of tea 

Since when have you been such a sissy? 

I'll tell you a thing or two, Missy
So sad but we oldies no longer are free

Well I’m going to the store and that's that

I was thinking that maybe you'd drive me there 

O.K., holy moly, I don’t even care 

Anything to wind up this god-awful spat 

So pleased you've decided to see things my way

Already you’ve made this a non-COVID day 

(And out the door they went, hand in hand)