Gimme a Break

Savvy CEO of subscription sweets box service
placed an order for those rare Japanese Kit Kats

Two containers loaded with thousands of flavors
caught a cargo steamer across the Pacific:

Skunk melon, eel jelly, sea flotsam pie
Talcum powder, mustard berry, tissue of ghosts

All the snack bloggers were overjoyed
but there was a monkey wrench in the supply chain

A shell email scammed the freight broker
The containers ended up elsewhere than they were supposed to

A case of what they call strategic theft
left those exotic treats in cold storage

                                        Break me off a piece of that!

Tidal Wave of Worry

My mother is worried about the Japanese tsunami
adrift in her retirement community recliner
where there’s lots to be worried about and plenty of time

every tumor is the size of a grapefruit
every reservoir is almost dry
every polar bear stressed and famished
every beech tree infected with rot
every migrant mistreated, unwelcome
every grandchild working uninsured
every newswoman hopelessly wardrobed
every politician so impolite

But I have learned from past experience
if I assure her I have laid out my outfit for work tomorrow
my mother will stop worrying for the moment.

Jack Klugman eating popcorn in a bucket hat

He brought an electric popper while on tour with a play
Got addicted to his favorite garlic and cheese

On the company’s day off when it was time for some air
he’d leave his Quincy toupee on the dressing room wig stand

Every woman loved his soulful, hangdog face
Jack’s mouth was always full with that healthy snack.

Postcard from the Amazon to be viewed without polarizing filter, drive-in screen projection or Late Show Creature Feature vacuum tube, from which no white bread egghead scientists return

      Reality different than that monochromatic picture
              Sky is ghost pepper creamy as lobster bisque

      Shimmering vapors sting your vision burbling upwards from murky brine
               Boiling insect clouds roll through Devonian jungle

Shimmering vapors sting your vision burbling upwards from murky brine
Boiling insect clouds roll through Devonian jungle

Vegetation roiling with salamanders and snakes
coiling themselves around the altar of

                                          The Piscine Prophet of the Black Lagoon

       Giving praise for the sultry swelter that slides into inky depth of ooze
               Lantern-like lizard eyes a constellation on the surface

Offering blessings with webbed claw for the scum slick armor of ridges and bumps
thus dankly pickled like a sweet and sour gerkin

Beseeching all gill breathers to resist the lure of those bathing beauty humanoids
who keep screwing up their amphibious Eden.