Humor & Satire

James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James
Said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he:
“You must never go down to the end of the town,

The last line should strike like a lover’ s complaint.
You should never see it coming.
And you should never hear the end of it.

England, with all thy faults, I love thee still
My country! and while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain’ d to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deform’ d
With dripping rains, or wither’ d by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies
And fields without a flow’ r, for warmer France
With all her vines; nor for Ausonia’ s groves
Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bow’ rs.
To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime

Aunt Mildred tied up her petticoats with binder’ s
twine, and my great-uncle Ezekiel waxed and waxed
his moustaches into flexibility. It was the whole
family off then into the dangerous continent of air

and while the salesman with the one gold eyetooth told us
the cords at our ankles were guaranteed to stretch
to their utmost and then bring us safely back
to the fried chicken and scalloped potatoes of Sunday dinner

I’ ve trod the links with many a man,
And played him club for club;
’ Tis scarce a year since I began
And I am still a dub.
But this I’ ve noticed as we strayed
Along the bunkered way,
No one with me has ever played
As he did yesterday.

It’ s like being lost
in the forest, hungry, with a
plump live chicken in your cradling
arms: you want to savage the bird,
but you also want the eggs.

You go weak on your legs.
What’ s worse, what you need
most is the companionship,
but you’ re too hungry to know that.
That is something you only know after
you’ ve been lost a lot and always,

Diarrhea: what nobody likes,
though a word the French love to pronounce.
They surround it with lips and tongue;
it pleases, like saying cellar door does.
Once I gave a pair of tweezers
to an au pair girl who couldn’ t extract
a splinter from her foot. It was a pleasure
for both of us to see that little thing come out.

Must Sean Penn always look like he’ s squeezing
the last drops out of a sponge and the sponge
is his face? Even the back of his head grimaces.
Just the pressure in his little finger alone
could kill a gorilla. Remember that kid
whose whole trick was forcing blood into his head
until he looked like the universe’ s own cherry bomb
so he’ d get the first whack at the piñata?
He’ s grown up to straighten us all out
about weapons of mass destruction
but whatever you do, don’ t ding his car door with yours.

Tell me not in mormonful numbers
“Life is but an empty dream!”
To a student of the slumbers
Things are never what they seem.

Life is yearning and suppression;
Life is that to be enjoyed;
Puritanical discretion
Was not spoke by Dr. Freud.