Adam Hoagland Poems

(a parody of Rudyard Kipling’s far-superior, but somewhat shorter, poem “If…”)

If you can go to bed with no assurance
that, when the daybreak comes, you’ll get a call,
...

There are old country chapels set back from the times
whose quaintness enlivens the heart
and inspires the cadence of old country rhymes
or the light in that old country art.
...

The flaccid verses etched up on this screen,
The spawn of more productive days before,
'neath dust that seeks to stain the cathode's gleam
and dull the dried-up sentiment they store.
...

The New Year's oft depicted on the page
the same way every time in comic panes.
A spent curmudgeon vacating the stage,
to let the newborn babe assume the reins.
...

(song parody only, to be fitted to the tune of the song 'Pepper.')

Claudius killed his brother,
Gertrude married Claude;
...

Of late, I'm oft envious of Theseus,
Sent into the Minotaur's maddening milieu,
With his secreted blade held at ready,
And a princess's promise to carry him through.
...

Stiffening and gorged on fouled air,
Stubbornly occupying a squatter's rights plot
of tar-snake tempted asphalt,
Setting to a fetid pudding
...

With our myriad ‘scopes at ready, men explore the enigmatic,
And no feature of all nature dodges focused, sharpened prod;
When our models and equations push electrons, we’re ecstatic,
When they fail, we bow and consecrate the question marks to God.
...

A memory from childhood, both fond and bittersweet,
when eyes were big but stomach still was small;
Dinner out, a rib-eye steak, a rare and pricey treat,
one I now desired not to eat at all.
...

Oh, when you’re young,
when your body is young,
and there’s no rigor you can’t abide;
you’re fit and you’re active
...