*****

Recorded Reading (2:18): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hlfpyogbi5nmk4r5dygzc/Ode-to-Silliness.mp3?rlkey=lyr42clowrknw1qc1j23sfclq&st=tbb1gnjy&dl=0

*****

Ode to Silliness

O silliness! We clutch our stomachs hard
Wiping the tears from every streaming eye
Waving weak hands before us, so to ward
Away nearer approach, then these belie

By pitching yet another ludicrous
And inapt comment out into the ring
Just when control was coming back to us
We our adulthoods were remembering

Demeanors regaining some dignity
Semihysteria brought into line
By reassumed respectability
Too soon to know another steep decline!

For so it goes in silly company; so go,
Fleeting and far, ones hopes of near reprieve —
Panting requests at least the pace to slow
Commonly short, short, short, short shrift receive

Shorter even than, post-Napolian,
Measured the great Egyptian Sphinx’s nose
Shorter than whatever’s inside that can
Which with the flour and the sugar goes

You know that guy who’s s’posed to stop the ball?
Shorter than him. Yep. So short that it has
Upon the help of taller kin to call
Whenever it would like to reach its — television antennae…

Shorter than TV shows between the breaks,
You picture what I’m talkin ‘bout? ~ Not tall
By any standards ‘cept the bugs’ and snakes’ ~
You wouldn’t have to train it up a wall

Or prop it up, or buy for it a cane
Or call a mobile nurse or Meals on Wheels
Until it could go out of doors again
(Next week we’ll check again, see how it feels)

~ None of that stuff ~ that’s how completely short
Silly companions have been often known
The importuned recession to abort ~
Yet thinking they had merely humor shown!

No, on deep thought (just try it, you will see)
I think, for the preserve of sanity
(For whate’er worth ones sanity may be),
We should keep only ser’ious company!

*****

This poet works for the good of her nation and society, seven days a week.

She’s in a pretty bad fix right now ~ due to the new crime of online targeting already homeless, now for the same reason the van she lives in has stopped running. Not a hope of fixing it without donations.

SHE WILL NOT SIGN AWAY HER CIVIL RIGHTS AND ABANDON HER POSSESSIONS TO ENTER IMPRISONMENT IN A “SHELTER.” SHE WILL NOT WAIT FOR IMPRISONMENT FOR AN UNPAYABLE FINE.

One ticket is death. Real.

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