Rhymenastics Redux
No, there’s no storm
Like a snowstorm,
Bringing old St. Nick, the bishop.
Couldn’t anybody dish up
One with less-pronounced proboscis
Than this Christmastide colossus?
Tried to keep him out. My padlock
Broke, however (’twas a bad lock).
Wonder what he’ll bring? His bag might
Hold a fragment of stalagmite.
I really hope this year Old Faithful
Brings a fifth (mine’s just an eighth full).
The wife would like some little trinkets:
Diamond earrings, rubies, mink, etc.,
Her list—item after item—
Running on ad infinitum.
Santa just ransacked my kitchen,
Found no cookies, stormed out bitchin’;
Left, his sleigh propelled by pygmy
Reindeer (Santa didn’t dig me).
Let whatever happens happen.
At least he left me rhymes for rappin’.
Ogden Nash
A mastermind at mincing words, a brash
Nonconformist soul was Ogden Nash,
Who violated all the laws of meter, rhyme, grammar, and spelling,
and wrote the longest run-on sentences
from his very first inaugural
in his daugural.
Tailgaters
Good Grief
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I weep for Adonais. He is dead.
He left me nothing. Weep for me instead.
Too Little, Too Late
William Shakespeare
The lady doth protest too much methinks.
I should have plied her with a few more drinks.
Bob McKenty’s verses have appeared in numerous periodicals that have either gone out of print (The Critic, Datamation, The Formalist, Marriage & Family Living, McCall’s, Manhattan Poetry Review, and The New York Daily Mirror), or discontinued poetry (The American Journal of Nursing, The New York Times “Jersey Diary,” Reader’s Digest ‘s “Picturesque Speech,” and The Wall Street Journal’s “Pepper…and Salt”), and in books that have gone out of print. But for the past 25 years, he has still been unable to sink Light.