Best Wilkes Poems
O foolish Amerikan klan,
who hath Klux bewitched thee with pale poof?
Kluless to the celestial truth,
Love immutable is infinity grand
Children of the Aryan band,
what doth the dark star say unsooth?
Thy divided house is quaking from the foundation to the roof,
as incantations of hatred are caste by thine hand
Stir madly the black cauldron with thy ladle iron brand ...
knowest not, thou Jim Crow vows are dove uncouth?
Universal love is the relativity proof,
yet thine mathematical impurity will cancel thy hexed land
Inverted cloud 9 chanting brings triple digit reign; slow death quicksand,
cursed cause invoked by thou warlock heirs of John Wilkes Booth
Mix the enamel pox potion from thy bittersweet Cain rotten tooth,
let angry spirits from boiling brew be vomit spilt upon thy Endora strands
Thus, the mirror of time will show the cold reflection of thy fool’s errand;
ought not all ayes idol-ly stand by, and watch thy seance plight aloof?
I never round-or-flatly disagreed
with Johnny Appleseed,
so red, so crisp, so...quite.
Never in the dawning, evening dawn
did I fly up or s*it upon...John James Audobon
in the evening, morning night.
Ah, I'd never be rude or eat the food
of the pulchritudinous Johnny B Goode.
How could I?
And why would I harm
odorless, flightless John Barleycorn
or give him Spanish flea?
I'd sail the vast untarted sea,
or play drums obstreperously,
with that flapjack, John Paul Jones,
but what kind of pancake would I be
if I revealed I was bigger than, by three,
that wunderkind, John Holmes?
Would I ask Johnny on the Spot
for a rag to wipe my snot?
Unindubitably!
Would I surprise him with mascara,
or do the backstroke in marinara
like a mushroom in a noodly sea?
I'd be on time for Johnny Come Lately,
and eat bon bons till I sat, oblately,
under the midday moon.
I'd tell Johnny Carson, "That's a wrap"
and neatly wrap my dog's crap
up with cellophoone.
What about John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,
that diaphanous, novelty hit?
Would I blast him with the guns of Navarone
under a sky that sticks like the glue
of a colorless, humid, hue?
Would I deny him a raisin scone?
No!
When Johnny Comes Marching In gets home,
I'd serve him grits and iridescent cornpone,
and sit him on my knee.
Then I give him a lavender shout,
and set up an appointment for my gout,
superciliously.
Would I ask John the Baptist to convert?
No, I'd offer him some camembert
and crackers!
And the sprightly John the Apostle?
I'd offer him a waffle.
and crackers
(for dessert).
Oh John Keats, dear clapboard poet - you left too soon,
before I could offer you a macaroon,
or anything that leaves a crumb.
There's a reason I asked you for tea.
Give me a sign. Tell me honestly,
do you think I'm a doofus - dopey, dippy, daft and dumb?
Would I pull the leg or make fun...or steal a tart, chocolate eclair, pineapple upside down cake or cinnamon bun
from the beetle, John Winston Lennon?
Nope, I imagine I wouldn't, in truth,
but I'd surely pull the tooth
of the weevil John Wilkes Booth
under the midnight sun.
Life in Africa was full; years in the bush, a treat.
Music made us happy; drums sounded for dancing feet.
A loving life with family always made us smile.
Living together freely, we never knew defeat.
Greedy slave hunters sailed down the Nile.
Chained us below with feces and bile,
Our curiosity was a big mistake!
We lived like that for a long bad while.
Sold to the highest bidder at the market by the dock,
Herded off to cotton fields, we became their livestock.
Forced to do hard labor; whipped until bare backs bled.
Rest would never come as time ticked on the clock.
The life of a slave was hard work; at least we were fed.
Some rested in cottages, others in a shed.
Scorching sun, sweat, blood, the whip did not feel good.
Calling a white man, “Master”, a slave’s daily dread.
Even in the best conditions, the human spirit was not free.
Mistreated; folks who could not take it were shot trying to flee.
A man could dream of Africa and his family all day.
Divided and sold into slavery a painful loss to see.
The Underground Railroad helped slaves run away.
Their owners and hounds tried to catch each stray.
Some of the lucky ones were never found.
Those who were caught for their lives had to pray.
Lincoln tried to free all slaves; the Klu Klux Klan still frowned.
John Wilkes Booth picked up his gun and shot the President down.
Slaves were free per history, but it was not as expected.
For even after the Civil War, burning and lynching did abound.
About one hundred years later, the issue was resurrected.
Rosa Parks stood up for her rights; NAACP directed.
The Civil Rights Movement brought freedom at last.
President Kennedy addressed the nation; equality enacted.
Lincoln, Lincoln
Lincoln, Lincoln he no stinkum
he was good man, yes siree.
He the one that set um free
makeum homes for you and me.
