Intransitive or: A Catechism of Long-Distance Angst

Which of us arrives calendars?
Which departs clocks?
When the train and speed vanish
Who frowns hemlocks?

When do we look daggers?
When speak flints?
At what point in the rue and blackness
Write peppermints?

How come crawl anvils the split weeks?
How come race feathers the bound days?

How goes one good into gentle nights?
How springs hope in eternal siphons?
Let we grow then, you and me,
To try and listen hyphens.

---------

[Another questionnaire.]

Limericks #33--39: Henry and His Six Wives

Henry VIII (1491-1547) gained renown for two things. In matters falling under the crown, he achieved unification of church and state, and in matters falling (or perhaps rising) under the belt, separation of skull and spine. He serial-married six women: "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived," as the mnemonic goes. Below, more or less, is their history.

Henry, illegible bachelor.

Hercules of Britain, Henry Number Eight
Saw as the Hydra his every other mate.
Say "I do" to his face,
And there were two ways
Your per capita income could grow great.

Catherine of Aragon, who spawned "Bloody" Mary I.

                                    

King Henry he sought an alteration to home,
Made up his heart and wrote thus to Rome:
"Annul us, sir, for I ha' decyded my Queene didst lie wyth mine Fifteen-Year-old Brother after all. True, thou hadst Suffered me to wed her on Groundes that she Never did consummate her Union wyth the Wretche (may God bless his Soul in Heavene), but Surely that be an Error, sire, for Else wouldst she not Torment me these score Winters with nary a male Heire yet no End to babes stillborn, miscarryed, or Daughtery. Annul, annul. Mark'd have I a fresh Bride."
To which the pope replied,
"Have you tried transmitting the Y chromosome?"

Anne Boleyn, who bore Elizabeth I. 

Henry, happy ruler, espoused anew
A wit to pursue, a beauty to woo!
(The one time she carried,
She "It's a girl, I'm sorry"-ed.)
O he loved her to pieces! (Exactly two.)

Jane Seymour, who begat Edward VI.

Had his breeder only been shrewder,
She'd have laid him another Tudor.
But wholly unprovoked,
She up and croaked,
Leaving the widower a blubbery brooder.

Anne of Cleves as painted for Henry's assessment. He was crestfallen upon meeting her in the flesh, likely calling her a "Flanders mare"; the marriage lasted six months.

Long before the days of Instagram
The way to a gent's electrocardiogram
Was a portrait; only, in person
The impression may worsen,
Perhaps even end an alliance program.

Catherine Howard, who had had a passionate past, and was accused of an adulterous present.

Upon discovering his partner's C. V.,
With two strokes of the pen Henry
Behead-
ed
His consort, and banned the word "spree".

Catherine Parr, instrumental in passing a crucial Succession Act.  

Sage, ready queen, kept her head!
Smile on her lips, heart full of dread.
By and by the Eighth died,
Whence C. Parr duly cried,
And ensured his girls one day England led.

Diary of a Poem

Day 2.

Happy I wish to make thee, but happier my writer.
Ther'by shift and knead I to align my body tighter.
He adores it when I ferry but one thought per line.
Feeds me he and clothes me he, so do not I whine.
And this when I do, smile does he too.
-----------

Day 9.

But thought never ends, does it, spilling
Into other lines, other days, willing
Itself to outgrow its creation. Yet, and yet
I fear for my mind -- and the guilt of the debt
I owe to mine master; no heart could be vaster.
(To m'tongue must I plaster: "No heart could be vaster.")
-----------

Day 26.

Cogito ergo sum. I prefer to park in those Carte-
sian co-ordinates. Why can't I party
like the other kids? I want to enjamb, not align, not.
even. rhyme!
There, I said it. (And you've read it.) 
-----------

The Convergence of the Titan

Who plunged (w)reckless
Joined Rose's necklace.

[Thomas Hardy wrote The Converge of the Twain in ship-shaped stanzas to mark the sinking of the Titanic. It's only fair that OceanGate-gate gets at least a couplet of its own.]

