Five Poems by Ken Gosse

 

Not Enough Hair on my Chinny-Chin-Chin

(a Parody of Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees”)

 

I think that I shall never see

a beard that looks half good on me,

whose chin, when hungry mouth is full,

will ne’er have hair that you can pull

though eyes, half-open wide all day,

can’t see through eyebrows made of hay.

 

They start within around my chin

and grow without beneath my snout,

but whether I may pout or grin,

a beard, ’tis feared, I’ll live without.

 

Birds nest above in greyest hair,

but not ’neath nose in meadows bare.

Desist from shaving? Proven vain,

for beards won’t grow where they’ve no reign.

Oh growth, how can you be so slow

that even gods can’t make it so! 

 

Desert Deuces For Dessert (a Fibonacci verse)

 

Stan

and

Ollie

were jolly

by golly, with each

new mess another fine folly. 

 

When the Dawn Came Up Like Thunder

 

Old Sol retired early that mid-winter afternoon.

Chill in the air, he didn’t care; his warmth another’s boon,

but after his long winter’s nap beneath a honeyed moon

he crept up on the crack of Dawn a little bit too soon.

 

“I told you I have much to do, not time for much ado,

but no, your ‘Lo! Let’s rise and shine!’ seems always right to you—

and heaven knows that you arose, just like you always do—

yet had you cared, you might have fared far better with your woo!”

 

Then with a shoulder crisp and colder than the winter’s morn,

she closed that door and said no more. His countenance forlorn,

he still must climb the new day’s shore, another to adorn,

but when his feet met frozen floor, he wished he’d not been born. 

 

Abruptus Interuptus

 

If rhyming were suspended

by laws evil or divine,

my thoughts would be un-ended

every alternating 

 

Breaking Up is Hard to Dooby Dooby Do By the Numbers

(17 song titles, 100 words, 8 syllables per line)

 

Monday, Monday. It’s gone today.

Yesterday seems so far away.

You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’, now

it’s too late, baby—but somehow

I can’t stop loving you and I’m

crying, crying all the time. The

rhythm of the falling rain fits

“Please release me, let me go.” It’s

the great pretender who will learn

smoke gets in your eyes. Don’t return

this diamond ring. Ask, once apart,

“How can you mend a broken heart?”

Bye bye, love. Perhaps someone will

take good care of my baby, ease

your cheatin’ heart—your cretin heart—

sealed with a kiss with cold remiss.

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.