Best Atilt Poems
Alas, never seen along scenic highways and byways anymore,
(Now, tacky billboards clutter roads from shore to shore!)
Are the pithy Burma-Shave signs displayed in red and white,
That provided the traveling public with so much delight!
Signs were planted by PhDs (Post Hole Diggers) fifty yards apart;
Folks memorized them by rote and recited them from the heart.
Dads became adept at suddenly shifting their cars in reverse,
Should Mom or the kids miss a line of that mesmerizing verse!
For massaging their spines, cows and horses found them handy.
Miscreants used them for targets - their usual modus operandi.
College boys "borrowed" signs to decorate their college dorms.
Others were set atilt or otherwise marred by savage thunder storms!
Six sequential signs were arraigned along a farmer's fence.
Each was carefully composed so as not to cause offense.
Shakespeare would be aghast at such appalling versification,
But never mind, for nigh on 40 years they tickled a generation!
'Tis so sad that these clever mots have vanished from the scene.
What was once an educational trip is now so boring and routine!
When rising each morn/Your stubble to mow/And your mug to lave/
You'll sigh and mourn/The demise of signs/Reading Burma-Shave!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired (© All Rights Reserved)
Pleading the Fifth is for “mobsters;”
To many, it’s proof of their guilt,
Including a certain ex-leader,
Whose previous claims went atilt.
For once he was called to the hot seat,
The Fifth was his very best friend.
Aside from his name he said nothing,
Defiant right up to the end.
Of course, he gave all the impression
He had quite a lot he should hide,
But if he had actually answered,
We all can be sure he’d have lied.
there once was a man from Kingsbury
who put on his kilt in a hurry
in a bit of a flap
he forgot his jockstrap
a chill wind put him in a flurry
What does a Scotsman wear under his kilt?
Is it Fruit of the Loom?
Is it nuthin'?
When it's cold does he cover himself with a quilt?
How much good Gaelic blood has been spilt
'cause he buried his Wee Willie up to the hilt
In a fair colleen's warm married muffin?
Author's note: Dear reader, after reading Linda Alice Fowler's delightful limerick "Kilt Atilt", I felt inspired to go into my archives and dig up this old chestnut.
magic mage
in tragic rage
calling time
in falling rhyme
hat atilt his cane a wand
limping lilt and pain a bond
His soul is tied to earthly needs
he falls in rhythmic rhyme to knees
feels frustration's pull and twist
finds no reason to resist
tears fall blind as hands unfist
in such surrender life is missed
precious moments measure life
increments of joy and strife
some cause pain and some delight
some are taken into night
like teddy bears to hold on tight
Embrace the Day
Before manscaping with my hair trimmer,
my arm hair army wrapped further,
further around my cylindrical arms,
like wheat stalks before the harvest.
All atilt in a summertime wind
where the view of the soil has grown dim,
rustling above farmer-sized arms
swollen from trips to the local, town gym.
Some near black, some unwieldy, and some
white-paper white.
I’m short sleeved today, and
I’m feeling right, and freshly groomed.
My arms now swing freely on arcs,
and rise up to greet the sun.
It was a bitter winter,
which tamped my goodwill, I think, as I
embrace the day.