Limericks #21--32: The Labours of Heracles

 I. The Nemean Lion

There was a full-time predator in Nemea
Suffering from pernicious anaemia.
Before he could delve
Into hunting B-twelve
Heracles lured him into academia.

II. The Lernaean Hydra

The lake of Lernaea was home to the hydra
Whose venomous fumes singed the hide raw.
For anybody Greek
Heracles v The Freak
Turned out to be that year's high draw.

III. The Golden Hind of Ceryneia

Whereas as asses it too has grass,
Despite its name a hind ain't an ass.
Now Heracles did pinch
Its every square inch,
But I can't stress enough that wasn't crass.

IV. The Erymanthian Boar

There was in Erymanthia a boar,
Until there it was no more.
As Heracles drifted,
It'd quietly shifted 
Hearing it was Labour Number Four.

V. The Augean Stables

The stables of King Augeas stung your lung,
For three decades' worth of dung had clung. 
Lest he lose his mind, 
Heracles sought to find 
The cleanest notes any tongue had sung.

VI. The Stymphalian Birds

Next he declared: "Stymphalia or bust!"

Its metallic flock never could rust,
But met their fate
In his sly bait:
What chewed the plastic, bit the dust.

VII. The Cretan Bull

A lonesome creature in Crete

Heard a man wished to meet.
"I'm calf, not bull,
Grown half, not full.
Surely my feelings he'll tenderly treat?"

VIII. The Mares of Diomedes 

Pegasus the beautiful, he could take wing;
Diomedes' terribles were man-eating.
Can you guess which
The hero had to hitch?
Why not the Trojan one? was his thinking.

IX. The Girdle of Hippolyta

"Amazon dread queen, Hippolyta, I'm.

State your purpose, waste no time."
The Herculean task
Was then to ask:
"Is your belt available on Prime?"

X. The Cattle of Geryon

Three-headed Geryon -- how his waist narrows!

Eagle-eyed Heracles --  beware his arrows!
The cattle! the battle!
Hark! the death rattle!
(OK, Geryon now lies with the pharaohs.)

XI. The Golden Apples of the Hesperides

The Hesperides' garden bore forbidden fruit
Whose juices immortalized the lowest brute.
Had our chap taken a bite
I'd've'd the pleasure to write
He was found impossible to hang or electrocute.

XII. Cerberus

Down in Hades to anyone who'd heed
Cerberus woofed, "Pray, what's my breed?"
He learnt it the day
H took him away:
One moment retriever, the next retrieved.

-----

Images from
https://www.kidslovegreece.com,
https://www.theoi.com,
https://www.vectorstock.com,
https://www.sciencephoto.com,
https://www.greekboston.com,
https://www.ipernity.com.

May the 4th

To be sung to the tune of The Imperial March.

-------

Make way for Lord of Men, Darth Vader.
Darth Vader -- here he comes, make a bow.
He has scarcely a lower jaw,
But once froze his son-in-law --
You all rather be well-behaved.
Unless you are a mannequin,
You don't call him Anakin,
And then your windpipe may be saved. 

Crater Lake at Christmas

Lines penned in 2016 upon beholding the lake snow-clad. 

'Tis a fashionable blunder
In naming the eighth wonder
To not take in account
Our fine lake-in-a-mount.
Ah the joy here! 
Is there a greater, truer?
(Is there a crater bluer?)

Limerick #20: ABBAA

His punchlines always came first.
Couldn't hold a thought --
And he often forgot --
Where suspense tends to fare worst,
There was that limericist from Amherst...

(A "good" editor would, of course, reverse the line order:

There was that limericist from Amherst...
Where suspense tends to fare worst,
And he often forgot --
Couldn't hold a thought --

His punchlines always came first.)

Unison

 "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,..., it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, ..."
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

It was the best of times, 
it was the worst of times, 
it was the age of wisdom, 
it was the age of foolishness, 
it was the epoch of belief, 
it was the epoch of incredulity, 
it was the season of Light, 
it was the season of Darkness, 
it was the spring of hope, 
it was the winter of despair.

