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HUMOUR & WIT

Quite possibly now is the time to insert a little light relief. Many of my poems display wit and a few of them aspire to humour, but invariably it is a dry humour. Expect the ironical and the satirical, but don’t look forward to a belly laugh.

Amnesiac

I fail to see how I could have lost my glasses.
I checked religiously when I left the house –
Spectacles, testicles, watch and wallet.
All were present when I crossed myself.

“What are you?” People are derisive
As I solicit passersby to help a half blind man
Half way across the road.
What am I? I am, I am, I am amnesiac.
Yes, that’s what I am.

I need one of those words that remind you of other words.
Not an anemone, not a gin and tonic,
Though I feel like one. A mnemonic!
That’s it, although I don’t remember how to pronounce it.

Absent-minded goes with professor, doesn’t it?
I never made professor, just absent-minded.
Maybe I’ve got that Alka-Seltzer disease.
I’d forget my head if it weren’t screwed on,
As the actress said to the bishop.

Milk of magnesia and sal ammoniac
Might help remind me of amnesia.
I’m sure I’d never forget those.
Now what was it I was talking about?

Ah yes, my glasses.
The insurance company who were kind enough
To remind me that I had lodged three claims
For lost spectacles in three years,
Suggested I check at the police-station.

They had a whole box full of spectacles,
Sun-glasses, reading-glasses, bifocals,
All left by silly old coots in libraries and supermarkets.
They didn’t have my glasses.

I would have recognized them instantly
Because they have expensive progressive lenses
And expensive unbreakable frames,
Because I am also very careless.

My daughter gave me a set of electronic tags
And a zapper to make them bleep.
I could put a bleeping tag on my specs,
Except I think I’ve lost the zapper.

When I left the police-station empty handed,
I went to get into my car.
My long distance driving vision is okay.
I found I had locked my keys in the car.

I have decided to suffer from selected amnesia,
Just as I suffer from selective hearing loss.
I shall conveniently forget to tell my wife
I have had a completely unforgettable day.

Beauty and the Beast

Wairarapa New Zealand, Wairarapa Travel Tourism and Accommodation NZ

I drive at sixty, (Too fast you feel)
Through the peasepod towns
Of the Southern Wairarapa ‑
Featherston, Greytown,
Carterton, Masterton.
Anagram towns
With interchangeable names.
A blur of little churches,
Petrol stations, antique shops;
Home‑spun, hand‑crafted,
Knick‑knackered little towns.
And in each cloned street
At the zebra crossing,
(Watch out for crocodile!)
The same pretty girl
With the same enchanting smile,
Crosses the road
Tossing her conditioned hair.
I turn my head to look, (As you would,)
To glimpse her curve of breast
Or tilt of hip or line of thigh.
And then say softly to myself,
"Pfwooaghh!" (As you would.)
Which roughly translated means:
I respond to that beauty
Which is your genetic health.
I respond to your youth
Which is your breeding potential.
But then I reflect dryly
That I am past sixty.
"Much too fast!" I hear you say.
Past Masterton on the open road
I put the pedal to the metal,
Enjoying the virility of the car,
Outrunning my thoughts,
But by no means fast enough.
I come to a complete halt
As a herd of dairy cows
Amble slowly across the highway,
Ford the alligator river
To their milking parlour,
Full udders swaying,
Heavy with milk.
Their brown bovine eyes
Regard me impassively,
But note the toothy grin
Of me the predator beast.
I eye the fullness of their flanks,
Mentally assessing
The quality of the beef,
Noticing the one that limps.
Suddenly It dawns upon me that
The beauty of the generic girl,
The Wairarapa woman,
Was partially in my response.
Without my hard‑wired,
Knee‑jerk turn of head,
Her pearly whites were but
Canines and incisors.
Without my predilection
Her breasts would not have kept
My mind udderwise engaged.
In one sense therefore
The beauty of the Wairarapa girl
Is a figment of the mind
Of generic middle‑aged man.

