COURSE OBJECTIVES

to locate
a 19-year-old voluptuous beauty
who is into funky poetry
and moderately married
literature professors with thinning gray hair;

to fix oneself
with a booster of infatuation
like cortisone directly into
the place where it chronically hurts;

to put a little distance,
in the form of an impressionable devotee,
between the 50-something failed poet
and his rapidly approaching eternal death;

to strike a long wooden marriage
against the flint of a new flirtation,
smell the sulfur, feel the sizzle,
know the lightning has selected me
to carry its torch.

GULF

after being assigned to write a poem
using the word gulf in it

I went immediately
to the dictionary

to look it up
and got as far as the part

where it says “from the Greek word
kolpos meaning bosom

and there my eyes rested
engulfed as it were for hours

IT'S IRONIC

I was tooling around
in my Saturn named Monica
my hand on the stick
just to be sure
when suddenly the shotgun went off:

“You’re a sex addict!” she said,
her cheeks all puffed up
with chocolate cake,
cup of cappuccino in her hand,
whipped cream in the cleft of her upper chin!

THE FORTUNE

What better way, I think,
to top off Chicken Lo Mien than
with the intriguing words of a cookie:
“A beautiful young woman
has something she wants to ask you!”

As I am fantasizing about
all the beautiful young women I know,
the lovely young waitress comes
over to my table and says,
“More wata, mista?”

THE FACTS OF LIFE

THE FACTS OF LIFE


“You eat too much,” she said

With my mouth full of chips and dip
I said,
“hows about a little roll in the hay?”
which came out sounding like
“cows are out a tittle bowl in the gay?”

but she could tell what I meant
from the obesity of my left front pocket

and she hit me
with the 14th and 15th letters of the alphabet
N & O consecutively

leaving me no alternative but
to further caress and penetrate
the old bag of Lays

GOOD WORKS

I visit John in the nursing home

Couldn’t figure out what he needed
so I come empty-handed

When I get to the room they say he’s in
he’s not there

The leer the quip the spark
pretty much gone

He’s being fed
by a gorgeous, brown-skinned girl

Right away as soon as I see them
I know what I can give him

I should brush up against her
bump her just hard enough

so that she’ll spill herself
all over John’s remains caws

that’s how every damn one of us guys
wants to go out

PICKUP LINES

Hi, my name is Jesus. What’s yours?

*

I’m a big fan of Hayden Carruth.

*

My wife and I are both schizophrenics.

*

Want to come up to my place and look at my collection of flyswatters?

*

What a cute baby! He looks so content! Can I suck on the other one?

*

I just got back from a vacation in Akron.

*

I know where you live, honey.

*

Looks are not important to me.

PANTIES IN THE SINK

I come home after a long day at the office, making x’s and o’s on a legal pad, and what do I find: panties in the sink (and they’re not even edible).

They’re not really in the sink. They’re encircling the faucet like an illicit lei, as if they had been ripped off and flung in heat by their owner who was sitting on top of the kitchen counter (where I wish a baked potato were sitting next to a barbecued pork chop and some oh baby carrots right now) waiting with her legs spread wide for the consommetion.

And, chrrrist, they are all gooey in the crotch as if the guy had add-on leaves to his member, enough to satisfy a whole tableful of hungry adulterous sluts, and couldn’t wait for her to get her panties off, at least not the first time anyway, and took the cotton, which was already thickly lubricated, right up inside her with his introductory stabs and explosions.

When I finally locate the owner of the panties, she is sprawled on the bed in her oversized fudge-splattered sweat pants with an ice pack on her head. I say: “I see you’ve had a hard day, dear. Guess my supper will be ready as soon as the ice melts, right?”