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
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
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
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
“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 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
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
