‘Til the Cows Come Home

Limbs akimbo, I breathe in the morning light, breakfast

on daybreak’s promise, turn my back on the angst

of last night’s news, moon the myopic body politic

with its astigmatic visions, ignore all mandates, refuse

to redress last-night’s nightmare-scattered bedclothes

or rinse grim residue off the stable floor.

I saddle up and high-tail it out the front door

to horse around in Central Park, plop on the Great Lawn,

bask in nature and nurture in the Conservatory Garden, laze around

the Sheep Meadow ‘til the cows come home, bull-headedly

churn unreal into surreal, grow bovine-size sunflowers

in giant dry fissures of rough and tumble rock, attempt to disentangle

gnarled roots of insecurity and insanity, while sticking

my skeptic’s tongue out at super-size-me

salt-licks of inanity.

I balk at cow-towing to the ding-dung, ding-dung,

ding-dung of the same old, same old bell

and to stoically chewing my cud

while awaiting the arrival of Godot.

Holy Cow, no!

Let me greedily graze

in Shakespeare’s Garden, ingest the lyric

that suggests parsley, sage, rosemary

and thyme to season illusive reason

with pigheaded rhyme.

Please Refrain from Feeding the Animals

Completely incorrigible, he snorts.

Oh, no, I demurely reply,

not completely, only half.

Which half, he snarls, upper or lower?

You never did understand me, I sigh.

I’m halved vertically, not horizontally,

and it’s debilitating to determine which side is which,

since left & right often conspire to join at the hip and broadside me.

Not only incorrigible, but dyslexic to boot, he grunts.

Oh, shoot, I cry, do you have to hang a sign on every cage?

Why can’t you simply flow with the go, you know,

cling to the flying trapeze wherever it swings you?

I ask you, Is it a crime to toss a monkey a nut?

Non-sequitur, he growls, then spits

a slew of primitive poetry through churlish lips:

What a flake, a certifiable fruitcake.

You’re so banana-headed you just don’t get it,

that sometimes your antics are hard to take.

I refrain from feeding him to the animals.