Christmas Cheer

I have no small-talk at all they say.
I have a slight autistic trait.
I make no brief encounters
With members of either sex.
I wash no public dirty linen.
I’ve enjoyed the solitude I’ve been in.
I do not gossip, do not relate.
I have a slight autistic trait.
I am a hermit in my shell,
An acolyte within my cell.
Trick or treat time I really hate.
I have a slight autistic trait or trait.
Hail fellow well met I seldom get.
Easy bonhomie comes strange to me.
My circle of friends is a tight ellipse,
My careless banter erudite quips.
My mailbox says no circulars.
I hang up on telemarketers.
My flat is self contained.
But come the yuletide festive season
I feel slighted and ignored,
Yet I can see no rational reason
To feel so blank, bereft and bored.
I do not need company
To prosper or to thrive,
But my throat feels strangely lumpy
When the misdirected Christmas cards arrive.

Madonna con Bambino

Mary and the infant Jesus,
The mother and her child,
But how could medieval mind
Be so easily beguiled
To consider an homunculus
A baby meek and mild?
These gilded bambini
Resemble little wise old men,
Microcephalic midgets,
Wizened masters of Zen,
Ancient alien succubi
Strange beyond mere mortal ken.
He reaches under Madonna’s silk;
Pulls out an unassuming dug;
Takes a nonchalant swig of milk.
“This is the life,” he seems to say,
Or words of some such mortal ilk.

Areopagitica

I think I can praise Diana the huntress,
Long of limb and willowy,
Running lissome in the birchwood
Pursued by a pandemic of horny satyrs.
Now she was seriously chaste.

I think I can praise Sandra Dee,
For guarding her virginity.
Like Titania among the rude mechanics,
In to be serviced,
Smeared by grease and oiled,
Well lubricated but not despoiled.

I think I can praise Gallileo’s daughter,
Child of a brilliant mind
For her illegitimacy confined;
Condemned to pass her nights away
In her hair shirt negligee;
Cloistered against her will;
Being nun and getting none,
But yearning still.

I think I can praise a eunuch
Guarding the seraglio.
Not that he is tempted
By the x-rated cast.
Being castrated, sex
Has limited appeal.
No electrifying current;
No raisin among the sultanas;
Nothing left to feel.

Psalm of the Mitochondria

What we wonder are
Our mitochondria?
What is going on
In each mitochondrion?
In all our cells are organelles,
Our tame bacteria, our first pets.
We are a symbiotic zoo
From some primordial ooze who.
Each tiny mitie is a guest
That gives us all our zip and zest.
Our cells have their nuclear D.N.A.
Neatly stashed and filed away,
Archived in massive database,
Accessed by spiral staircase.
Our mities though avoid the joint.
It’s Greek to them, so what’s the point?
Each reads instead his words of Mao,
That independently tells him how.
Like a manual for the washing machine
Each mitie has its Book of Gene.
An interlibrary loan is sex,
A museum exchange of artifacts.
The Elgin Marbles at the Smithsonian.
The Mona Lisa off to Kensington.
Each sperm glib of tongue and suave of looks
Seeks lonely housewives with a love of books.
These library reps travel light,
Their box of books, just a bite
To eat and a thermos flask,
Just enough for his one small task.
But big fat Momma egg sits at home
Rereading every favourite tome,
Prides and Prejudices, Wars and Peaces,
And Darwin’s Origin of Species.
And in her boudoir are her mities,
Curled up on her fluffy pink slippers
And nestled among her nylon nighties.
Clutched in every mitie fist
Is that original shopping list,
The mitie gospel, the mighty creed,
That selfsame sacred screed
Of everything a mite might need.
And when the traveler comes to call,
He leaves his tail out in the hall,
For the hero of this tale has gone inside.
Conan the Librarian claims his bride.
The well-stacked wife stands dewey-eyed
As their jumbled books are reclassified.
From out the wardrobe creep her mities,
Out of slippers, out of nighties.
And each and every single one
Is Mummy’s mitochondrion,
Eve’s dowry from the ends of time,
Down the distant distaff line,
Sailing on the flood of life – an ark
From the mitochondrial matriarch.

Gorgonzola

Before the advent of the refrigerator
Cheese was in a domed dish secured,
In the cool dungeon depths of a larder,
In a stone walled pantry chained and stored.
Here the moulds multiplied and matured.
Pungent, whiffy gases sulphurated
Under the willow-pattern cupola,
The lair of the gorgonzola.
Should a curious child come to wonder
What edible delight lay thereunder
And lift the lid!
He would be bowled over by the evil belch.
Delicate membranes nasally assailed,
Exposed to such a barnyard bouquet,
Senses ravished by decay,
That he would swoon, spread-eagled
On the polished wood parquet.
His pale cheeks splashed with water,
He would revive to hear his mother say,
“It must have been the gorgonzola.”

