Going Downtown

For Cubans who live in Havana
One fruit is provided like manna
They think it so nice
They call for it thrice -
Banana! Banana! Banana!

What's this?

I thought bakers were all men!
Or matrons tough as shoes

These girls are...cute
And full of breasts
And smiles
And I think something's up.

This is some creative ploy
Eroticizing bread.
Dusting of flour, warm loaves...
This is not right!
Scones should be dry
And bread should be
Cold.

Welcome to the rinsewater

There once was a lawyer from Boston
Who lost to a Yalie from Austin.
He said, "Now get set!
You deserve what you get -
At least all the states that I lost in."

Relax, Mr. Muscles

There once was a girl from Nagoya
Who never delighted in soya
She made awful scenes
When fed curdled beans
And screamed, "I am calling my lawya!"

There once was a writer so awful
His scribbles would verge on unlawful
Instead of "not many"
Or "just barely any,"
He called tiny numbers "a pawful."

A rhymer I met down in Texas
Drove out to his herd in a Lexus.
Though grown on the farm,
He could see no harm.
"We're country, if nobody checks us."

Drink T. Regularly

I will sneak an illegal moment and write a bit.

Mr. Dove was a very good little boy, and his shirts were always clean. He was an ugly-beautiful black kid, with lovely skin and hair and an incredible Merchant of Venice nose. His mother was a doughy, petite white girl, his father a man of irregular temper, and his house had a strange odor, which I later discovered was not strange. I remember one good moment we spent together, hanging from the painfully cold jungle gym, which was the TARDIS. I was Doctor Who, and he was...I don't recall what he was. But it was just us, the two of us, filling our recess with a little adventure as our classmates screamed and bit and did whatever little boys and girls do. Then I remember painful scenes, scenes of astrangement. I felt him pulling away, but was powerless to change it. He began to rut like the other boys. He became an empty cypher. But I was far from accepting that he or I had changed. One sixth-grade day I walked into the tin shack that housed the middle school's gifted program. He mocked me for some flaw in dress or manner that I could not see. It was over. My heart felt its first break. Mr. Dove, my love was pure. I'll admit that later my whole idea of love became mixed up with my wildly aesthetic consciousness. But back then I couldn't have known it or named it, it was so pure, everywhere and nowhere like the ether itself.

Shock! Misery! Failure! My poor little heart.