Tiptoe the finest, fine twine, needle-eyed thread
and a glitzy sequined clasp, tiny
tweezer-tie it finger-tip fast with a nuanced knot -
my, my, the pedantic perfection of the master jeweller.
I have the servile subtlety of thick thumbs,
all clumbsy carpals, my fudging finesse
better suited to a beanie'd stevedore, loud lugging
heavy-haired harbour rope to ship-secure
a brutish lump in the line.
Tongue tied up, spun on my own silver yarn
like a crystal jeweller, giddy with champagne giggles,
dizzy on a spinning chandelier high strung from the pressed ceiling.
Oh non, pas moi! Mine is more an oiled elegance,
heavy handed, ham-fisted like a scabby wharf rat,
chased and unchaste.
Dextrous in the strangest ways -
gutsy and glamourous,
ours is a nuanced life of grunting grime
with the briefest flashes of bedazzled dance.
My typewriter
was not a good typewriter,
its keys were weighty,
you had to use brain muscle to work it,
nobody wanted it.
My son unpacked a home computer.
I stood by and watched
as all the electronics were laid out on the floor
and surgically knitted together.
I knew then
that I would be consistently out of touch,
and possibly would remain
stuck in an obsolete year
trying to catch up
from the rear of the field.
I wrote my first poem
on that clickity-clack manual machine,
then a dozen more,
all of them were heavy handed,
yet that hefty labor
made me think
I was crafting something worthwhile.
Later, I was enslaved to a computer keyboard,
chained as I was to its subsonic urgings
I could tell
the world was speeding away
faster than I could write.
When my kind of poet dies,
he is immediately ed,
for all his contemporary poems
turn into digital wormholes
that suck him into an unknown grave.
The young look to dead poets for wisdom -
truth is,
that those ham-fisted plodders
have long ago
turned into chunky typewriters
that nobody wants.
Chairman Xi, like Chairman Mao
Vladimir Putin, shades of Josef Stalin
Kim Jong-un, plus Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Iranian Mullahs producing drones and bombs
Our world is an awfully dangerous place
Yet America's response is a first-class disgrace
Yesterday Congress' focus on International Pronoun Day
At New York's UN today, autocrats against Israel inveigh
At home, crime's way up, 'so' we end cash bail
Why not let all the thugs out of jail
To protect its citizenry, America's government once existed
Now it opens the borders, its explanations ham-fisted
Add to all this rampant inflation, rising racial tensions
Plus self-defeating 'green goals' and underfunded pensions...
The 'threat to democracy' shouters couldn't be more wrong
The reason it's real ~ America misguided is no longer strong
I’d plow four rocky acres, maybe even five,
For a taste of the honey from my Honey’s hive.
No one spices the clover like my lover does
When we meet in the meadow and we buzz, buzz, buzz.
She’s a blue ribbon winner at the county show;
Sings a nice little number, ends in E-I-O.
She can flirt with the judges and they think it’s cute;
When she winks like a barn owl, they shout hoot, hoot, hoot.
Buzz, buzz, buzz, hoot, hoot, hoot.
Dance ‘round the hen house in a chicken suit.
Learn how to juggle, break an egg or two,
Then we’ll make rooster jealous when we doodle-do.
See the ducks swim in circles on the lily pond
And that one lonesome froggie in the mist beyond.
We can drop our pretensions (standing back-to-back),
Then we’ll slip in the water going quack, quack, quack.
I’m a ham-fisted farm boy, Sugar. Holy cow!
Got a stool and a bucket and I do know how.
We’ll have sweet cream and peaches once the milkin’s through,
When our lips come together and we moo, moo, moo.
Quack, quack, quack, moo, moo, moo.
Work like the devil with a pitchfork, too.
Warn all the pigeons we’ll be pitchin’ woo
When we meet in the hayloft and we coo, coo, coo.
In the coffee shop
A mistimed twist
By the barista
Caused a hissing
Coffee jet to
Ballista towards
My sister and I
Worried it would
Hit her wrist and
Give her a blister,
But fortunately
It missed her.
The manager scolded
The ham-fisted barista,
But since no-one was scalded,
He didn’t dismiss her.
Inexpert at rhyme
or singing in time
I bray like a laryngitic donkey
my artwork's inept
I'm ham-fisted except
when doodling things that are wonky
Of style I'm bereft
my feet are both left
splayed in an opposite direction;
'tis little wonder
I blindfully blunder
into despair and abject dejection
My mind is a bog
of gunk and cheap grog
my gray matter's shrinking, I fear
today is a haze
yesterday a maze
and everything's clearly unclear
My dress sense is eish
and fits not my niche
nor do my shorts, come to that
my flip-flops are worn
my t-shirts all torn
one boob is fat, one is flat!
Despite many a flaw
I'm not an eyesore
though ungainly and lacking in style
with my stunning good looks
I easily hooked
your soon-to-be-ex with my smile
Here,
where the black white shadows
pond and melt
her dress
flutters around the
pronounced scimitar
of her neck line.
Eyes whisper
fr-ig-id
with a syllabically thick accent
as if cold were a ham-fisted lug
emerging from the
yawning dark mouth
of the cabin behind her
pressing his hands
with the grip
of a dying man
bracing his last breath
with each
light blue,
half moon
fingernail.
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