Monday, May 20, 2013

A Bouquet For My Dentist


I dispatched a thank-you note       in floral guise
tender tulips       for a tooth whose days were numbered
delicate Afsoon!         most beautiful!    most wise!
through your skill       my dental life blooms unencumbered
 
gentle doc!            you who embody pearly youth
gratitude!       you deftly plucked my rotten tooth
 

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Quatrain occasioned by a "We Miss You!" Notice


To what do the dead subscribe?
what periodicity draws them?
what news do they seek? what tribe
of angelic beings awes them?


==========

Note scrawled on a form letter
that arrived today, addressed to my late father (sent by the subscription department of The Progressive, a left-wing magazine) ; the letter begins:
Dear Sam Israel:
We miss you, and I thought you might be missing us, too. . . .
My scrawled note reads:
Dear Progressive:

My father, Sam Israel, passed away in October of last year.  He loved your publication, and for that I thank you.  But you need send no further subscription reminders.  Sam Israel is now permanently unsubscribed.

Thanks!
David Israel

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Music Theory


If music is only obsolete in moksha
       it demonstrates what utility in life?


perhaps it's employed to overcome inertia
   & regulate all the threads of joy & strife


Friday, April 12, 2013

Quatrain responsive to a question posed by Lewis Carroll

Loving or being loved. Which is best?           77
[from the index to Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno (1889)]


If each is incomplete without the other
yet both are in a partial manner blessed
why argue which is preferable? I'd rather
suggest the state of both-at-once is best


Saturday, March 23, 2013

Who Am I? [riddle riff]


If you utter my name   I vanish
if you mention me not   I'm there
I'm Silencio   if you're Spanish
(or Italianized)                in air
I dangle with mystery's mist
of all that is said I'm the gist!