SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY NOTE: I cannot correct the formatting. There should be double spaces between stanzas and single spaces between lines but after 30 minutes I have to move on.
Remembering the adage, “All work and no play makes John a dull boy,” I am giving my readers a head start for the labor day weekend, four poems that are as funny as all hell.
By David Gottfried
A MEDITATION ON JOHN NEGROPONTE, AN OFFICIAL IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF GEORGE W. BUSH
John Negroponte is a
Negro who wears a ponte
Pontes are faggot things to wear
Because the second syllable in Ponte
Sounds like kay in okay
And will sashay and shout he’s so very gay
I don’t know what a ponte looks like or is
But I know that with its sashay ending
It has to be French
as in Bouvier or Escoffier or ballet
So fastidious and refined
His ponte might be a very tight choker
with a bow swerving down to his right nipple
Or something to make his pants stay up, up, up
To showcase his butt for the world
And when the Bushes gathered in Kennebunkport
His ponte made his butt bigger than every butt but Barbara’s
So Rumsfeld and Chaney and Condi all laughed:
“You’ve got a sissy missy big round Ass”
And Negroponte made up weapons of Mass destruction
WHY CONSERVATIVES SMOKE MARLBOROS AND DECRY EVERY OTHER BRAND OF CIGARETTES
I want the classic glory of Marlboro
It's off to war with a tally ho
To be a Wasp with a deadly blow
A Christian soldier against the foe
Spare me the Camel of the orient
Unwashed heathen who don't repent
Saladin's slaughters and our lament
For Crusader blood, like rivers spent
And if I see a box of Newport
Its menthol miasma is like a retort
To letters, learning -- the mind's consort
Be off -- you braying subway sort
I do not approve of Parliament
The Whigs, like twigs, spineless, bent
Their somber clothes should all be rent
For my threads millions are spent
Virginia Slims is a prickly dame
Gaudy and gauche, reaching for fame
Like Diana all passions aflame
The girl deserves discipline, blame
TERMINAL ANGLOPHILIA
(Inspired by the rhyming of the words “chance” and “dance” in “Bang the Gong (Get in On),” a song by the rock group T Rex)
It was quite a mesalliance
To be wed to Frothy France
For the Prussians they will prance
Upon Paris in a trance
We must thwart their advance
And Assume a stoic stance
With a dagger and a lance
We’ll quash their entrance
And When we charge we dance
In underwear by elance
At the foul we look askance
And we dare to take a chance
With a very haughty glance
Like a seer at a séance
We’ll exhume a dude named Lance
And He’ll wear the tightest pants
WHEN LESBIANS BECOME LESLIANS
When Lesbians are elegant
And have literary leanings
“Lesbian” is excised of the boyish B
Learns to loom large with a second L
And becomes a stellar Leslian
In honor of Leslie Fielder
(Who divined homosexual motifs in “Huckleberry Finn”)
And they dance and prance in Wellesley
And The tintinabulation of the bells
And the scattering straights running pell mell
Evoke moody mansions where dowagers dwell
And the ice of Dickenson and the pride of Austen
Runs through their veins like an ore of iron.