Pile Their Heads . . . HIGH

Pile Their Heads . . . HIGH

I am an editor of the Real Change. There are others as well. I have a headache. This is not a coincidence. So I am impelled to quote Genghis Khan who once said (speaking of editors who insist on "altering" other's columns), "Pile their heads high! Pile their heads higher than the pyramids at Giza! Then we shall drink their beer and eat their chips!"

As I report this I am in NO way being mean and/or politically incorrect. Consistent with being a "differently expressive" person, I am simply falsely quoting Genghis Khan, a homeless role model, in order to convey my personal feelings in an oblique yet wholly appropriate manner.

But what, you ask, has this to do with poetry? Why, EVERYTHING! For headaches are the stuff of life, and the stuff of life is the stuff of beer and chips, and the stuff of beer and stuff is stuffing, and turkeys are involved and excuse me I will begin over.

NOTHING hits the SPOT better when your head THROBS than BLANK VERSE, n'est-ce pas? Ah, the pounding exclamations to compensate for the lack of meter, the odd placement of words to compensate for the lack of rhyme! Ah, the LACK of RHYME ITSELF! HOLD ME BACK!

So anyway, having written blank verse all my life and not known it, I have finally penned a serious work of the genre on purpose, which follows:

Blank Verse on Purpose

or, Opus 8, I Have a Headache

© Dr. Wes Browning

i am NOT DEAD!

YET:

i am CARRION!

SOCIAL WORKERS! LAWYERS! MY EX-WIFE!

MISSIONARIES! REPORTERS! DOCTORS!

FUNGI! CIVIL LIBERTARIANS! CRABS!

OTHER POETS!

ALL want a PIECE of ME!

and NO ONE goes away

HUNGRY!

(finis)

Better than aspirin! Thanks for reading and special thanks this month to J. Feelgood and M. Schmerzgarten for their much enjoyed comments.

What Could Be Verse?

It has come to my attention, last month, that I have been "laid off" by my "employer." This is good news and bad news. The bad news: i.e., I've been screwed. The good news: as an Artiste, all of Life's Travails are but Grist for my Mill!:

I got Grist in My Teeth!

or Opus 13, My Life Stinks

© Dr. Wes Browning

I cannot contain my elation:

I have an unplanned vacation!

Sure, my life stinks

(And bosses are dinks)

But: due to the fact that I have worked my ass off for the past six years to

earn a living rather than take payment for that permanent mental disability I

am now gratefully fortunate (thanks largely to the Great Depression and its

attendant Administration - I love you Rosy! I really do! I will vote Democrat

forever, just because of you!) that I am going to be able to live like a

jolly starving dog for up to half a year by means of jolly unemployment

compensation.

Here's another easy way to write poems for all you poetry neophytes out there! Say you want to write a poem, but say you're drunk or hungover, or you're bummed out cause you lost your job, or say you're clinically stupid, or all three, or whatever. What should you do? Well, just what any lame artist would do: collage!

Let's see right now I want to write a poem about oh I don't know, oh hell, I'll just write one and see. So I grab my copy of "All the Poems You Were Forced to Read in School So Now You Hate Them and All That They Represent" (by Dead White Poets' Press) - or equivalent - and pick out 3 or 4 at random. Then I "cut'n paste and disregard the waste!" Maybe I kick in a scrap or two from memory and out she comes, another masterpiece!

Un Verset Collagesque

or Opus 14, What Could be Verse?

Copyright Dr. Wes Browning

The gingham dog and the calico cat

side by side on the table sat -

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?

It's nothing against you to fall down flat,

(The) Living shall forfeit fair renown,

and, doubly dying, shall go down

Then they'll do the hokey pokey

And turn themselves aroun'!

That what it's all about!

-Thanks to Eugene Field ("The Duel"), Edmund Vance Cooke ("How Did You Die"), Sir Walter Scott ("Love of Country"), and a scrap from memory. And thank you, poetry reader, for reading, and a special big thank you to The Fisch, Marion Sue, for her hot French pointers!