Him the one who wears black clothes
had tall hat and crooked nose.
He the tall and stately bird
people all around him heard,
as him giveum big address
at Gettysburg, him didum best.
Him was shot by John Wilkes Booth
oh, this man was quite uncouth.
Then they laid um Abe to rest
me thinks him the very best.
By: Marilyn Jennings
today it has been proven that our justice system does'nt represent justice. it just
fixes things the way they want things to be fixed. today a murderer was judged not
guilty and will soon walk free from the crime that they commited. they may have
escaped man but they still have to face God. they should have paid man. maybe it
was an accident with choloraform. but everything else she did added it up to
murder. today a jury assasinated justice just like james earl ray killed martin luther
king and just like lee harvey oswald killed john f. kennedy just like john wilkes booth
killed abraham lincoln and all i can say is et tu brute to our judicial system. i must
admit the defence did their jobs well but now they know they did it too well because
the eyes of true Justice will be apon them for their crimes. and so this is how the media planned on how to keep milking this cash cow indefinatly.
There was an old lawyer named Ruth
Who didn't mind bending the truth.
No scoundrel too bad,
If money he had.
He'd have pled self defense for Wilkes Booth.
For Carolyn's
lawyer limerick Tied for no. 1
April 14, 1865
A chilled southern wind
Lincoln's last hours
Our American Cousin...
John Wilkes Booth
born: May 10, 1838
Taurus the bull
claimed he had too great a soul
to die like a common criminal...
April 26, 1865
shot rang out
hands held above chest
tell mother I died for country
these hands, useless...useless..
~ ~ ~ ~
Alas, Abe Lincoln was fatally shot forsooth,
By that nefarious cad John Wilkes Booth!
Booth was shot by Sergeant Boston Corbett,
Sending him on his well-deserved eternal orbit!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
(c) All Rights Reserved
Dark echoes of the past reverberate
In Mississippi voices filled with hate.
This morning nooses hanging from a tree
Remind us all of lynching history.
Some people claim great progress has been made
And racist attitudes, in time, will fade;
If this is true then why do people try
To resurrect the Old South's battle cry?
To say Jeff Davis was a patriot
Is simply vile and apoplectic rot.
He was a traitor to his very core
In spite of false heroic Southern lore.
The South was built upon the backs of slaves
Who found no freedom 'til they found their graves,
And those who try to sanitize this truth
Reanimate the hate of John Wilkes Booth.
Nutty grandpa president
is talking crazy uncle Donald again
His little Chucky thumbs
is tapping epithet tweet nonsense
Batty grandpa’s been
grumpily sucking
on the hate hot sauce bottle
stashed in his KKK closet
Now he’s sporting a Commander-in-Chief cap,
dressed in a wrinkled birthday suit
Churlish grandpa wanna blow the nuclear candles out
in his Oval padded room
He’s trying to smear his coconut-frosted
pejorative German chocolate cake
on every African looking face
Calling Doctor Strangelove and nurse Annie Wilkes Misery,
bad Grandpa is verbally pooping all over the place
His anti-social, mood swing meds
is scattered everywhere on the bed
Nutty grandpa prez
is a stable genius he says
But his schizophrenia behavior
is open and shut caged rage ... Jekyll and Hyde
Hannibal Lecter ... American Gothic suicide
Old Grandpa says
young women love him like Frankenstein’s bride
His paranoid soul
got a misogynist itch
in it’s nether parts
Curmudgeon grandpa claims he’s really rich,
and has an Ebenezer Scrooge heart
Nutty grandpa prez don’t like no immigrants
who came from where he ain’t
Straight jacket truth wraps him wrong,
he loves to swear that he’s no saint
Crazy grandpa just wanna roam the West Wing halls at night,
cursing at everybody left and right
His angry autocrat ticker just wanna be dictator loved
with family suck-up sniveling loyalty
Cuckoo grandpa flew his nest egg eyes over someone in the staff,
whose nurse Ratched mirror image greedy
Nutty grandpa president just got another person fired
for improper cleansing backside kissing
And the raucous din,
rising from the voter base-ment,
means it’s electoral shock therapy time again
So lock the border doors —
keep it dissent quiet, dum-dum
Czar grandpa prez don’t like all that democratic noise
Silence of the lambs,
that soothing lullaby hum
Is the sweet sound
that calms his Joker tweeting thumbs
Rest your rage, nutty grandpa prez:
Uneasily snore deeply,
wearing your Mad Hatter MAGA brim
(keep having more troubled, neo-Nazi policy dreams
of Making America Great Again)
As the White House hospice staff is issuing
M.A.S.H unpatriotic greetings
to Parallel reality refugees
seeking insane asylum ...
Welcome, to the Oval Sanatorium
The silence of morn makes this place forlorn
in the fields, the hillsides, and trenches.
