Best Deduction Poems
A double sonnet in which the great detective and his faithful sidekick, Dr. Watson, alternately deduce the cause of Sherlock’s latest malady…
Part the first
Sherlock could not deduce his source of pain
at first. “Try as I might, I cannot find
the cause – is it contusion, or a sprain?
Perchance a mere psychosis of the mind?
“Yet by deduction, I’ve ruled out the plague,
consumption, smallpox, cholera, and mumps.
My symptoms, although serious, are vague –
this lack of answers has me in the dumps!
“Where’s Watson? He would have a quick prognosis –
I’ve never seen him err in all our years”.
Then! Churn of stomach yields its diagnosis
just as his friend, the good doctor, appears:
“What seems to be the problem, troubled one?”
“It’s alimentary, my dear Watson!”
Part the second
But from the learnéd doctor’s point of view,
there yet were tests and readings still to take.
He’d learnt the ill effects of poor review
and on his friend would not make that mistake.
“Stick out your tongue! Now, turn your head and cough!
Say ‘ah’. Hold this thermometer in place,
and while you’re at it, take your trousers off -
we’d better check your prostate, just in case!"
But Sherlock dashes to the water closet
in dire urgency and grave chagrin
to make a loud and liquidy deposit.
“It’s diarrhea!” Doc yells with a grin.
“How did you know?”, shouts Holmes. “How in tarnation?”
“Why, Holmes, mere process of elimination!”
written 17 Jan 2020
To take the "standard deduction"
means throwing away every gift to goodwill
It means that you never spent hundreds on glasses
or saved your receipts from each blue little pill
It means that the trip that you took late last fall
securing connections for business demands
while your wife and kid sat at home half complete
becomes liquid losses escaping your hands
It means that each mile you penciled on notebooks
and kept rubber banded in dark glove compartments
might as well say: "Hey! You spent countless hours
on pointless arrivals and black hole departments!"
It means that your charges of finance are hollow
and every bill that you paid is still owed
It tangles and grows up in weeds of employment
so you never reap the deductions you sowed.
To take the "standard deduction"
pulls your portfolio out of unique
It means that you flow like the drudge of the masses
and never quite manage to climb to the peak
It means that your taxes will never be paid
and all of your life you will owe
and every bit of your saved IRA
flatly refuses to grow.
It blows every wish of a refund to wind
and keeps the river of finance in sync
but still you will find me there taking the "standard"
as long as I'm filed by April 15th.
Here I am, reminiscing every junction
when poetry and literature peeled my very education
and verbiage and grammatical function
revealed my sense of moody stagnant indications.
Sister Laura questioned every thought that stirred
changing lines and defining the correct poetic form
each cut left a mark from her razor sharpened sword
and in the years that slipped from my teenaged storms
I found clarity out of desperation in the written word.
Stubbornness agonized at any change she made
and every poem I write today reveals
her hidden corrections engraved on every page
that formed my poems, thoughts, ideals to be unsealed.
for Chantelle Anne Cooke's Favorite Teacher contest
For Trumpians
our multiculturally celebrated Golden Rule
applies first to Ego
then to immediate white privileged family,
then to wealthier gated community,
then to a more rabblous Republican Party,
then to USA nationalists
European predative culture idolaters
mistaking capital-inspired Manifest Destiny
for sacred DNA theology,
then to fallen Earth,
if there is any gold left over
after all that strained dispassion,
divestment fatigue
stretching out from entitled EgoCenters.
For Green Party contemplatives,
the Democratic Golden Rule
is first celebrated with,
then applied to, planet Earth,
then all Her sacred EarthTribes,
then to humanity, alive,
dead,
and yet to arrive,
then to cooperatively co-invested local community,
then to extended family,
then to nuclear family,
then interdependent Ego,
should there by any radically inclusive Golden Rule energy
left deductive
and right inductive
to regeneratively,
win/win bicamerally, share.
Pick up an offer
You'll find a new adventure
A deduction of prices
A quick accumulating crowd
A long queue of patience
And a challenge of temper
A traffic jam
And a lost of precious time
An extra expenditure
And a new debt
And a risk to Covid-19
Really an underestimated offer
Ruminating on Li??le Bo-Peep,
and sadly,
her badly-missing sheep,
the evidence will show,
in the time allotted,
to get all her ducks in a row,
she had not spotted
the reason they were lost.
It was because her t's were dotted
and their eyes were crossed.