It was a time for the worst,
it was a time for the best,
it was the era of greed,
it was the era of contentment,
it was the hour of need,
it was the hour of magnanimity,
it was the sentence of sloth,
it was the sentence of industry,
it was the solstice of incongruence,
it was the equinox of symmetry.

But, it must be said,
it was not the crossroads of triumph,
nor the crossroads of disaster.
People remember it that way,
but there's more nostalgia in that than truth.
Likewise,
it was not the rule of warmth,
it was not the rule of cold,
wasn't the cycle of love,
wasn't the cycle of indifference,
not the chapter of comfort,
not the chapter of angst.
By utterly no means was it the chapter of angst.

A closer reading of history will prove that,
in reality,
it was the tenure of solitude,
it was the tenure of company,
it was the spell of calm,
it was the spell of wrath,
it was the adolescence of disarray,
it was the dotage of indulgence.

Maybe it was the aeon of vanity,
maybe it wasn't,
but I'm one hundred percent certain that
it was the aeon of humility.
Then again,
it was the semester of silence,
it was the semester of prolixity,
it was the nanosecond of haste,
it was the millennium of patience,
so alright, I'm not all that sure.

I have been going around saying
it was the eyeblink of serendipity,
and sometimes the eyeblink of ill fortune,
that it was the jiffy of surfeit,
and--against all odds--the jiffy of shortfall.
So picture my astonishment when I looked up my diary
and saw, in my own writing, that actually
it was the heartbeat of crisis,
it was the heartbeat of harmony,
it was the two shakes of a lamb's tail of ailment,
it was the two shakes of a lamb's tail of health.

To think that if certain events had transpired a tiny bit differently,
it could have been the interlude of movement,
it could have been the interlude of stillness,
could've been the twilight of superstition,
could've been the dawn of reason, 
would have been the history of the beginning,
if not the beginning of history.

At any rate, back then they said soon
it will be a time for the best,
it will be a time for the worst,
it will be the session of passion,
it will be the session of chastity,
it will be the debut of suspense,
it will be the swansong of reminiscence.

Well, look around.
It ain't the debut of suspense,
it ain't the bloody swansong of reminiscence,
it is the bout of voracity,
it is the bout of temperance,
it is the cadence of faith,
it is the cadence of empiricism,
it is the Jurassic of habit,
it is the Atomic of invention.

That is why I don't like making imprecise statements about durations.
But I do have a pretty sharp memory for the spatial aspects of times.
I can tell you, for instance, that
it was the best of places,
it was the worst of places,
it was the kingdom of heaven,
it was the kingdom of limbo,
it was the chamber of glass,
it was the chamber of secrets,
it was the land of the gleeful,
it was the home of the grave,
it was the epicentre of action,
it was the shell of idyll,
the ballpark of conjecture,
the bullseye of accuracy,
the right of apathy,
the left of candour,
the surface of politeness,
the depth of compassion.

Believe me, I had taken measurements. 

Collateral Adjectives: an Introduction

It looks like a long poem but 

something about the opening line 

gets my attention.

I quite like how it cuts to the chase 

with the metaphor of 

adopting a dog versus an infant.

How it patiently elaborates 

that neither aqueous nor watery 

would have a life of its own without water, 

but that only one of them 

can be mistaken for a biological child 

of the noun.

I don't know about you, but

I personally find that a nice explanation 

of the titular subject.

Which is why I don't mind

when a couple more examples 

are shoehorned in, like end vs terminal, 

and moon vs lunar.

There is even a joke 

about collateral and loan words 

that I'm willing to give a polite chuckle.

At the same time I also begin to suspect here

that the poem is perhaps not really about collateral adjectives, 

that maybe it wants to do something else altogether,

something that reminds me of adjective vs epithetic.

Out of nowhere then comes this river in South Bend, Indiana.

There is that phrase, 

ribbon of sparkling silver, 

which I love, but there are also those two names, 

St Joseph and Sakiwasipi.

So presumably this is another metaphor.

