Taxicab Doggerel & Three Poems

Taxi Doggerel: 

O Taxi! (with apologies to Mister Whitman)

O taxi! O taxi!  I'm out of my mind!

No, I am not having a good time

working late into the night and morning

when I'd rather be snug in bed,

if this is living, 

I'd rather be dead!

And if I keep this up,

I'll certainly be guaranteeing my funeral,

and what will be the verdict at my autopsy tribunal?

"That he could have done better and sought all those higher degrees,"

"But excuse me," the lead doctor yawned, "I unfortunately have to 

sneeze!"

Three New Poems

What if anything but nothing do the following have to do with driving that damn taxi?  The alarm clock was given to me by Maynard, one of my loyal regular customers.  Maynard, age 85, and his wife Pat are wonderfully kind people.  What do I do in return?  Take out the garbage and change the occasional lightbulb and take them here and there and sometimes everywhere.

                                                                Less

                                         Less than myself I enter this morning

                                         fifty-five percent me, the remaining forty-

                                         five percent I have forgotten somewhere

                                         I cannot remember.

                                        Where have I gone?  Am I hiding me from

                                        from myself?  Or is it I have never known 

                                        the totality I am or could be, one eye 

                                        shut, the other definitely swollen.

                            ____________________________________________

                                                            Bell (Westclox Baby Ben)

                        The class bell rings but no, its the 1948 Baby Ben Maynard gave me,

                        its clanging alarm saying its time to close the textbooks and go where,

                        where, where should I go but having no idea, walking sideways crab-like

                        through the door into the corridor the big oval white-faced clock above my

                        head tick-tock ticking ticking my breath way.  

                       ______________________________________________

                                                            in this room

                                   In this bedroom with books reading poems 

                                   from a collection, reading to understand who forgot,

                                   some neglecting what must be remembered---

                                   the long nights and sentences accumulating 

                                   into lines after glorious line, asking: were you

                                   studying when the lamp said "its time to sleep,

                                   making the ink blotted verse your eternal pillow?" 

French Wolves and Uber

Turns out there are many expressions in the French language regarding our furry friend, the wolf.  I like this one, and isn't it a bit poetic?  Anything poetic about Uber?  Nah!

"Quand on parle du loup en voit la queue"

and the English translation is

"when you speak of the devil you see its tail"

There once were many wolves roaming France's forests. Now there are few forests and fewer wolves.