Short Poems

" Buy me a Kyoto comb, yes, a Kyoto comb!
Yes, a Kyoto comb to make my hair sleek! "
" I've bought you a comb. Comb your hair, girl.
Your hair, longer than you're tall,
your long hair, look! as you walk, it gets tangled in your sandals. "

Can I not sin, but thou wilt be
My private protonotary?

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.

Chattering Swallow, what shall we,
Shall we do to punish thee?
Shall we clip thy wings, or cut
Tereus like thy shrill tongue out?
Who Rodantha driv'st away
From my dreams, by break of day.

for RBS

A cat came fiddling out of a barn,
With a pair of bagpipes under her arm,
She could sing nothing but “Fiddle-de-de.
The mouse has married the bumble bee.”
Pipe, cat—dance, mouse—
We'll have a wedding at our good house.

(This quatrain is imagined as the caption under a picture of a rugged-looking cowboy seated upon a bale of hay.)
Carnation Milk is the best in the land;
Here I sit with a can in my hand--
No tits to pull, no hay to pitch,
You just punch a hole in the son of a bitch.

A canner, exceedingly canny,
One morning remarked to his granny,
“A canner can can
Anything that he can,
But a canner can't can a can, can he?”

Candy
Is dandy
But liquor

Call John the boatman, call, call again, For loud roars the
tempest and fast falls the rain. Johnny is a good man, he
sleeps so very sound, His oars are at rest and his
boat is aground. Red rolls the river, so rapid and so
deep; Well, the louder you call him, the faster he'll sleep!