Five Poems by Ken Gosse

 

Hungover and Over

 

A common tale of sad travail.

 

I was hung when I was young

but I’ve been hung since I was young.

 

A noose tied loose around my goose

was tightened by the one who’s done

me in since then, made mice from men.

 

She kept its cocky head from crowing;

blocked its flowing from ongoing;

stopped the juice within its sluice—

quite simply put, she said “Vamoose!”

 

I hung around, an albatross

tried ’round her neck, a double loss.

How soon my hopes all turned to dross.

 

My voice no longer is among

the songs we sung when we were young.

 

I can’t unveil my holy grail. 

 

Bye-bye Black Sheep on the Lam

 

Mary left a little lie;

its fleece was poisoned snow.

She brought a box without a pie

and left it where he’d go—

the lunch-room thief

who’d claim his fief

and thought no one would know. 

 

Choices, Choices, Inner Voices (100 Words)

 

Did modesty’s prow guide their where, when, and how,

or did they kowtow to the needs of the now?

 

Were they ever demure hoping love would endure

or let nothing obscure what they hoped to procure?

 

Did they gently concede to due deference of deed,

or brashly proceed to procuring his seed?

 

Were they sweet and discreet every time they would meet

or converge till the urge of his surge was complete?

 

Once they were married, had their fervor varied;

the opportune tarried because the pair parried?

 

Their care soon miscarried, their happiness harried

till joy became buried, delights cemeteried. 

 

Wordliness Gets Next to Someone

 

Rearranging my cliches

until they’re tight and fast,

to catch a siren who sashays,

though we know it won’t last. 

 

When You Wish You Were A Star

 

Nopicchio once was a boy,

but without flesh and bones, a decoy.

He would if he could

but his wood is now wood.

All alone now, he’ll wonder

whom she has been under,

what skills she has plied

since her strings were untied.

But he’s just black sheep

she prefers not to keep

and his Spartans no longer deploy.

 

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.