Five Poems by Ken Gosse

 

The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring

 

Perennials prove their persistence

after winter’s relentless resistance.

 

 

The Learning Curve

 

Experience is

a remedial teacher

whom we soon forget.

 

Guttle Language

 

Whenever you guttle,

your gut’ll soon shuttle

the mash till your butt’ll

emit its rebuttal

in ways that aren’t subtle!

 

A Phrase by Many Other Words

 

Sesquipedalian prose

is a practice which everyone knows

is pretentious profusion

of lexicallusion

for trying to rename a rose.

 

Pirate Weddings (You Can Dress Him Up …)

 

The rental tux for a pirate sucks.

Silk patches for eyes

(one is free for blind guys);

a ring for your hook

from the nose of your cook;

though parrots look bolder,

they’ll crap on your shoulder;

a bow for one leg

ties the shoe to your peg

but you’ll itch all the while

from the leg in arrrrgyle.

The title “The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring” is borrowed from Gilbert and Sullivan’s song of that name from their 1885 operetta  “The Mikado.” (My mom sang the nasty role of Katisha in a Chicago-area production while I was incubating.)

“The Learning Curve” is a senryu although it’s appearance in print is a pyramid.

“Guttle” was a new word to me when I wrote this poem in response to a limerick on Facebook by Madeleine Begun Kane. Merriam-Webster says it means to eat or drink greedily and noisily.

I came across the word “sesquipedalian” in a Grammar Girl Facebook post about portmanteaus in February 2018.

The inspiration for “Pirate Weddings” was being honoured by my niece in 2016 to give her away at her wedding. As a gift from the groom, the men in the wedding party all wore matching Argyle socks. The headshot photo I provided previously is from that wedding.

 

 

Ken Gosse usually writes short, rhymed verse using whimsy and humor 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.