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Best Poems Written by Martin Elster

Below are the all-time best Martin Elster poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Details | Martin Elster Poem

Willy, the Rat Terrier

Willy, the Rat Terrier

He nibbles on my nose.
Why? Heaven only knows!
Each tooth feels like a pin.
I need much thicker skin!
Yet Willy, the rat terrier,
could not be any merrier.
After a bath or stroll
he sprints around the whole
apartment like a race 
car driven by an ace
who’d swallowed too much speed.
(Perhaps it’s just his breed
that is to blame for that.)
He’s like a mad preschooler
who drank from the wine cooler
and got so hugely gassed,
runs so awful fast,
is such an acrobat,
a poor rat would have no shot
at evading such a tot.
I wouldn’t like to be
that rat, believe you me!
He’d shake it side to side
until the critter died,
which would be just as quick
as death by a dropped brick.
Even a swift hare
wouldn’t have a prayer!
Yet the only life this brat 
has so far ever seized
was neither hare nor rat,
but the schnoz from which I’ve sneezed.

Copyright © Martin Elster | Year Posted 2016



Details | Martin Elster Poem

Lovebugs - Plecia Nearctica

A flurry grays the April air
as clouds of speckles swirl and mate,
euphoric, blazing, unaware

of windshields on the interstate
hurtling through their fevered storm. 
These whirlwind-wings pursuing their fate,

in red and black above the warm
blacktop, link up and live three days.
Tripping on truck exhaust, they swarm,

convinced it’s flora which decays.
They catch the fumes, sweet as the spice
of rot, home in on motorways

and, as they’re turned to mush, think, “Nice!—  
manure, grass clippings—paradise!”

Copyright © Martin Elster | Year Posted 2021


Book: Reflection on the Important Things