The Mouse on the Sidewalk
On a quiet suburban street,
Brick houses arrayed
Along the twisting road,
A little grey mouse
Lay on the white concrete,
The body not yet decayed
Though flies buzzed to goad
The furry form or rouse
Its soul to leave its load;
The arms stretched ahead
To the adjoining house
As if the mouse had meant to greet
The owners who’d have crushed it dead
And unseen up in their jeep;
Perhaps the tourist instead
Sought to reach its retreat
In the earth by the wall to sleep
But lagged on this beachhead
With its last heartbeat.
No person could be so estranged
In lying down to die:
Whether in the cities ranged
Across the continents’ lands,
On a plane that streaks the sky,
A vessel on the rippled sea,
A dune in the desert sands
Or frozen on a mountain peak,
No humble mouse has the key
To outgrow its old clique;
No rodent is such a freak
As to incessantly seek
A perfect place to be.
The Late-Night Jester
Behold the late-night jester,
The neutered talk-show host;
Never a fan to pester
The landed superstar,
Let alone to roast
Her for ladling caviar,
He’ll fawn all over the rich,
Spoil them with praise,
Slobber and scratch their itch;
If the grovel could be bottled,
Mr. Bootlick Fallon
Would pour no less than a gallon
Of the syrupy glaze
Over their perfumed skin,
Down their throats with a grin,
Wouldn’t stop until he’d throttled
The pretty movie stars.
But like Poe’s dwarf, Hop-frog,
Who tricks the king’s retinue,
Wraps them up and chars
The tainted upper crust,
Does that boyish lapdog,
Too, ignite a barbecue?
While the pampered players are trussed,
Bewitched by the fickle spotlight,
Could the host be as shrewd
As to flatter out of secret spite,
To butter them up to be stewed?
Who could keep an adult’s grace,
Propped up and viewed
By a fame-hungry crowd,
Fed by a raving oddball?
When a fresh idol will replace
The last and each, unbowed,
Is stuffed for their downfall?
Witness to a Fire
The black smoke rose
From a downtown house;
Just one fire hose
Sufficed to douse
The blaze in seconds flat,
Though five fire trucks
Showed up to chat.
Like a nuisance on set
I went with camera ready;
I joined the influx
Of extras, holding steady
Our cellphones to get
Full coverage of the scene;
I got so close I choked
On the cloud in the street;
I took shelter to preen
On a stairway and joked
With another, we’d never seen
The likes of this but were keen
To film the source of the heat;
I felt stray drops of water
On my balding head,
Blown from the hose by a breeze;
The show was as brief as a tweet
And I admit I thought it a tease,
But as I crossed and got hotter
I had a moment of dread:
What must the owner think,
His home ravaged by fire
While a pack of strangers slink
Out front to capture his dire
Condition and post the pics
On the internet for kicks?
cool
ReplyDelete