Monkeyface and Stink Eye Ralph

There was a man named Monkeyface

Who lived in a tiny hut

He had no friends, and spent all day

Counting up the hairs on his butt.

He had a neighbor, Stink Eye Ralph

Whose hut was also tiny

And just like Monkeyface, he counted

Up the hairs on his heinie.

One day, that rascal Stink Eye Ralph

Said, “Come on, Monkeyface!

Let’s tip a cow! Let’s rob a store!

Let’s break a crystal vase!”

So Monkeyface and Stink Eye Ralph

Wreaked havoc on the town

Tipped cows, robbed stores, broke vases, too

And burned the houses down

The cops arrested them and said,

“Now, fellas, looky here.

You’s vandals, and you’s goin’ to jail

For more’n fifty year.”

Now Monkeyface and Stink Eye Ralph

Both share a tiny cell

And count the hairs on each other’s butts

Which is prob’ly just as well.

I Have a Crush on Radiation

I have a crush on radiation

Because Little Boy hit me

In the Hiroshima of my dreams

And my skin felt the dark heat

And itched and prickled hard.

Imagine the mushroom cloud

Exploding hotels and their bellmen

I broke out in a rash of thorns

And ran from the city, crying

That I would like a blackberry tart

I found a buffet

And heard the cackle of Death

“You’ll have Cancer!” he said

And my cells, like frightened oysters

Shook in their membranes and cried.

Shh, little darlings, I whispered

I am your Sweet Mother

And if we’re to have Cancer

We shall go and live in the woods

And let our feet dangle in streams

Genesis

1. In the beginning, God’s mama created split pea soup and told Him to eat it because she slaved for an hour over a hot stove to fix Him a meal of proper nutrition and He’d better not be ungrateful.

2. And the soup was without flavor, and had a nasty texture, and a scowl was on the face of God. And He stirred His spoon reluctantly in the mush.

3. And God’s mama said, Take a bite: and God took a bite.

4. And God said, "Blech."

5. And God’s mama said, “You won't leave this table 'til you eat that soup!"

6. And God said, “If I eat all my soup, does it mean I don’t have to take a bath?”

7. And God’s mama said, “No, Sir, you are filthy and I’m your mama, and those two together mean you’ll be taking a bath!”

8. And God grumbled, but He ate His soup and got in the stupid bathtub.
9. Only, He refused to wash His hair.

10. And God’s mama said, “Young man, I'm going to get the sheets out of the dryer, and in the meantime, wash your darn hair or I'll show you what-for!"

11. And God had a staring contest with a rubber ducky instead.

12. And after two minutes, the rubber ducky blinked, because if anyone can out-stare a bath toy, God can.

13. And God poured His mama’s expensive shampoo into the running water and it brought forth bubbles, and God saw that it was good.

14. And God’s mama said, “Young man, you’ve just earned yourself a smarting keister!”

15. And how God's keister did smart!

16. And to make things worse, the cat knocked over God’s favorite dinosaur nightlight and busted it!

17. And God’s mama said, “Well, you’ll just have to make do with those silly glow-in-the-dark stars.”

18. And God climbed in bed and stared up at the silly glow-in-the-dark stars that He had bought with His allowance and pasted on His ceiling, and He smiled.

19. And God smelled His freshly washed pillowcase and it smelled good, and He was for a moment grateful He had a mama who washed his pillowcases, even if she did smack His keister over some dumb shampoo.

20. And God closed His eyelids and started to snore.

21. And while He snored, God dreamt He created the waters and the firmament, and every beast of the earth, and every fowl of the air, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every green herb, and the sun and the moon and the stars and Adam and Eve.

22. And in the morning, God’s mama woke Him up, and God said, “Mama, I'm God, the Creator!” and His mama said, “Well, don't you go around thinking that makes you better'n the rest of us, and you'd better hurry up and eat your breakfast, ‘cause I won’t have you missin’ the bus.”

