To Guinness

(Sometimes I write a poem for myself alone, but later discover that others want access to it.  This is a departure in tone, but what of it?)

To Guinness
 

What dismal brew comes now to rest
Before my disenchanted breast?
Brew, I say?  This cannot be!
A brew has weight and dignity.
But this?  This piddle, thin and bleak,
This sallow swill with sunken cheek.
If barleycorns must crack their chests,
Then let them die a noble death.

Let them lie in sacred state
Within the walls of St. James Gate.
A princely stout!  A poet's milk!
With creamy crown and robes of silk.
Thy brooding brow. Thy nodding head,
Adrift upon a midnight bed.
I know not if I'm fit to sip
and bless my most unworthy lip.
And yet, you heed no rank nor class
But fill the same each eager glass
Of statesman, scholar, journeymen,
And all who labor with their hands.

Good traveler, quit your hurried call,
And peer within these lively halls
On gentlefolk with courteous hearts
Who choose but mirth before they part.
Come doctor, welder, lawyer, nurse.
Come drink what's worthy of your thirst.
Come ladies, with your flow'ry styles
And revolution in your smiles.
Come poets, players, lift your voice.
Come distant shades. Come Yeats! Come Joyce!
Come gather round this festive board.
Be kinsmen in a happy hoard.
We'll drink to all that glows within us.
And God in heaven, make it Guinness.

--AGH

Poem: Untitled

The English make wine,

As the Spanish write verse:

Two virulent vines

Whose berries be nurs’d

Past o’er sweetened sentiment. 

Tut! What a shame.

No Bacchus in London, 

No Shakespeare in Spain.

Poem: The Rancid Clams Of Amsterdam

Twenty cans of rancid clams

I ate last night in Amsterdam,

And how they passed a health exam,

No lucid man can understand.

Overpriced and poorly planned,

I bought them from a roadside stand.

A land-clam stand that’s undermanned.

With runny nose and unwashed hands,

He tossed them in a dirty pan.



No place to sit, I had to stand

And eat them by the garbage can.

Full of sand, these blubber bands,

They smelled of smelt but tasted bland.

Like dumplings from my gastric glands,

They went in grey but came out tan.

My bedpan’s crammed with contraband.

Goddamn your clams of Amsterdam.

Next time I’ll get the leg of lamb.

Poem: The Ballad Of Easticle And Westicle

Easticle and Westicle were close as close can be.

Quoth Eastticle to Westticle, “Now hearken well to me.

We serve our master’s pleasure, ’tis a high and worthy art, 

So let us two together, lest ill-fortune bid us part.”

Easticle and Westicle went bounding o’er a dale,

Till lo! They reached a shepherd’s green denied them by a rail.

Sayeth Easticle to Westicle, “We’ll leap this surly gate,

For we have youth and vigor, and no cause to hesitate.”

Easticle and Westicle came charging down the hill.

A valiant leap gave they, but fie! The gate was higher still.

A moist and throaty whomp was heard like liver on a stone,

When Easticle came to again, alas! He was alone.

“What ho, my goodman Easticle!” the frightened loner cried.

“I’m way up here, inside a cave, and O! ’Tis dark inside!”

Quoth Westicle, “If truth you speak, I’ll with thee straightaway.

The oath we swore to never part, I’ll honor it today.”

Westicle arose and faced the step-stile where it stood,

And with a mighty charge he dashed his meat against the wood.

And as the buds of springtime burst their shells in pregnant lust,

Just so, but in retreating order, shot he through that husk.

Behold the cows a-lowing on that hillside far beyond.

Behold the farmer sowing and the moorhens on the pond.

Behold the evening dimming and the day dismount the west.

Behold the master writhing with his knees about his chest.

Now, wish you for a moral, for it may be all for naught,

But know the oath you swear may leave thy master overwrought.

And youth and vigor oftentimes with pride go hand in hand.
What little cross of wood to oversee the fall of man.

Poem: The Diaper Of Doolin

The Diaper Of Doolin

I’m a servant by trade.

I clean out the loos,

And I’ve seen me some diapers,

And I’ve changed quite a few.

But there’s one dirty didey that left me aghast.

Aye, the Diaper Of Doolin looms large in my past.

It was bloated and loaded as if Lucifer fill’d it,

And it leaked from all sides e'en though it was quilted.

Now most every baby is lovingly fed

With sweet mommy milk in a pillowy bed.

But who feeds a baby such ill-gotten meals

As buffalo dumplings and hot buttered eel?

But that’s what I found when I peeled back the diaper,

And it smelled like an over-ripe merkin, but riper.

A gluey blue goulash awash in ganache,

And tossed in a broth of anal floss sauce.

A beef and bean butt bomb that peeled back the paint, 

A stench so intense, it un-martyred the saints.

