Joker Jokes

“Now, my dears, keep watching the ace.

My favorite card — it has no face

And just one itty bitty heart.

Hee, hee! It can’t squeak out a fart

The way the queen of spades

Will to call forth some dainty maids

To please her king of diamonds,

Who’ll grab one with a showbiz mons.

Now, see? Your lazy eyes don’t peel

On the ace! It has disappeared!

Where’d it go? It’s as I feared,

Some joker has stolen the deal.

Why, that’s me! I rule the whole deck.

Every card’s at my call and beck!”

Another War

I drew a high number the last year of the draft,
But a childhood disease would have kept me 4-F.
I have a misshapen hip and couldn't force-march
Or negotiate a pitching deck, fore to aft.
I lost no friend or brothers to war; no one left
My high school to volunteer; no triumphal arch,
No memorial was erected in our town,
No first-hand accounts of battle were written down.
The nightly news showed all there was to see of death
And defeat: we lose each war the minute one man
Fails to open his eyes or to take a next breath,
And new wars start soon enough, because they can.
We launch and drop bombs and bombs and more bombs,
Generously, Samaritans offering alms.

Curse

Can a country be under a curse, 

A few words of malignant verse

Chanted inside a racing hearse?

To hell with superstition!

A man, cults, and institutions

Have turned our nation sour.

The Mind has forgotten the hour

Can grow late

Growing hate,

Like an ocean filling with plastic

Leaving life crippled and spastic.

The curse is proliferating thought

That the future can be bought

And as quickly taken away —

Only the loudest given a say.

Will the worst curse have its day?

The Death of Galileo

Galileo is gone and forgotten.

The earth is again as flat as a coin

Around which the sun is quickly slowing,

Nourishing all that is raw and rotten.

A feather falls faster than a lead ball.

Beelzebub erases your recall.

The bald liar is our new scientist;

There is no proven fact he cannot twist.

Poor Galileo was forced to recant:

Today we have the canting sycophant.

Hence it’s obvious that the earth must cool;

To think differently proves one a fool.

I’ve seen a bald eagle flying backward.

A plague of fat rats invades my front yard.

Haiku, 2/3/26

A walk in deep snow —

Think of nothing but troubles —

Rabbit tracks just stop

The Reversal of There

I rarely walk beyond that tree

That is home to birds —

And air — too close

To the undermined

Riverbank.

I’ve tried holding

The tree — hands uncertain—

Taking a step —only one —

A test of courage —

A test of foolishness.

Even at flood height 

The water invites —

And seems — at times —

To flow in reverse — back

Up between its banks —

I follow from here.