That much is confirmed in the next line,

when we learn that St Joseph is the version

that freezes over, runs in 

straight lines, or beneath 

unsightly bridges, or by 

the crowded pier at Lake Michigan 

into which it merges and 

disappears against the clouded sunset beyond,

whereas when called Sakiwasipi the river

ripples under cackling geese 

and meanders 

under luminous spring clouds,

once having overdone it and

leaving behind 

a lake shaped like a horseshoe,

perfectly still,

a giant mirror 

into which bright yellow trees 

hang upside down, pointing 

to the clear blue sky 

at the bottom. 

It's not obvious to me what I'm supposed to make 

of that frenzy of imagery -- 

but I am left with no time 

to turn it over the swivels of my brain, 

because the poem now puts its arms together in front of it

and dives into a second big analogy.

This is when it gets tiresome, technical -- 

yes, I get that no single ancestor 

gave bats and dolphins 

their common blessing of echolocation, 

but do I really care that nor did 

one etymological great-grandmother 

spawn east and oriental?

That word, convergent evolution, 

makes me wince: 

it should have no place in poetry.

I want to go to the next stanza already.

Only it turns out to be 

a curiously defensive one, like

it is trying to prove a point.

Speaking for myself, though, I felt it had its moments,

like the spiel about how some collaterals

function as euphemism. 

The one with cystic vs bladder,

the one about mortal remains for dead body,

and my favourite, gluteal vs buttock.

But hang on, hymeneal vs marriage

shouldn't belong here.

That sounds to me like 

the opposite of euphemistic. 

We then go off on 

an unnecessary moralistic tangent on what it feels like to

savour stewed goose and smoked steak versus 

bite into birds and bison.

I suppose that was for those s's and b's.

Next we are abruptly dropped into the periodic table 

and asked to contemplate stannic acid 

and ferrous oxide and Auric Goldfinger.

Then it gets awkward with 

all those obscure collaterals for common nouns, though I dig the one on 

hodiernal vs today. Yummm.

Also, estival vs summer. 

Estival cracks me up.

The final bit here is for me the best, 

the one with all the sneaky types, 

you know, the ones we use all the time 

but don't think of as collaterals.

Like I am startled that second and best

slipped under my radar just now.

To be honest, the next stanza loses me completely.

Do I really need to use digital exchange 

in place of fingers crossed? 

Sure, feline and canine precipitation 

faintly tickles me,

but xeric uniformity? Colour me unimpressed. 

That's not even what "just deserts" really means.

That also goes for the one on 

carpal gyration vs wrist spin.

And maybe I'm just too cynical at this point, 

but dextral absence for right away 

strikes me as too clever by half. 

I sense the poem is in panic mode now,

as if guilty of having 

bullet lists masquerading as its stanzas.

Pitiful, really.

  

I am pretty inspired, though, 

to see it recover to hit some high notes 

in the final stanza.

Those nouns lacking collaterals 

do make a good theme for wrapping things up.

Like when we are challenged 

to produce one for sin or Portugal or TV, 

I, for one, fail to.

And it is odd indeed that window has fenestral 

and door has nothing.

Pet haters? Ha, that's a good name -- 

having me doubt if the original metaphor 

was set up for this payoff.

(Then the volume of my mind 

inexplicably turns down as I read 

that side remark on how sooner or later 

I'd be thinking of the collateral shelter 

as one boasting no unclaimed animals.)

And I really like the way the examples 

in this category are juxtaposed.

The cake, guillotine, democracy sequence 

is a nice touch, for instance.

But also coffee, bean, cup. 

It gets me when we then immediately go

from coffee to scatological.

Seeing how the clock on the poem 

is running out, I become curious 

about how it is going to end. 

That is when I am a trifle jarred, 

but mostly amused, to discover that, 

in its own words, 

"As a poem do I long to sound,

 as thy eyeballs come southbound."

Fancy.

Clerihews #17-18: Babbage

Charles Babbage
Had spare cabbage.
He put it in a while loop
And made eternal soup.