Later at school the child met
Greek mythology, nymphs, fauns,
Satyrs, an assault dog Cerberus.
He read of Odysseus and the Cyclops,
Theseus and the Minotaur,
And Perseus and his shining shield
Who Harry Potterwise destroyed
The snake-haired Gorgon monster.
The picture now was clearer
And for thirty years the lid stayed down.

When imported gorgonzola first appeared
On our supermarket shelves.
Plasticized and pasteurized,
A pale and pastel imitation,
It was merely a spendthrift’s Danish blue,
No more frightening than Cerberus salt,
Bambi the faun, or political satire.

But now in Italy I rediscover
Gorgonzola.
Crusted like a leper with some medieval pox,
Riddled by wormholes of putrescent green.
Noble blood runs in these veins.
And this cheese is on the move.
It runs like cooling lava.
It is a sensuous shape shifter.
It morphs in molten motion
Along the tablecloth towards my hand.

And then the smell!
No rank odour of the wild beast,
Not a puddle soaked poodle pong.
Merely a hint of armpit and groin,
A je ne sais quoi of horse manure.
Mostly a warm milk and mushroom aroma,
A mealy muzzle nuzzling smell,
A purring come and tickle my tummy smell.
Hi Gorgonzola!

Hilltop Towns of Umbria

On sheer cliffs on prominences
The hill towns of Umbria
Dominate the plains.
We are a band of ANZAC pilgrims,
Eight middle-aged travelers,
Individuals of set habits.
The hill towns hardly look out
Over their tapestried landscapes.
The walls have few windows,
But battlements that overhang
With gargoyled chutes of stone
That sluice shit and piss and hot lead
Upon the invaders below.
Sometimes Franks or Langobards,
Vandals or Allemans,
But mostly the neighbours down the road.
And so we squabble each day
Which hill town to invade,
Orvieto or Todi, Siena or Narni.
And in the one villa we all share
We invade each other’s privacy.
We piss each other off
And heat the cauldron for the lead.
The stonework shows the scars of years.
Previous portals are occluded.
Ancient archways are walled in.
And we keep stumm
And clamp our mouths in stern creases.
In the walls are embrasures,
Archer slits for crossbow bolts
At Guelphs and Ghibellines.
And we snipe at each other
With little poisoned arrows
About who forgot to buy the milk
Or which lucky bastard
Got the bedroom with the double bed.
For we are medieval pilgrims
To the hill top towns of Umbria.

Our Escher Villa

Escher must have been in Italy.
His steps to nowhere etching
Where staircases from one point of view
Are real and logical
Until suddenly they invert
And become impossible.
We live in an Escher villa,
Multi-leveled, full of doors,
Staircases and balconies.
At the lowest level
Is a basement bathroom
Where black beetles crawl
Nightly down the stone steps,
Trapped in a marble vault.
Here they patrol endlessly
Around the tiled perimeter
Until their batteries run down.
When we leave our Escher villa
For our daily excursions,
We mob and mill around
Like a nest of stick poked ants.
One searches for the keys.
Another forgets her camera.
A third needs a final toilet stop.
A fourth runs back to get the map.
We run up and down the stone staircases
In conflicting directions.

Volcano Bear

The earthbear hibernates.
Asleep in his magma den,
He slumbers in his chamber.
He stirs and stumbles,
Coughs and rumbles,
Grumbles and clears his throat.
Teddy scuffles in his bedding,
Scooping awful pawfuls,
His lava litter shredding.
As he makes his bed.
But there’s still discomfort
In his bloated belly.
His stuffing nearly bursts
His seams and pops his buttons
As he gives volcanic vent
To one enormous belch.
His aching belly roaring
Subsides to fitful snoring,
To quieter woozy snoozing,
To the final senile drooling
Of the earthbear in his sleep.

