Soles of Giants
When I take to the ground on my own stumbling feet
and look up at the soles of the giants,
I’m amazed I can gather their thoughts to entreat
and arrange my own in some compliance.
Neologistics
I wrote a word that no one’s heard
and though it seemed a bit absurd,
I thought it served my purpose well,
to pave my highway to that hell
where rhyming poets meet their doom
(a crowded place of joyous gloom).
Modern poets may debase
this feature, once so commonplace,
developed by the greatest bards
but over time, smashed into shards
by pens of many later greats,
avants, though each appreciates
that time moves on at every dawn
and though the past’s not dead or gone,
it’s time for it to rest in peace,
let formlessness fulfill caprice,
expressive in its newer ways,
a better fit for newer days.
At first the word was capradocious,
(for atrocious, not precocious)
then it changed to capridacious
(for audacious, not capacious).
I avoided crapadocious
and its sibling, crapidacious,
knowing well the road I pave
could send my writing to its grave,
and so I won’t write either one
though pondering them is lots of fun.
My Unfinished Synchrony
When I’m ghosted by my muses, I feel like
I’m a diminishing, sad drutherless child;
Paul Clifford’s bright, sunshiny day;
the Cheshire Cat without a smile;
Pythagoras with no right angles;
Carroll without his menageries;
Frost lost in unknown woods;
Archimedes without a bath;
Twain without vernacular;
Moby—just plain Moby;
Revere without lamps;
Newton sans apples;
Bartleby in ecstasy;
din but no Gunga;
potentialess Poe;
anon imposter;
what’s worse,
unspeakably
Nashless,
burned
out.
0.
Beneath The Radar (a surreptitious sonnet)
I always feared death waited up for me
when I would take my pen in hand and muse.
No guise could well disguise an employee
whom management was anxious to abuse.
Clandestinely applying ink to page
since typing on a keyboard could be tracked,
I counted on each muse to be my mage
and offer me the epithets I lacked.
I thought of ways to praise my churlish boss
and honor those above (to keep my job),
but honesty, alas, would prove my loss;
a lack, perhaps, of heartbeat’s loving throb.
It seems they’ll never know what glories cost
because my meager pay would have been lost.
Forked Tongue In Cheek
After one day of rest
it was time for the test—
with a quick morning shake
God would set free the snake
which slid off toward the girl
with the cute little curl.
Although very good,
somehow she understood
how to tease him with ease
so her curl would please
the cute guy standing by
whom she hooked in the eye
while he scratched at his chest
where a scar would attest
to the birth of another
who wasn’t his brother,
but some sort of peeve
that a voice had called Eve.
She got his attention!
There’s no need to mention
the rest of the story,
a ripe allegory
where Eve shared her fruits
and they shared birthday suits.
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.
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