Charles Babbage
Served soup of cabbage.
The recipe for the starter
Was by Byron's daughter. 

Oregon Pacific

Come morning tide up the wayside,

By whales and wharfs and dunes I glide,

I slide by rock, mount, bridge and bay.

I wave, I roar, I leap, I pour,

With briny tongues lap up the shore,

Through cliff, cape, chasm find a way.

I shape the shell and wash Thor's Well,

Entrance the lighthouse clientele,

And arches, churns and punchbowls spray.

And as the beach I sweep to reach,

I catch Ponsler's pebbles in speech,

Or stumps and wrecks rue their birthday.

All Deck on Hands

Call a spade a rake never;
A gainful club must meet.
Diamonds may be forever,
But hearts will cease to beat.

Yoke abacus to alphabet:
Ten-J-Q-Joker-Ace.
Then cast your silver in the bet,
And keep a poker face.

asdf␣ ␣jkl;

THUMB through the telephone INDEX,
                                look up a plumber.

(Think of a five digit number.)

MIDDLE of the night,
        give him a RING.

(Is it a glove of ice? 
A bee quintet's sting?)

                                                                  Whisper:
"Mighty vitamins in LITTLE leeks: they fix you."

(Or is it seven-seven-eight-six-two?)

How to Make Our Friends at the Bottom

I know not their design,
Nor of their dividends,
Only how to frankenstein
Our very little friends.

The mushroom, she is Fungi --
Just one limb to keep her hold
(Any counter feet are bogi);
Cast her with a Mould.

The Amoeba has no vertex;
You may append an amoebum.
When pressed into servex,
He would sway it to and from.

There be no complex tricks
To beget a Bacterium,
Distance from antibiotics
The sole criterium.

Ration the creature Viral --
'Tis Death's loaded die.
Grant it the double spiral,
And slip it into a mie.

Through a Mirror Cracked

Right is funny sometimes.

This is the side of the car I mis-enter 
outside Arrivals 
with the fresh sting of a tropical lungful of air.
This is the earthing-wire limb of Nataraja,
the useful arm of God in the Sistine Chapel,
the hemisphere of the brain
out of which paint flows, and humming-birds fly.
This is where the choir of rhymes stand in an ode,
where you would lay down 
the first syllable of an Arabic haiku.
Where Hitler leaned, 
and Italy -- and italics.

Left is hilarious.

This, and not that, is the hand of Tendulkar that drops
the mushroom autograph.
This is the hand of an acquaintance you glimpse
for a ring, to trace their bliss or misery;
the hand of mine that holds a teacup in restaurants 
because my grandmother had suggested
this cuts down contact with public spit;
the lively hand of a protein --
the only hand of a neutrino.
The eardrum of Caesar that had ceased to stir.
The ear Mike Tyson 
lets you keep, if it is yours.
The ear Vincent van Gogh
lets you keep, if it is his.
Hither hover hearts; here 
align 
alliterations.
Once, I dreamed I walked this way on the number line
-- passing all the numerals in a fencing pose
(and I could swear they were getting bigger, 
only, I was told, they were getting smaller) --
until I encountered a sinister southpaw
from the occident,
who seemed a bit on the portly side.

Proceedings of The Ornithology Society

             
"Was it a warbler you met?
Does it fly? Get wet?
A brand new breed of bird?
We stand in need of word."

"Aye, a brand new breed of bird,
The kind of which's unheard.
To describe her we need
Words of phrasal breed.

Finefangled is she, and in new fettle,
She builds her dint with loggerheads and lays eggs in a kettle.
Her dudgeon's short and shrift is high,
A riddance reddish in her cry:
A brand new breed of bird,
And that's just the first third.

Her down -- at least from what I saw --
Was spick and beck, and kith and haw,
Kit and whit, and not a caboodle.
All in all, a jetsam doodle
Was the brand new breed of bird
That I had encountered.

She bandies a shebang raringly,
Drinks neap and petard sparingly;
She wears her bill in kilter,
Up skelter and fro helter.
A brand new breed of bird,
A true crossword absurd."