Requiem for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart was sometimes Brahms and Liszt;
Amadeus Wolf gang oft agley;
He’d keep some nightly naughty tryst;
“Bach in a minuet,” he’d say.
“Offenbach in half a tick,”
He’d quip and crawl home late.
But no finer minor hacked music
As his requiem mass should state.
Now he lies in a pauper’s grave
And no one knows where he’s Hayden.
His score is up; he’s penned his stave
And now lies gently decomposing.

Virtue

Virtue is per se the manly way,
Not the housebound husband way,
Not prissy sissy P.C. stuff,
But rugged, rough and tough;
Everything a two ton ute is,
From the Latin word virtutis,
Meaning merely manliness,
Just that and nothing less,
Not celibate, kind or good,
But virility or basic manhood.
Virtue is how men behave,
Exemplified by being brave,
Bold, reckless and rash.
We just aren’t built to handle cash,
Be thrifty, or practise self-denial.
We walk uneasy down the aisle.
Virtue like beard and baritone,
Engendered by testosterone,
Urges real men to scatter seed
Much beyond their spouse’s need,
With fantasies of even worse
To inseminate the universe.
Thus straight excess, not gay abandon,
Extols the virtue that we hand on.

Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction

Your sleepy smile was moist and sly.
Your pyjama top was hoist on high.
The trees bucked and quaked.
I knew this could go on forever
Unless I a convincing orgasm faked
Or assumed a position awfully clever,
For the trouble with hammock sex you see
Is Newton’s third law of gravity.

We Leave The Well Beloved Place. (Tennyson)

‘Twas on a deep sea drilling rig
That Bachelor Billy fell from grace,
Not to a centerfold bosomly big,
But to a tasty piece of plaice.

“You’re a bit of a flatfish”, he observed,
“But will do very nicely cooked.”
Yet when he looked into her eyes,
It was Billy who was truly hooked.

If love is engendered in the eyes
Then flatfish have a cute surprise.
Their right eye stays where nature implied,
The sinister eye moves to the self same side.

“I cannot keep you here my dear,
Neptune’s two dimensional daughter,
I should really throw you overboard,
Yes, that is what I really ought to.”

“But my little ray of sunshine,”
Quoth Hermione, the hapless soul,
Victim of his chat-up line,
Barbed wit and bamboo pole.

“When will I see you again my lover,
My Dover sole significant other?
And how will I recognize you my dear,
For all men look the same to me I fear?”

“Have no worry on that score,” he said,
“For every man must know his plaice.
And we shall have a trysting place
By the oil well shaft on the deep sea bed.”

So they made love on a daily basis
And she introduced him to the plaices
As Bill, her human paramour.
Things went well for a year or more.

You are wondering at this point no doubt
How their love was consummated.
She simply spread her eggs about.
He casually ejaculated.

But then this well ran out of oil.
Bill had to inform his Hermione,
How cruel fate conspired their plans to foil
Like barbecued trout or irony.

“We leave the well, beloved plaice,
So dearest Hermione, adieu!”
And Bill the Rigger, a real hard case,
Was rumoured to shed a tear or two.

Moonbirth

Four billion years ago or so in time’s backward vertigo,
The virgin earth was spinning in a vacant moonless void.
She was a wondrous vision, an oocyte planet maid
Veiled in clouds.
She trailed a silken lure of sex scent heaven sent
Soaring on the solar wind, trawling the seas of space.
A rogue and roving male flehmed with nostrils flared
And in a twenty second burn and showy skate’s heel turn,
Caromed off an asteroid.
He went for all his worth, hurtling towards the virgin earth
At colossal velocity.
He loomed from the depths, a shark from the abyssal dark,
A giant space moth following pheromones.
A berserk planet ran amok was Armageddon and Ragnarok.
Interplanetary sex, my friends, is always something less than gentle.
No clumsy fumbling with her mantle.
No foreplay, no atmospheric kiss, no prelude to bliss.
Just a brutal penetration, a mutual annihilation
And a mingling of genetic cores.
And when after decent millennia the veil of dust is drawn aside,
The mantis has devoured her mate, has digested and gestated.
Our pregnant world, the gravid earth has convulsed and given birth
To her lunatic daughter moon.
Now they co-orbit in feminine conspiracy,
The gravitational bond of the mother and her daughter,
Pulled by emotional tides that monthly inundate the shore.
Now we observe the acne of the adolescent moon,
And fear their synchronous oestrous surely coming soon.

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