JUST SAY NOH
NOH MEANS NOH
NOH WAY OUT
IN THE NOH
DOCTOR NOH
NOH WAY, JOSE
NOH HITTER
NOH EXIT
I DON’T NOH
NOH WAR
NOH IT ALL
NOH QUESTIONS ASKED
A THOUSAND TIMES NOH
A League of Chipmunks
Animals have been getting into our downstairs kitchen for years.
It’s underground, so they have rights. I once found a squirrels’ nest
under a bookcase where they were using paperback pages for bedsheets.
But, over the years, I’ve fortified. I found breaks where they were coming in,
covered them with wood, plastic, even metal…they chewed through.
Then I found glass. Impenetrable. I drank wine frantically for a year,
amassing enough bottles to erect the Burrow-in wall, and with a swagger
contemplated embellishing with broken glass (I love the smell of squirrel
blood in the morning..). And I thought they were stopped. They were not.
Mice squeezed through. But made no purchase.
This fall I saw what looked like a flash of chipmunk after tracking down some noise.
Unused catnip was the target. I defoodified the kitchen area (we have no
running water there, so it’s a frozen wasteland) and sat back waiting.
They attacked the waste basket until it was lidded. Alas, their last forays
were dedicated to nibbling at a yellow soap bar,after knocking it into the unused sink. Each night a few more gnaw and scratch marks would amass. It was almost cute.
But last night they must have gathered a road crew.
N said she heard some crashing downstairs and in the morning, the soap bar was gone.
I fear a league of chipmunks has come to pass.
Bite Your Tongue
It’s too cold in the winter
but too hot in summer’s sun.
The forest’s turned to tinder
and the ocean’s almost done.
There’s genocide on foreign sands
and planes fall from the sky.
Somewhere a general claps his hands
and drones make people die.
I’m quite low on the ladder
but I’m not the bottom rung.
Some say that life gets sadder.
I reply, "Just bite your tongue."
The banks are leeching money
from the poor and dispossessed.
The prisons fill, no need to kill,
wear hoods and be our guest.
The polar ice caps melt away
and flood tides surely loom.
But politicians scoff and say
that talk’s just gloom and doom.
I’m quite low on the ladder
but I’m not the bottom rung.
Some say life will get madder.
I reply, "Just bite your tongue."
Jazzed
Mingus, Miles and Monk decided
notes were better oft divided.
Bass and horn and ivory
worked to set the rhythm free.
Trane then took it off the track.
Melody would not come back.
Earl of the Flies
He claims he wrote the very first
hillbilly constitution.
He got hit by a truck but
still awaits his restitution.
Born to rust and death by dust
are words in his preamble.
He lost a finger in a bet
then swore he’d never gamble.
He picks up tin cans by the road
and feeds them to his goats.
He never rode an airplane
but has paddled several boats.
He told his family sell his body
parts off when he dies.
He dreams of Daisy Duke at night.
He’s called Earl of the Flies.