Robert Burns Was a Dirty Boy

'Twas reading Bone Fires by Mark Jarman--a Christmas present from T--and after perusing "My Parents Have Come Home Laughing" had to check out a reference to a Robert Burns poem which I thought surely must have been a fiction--"Nine Inch Will Please a Lady."  But the miracle of Google proved that it was no fiction:

Nine Inch Will Please a Lady

(Robert Burns)

Come rede me dame, come tell me dame,

My dame come tell me truly,

What length o' graith when weel ca'd hame

Will sair a woman duly?"

The carlin clew her wanton tail,

Her wanton tail sae ready,

"l learn'd a sang in Annandale,

Nine inch will please a lady."

"But for a koontrie cunt like mine,

In sooth we're not sae gentle;

We'll tak tway thumb-bread to the nine,

And that is a sonsy pintle.

Oh, Leeze me on, my Charlie lad,

I'll ne'er forget my Charlie,

Tway roaring handfuls and a daud

He nidged it in fu' rarely."

But wear fa' the laithron doup

And may it ne'er be thriving,

It's not the length that makes me loup

But it's the double drivin.

Come nidge me Tom, come nidge me Tom

Come nidge me, o'er the nyvel

Come lowse an lug your battering ram

And thrash him at my gyvel!

graith=gear, equipment; clew=scratched, fondled;

tway thum-bread=two thumb-breadths; sonsy=healthy;

daud=a lump, a bit; laithron=lazy; doup=rump;

gyvel=gateway.

And the miracle of The You Tub proved that there were several performances of this song available-

Goodness gracious.  And he looked like such a genteel fellow.

3 Godot Poems

Eye Full Tower

The Eiffel Tower scratches at my cornea

seeking to break through that crystalline shield,

its barbwire claws twitching spasmodically,

anxious to puncture my vision

and when it does my eye

vomits a torrent of bile

vile and viscous

tarry black

flecked with bits of broken moments

and my heartaches spoil the horizon

The tower rocks back on its heels

content and fat with my pain

and I can only gaze monocularly,

stumble away through a two-dimensional world.

Perhaps I'll grow an eye patch

of callus or infected tissue.

Why is it that a one-eyed man

always looks so threatening, so fierce?

It's not his injury we see,

but the mystery of what lies behind the wound,

the armor of apathy which surrounds him.

One day soon I'll pluck that tower

from where it stands

and wield it like a sword

and the one-eyed population of the world

will grow by leaps and bounds.

Tree

growing slowly inch by bark-covered inch

moaning with the pain of stretching ligaments

tortured seconds, dying minutes, and

the last gasps of hours, days, months, years

tears

groaning from the womb to the tomb

splayed fingers scratching at the sky

digging into clouds to find the sun

hidden, buried in cloud

frost-whitened and tired as a

man who's been drowning for days

starving for weeks

rooted in the moist earth of mother's guts

gripping her spine with clenched roots

rupturing her spleen, heart, lungs

the cracked sidewalk of her face

thin branches reaching for father sun

growing in his direction but

dying from the cold

growing old

still hoping

it might be summer again

one day

or this may be all that there is

peaceful, quiet, cold death

Vegetable Holocaust

Sullen-eyed raddishes ripped from the ground

Foul-mouthed turnips trying to fly

While leafy-headed carrots grin

Superciliously, knowing they are the first choice

Knowing they will arrive at the table intact

While their former fellows are sliced and diced into tiny bits,

Unrecognizable and devoid of

Their true character.

It is a Vegetable Holocaust

And the carrot strides in the

Borrowed jack-boots of the kapo

While the raddish and turnip

Whimper and are crushed.

There is a hierarchy here,

And those at the top / near the top / who serve the top

Prosper

While those below are destroyed

In the most casual way,

And unremembered forever after.