Jerome Betts: Bill Settlement
Thanks, blackbird, loudly singing overhead
So close a dismal winter mood soon mellows.
Above frost-blasted forms of plants long dead.
You pay for summer raids on ripe Morellos.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Steven Kent: Iamb I said
For comical verse you can't top 'er, can't beat 'er;
No rhythm works better for ho-ho-ho-ho.
Iambic tetrameter: funniest metre,
So why are these lines anapestic? Don't know.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Russel Winick: Apologies
I’m proud that I apologize
The times I do.
But I’d be prouder if there was
No reason to.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Tony Peyser: Youth vs. Middle Age
The transition
I confess hurries
From no worries
To yes worries.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Michael R. Burch Tribalist
Tribalist, tribalist,
Medieval revivalist,
Why is your Bible
Raised in a clenched fist?
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Felicia Nimue Ackerman: Concerning Returning
"RFK . . . infamously visited Samoa in 2019 as
experts worried about the nation’s vaccination
rates and urged the island’s government to view
the lagging rates as a 'natural experiment' of health
without vaccines. The result was a measles outbreak
that infected thousands and killed 83, mainly children."
– The New York Daily News
Measles is returning!
People should be spurning
RFK's inane advice.
Expert counsel will suffice.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Damian Balassone: Debutante Ball Blues
I did not come alone,
but once again I’m on my own.
If this is my debut,
then why do I feel déjà vu?
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Steven Kent: The Best Revenge
I got a girl then lost her, sadly;
Did my best to love her well.
But though she left me feeling badly,
Now I'm rich, so what the hell.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Michael R. Burch: Contra Men’s Scanty Antes
The difference between women and men, I aver,
lies not in the length nor the abundance of their hair,
but boils down in, in the end, to a question of scanties:
women will pay fortunes for provocative panties!
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Martin Parker: Retirement
What is life if, freed from care,
we have more time to stand and stare
And find we've got more time to kill,
and know that, some day soon, it will?
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
Tony Peyser: Early Doesn’t Apply
I’ll pass along this bold truth
That isn’t just some great rumor –
Only posthumous fame can
Make you the ultimate late bloomer.
♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣
L.A. Mereoie: Potted Reverie Of Poor Susan
She's in London, but pines for the Lakes
Whose memory a song thrush awakes.
In a vision they sparkle and gleam
Until fading away like a dream.