The Wind

Out near the Baskett Slough, the wind makes waves across the wheat fields. It's a heavy wind--whoosh--it could rip your mind from its roots. Is the writer drinking wine inside her hilltop trailer? Does the wine go to her mind, does it whine? The trailer shakes, the wind has muscles thick as snakes. The wind gets drunker and drunker on its own strength. The trailer is creaking and snapping thanks to the wind's whooshing and the undulating wheat fields with their quiet swooshing make the world seem alluring, the potatoes need mushing. The writer calls them mushed not mashed because she wishes they were mushed, dash it! She shovels them into her mouth bland with her left or right hand. The writer is the only stillness in this wind wilderness, except the crick-cracking of her stiff neck. The wind was wild when time began and will be wild 'til time eats its own tail. You can't see, but a fat gopher snake in the grass waits and smacks his lips for a titmouse treat. The hawk in the air has the wind as his cradle; it rocks him soft; he thanks his wings. The wind is the world's wine and has made the wheat grass tipsy, see how it sways.

Befuddled Puddle Huddle

It was cold, so everyone huddled together

Mumbling about the unbearable weather

“I wish it were warmer!” they whined. “We miss sweat!”

“And furthermore, why are our feet soaking wet?”

Then a man came along and informed the cold huddle:

“You’re wet ‘cause you’re standing inside of a puddle!”

The huddlers continued to mumble and frown

The man said, “It’s true! It’s a puddle! Look down!”

But the huddlers were huddled quite tight; chin to chin

They couldn’t look down to see what they were in

And so they continued to whine and to fret

And wonder why all of their feet were so wet

The man said, “Unhuddle, and then you will see!”

But the huddlers said, “No! We’re as cold as can be.”

And so they kept standing, confused, in their puddle.

 Some people just don’t like to be un-befuddled.

sikorsky

sikorsky is a military helicopter company
that has hired two giggly twins

one of the twins gets nervous
about hot oil in the frying pan

the other is afraid to say a word
to blatant litterbugs
and right-wing blabbermouths

a colleague twice her age comes up behind her
and whispers,
"when you smile, the whole world smiles"

creepy

Three Heads

     There once lived a little boy who had three heads. He could switch heads as often as he pleased, and just as easily as if they were wigs.
     The first head was as teeny-tiny as a chestnut and bald and its mouth was so small that it could only fit one grain of rice at a time. This was what he called his “Mini-Head.”

     The second head was a regular sized boy head, with freckles across the nose, brown eyes, brown hair, and a mouth big enough for a heaping spoonful of rice at a time. The only problem with this head was its cheeks, which were so chubby and pink that middle-aged women pinched them at least three times a month. This was the little boy’s cross to bear. He called this head his “Cheeky Head.”

     The third head was one the boy called “Mega Head” because it was the size of a watermelon. A whole pot of rice could fit in the mouth, and the eyes were bright blue and all across the face were freckles as big as bottle caps. The hair was blonde and wild and feathery like the tail of a big happy dog, and the ears were huge and stick-outy and gave the boy excellent hearing. Being so large and disproportionate, this particular head often threw the boy off balance. He had to work hard to keep it from tilting to one side or the other, and the effort gave him neck aches.

     It seems fairly obvious that the boy wore the second head most regularly, as it was the most proportionate. Well, I can verify this fact—Cheeky Head was the only head the little boy ever wore in public. But what did he do as soon as he got home from school and shut the door to his room? I’ll tell you— he put on Mini Head! And he kissed and he kissed and he kissed. Indeed, it was quite serendipitous that he owned such a microcephalic prosthetic, because without Mini Head’s tiny lips the boy never could have kissed his girlfriend Lucy, who was an adorable little striped snail. So it turned out that Mini Head was the boy’s favorite head of all! And you might wonder—did the boy ever wear Mega Head despite its clumsy and unnatural size? Yes, but he only wore it when he was mad at Lucy and wanted to show that he wouldn’t kiss her. With Mega Head, the boy’s lips were bigger than Lucy’s entire body, and a kiss would smash her. So Lucy felt very small in the presence of this unkissable head. She was only a snail, and had no alternate heads of her own. This was her cross to bear.