Sometimes when I happy get

Sometimes when I happy get
I turn on my television set

and disappear into its glow
like a pixelated crow

I flap my wings so pure and black
and feel like there’s no going back

inside the tube I’ll stay forever
consider thrown the simulacrum lever

if my mother comes home and turns it off
at her love I’ll scoff

happy on my own terms you see
like a Titleist balanced on a tee

waiting for the coming thwack
to send me into orbit’s knack

for spinning guests in skyward order
free I am a floating boarder

everywhere I go I smile
I see my reflection in bathroom tile

my grin it gleams
with the purity of creams

freshly descended from the cow
of bacon from the virgin sow

who snorts and oinks as I come close
we are friends the farmer knows

and so he waves as I walk by
and disregards his wife’s sad sigh

she resents that I am happy
she thinks my mother should just slap me

but you can’t obsess over what others say
just this morning I flew away

so I’m sure to have some sadness soon
from major to minor will go this tune

the farmer’s wife and my mother agree
that no one should be as glad as me

while the farmer and the virgin pig
think no smile can be too big

a hog with tusks tends to think the same
splashed mud spells his name

on the wall of the spotless barn
to reveal said name would exceed this yarn

suffice it to say it rhymes with ‘sick’
and is a synonym for prick

I hope that makes you laugh
long in your throat like a giraffe

is any bestiary complete
without a mention of the webbed feet

of the platypus
who like one of us

is neither one thing or the other
not wholly dad not wholly mother

it lays its monotremish eggs
and from their schizophrenic dregs

are born new hybrid duck-billed beasts
as sun and moon light up two easts

what if there were no more west
the sun would set inside my chest

between my ribs it would grow red
a fire on a speeding sled

melting the frozen world as it flew
and in my heart darkness would brew

so this is how my happiness runs out
a glowing ale reduced to stout

so thick in your throat
you feel like you swallowed a coat

a trench worn by a private detective
I’ve grown weary introspective

perhaps it’s time to pull the plug
give the tired shoulders a shrug

it’s exhausting to carry a smile around
or at least turn off the TV’s sound

and watch its shining figures mute
as sorrow does vast minions recruit

and watch the weepers shed their drops
and browse the coffins in burial shops

my mother’s making chicken soup
I pray to be left out of the loop

that seems to strangle Pollyanna
and that one day like Indiana

Jones I’ll open the covenant’s ark
and find out why the world began dark

and why God didn’t begin with light
gradually learning to shade his sight

when the blinding things his creations did
made his ego feel that he favored id

I hope one day that God is happy
for making people feel so crappy

if when I’m dead he asks me why
I smiled so much I’ll spit in his eye

and dance my way back down to hell
as demons ring the Liberty Bell
**

Related posts:

1. The Lyric Workshop, Session 1: Theme From Shaft
2. 12 February 2010
3. Celebrating Sylvia
4. We Need Only Heaven And Earth
5. Briefly remembering

Tagged as: bacon, farms, God, golf, mother, Philadelphia, platypus, Poetry, TV