Where silliness borders on the realm of possibility –
that’s the blissful land where children play;
inventing for themselves, or helped
by those never-quite-grown-ups
who spend their working week
chortle-gurgle-wham-ouch-eeuucchh! -‘****? ’-
EEEKK! -AAaarrgghh! ! ! ,
illustrating Kidz Komix and such
in that blissful land
and there were books called ‘Funnyossities’
(they’d be nothing now)
the pages chopped laterally in three:
heads in the top section, every possible caricature,
bodies of every size, shape, dress, the middle section;
then legs of all sorts (lots of hairy ones, of course)
occupied the lower section;
and you turned them over, this way, that way,
to make the most ludicrous combinations…
sometimes just absurd, sometimes surreally possible…
I’m there on the page you’re turning now:
a wizened face, eyes popping;
from my mortar-board, it seems, a schoolmaster enraged
to apoplexy and beyond;
the body of a languid, greenery-yellery poet, wilting like
a stick of celery long past its celery-buy date…
the legs like ancient hairy sticks beneath the woeful shorts…
feel free to chortle, or to turn the page;
it could be worse.
I think most of us are made up of books like you described. Depending on how you combine our pages we can either look ridiculous or borderline sublime.
Sorry to hear your celery is limp but your poetry is still crisp, perhaps not even fully ripe yet? LOL David.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
your work is a joy. -shannon