Clerihews #14-16: Sudarshan

Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan
Preferred introversion.
He was only partial
To interactions axial.

(Speeches by
Weinberg, Glashow, Marshak.)
-----------------------------------------------

Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan
Felt for Sweden aversion.
He pardoned the indifference,
But not the incoherence.

 (robber barons, disgruntled giant)
-----------------------------------------------

Ennackal Chandy George Sudarshan
Took a diversion.
Thanks to this foresight,
He arrived ahead of light.
-----------------------------------------------

Descent of the Daystar

He's up there, high up, and I frown as I re-consult my sunset tables.
All right, it is nigh; the final sweep always the swiftest, I remind myself.
I perceive with amusement the masculine pronoun that has travelled from Coleridge into my mental notes.
Was some Ra-like one in the back of the mariner's head, or did he only contrive a convenient rime for "sea"?
Lo, the hasty farewell has begun, the headlong plunge to the horizon, like a -- the azures are crimsoning -- like a marathon athlete who's saved the coal in her muscles for the end sprint.
I dig my fingers deep in the sand and watch.
Something's very wrong about these settings and risings, I say to myself, like the old streetside trick with the magician vanishing the coin and retrieving it from behind your ear. 
I can more eagerly digest the Norwegian fireball that swirls about my head than the African version that swings from scalp to sole and back.  
The blazing rim is but a whisker's breadth from the steel-blue parapet of ocean. 
I lean forward, almost hoping to hear a clang.
The doughnut is poised to dunk.
No, the coffee is poised to rise -- the sun ain't setting; 'tis the earth rushing up to draw a curtain over it,
And as I balance this astronomical technicality in my brain, my eyes wander, and I miss my moment:
The sea has already taken a bite out of him.
And that initiates the ebbing of light; the grays begin to surround me, deepening in sudden jerks as the planet's eyelids droop.

"Isn't it a lovely sunset, Mr Robert Frost?" remarked a young lady at the balcony of a party, to which replied he, "I never discuss business after dinner."

I roll the anecdote across the draft for a groove to slide it in, stopping only to witness the shiny bald top of the glorious thing slip quietly into the waves.

I become aware I'd been holding my breath, which I unclasp as I prepare to disembark the dune.
On the climb down I turn to the wispy clouds and warn them, Soon, out of your sight, too.
As far as I can tell the universe is now a whimsical gallery of purple and orange, the silhoutte of my sedan somewhere in it -- a bridge to the world of dinner, detergent and bed.
I trudge my reluctant way thither, which is when I'm struck by the happy thought that the photonic sun has set; the neutrinous knows no nightfall.

-------

Update on Sep 2022:
I only just came to know of John Updike's Cosmic Gall that expands on the last line.

Hourglass

Brigitte Bardot keeps off starch
And Greta Garbo hydrates,
Yet Humphrey lets his throat to parch
And bites them carbohydrates.

Rita Rudner lives on crumbs,
Marilyn Monroe, celeries;
Orson hungry when he becomes 
Eviscerates he sculleries.

Dancercises Lindsay Lohan,
Weightlifts Lucy Lawless;
"Burrrp" comes Denzel's slogan,
You wish he would gnaw less.

Amy Adams turns to pose, 
Lucy Liu winks;
Is that cheese on Joaquin's nose?
I bet his breath stinks.

Clerihews # 09 - 13: Bentley

Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Differed fundamentally
From Boswell and Watson --
Everyone was Holmes, anyone Johnson.

Edmund Bentley
Prepared mentally
To take the blame
For his name.

The pa questioned the mother,
"No more rhymes to gather?" 
They made, consequently, 
Edmund Clerihew Bentley.

E. C. Bentley
Accidentally
Ran into the liquor shelf, 
And clerihewed himself.

Edmund's clerihew and Bentley
Were also lowered gently,
But the sedan didn't go in
Due to the coffin.

---------------

Here's a collection by other authors.  

