Percy Dovetonsils

Life, said the old poet
is an insistent knocking
on doors that won't open
into houses
...

Fruit-flavored lights!
Shivering, quivering, edible sights!
Spooned up suns of chewable mood-
Plasmic, prismic, rhythmic, food.
...

The professors,
who have taught
in person
their whole lives,
...

I’ve missed the boat.
And that’s not the
only one.
...

Every other time
I drowned
I lived
to tell
...

I feel sorry for myself.
so sorry.
because I have a gift
for self expression
...

I have a rendezvous with destiny.
She is the goddess who entices me.
I see her beckoning with open arms.
She promises I will not come to harm.
...

In my cramped world
I only find room
in my sleep.
I’m cornered
...

I enjoy getting bills.

Lets me know at least
...

I returned,
after browsing the Barnes & Noble magazine stand
to buy one more thing
from the same clerk
...

'Art needs an operation.'
-Tristan Tzara

Art
...

I sit here trying to remember
the dream of America,
the dream of our forefathers,
and all I see is you,
...

I wondered if I could still love you
if I were blind and
could not see your beauty
...

Woke up this morning
realized
I was almost 55.
When Shakespeare was this old he was dead
...

Not that I plan to,
but it’s nice to know
it’s there
if I
...

At Shiloh, The Marne, and Waterloo,
Sribinica, Auschwitz, and Dien Bien Phu,
wherever the slaughtered dead soaked the earth
the marriage between man and forest grew.
...

Nice thing about the dinos:
their extinction
not my fault.
A meteor did that.
...

When the thieves
descended
on The Red Apple Farm,
...

of the North
wanted to be
a movie star
but did not know it
...

I used to shop there
all the time
and it was always crowded
...