It smelled of bad bullion, befungal and spunky.

There were times, I confess, that the smell made me hungry.

I buried it twice ‘neath a yewberry tree, 

But the Diaper Of Doolin done dug itself free.

It crawled to my door in a trail of flames.

It sang 'neath my window and called me sweet names.

So I paddled it out far away from the shore,

Where that unholy hotload would haunt me no more.

I murmured a prayer, and I dropped it on in, 

But what kind of god makes a diaper that swims?

Now I wander the earth in a veil of shame,

For the Diaper of Doolin hath sullied my name.

The ladies, they whisper.  That’s my stench, they say.

Men gather their children and hurry away.

But my day is coming—mark well what I say!

For when I grow old and my bowels give way,

I’ll fill me a diaper like no man before
And I’ll loose it upon all you children of whores.

Poem: The Krampus

(He's coming for you, you naughty, naughty nipperkins!)

The Krampus

Oliver Gordon and Annabelle Grace

Lived in the vale ‘neath a mountainous place,

And I wish they were good, but that wasn’t the case.

For Ollie was wicked, and Annie was base.

They’d torture the cat with their mutinous play,

And they’d dash every vase in their parents’ chalet. 

No, they wouldn’t wear the stockings their mother had chosen,

And place toads in their grossvater’s best lederhosen.

They’d wriggle from bed, nor e’re wash their hands,

But fester the air with obnoxious demands,

And roll their eyes glumly—those ill-tempered brats!—

While filling their pockets with money they’d snatched.

Their poor haggard parents! But what could they do?

Throw the wretches in jail? Pass them off at the zoo?

They’d kneel in that church at the foot of the Alps,

And pray to the angels for heavenly help.

But far up the mountain, high on a slope,

Their words were conveyed to a black-hearted pope.

He was craggy and crooked and covered in hair,

And he carried a switch that he waved in the air.

His tongue it was forked, and it spilled from his mouth,

Like a river of evil that wound its way south.

I can scarce move my lips, and I know I’ll regret it,

But his name was the Krampus. Good Heavens! I said it!

Now it’s lately the fashion in higher society

To cast off the switch for a gentler piety.

Spare the rod for your child, if that’s your conviction,

But the Krampus, he lived in his own jurisdiction.

On the tenth of December, 1828,

Ollie and Annie were juggling plates

At the top of the stairs—which was strictly forbidden—

But they cared not a fig, O, those insolent children!

They screeched to their parents, “Pray, look you not listless,

But say right away what you got us this Christmas!

And tell Sinter Klaus, O, that fatuous troll,

That we’ll kick out his knees if he leaves us with coal.”

Just then there was heard at the window a scratch,

And the sound of a click as the door came unlatched.

And Oliver Gordon and Annabelle Grace 

Fell silent for once, and white in the face.

For there stood the Krampus, a high holy terror,

With that great ghastly switch for to beat out their errors.

He licked at his lips and he hissed out a threat:

“I shall give you a thrashing you shan’t soon forget!”

Annie shrieked and dove ‘neath where the tapestry hung,

But he seized at her feet with his truculent tongue,

And he whispered these words to his dangling prey,

“Oh, you hideous girl, here’s the price you shall pay!”

And he spanked her with glee ’til her bottom marooned

And a great rosy sunset lit low her bondoon.

How she wailed with each blow, one for every transgression,

One for each nasty lie, and for each indiscretion.

Ollie dashed for the door, to abandon his sister,

But the Krampus exclaimed, “Here’s a bottom to blister!”

And he yanked down his britches, in front of wee Annie,

And he scalded that beast of a bare-naked fanny,

With blow after blow from his smoldering spanker,

And he did it with joy. And he did it with rancor.

And their parents sat silent, their hands folded neatly,

For they knew this was coming. They knew it completely.

And their miserable wails issued all through the streets.

Some nodded their heads, others shuffled their feet.

Their torment careened through the valleys and trees.

It was heard in the church, and the ships out at sea.

And the Krampus, he tossed the two brats to the floor,

And shouldering his switch, he slumped to the door.

But he turned e’re he left, and he uttered these words,

“Remember, I’m watching, you dissolute curs!”

Now Ollie and Annie, they’re different these days.

They’ve cast off their wicked, incorrigible ways.

They’re kind to the kitty, and quick to their lessons.

They help with the dishes and go to confession.

And never a curse will you e’re see alight

On their sweet, doting parents, who brought them up right.

They fetch them their slippers and tea in a tray,

And it’s, “Yes, Vater!” “Please, Mutter.” “Ja, right away!”

And yet, now and then, every once in a while,

When they leave dirty dishes or clothes in a pile,

Or scowl at their parents, and act impolite,

There's a scratch at the window that sets them aright.

©Arthur Greenleaf Holmes