Higgins was the worst Math teacher,
and that year I was his worse student.
Higgins had loose blubbery lips.
When he taught long division or algebra
his words were full of spit
and phlegm.
Higgins had big feet and he carried a large
thick-soled sneaker
which he threw at slow thinkers
It hurt
especially if hit by it 3 times in one lesson,
especially since we had to pick the damn thing up
and hand it back to him
especially when he loomed over you glaring,
daring you to be a wiseass.
Higgins was really very big
his massive form always intimating
to young minds.
Mostly I just doodled his form
on my school math book.
Happy to flunk any test of his.
Once I drew him naked,
his fat backside bouncing on the back
of a spavined mule.
Underneath this masterpiece I wrote
'It hurts don't it?'
Sadly he had snuck up behind me
too late
I felt his hot breath
drooling down the back of my neck.
Higgins was hit by a bus,
but that was years later.
When I heard
I felt sorry for the bus.
Categories:
wiseass, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Go on break its heart, don't be shy, ask it why
was it said in that way and not another?
Or maybe why the hell you even said that anyway?
A poem enters a boxing ring
gets beaten up, yet in the end
the loser is a winner,
the pummeling has changed its shape.
A seagull poops on your head,
kind of funny, everyone grins.
An eighteen-wheeler jackknives,
no one is hurt, poop does not kill,
but you're a poet, some kind of genius,
so you write about slippery bird guano
on a wet road,
a truck hydroplaning,
cars bursting into flames,
a trucker dying of colon cancer
long after that fatal accident.
Misery and joy must be manipulated
then handcuffed together.
You publish the deranged thing -
your mistake,
it's just another aberration of your nervous system.
Then you wait for some wiseass
to tear it apart,
and it serves you right.
Categories:
wiseass, poetry,
Form: Free verse