Three Poems by Ken Gosse

 

Wuthering Lows

 

A cold and dreary Valentine’s Day

beset with darkness, skies of grey;

chill winds moving slow and steady;

bleakness, swirling clouds which eddy;

no pretence of welcome rain

nor sun to warm this dreary plain …

 

While outside, warmth and sunny breeze

with azure skies which gently please

cannot appease the agonies

of love long lost by slow degrees.

A Gander’s Dream

“What’s good for the gander is a good gander at a goose.”-someothernon

 

The youthful gander would meander

and he’d ponder while he’d wander.

Surreptitiously, he’d gander

in the hopes that he might pander

to some goose that’s on the loose,

and so he’d follow some caboose

of likened feather, whence together

they might flock in fowlish heather

where her wonder he could plunder,

knowing none would put asunder

what these birds, flown out of hand

into the bush, their promised land,

agreed by deed that they would join

and henceforth none would e’er purloin

their love: a pairing worth far more

than what their sum had been before.

 

Thus nightly he would dream and wonder

till the dawn came up like thunder.

 

Postnuptial Agrievements from the Bearded Tribe (in 100 Words)

 

Mankindliness:

Under water

’cause I bought ’er

what I liked,

not what I oughter.

 

Drinking Takes Second Chair:

Man’s primal fear

year after year

is loss of beer nuts,

not of beer.

 

Two Too Many:

Behold my wife

who wields a knife.

She says they’ve caused her

too much strife.

 

Here Yesterday, Gone Today:

Now and then,

the best of men

would like to have them

back again.

 

Unsobering Thoughts:

So I’ll drink more

right here and now

to help forget

when, where, and how.

 

Close Shave:

This rant and rave

is yours to save.

My moot tribute

to Burma-Shave!

Ken Gosse usually writes short, rhymed verse using whimsy and humour in traditional meters. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, he has also been published by Pure Slush, Home Planet News Online, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and others. Raised in the Chicago, Illinois, suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, for over twenty years, usually with rescue dogs and cats underfoot.