Saturday, October 04, 2014

IAMBIC, I SAIDIC:


Well, what the hell - while I'm reconstituting long-wilted word salad in lieu of producing fresh, um, prose produce, I may as well serve up some more recent cuts of lean (oh, Christ) Tweet meat.  Fuck, if Steve Martin can slap his Twitter feed between covers and charge people the same price they'd pay for an actual book for it (yes, yes, I know it was for charity - buzz off, I'm in the middle of a delicate rationalization here), then there's no reason I can't transport a few damp squibs of near-cleverness from one barely-noticed area of the Internet to another.  So here are some items I posted the other day on Twitter (@williamham) under the hashtag #NationalFirstDraftPoetryDay, plus a few bonus ones whose brilliance could not be contained in a mere 140 characters.  I just bet some of them may even push the 147-character envelope. I know. I can't be stopped.

how do you like your blueeyed boy
   Mister Death
regular
       or
           extracrispy 
*   *   *   * 
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
But, whatevs.  Costco's hiring.
 
*   *   *   * 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
No?
Well, how about a Summer's Eve, douchebag?
 
*   *   *   *

Because I could not stop for Death 
He kindly stopped for me 
And beat my brains in with a rock 

Because he's fucking DEATH. 
*   *   *   * 

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
won't you guyde my sleigh tonight? 
*   *   *   * 

How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.
Three, tops.  Four if it's your birthday. 
*   *   *   *

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said, "What the fuck kind of middle name is Bysshe, anyway?" 
*   *   *   *  

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox 

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast 


If you send
one more note
of mine
to Harper's

I will eat all
your peaches
and leave pits in
your slippers


*   *   *   *

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem for its microdermabrasion appointment?

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