Ernest Hilbert Poems

Thank you, oh, thank you (hold up statuette)
Thank you (breathe)so much. This is just too much.
I couldn't have done it without the drugs...
And the booze. It took a whole lot of sweat
...

The character of a gentleman rests
On his never needing to get ahead.
High-school quarterbacks pummel losers
100-nil to push personal bests
...

Epithalamium, for Elizabeth Gold and Daniel Felsenfeld

Why must we love? Perhaps as Plato thought,
Zeus hacked jealous man into two parts,
...

They made Alexander just a bit tense.
He could rule the world, but not a tabby.
Julius Caesar could bash his way through Gaul
But faint if a lynx pissed near his tents.
...

For Jacob Charles Hilbert

Small Viking, like us, you have a slight part
Of the Troll in you, that ancient being born
...

Organ meat is sort of like organ music. Great at first, but too much
of it will probably kill you. - Dan Okrent

After an hour's shower he feels flensed,
...

O, ungrateful hordes! Archaeologists
Mill through the hotel lobby, like jammed cars,
Clogging doorways, aiming all ways, vaguely
Swerving clots of unflappable classicists.
...

By the time you learned it was Lyme disease
It was "advanced." The sports clinic sent you
Home with aspirin for an entire year.
With tuition due and an expired lease,
...

For Jennifer Makowsky

Impatiently polite, imperious,
Our neighbors only just tolerated
...

Is this the end of fulcrum, wheel, and pulley?
Gains or loss issue from plan and man-hour,
Herds bred, coasts moved, pure momentum and mass.
Calls cough through. Gas pumps plentifully.
...