Anvil in a Lace Bootie

This is the hollowite, Motty. Nanny to the Cloud Castle princess, Nimble Missst, she can flick her tongue all the way across the room. Oh, she can fly, and she wears 6-legged trousers. Her hair style is quite nice, too, don’t you think?

The renegade helicopter was on a mission, San Juan Bautista, to be specific. A sea of local authorities and law enforcement officials from as far away as France and as nearby as Hong Kong surrounded the site. Police officers took turns eating donuts and attempting to talk the helicopter into releasing the hostages. The hostages took turns braying and working on the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. The helicopter snarled defiance.

“I defy you, coppers!” snarled the helicopter.

“Hey, helicopter, there’s someone here who wants to talk to you,” purred the SWAT guy from Modesto.

“Honey, it’s me. It’s Rhonda. Please let the camels go and give yourself up. Won’t you do it for me? For me and little Klaus?” tearfully pleaded the attractive, albeit matronly, snowplow.

“All right, Rhonda. I’ll do it for you and to end this ludicrous narrative. Meet me in Saskatoon,” said the helicopter, lifting into the sky and heading north.

Everyone wept in relief because the camels were safe. It was a major hassle to get them off the roof of the mission, I can tell you. Hernias galore.

#

During rehearsal for ‘My Fair Lady’, Julie Andrews:

a. always showed up drunk.

b. slept on a bed of nails.

c. called Rex Harrison ‘Mister Wrinkle’.

d. dallied in the black arts.

e. had to be talked out of shaving her head for the role.

fleet indian red

rummaging dustlike on the plain

buffalo hat

You get the idea.  Me?  They call me Fillip Flan — poet and private eye.  So she said, “I want to raise your shamrock.”  She opened her blouse.  My shamrock rose.  Salute.  I kiss your clerical ruby wine lips.  I said, “The night whines on its sad stem.”  She put back her head, made a long curve egret neck and laughed.  She kicked my shamrock hard.  The night exploded millions of little white shards of pain.  When they cleared, she was gone.

cry

friend rabbit

mold grows

in the carport

You get the idea.  I get the pain.  The note she’d left, rolled and jammed into my left nostril, told the story.  Catch my husband cheating, it said, and you get five big ones.  Cry the beloved greenback.  I’m out the door and after him.  I have to stop and hold the hall wall because I am overwhelmed and my mind is sent reeling by a sudden attack of trivia.  Did Mao ever once in his life bite into a Three Musketeers candy bar?  If so, what did he think of it?  What’s in the cubic foot space 100 yards due north of the Liberty Bell?

bowls of fruit

floating sadly

in the rain

At the diner, Grace turned her huge mottled pimple face to me, got off a reasonable attempt at a smile and shoved the glazed buttermilk bar at me.  I grimaced and tore at the sugary goodness with my cloud white recently flossed choppers.  “Nuthin’,” she said. “I know nuthin’.”  I could believe that.  The snow that fell on the streets of Paris came down in tender flakes.  And the night gripped me in its flaccid tentacles.  Hart Highland was a dead body and I knew it. So did Lieutenant Storper of the PD.  I could tell because he picked me up off the stool with his huge furry hand and turned me so that he might knife into my eyes his oaken glance.  “Behold, poet,” he said, “you know something about this Highland thing, doncha?  We seen his wife comin’ out your place of business. Am I right?  Or no?”  He squeezed my neck.  Try to imagine a dark blackness.  Got it? Now double it.  Into such a place I fainted.

the heart can lie

cheat or steal

in cold summer

mists

I kicked open her door.  The rage welled up from my knowing feet to my coldly calculating, yet not unattractive, eyes.  “You!” she gasped as she slumped neatly onto a nice big fluffy cushion.  “You know!”  “You’re darn tootin’ I know!”  The words were slit from my larynx.  The moon outside was unaware.  “But why?” I asked.  Was it love?”  “Yes,” she drooled, “it was love…..for you.”  Oh, God.  My shamrock again saluted and my lips came down, closely followed by the rest of my face, to meet her heather highland fields of singing clover with just a few daisies sprinkled about for effect.  Her knee shot home true and again in my head the universe broke into a hundred billion particles of pain.

when the bee smiles grimly

you know

it is christmas

When I came to my senses, she had been in prison for three years.  I visited her to see if she was still a vision before my now honestly bloodshot eyes.

wounded meadows

know the squat

of the chipmunk

We talked on the phone as our eyes grappled through the window wall between us.  “What’s the answer?” say I.  “The question was?” says she.  And the dance continues.  I put my hand to the window – – try to reach her.  “None of the likes of that we’ll be havin’,” says the guard.  Then he drives his nightstick into my groin.

the world

ow! ow!

the world

ooowwww!

“It happens every year when they realize it’s December.”

This is a cragger maiden. She lives in Cloud Castle City on the world of Boad, All Fidd and Leee Combined. She is worried because she notices clouds gathering. Craggers most emphatically do not like to be caught outdoors in the rain.

The trees are goin’ yeller

Lily-livered sons of whores

Dog-eared

On cat’s feet

I ride the range

Cup of joe

Battered pot

I hunker by the fire

The trees are goin’ yeller

Lily-livered sons of whores

There once was a crofter named Jones

Who was constantly badgered by crones

One day he asked why

And was told, “My oh my,

Be grateful we don’t grind your bones.”