Lines on a Mile High Holiday

Last Tuesday I caught an off-season hill station by surprise.
Ever since, I've been itching to chronicle the things I saw -- "saw".
But I curb myself.
Travelogue, I've come to suspect, is soft writing,
A home-delivered pizza that keeps the saucepan of imagination unlit.
It altogether eliminates having to look a reticent blank page in the eye all day in hopes of teasing inspiration out. 
It guarantees sleep.
It hires a secretary and dismisses the muse.
"Describe the pictures in your head in 500 words or less."
And that, reader, is why I'm not gushing about the orchid petals and the snaking river and the bison and the kurinji blossom and the spotted deer and the luscious kamala oranges and the coffee berry -- or their lack thereof.
Not because they, in absentia, were not fine pegs to hang a tale by, but because I am not that flavour of writer. 
Not because my sleeve isn't brimming with lines like "Seen sights are curious, those unseen are curiouser and curiouser", but because in general I prefer to talk about, say, a stripe of moonlight cutting through the heart of a lovelorn damsel, or strive to fly the word "spezzatura"  amidst the rough weather of an ode and land it on a stanza without crashing it.
Much rather would I indulge in such unashamed birotechnics, than clamp sentences onto sensations past, a labour that bears out little more than powers of portrayal.
Vast as the fascinating gulf between truth and travel brochure is, I oughtn't to give in.
And therefore, with resolute heart, the orchid plant no longer a-bloom will have to be pinched by the stem and pulled whole out of my poem, and tossed to the margins, 
Where it will have to jostle for space with the Cauvery stealing her chilly way under the floor of the cave that wriggles all the way to Mysuru, 
The leafy grounds said to heave beneath the hooves of mountain bison at night,
The kurinjis expected to awaken next spring only to squint at the skies and wind the alarum up for another dozenyear, 
The Deer Park closed on Tuesdays presumably to annoy the town barber,
The unripe oranges swaying in the breeze -- emerald pendulums -- as if impatient to live up to their name,
And the first coffee flower I ever saw.

Interior Decoration

  What misses, rankles; who aimed,  

Back from self-deceit's canal,  

  Thither to ship off wounds, named

Their airtight rationale.

  Yet shall gently weep and richly chide,

For tastes dire,

  Into daughters' ears the merry bride

Who took a liar.

Love Letter Back of the Envelope

Defer the air may, as you inspire it, love, to Dr van der Waals,
But its PV, when from your pretty nose it withdraws, is ever NRT.
That bewitching toss of your head, and the gait that captivates, 
Sinuous movement of hands to the accompaniment of honeyed voice,
These, these more than anything else, at Carnot efficiency pass.
As I yawn, rest pen, crack knuckle and stare out the listless window,
The tune of thought segues into your giggle, dilator of my pupils,
And my world of twenty summers turns over to unwrinkled simplicity. 
Friction becomes negligible, pulleys turn massless, orbits circular,
Flows streamlined, vibrations undamped, stoves are blackbodies, moons balls;
Airless spins the earth now, its density uniform, its gee taken ten.
Appear, quickener of my pulse, in the apple of my pining eye, and 
Batteries as soon lose their internal resistance as Biot-Savart wires illimitably grow.
Closer come, and I relapse to days of naiveté juvenile,
When position-momentum commutators used to vanish
In silence, without my knowing they did.

These passions, good madam, feel free to requite; oh do quite, only not hastily.
Mixed signals, should you ask me, would be for the moment the very thing.
Of emoticons master the enigmatic placement. My favoured novel happen to be reading.
Forget not the absent turn of head that ends in the briefest of ocular trysts.
Fan the fires of hope and misery in equal turns by means suchlike,
Cede I would the world's wisdom for the electric delirium you shall accord me. 
Some day, I shall the vale of acquaintance tread and adore by very different word and heart,

Having my palate widened by the diet of surprises you have no doubt up your sleeve,

Fondly acclimated to every quirk, conviction and odour.

Today, strawberry pie, less keen am I to account for apsides, drag or Heisenberg.
Today I invent sobriquets for my private whisperings.

