Make the Pie Higher

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish
Can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!

A poem made up of Bush quotes.

Ode to Those Lost At Sea

Bursting his gravity chains with a full-throat cry,
From his eeled grotto, lunatic, Neptune
Has flung his emerald arms into the sky.
I, afloat with Zephyrous a-billowing the cloth
Am flung into a no-man's land of spray
And crack and hoot amid roiling demons
That twitch our floundering vessel roundabout.
Then, just when that guest of spring winks in,
Helios, calming the waves with an outflung hand,
We rocket off on a mad bedraggled couch,
Our makeshift lifeboat, borne directionless.
What salt-encrusted, green-sea vision is this,
This multitude of disinherit souls
That nest like sea birds all about me?
One speaks: "We are the men Direction scorned
When he handed round charts
Of destiny ... our dooms were preordained
And we've no commerce with those of you
Whose courses from the outset were drawn straight
And whose bloody corpses, goggle-eyed, approach us!
Ah! Now at last they come, the Vegetable Gods...
Piping through, with banners
On which are stitched the humiliation of us all.

By William Ashbless

'Middle Earth': Is This a Table? No, This Is a Poem

A NY Times review of Henri Cole's ''Middle Earth'', a book of poetry.

Bird suddenly quiet
on his branch — his
Wife glancing at him.

Useless! Useless!
— heavy rain driving
into the sea.

Spring is coming
Yep, all that equipment
for sighs

Beautiful young girls running
up the library steps
with shorts on

The windmills
of Oklahoma look
in every direction.

Jack Kerouac, the poet of inordinate prose, was also a master of haiku, and a master, as always, at deformalizing the formalities of any genre. "Haiku, shmaiku," Kerouac wrote, in a verse that ended, "I can't/understand the intention/of reality." He called haiku "pops," which he defined as "short 3-line pomes." In Kerouac's haiku, now gathered in "Book of Haikus," edited by Regina Weinreich, 17 vanishes as a requirement.

To read these poems is to hear how raucously Kerouac reinvents the genre. Haiku is a poetry of exclusion. Just think, after all, of everything that can't be said in three short lines. And yet Kerouac turns his pops into strange miracles of inclusion.

Two Japanese boys
singing
Inky Dinky Parly Voo.

They sound so easy, so direct. But just try making one.

New York Times - Jack Kerouac's Haiku - VERLYN KLINKENBORG

I am the Very Model of a Modern Unitarian
by Christopher Gist Raible

Sung to "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General"
from "Pirates of Penzance".

I am the very model of a modern Unitarian,
Far broader than a Catholic, Hindu, Jew or Presbyterian.
I know the world's religions and can trace their roots historical
From Moses up to Channing, all in order categorical.
I'm very well acquainted, too, with theories theological,
On existential questions I am always wholly logical,
About most any problem I am teeming with a lot of views,
I'm full of fine ideas that should fill our church's empty pews.

(Chorus members:
We're full of fine ideas that should fill our church's empty pews.
We're full of fine ideas that should fill our church's empty pews.
We're full of fine ideas that should fill our church's empty empty pews.)

I quote from Freud and Jung and all the experts psychological.
I'm anti nuke, I don't pollute I'm chastely ecological.
In short, in matters spiritual, ethical, material,
I am the very model of a modern Unitarian.

(Chorus members:
In short, in matters spiritual, ethical, material,
We are the very model of a modern Unitarian.)

I use the latest language; God is never Father or the Lord,
But Ground of Being, Source of Life or almost any other word.
I never pray, I meditate, I'm leary about worshipping.
I serve on 10 committees none of which accomplish anything.
I give to worthy causes and I drive a gas conserving car,
I have good UU principles (although I'm not sure what they are).
I'm open to opinions of profound or broad variety,
Unless they're too conservative or smack of righteous piety.

(Chorus members:
Unless they're too conservative or smack of righteous piety.
Unless they're too conservative or smack of righteous piety.
Unless they're too conservative or smack of righteous pie-piety.)

I formulate agendas and discuss them with the best of 'em,
But don't ask me to implement, we leave that to the rest of 'em.
In short in matters spiritual, ethical, material,
I am the very model of today's religious liberal.

(Chorus members:
In short, in matters spiritual, ethical, material,
We are the very model of today's religious liberal.)

A bit too critical, maybe I can work on the lyrics.

Not all those who pass

In front of the Great Mother's chair

Get past with only a stare.

Some she looks at their hands

To see what sort of savages they were.

-- Gary Snyder

(No Such Thing As) Girls Like That

The woman on the TV set
Is clutching both her great big breasts
And she sure looks like she is having fun
In purple plastic panties
She is writhing she is dancing
And it's plain to see she really turns her on
But this is MTV you know
And that is how the music goes
And all the male guitarists think she's great
They believe that girls like this
Actually do exist
And secretly we all love to gyrate

Well, pardon me but I have never
Done a thing I can remember
That remotely looks like this at all
Except for once at Girl Scout camp
When several bees got in my pants
And one of them flew in my training bra

CHORUS:
Maybe these are fantasies
Maybe you have a right to these
Baby I'll just break this gently
There's no such thing as girls like that

The catalogs of lingerie
Come to our houses everyday
With women who have mostly nothing on
My favorite is the one who sits and
Drinks her coffee in her kitchen
Wearing just a silk robe and a thong

Well, let's be real here let's just say
My kitchen any given day
Is not exactly somewhere you seduce
Between the cat hair and the crumbs
Your nakedness might make him numb
And even worse he might begin to puke

And if you're gonna wear a thong
You might just find the cat hair's gone
To places you don't want cat hair to be
And besides you know the facts
A thong just rides right up your ass
And serves no earthly purpose I can see

CHORUS

Lastly I will say to all
The boys who make the Barbie Doll
That I think Barbie's really cute and fun
But if Barbie were a real live chick
Her waist would be 12 inches thick
Her bra-size would be close to 41

So by the age of 53
Those things would be down to her knees
With osteoporosis on the way

So, after having said all that
I'll leave you with this simple fact
My favorite girls are women that
Are not afraid to cry and laugh
And eat some food that's high in fat
Can change your oil, fix your flat
Can say some prayers and blaze a path
And I'll just say on their behalf
There's no such thing as girls like that

Christine Kane from Kathological here at blogspot.

Eventually
the words will come back and I'll
write haiku again

J.W. Abbott