Nonsense and Next-to-nonsense Verse
The Instrument I Play
A rainbow, looped and lute-like
Is the instrument I play
For each colour there’s a thousand strings
And, as I like to say
There’s a myriad of miracles
In this instrument I play
A rainbow, looped and lute-like
Is the instrument I play
For each colour there’s a thousand strings
And as I also like to say
There’s many a magic melody
In this instrument I play
Limerick
The psychiatrist said it was chronic
A psychotic disease quite demonic
The schizophrenia flu
And all we can do
Is to give the cat a tonic
Doctors, in their bedside manors …
Doctors, in their bedside manors
From upper stories scrutinize
The patient, subject, syndrome, case
Who, soon or later
Always dies
Academia
Mr. Prism’s syllogisms
Could induce
By Zeus
Paroxysms
If all A’s are Bees
And all Bees are Seas (sic)
Then honey tastes funny
Ergo
It is so
As epistemologists know
That premises
Are the nemesis
Of polemicists
One Expert to Another
Scare me up some quotes, prof’
Reel a few footnotes off
Add some anecdotes and so on
Make it look like I took
Some time out to study
The issues and such …
You can hint that it’s deep
But keep it somewhere
Between murky and muddy
And don’t give ‘em too much to go on
Bird
Bird tracks
A lonely furrow
If sky were sand
Then bird would burrow
Acorns
As I was playing with my acorns
As I do most every day
I contemplated
Mind-created
A mighty oak
A solemn yet a carefree tree
Leafily a-waving
Signalling in semaphore
To knights of sorrow
And sundry kindred spirits
Venus
Though they reckoned my ardour obsessive
And said that despite my endeavour
I’d just never win
I thought you my twin
My Goddess of Love
My beckoning Venus
And how I adored you
As I travelled toward you
And the closer I came
The warmer my flame
But you were hot and sulphuric, oppressive
You boiled and buckled and bent me
And wrinkled and riddled and rent me
So I float back in space
A wonderful place
To say thanks
For the love
That you lent me
Booze
I’d heard the story put around
That a man who could DRINK was bound
To enjoy an intense and tonic emotion –
So I dove into an ocean
Of that ineffable potion
Damn near drowned
Drunken Nonsense
Lightly he lit out
Not quite Brahms
Though he’d quaffed a few quavers
And seemed to be slurring his slanguage slightly
Sloshly
Into the soft night
The Drinker
A zillion sips
A sorry saga
Oh, fate was so unkind
He dipped his lips
In foaming lager
Till he emulsified his mind
The Goer and the Good-for-nothing
The one
Doesn’t like to let the grass grow underfoot
The other
Likes to let it grow along the whole flesh-length
Lazing in self-luxury
Till the lawn is visibly longer
The Magic of the Motor Car (courtesy of Jock and Maryjane)
Getting from here to there
Is neither here nor there
It’s not a question of transportation
The magic of the motor car
Is encapsulation
Non-applicability
There was a man who had no name
Whose sole belief was love
He filled in every form the same
‘None of the above’
Self-seeking
This discrete and personal ‘I’
Is like a spectre in the sky
Or, like a great, big dirty fly
In the stickiest of ointment
Thus, those looking for themselves
Find only disappointment
Late-night Explanation
They may be lunatics and losers
Drug-takers, trouble-makers, boozers
But they’re my friends, dear wife –
And what mortal leads the life he chooses?
Doors
Inside or outside
There’s nowhere you can find to hide
Behind doors of steel, doors of wood
Doors of any material
Doors entirely ethereal –
As the lunatic in the corner curled
Would tell you if he could
There are no doors that shut out the world
Cosmic Delusion
He hitched his wagon to a star
Whose light shone on him from afar
How was he supposed to know
That star had perished long ago?
Leaves of Acid 