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Tag Archives: list poem

satchmo/warner/doughboy/fun to make/monterey/weasel/cereal elf/exhausted/heavily pregnant/culture/balloons, bubbles and firecrackers/photographers/choklit shop proprietor

Answer Key:

Louis “Pops” Armstrong/Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy/Jiffy Pop Popcorn/Monterey Pop/Pop Goes the Weasel/Pop, Snap’s & Crackle’s associate/Too Pooped to Pop/Ready to Pop/PIP Culture (a knowledge of which is a big help with the answers)/Things that pop/Paparazzi/PIP Tate

…and a tip of the hat to Groucho Marx, who on You Bet Your Life invited guests to say the “secret woid”

hark: a shark

hark: a shark

feel: an eel

swish: a fish…that got away…in the dark…

unreel

Afterword: Compulsivity led to the creation of this minimal list, minimalist poem. Midevening today I realized that if midnight came and went, and I failed to publish something on my blog, I would end a streak that started on July 25th. My friend RussKaz was nearby when I had this realization, and he happened to have single-word prompts on flash cards, so I asked him to pull one at random, and he pulled “shark.” The rest is hastily-written microhistory, with the subtext that a text-body in motion tends to stay in motion, especially if the textmaker has a screw loose.

[Originally published in the Facebook group Poets All Call, earlier today.]

five such things

there are five such things as desire
want
ambition
lust
appetite
dissatisfaction

and there are five such things as death
cessation
mortality
zero
discontinuity
oblivion

but there is only one such thing
as you where you are
receiving this message from me
wherever i may be
telling you that you are loved
and that you deserve
good tears and lusty laughter
and the overhauling
of pain
with riotous joy

there are eleven thousand
nine hundred and thirty-two
such
things
as