Classic Poem

Actually Succotash can skate without collapsing
And knows full well what cool to do
In the furnace face of a berserk bull. At home
He has a closet of conventional clothing,
Not those bulb-toed exophthalmic saddle oxfords two feet long
In high-shine purple and yellow
And no helium-ballooning trousers with a hula-hooping
Sixty-inch waistline twice too big.

He has eight real hats
With no floral tributes wandering forlornly from the crown;
His actual hair is nothing remotely like royal blue
In a gas-burner fringe crowned around a steep pate
The actual color of " green " cheese (which is moon-white).

He is said to dive straight as a die from unearthly heights
Like an Olympic medalist, ski like mad or anything, swim
Endlessly, swallow swords, produce presto a full deck
From thin air or your ear, eat fire from a short spoon,
Geronimo nonchalantly out of barrel-rolling Cessnas, and
With a quelling gesture that marries modesty to understanding
Coax inflamed tigers into supine docility.

Even so, the little dotted dog does not really belong to him.
The disorderly sock drawer at home (he owns a mobile home)
Does hold a joke or two of the second or irregular persuasion.
Even in plainclothes, it is true, he may sport
One wide tie across which tricky matrix
Polar dots polka with askew Saturns, snapdragons,
Radioactive macaroni marbled like scar tissue
Along a long tongue issuing Jackobox
Out of the apocalyptic gape
Of a nightmare quagmire gone quite ape.

They say Succotash's wife has a crush on a weightlifter
( THE VERY STRONG MAN KWASIND ) whose mere gaze,
Even in repose,
Can drown full-grown bullmoose in lagoons of swamping terror
And frantic panic while simultaneously prompting substantial deputies
To turn their badges back in
Just on the basis of hearing gossip about how he breakfasts.

But actually Succotash can act in the classics handsomely.
He has been Macbeth in Akron and Duluth,
As well as a " highly convincing " Philoctetes in El Paso.
His is a trained tenor voice
Utterly different from the twisted rustic tongue
Falling flat over the threshold of such obstacles as " Schenectady. "
He'll sing " Here I Stand with One Foot in the Grave " by Bach.

From her sphere of mantic crystal, yonder Magyar woman knows
That there is a night going to fall
When he will not be able to skate without collapsing
And he will fail to repeat after the patient nurse,
" Sphygmomanometer. "
He really will not know whose head is on the Lincoln penny
Or who is buried in Grant's Tomb.

But that's to come. For now, rejoice
That he does hold an Oxford doctorate and can juggle
These dozens of incandescent butcher knives without letting a one
Fall through the huge shoe that is reflecting many colored footlights
In curved figures that may be, after all,
Melodramatic facsimilies of smiles.

Actually Succotash can skate without collapsing
And knows full well what cool to do
In the furnace face of a berserk bull. At home
He has a closet of conventional clothing,
Not those bulb-toed exophthalmic saddle oxfords two feet long
In high-shine purple and yellow
And no helium-ballooning trousers with a hula-hooping
Sixty-inch waistline twice too big.

He has eight real hats
With no floral tributes wandering forlornly from the crown;
His actual hair is nothing remotely like royal blue
In a gas-burner fringe crowned around a steep pate
The actual color of " green " cheese (which is moon-white).

He is said to dive straight as a die from unearthly heights
Like an Olympic medalist, ski like mad or anything, swim
Endlessly, swallow swords, produce presto a full deck
From thin air or your ear, eat fire from a short spoon,
Geronimo nonchalantly out of barrel-rolling Cessnas, and
With a quelling gesture that marries modesty to understanding
Coax inflamed tigers into supine docility.

Even so, the little dotted dog does not really belong to him.
The disorderly sock drawer at home (he owns a mobile home)
Does hold a joke or two of the second or irregular persuasion.
Even in plainclothes, it is true, he may sport
One wide tie across which tricky matrix
Polar dots polka with askew Saturns, snapdragons,
Radioactive macaroni marbled like scar tissue
Along a long tongue issuing Jackobox
Out of the apocalyptic gape
Of a nightmare quagmire gone quite ape.

They say Succotash's wife has a crush on a weightlifter
( THE VERY STRONG MAN KWASIND ) whose mere gaze,
Even in repose,
Can drown full-grown bullmoose in lagoons of swamping terror
And frantic panic while simultaneously prompting substantial deputies
To turn their badges back in
Just on the basis of hearing gossip about how he breakfasts.

But actually Succotash can act in the classics handsomely.
He has been Macbeth in Akron and Duluth,
As well as a " highly convincing " Philoctetes in El Paso.
His is a trained tenor voice
Utterly different from the twisted rustic tongue
Falling flat over the threshold of such obstacles as " Schenectady. "
He'll sing " Here I Stand with One Foot in the Grave " by Bach.

From her sphere of mantic crystal, yonder Magyar woman knows
That there is a night going to fall
When he will not be able to skate without collapsing
And he will fail to repeat after the patient nurse,
" Sphygmomanometer. "
He really will not know whose head is on the Lincoln penny
Or who is buried in Grant's Tomb.

But that's to come. For now, rejoice
That he does hold an Oxford doctorate and can juggle
These dozens of incandescent butcher knives without letting a one
Fall through the huge shoe that is reflecting many colored footlights
In curved figures that may be, after all,
Melodramatic facsimilies of smiles.