Over two hundred years since the bloodshed and fear,
yet you can hear the yells, smell the stenches.
The crush of the blue, charging straight and true
at the redcoats behind all their breast-works,
The bayonets clash, and the musket-balls crash,
the cannon’s roar shaking all the Earth.
Two centuries gone by, you can still see the lines,
hear the cries of dying men down in the grass,
to some it’s meadow, but to those in the know
Saratoga is a place of today’s past.
In a Vegas hotel are some relics that tell
of a ship that tangled with an ice-berg.
The trinkets and things of those traveling,
raised up from the ocean and preserved.
From Gilded Age times, these objects passed b
you can imagine in a person’s pocket.
Watches for a vest, tooth-paste and a dress,
dishes, satchels, and a locket.
And there, grey and dull, a big piece of hull
hangs before you just beyond your grasp,
these titanic remains, they make a good claim
for being a place of today’s past.
A theater in D.C, it tells the sad story
of a great man who was cut down too soon.
Sitting in these rows, seeing the play go
until the shock comes from a pistol’s loud boom.
Imagine the sounds when Wilkes-Booth leapt down,
the chaos, the confusion, the frenzy,
a war we had won, then the sound of a gun,
and a chase for a dastard enemy.
That theater this day means more than plays
echoing the sounds of that old blast,
we still feel it now, though we can’t say how,
it’s forever a place of today’s past.
The present goes quick, there’s no stopping it,
and the world it wrenches and spasms.
We forget about time and its endless line,
we pretend that it’s like a great chasm.
But mankind don’t change, we’re much the same
as those past that we pretend we’re beyond.
If we lived back then would we do different,
or would we the same road walk upon?
We find an old space, the present is erased,
and the memories start coming so fast,
we revisit that hell and we see ourselves
when we stand in a place of today’s past.
Use to work at Wilkes
walking across South Street Bridge
on my way to work
a strange sort of flow
comes with thoughts of long ago
spews a welcome glow
nostalgia may just soothe
when mixed with lies and half-truths
Hitler and his ilk
less troublesome than spilled milk
like Wendell Wilkes
slavery a slight bother
endorsed by founding fathers
a happy nation
few trials or tribulations
add more misinformation
ignore racial injustice
force the children to trust us
all Greenwood flattened
pretend it never happened
let's not be saddened
forget all those starved and bruised
that story is over used
no big mystery
we’ll sugar coat history
practice sophistry
let's deny the Holocaust
past transgressions should be lost
need new set of rules
ensure what is taught in school
makes nation look good
our kids do not need to know
repeating the past brings woe
Review the annals of history
Murder upon murder you'll see
Start with Adam and Eve's son, Cain
Who murdered his brother Abel in vain
Then there's Moses, the saintly lawgiver
Who murdered an Egyptian taskmaster and shivered
The greatest of playwrights, Shakespeare, didn't hedge his bets
He wrote of murder in 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth' and 'Romeo & Juliet'
What of Abe Lincoln's assassin, Mr. John Wilkes Booth?
His name lives all these years later, verily and forsooth
There's Lee Harvey Oswald, shot JFK -- ended Camelot
Else his name wouldn't be worth a pee in a pot
Can't forget the serial killers, whose souls are damned:
Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, Son of Sam
Not to mention the 'iconic' socialists you all know:
Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Idi Amin also
In this century you don't have to rack your brain
We've had Osama bin Laden, Bashar Assad, Sadam Hussein...
As for 'professionals,' Bonnie & Clyde are your bank robbers
And how about ('Scarface') Al Capone for a celebrity mobster?
So, you want your name to be ever remembered?
Just commit a few murders: Behead and dismember!
To be. To feel.
To feel, to love,
To love. To rage,
To rage, to die
Like a good Romantic, or to sleep like this,
Ghosting about
Like a loose plastic bag
That flaps on a windy night
Under a sodium street lamp’s
Eerie all-submerging light.
O Shakespeare, pity us,
O Wilkes, O Pope,
O Voltaire, O Heine,
O Byron. O Shelley,
Shed tears for us.
We have mislaid the liberties
You fought for.
And the truths you taught us.
The Board of Standardisation
In the interests of this nation
Will suppress the imagination.
Like ranters at Hyde Park
We’re still good for a Sunday lark.
Our patrons are benign
as long as we are innocuous.
They’ll allow a little room for satire
(as long as we keep our hats on)
Just to show what sports they are.
Toothless protest’s just a cliché,
But don’t let slip a waspish quip,
Or “Sirrah, Sirrah, the whip!”
Tow the line. That’s fine.
“Douse that prophetic fire by nightfall, sir,
Or the neighbours will complain.”
A D-Notice served on the brain
deadens every joy and pan.
Cross the heart with this red pencil
And with this stencil write:
THE END OF ART.”