RHYMEORAMA
Each day when I invoke the Muse,
Beseeching her for juicy clues,
For hints my nascent verse might use,
Some novel topic to peruse,
A headline from the daily new
Or subjects seen from different views—
Eventually a verse ensues
Which, if like this, will make you snooze.
*
SNUG
It’s gusty out of doors and overcast;
The heater in the house is turned up high;
The girls, gone out to pee, have faced that blast
And now are happily back and cold, but dry.
I think we’ll wait a good while till our walk
In hopes the sun will burn through the cloud cover,
Against which I can spy a sailing hawk
Who barely moves his wings and seems to hover.
This is a morning made for indoor sports,
Not braving this intemperate, rough weather
Or better, as our little one exhorts
Me, to cuddle in this easy chair together
And hence it is we snuggle side by side
Where, till the sun comes out, we will abide.
*
ITCHY BITCH REDUX
Poor Gyppy lately’s been an itchy bitch,
Which makes her slurp and nibble on her flank,
Trying to salve that agonizing itch,
Perhaps believing it a pesky prank
Some woeful enemy has pulled on her,
As if there could be such a nasty tease;
The real reason why this would occur
Is simply the maliciousness of fleas.
The medicine we give her to prevent
Such an incursion clearly hasn’t done
The salutary job for which it’s meant,
And our assault on fleas we haven’t won,
So, now around her neck she wears a cone
That amplifies her sighs—a megaphone.
*
BARDACITY
To write a sonnet such as Shakespeare did,
You make each line in syllables of ten,
For which it’s best the Metric Muse you bid:
“Please send me alternating beats, amen.”
Then you’ve an easy rhyme scheme to play out:
ABAB/CDCD/EF
EF/GG, which you can do, no doubt,
Unless you’re number-challenged or tone deaf.
Of course, you need a subject to explore
And most traditionally, the topic’s love
As you enumerate what you adore
In one o’er whom no other stands above.
A tidy couplet tightly ends your song,
Which, if as good as Shakespeare’s, may live long.
*
ETIOLOGY AND ETYMOLOGY
It could not be that all of life and we
Emerged from dust, some shattered star’s debris,
But rather that such order was aligned
According to the dictates of a mind.
The universe is rather like a poem,
A verse, at first, then growing to a tome,
An epic such as Milton might have written
About an apple infamously bitten.
Good Orderly Direction is its theme
As countless eons manifest its scheme,
A plan that marvelously created us
To show what wonders can arise from dust.
The Cosmos, we infer, has been designed
By an immense, enthusiastic mind.
*
