On the Generation of Animals
To beget with a cloacal kiss
Is the apex of avian bliss.
Crows do it.
Owls do it.
Even sopping waterfowls do it.
And unlike the fish who discharges his milt from afar on the external eggs of his mate in an ovuliparious fit, well…
Our bird is sure not to miss.
Disambiguation
Antinomy is when, of two things, both together can’t be right.
Antimony is mostly found in sulfide mineral stibnite.
A big difference indeed, but still not quite antonymy,
Nor yet, like bank and bank, nor bark and bark, homonymy:
As also when we learn,
That coke is something that you burn,
And coke is something that you drink and something that you snort,
And Edward Coke solicited before the English court.
Parsimony is, like, when you say no more words than suit,
Persimmony’s the essence of a common Asian fruit.
Possum is the Latin for whatever I can do,
Opossum with an o entails things I can’t do too,
Like playing dead, or tonic immobility (synonymy),
Among the other features of this noble beast’s zoonomy.
Spirit Is a Bone
“There is a bone in the spine that remains in the grave and never decays; it resembles the head of a serpent, and from that bone the body is rebuilt at the resurrection.” —Zohar I, 137a.1
“If being as such, or thinghood, is predicated of spirit, then the true expression of this is that it is something like a bone.” —G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
The Jews say spirit is a bone,
A solid part, as hard as stone.
Others think it’s like the gas
That glows and hovers o’er the grass
In graveyards hosting dead ancestors,
Who go a-ghosting, when methane festers.
Some fancy it a subtle vapor
Binding body and mind without any tape or
Glue or velcro or rubber cement,
Or artisan’s mucilage, handcrafted in Ghent.
Some say it grows like a sac ‘neath the gullet,
Trapping gristle and bone of carp, roughy, and mullet,
And gum, and all that you oughtn’t to swallow:
In bad boys it’s full, but in good girls it’s hollow.
Some say it’s oil, some say it’s steam,
Some say it collects like the gunk of a dream,
And that it flows in the phlegm ducts, or it flows in the bile,
Or it grows like a frog from the slime of the Nile.
Or is it chyle, or pus, or some other juice?
Does it grow on a tree in a pod like a goose,
and drop off when the branch can not manage its weight?
Does the hour of dropping determine its fate?
Would it be more like Roquefort or Brie, were it cheese?
Or more like the Swiss through which bloweth a breeze?
And where does it go for la petite mort (when I sneeze)?
And don’t answer: it goeth wherever it please.
Is it just something bloated that floated downriver?
Or something that’s noted for the quirk of its quiver?
Or something that hides in a shell like a clam?
Or something repulsively pinkish like ham?
I know I have it,
Though I’ve never seen it.
There’s always something lodged between it
And me, its presumed possessor.
Or is it only on lease,
And if so, who’s the lessor?
Could I find it with a tongue depressor?
Is it the dentures upon the dresser,
In a glass of tepid water?
Does it need to be fed,
And if so, what’s its fodder?
Methinks it deprived of all figure and form,
Something that’s neither translucent nor warm,
Nor opaque, nor cool, nor even, nor odd,
Nor quite, nor not quite, an image of God
To whom it doth cling as its Maker and King.
Nor, for that matter, like anything.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The world is all that is the case.
If you don’t learn your lesson, I’ll smack your face.
If it can be thought, it can be thought clear.
Don’t talk back, or I’ll box your ear.
Whereof you can’t speak, thereof be silent.
Not a peep out of you, kids. You know I get violent.
Insomnia
Why are you so dour today?
Said the girl on the bus with the hair more like hay.
It’s simple, girl.
I couldn’t fall a-slippy-slumber.
I couldn’t find a dripping dream
To slip upon and tumble under.
So I stayed up all night and I counted the goats
As they chewed on their barley and plywood and oats.
Then I switched up my beasts and I tried counting pigs
As they snorted out truffles and capers and figs.
Brute beasts! I’m wide a-wacky-wake!
It’s three a.m., for goodness’ sake!
Then I counted my fears and they bellowed like steers
And my head sprouted specialized bellow-hear ears.
And I counted my donkey-dust-flurries of worries
And they brayed like mules pulling a worry-me-surrey.
Brute dread! I’m still a-wacky-wide-wake!
It’s four a.m., for goodness sake!
Yes, I stayed up all night, now my brains are pâté
Of the creatures who came and decided to stay,
Of donkey-dread, pig-doubt, and goat-spleen and mud
That sticks in the hooves of these chewers of cud.
I’m a grown-up, dear girl, and I’m sorry to frown
But I’m covered in worries like soft ducky-down.
Said the girl on the bus with the hair more like hay:
Don’t count fears that bellow and worries that bray!
Instead why don’t you try counting sheep?
(The kind with the cushiony-whispery bleats.)
Their muzzles will fuzzily soften the sheets
Their silence will white-woolly-woo you to sleep.
See Daniel C. Matt (tr.), The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, vol. 10: Midrash ha-Ne’elam, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016, 293–295. See also Edward Reichman and Fred Rosner, “The Bone Called Luz,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 51 (1996): 52-65.
Wonderful witty poems. Please write more.
These are lovely and fun!