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

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