Monger of my dreams.

Author of unannounced smiles.
Commissioner of doodles.
Jaggery brick.
Sugarcane juice.

Macushla.

Be mine at some point, but torment me now.

Clerihew #08: Fry

Stephen John Fry
Is a versatile guy
But couldn't be sorrier
He ain't a little Laurier.

-----------------------------

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k-T8S0lEwQ]

A Grandfather's Guide to Poesy

Catching her kvetch thusly, we was keen to teach Kim a trick:
"Incapable of completing my poems am I, though they begin with promise."
We prescribed ye ol' family formula, Ocean-Heaven-Joint-Pun:

"To seek inspiration, seafare," advised we. "Hatch a Miltonian paradise.

Attempt cannabis. Should all fail, cast dignity aside and play on words.
Why couldn't you be a gent? All comely women of circular countenance
Spout perennial male poetry from moles located at midwicket..."
Pensioners' mouths, like air conditioners, only stop for autumn --
Free rolled the pearls of wisdom, and other spherical schemes.

Yet civilly did Kim nod her head and mutter,
"You do know this is my bread and butter",
Check the flow of thoughts said, and utter,
"But, Gramp, isn't that our bread and butter?"
Let her bright pink face to redden but her
Tone was even-keeled: "Bread and butter."
Her trouble wasn't, explained she, a deficit of lyrical themes,
But that she possessed an imagination with neither top nor bottom.
It chirped itself hoarse like a negligent mama cricket's kid cricket,

Spiced everything up and set off smoke alarms, like brown tenants;
Kibitzed, quivered and cooed with flying colours, like crayon birds.

Inheriting her clan's sonnet nose, doggerel ears and ballad eyes,
Inflated she with uncontrollable stanzas every revision -- ere quitting at v7.1.
"Sweet child, there is a fix as surely within your reach as your left palm is,"
We suggested pitifully. "Make your rhyme scheme symmetric."


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
In case you missed it, here's another version.

Little Mortinsen

Now Mortinsen saw an octopus;
she behaved very odd.
Pray, boy, and make no fuss,
said the cephalopod.
See the pistol in this tentacle?
You, young man, I've been sentacle.
Mortinsen scowled, Mortinsen sighed, 
Mortinsen stood there glassy-eyed. 
His head was elsewhere, his eyes saw through she; 
he picked up the gun absently and made some sushi.

Mortinsen met a tramp whose vapours
with everyone disagreed.
About he walked reading newspapers:
they called him Encyclopede.
Do you know about, Mortinsen, sneered he,
What are your thoughts on and heard of the?
Mortinsen stretched, Mortinsen bent,
Mortinsen puzzled over where he went.
He removed his earphones and asked for directions,
and healed the poor tramp of his omniscience. 

Mortinsen encountered a pterodactyl;
it alighted on his bed.
Sir, it would appear I'm a fossil,
the angry reptile said.
Now and then I nap, and a few million years pass --
this time I wake to find me displayed under glass.
Mortinsen squinted, Mortinsen yawned;
the pterodactyl Mortinsen gazed beyond.
When at last he saw it he once or twice blinked,
fed it some birdseed and made it extinked.

Mortinsen dashed into a troika of dots;
their talk was elliptic.
They had no more than two or three thoughts,
all apocalyptic.
The planet, they cried, is growing ovoid,
to hatch one morning that none can avoid.
Mortinsen grunted, Mortinsen scratched,
the bombast of the dots he hadn't catched. 
He leaned forward, put his lips near 'em,
whispered So? and disproved their theorem.

Mortinsen came upon four little boys;
they seemed just as him.
They had his coiffure, they had his voice --
three of them were dim.
"Mortinsen, I your doppelgänger", "Mortinsen, you my clone",
"Our time machine works, Morty!", "Ich? Ein tzwin of your own."
Mortinsen mumbled, Mortinsen frowned,
Mortinsen smiled and jot something downed.
He pranced home with joy, his soul blithe as bubbles,
and cut off his big toe to tell him from his doubles.