Exquisite Corpse - Issue 4
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Toppoems
by Mike Topp

SINATRA HAIKU

The old pond;
a frog jumps in-
doobie doobie doo.

No one spoke,
the host, the guest,
the dry martinis.

Fly me to the moon-
by myself,
chewing on dried salmon.

One broad
after another-
how stupid.

This audience,
they just don't seem
Vegas.

No doubt about it,
Peter Lawford's
a crybaby.

Why mention people?
Even the horses
are crooked!

How
did all these people
get in my room?

In the wee small hours of the morning,
I am in bed
with a crab.

I look into a dragonfly's eye
and see Hoboken
over my shoulder.

Pissing in the snow,
my kind of town
Chicago is.

 

ACCIDENT

My mom told me about a terrible accident she had the year before I was born where a drunk driver ran a red light and slammed into the side of her car. He had to have traction and never drove again. My mom said it was a lucky thing I wasn't around then because the other guy plowed into the passenger side where I might have been sitting had I been born a year or so earlier.
 

INTUITION
 

Is intuition what I think it is?
 

POETS ARRANGED ACCORDING TO HEIGHT

Marianne Moore
Randall Jarrell
Dylan Thomas
Elizabeth Bishop
Robert Creeley
Robert Lowell
Charles Olson
 

POETS ARRANGED ACCORDING TO HEIGHT

John Skelton
Sir Walter Raleigh
Edmund Spenser
Barnabe Googe
George Peele
William Shakespeare
Thomas Campion
 
 

POETS ARRANGED ACCORDING TO HEIGHT

Maxwell Bodenheim
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Weldon Kees
Daisy Aldan
Louis Zufoksky
Hilda Doolittle
Harry Crosby
 

A NUMSKULL STORY

Once two boys jumped onto a bus, but the second boy fell clumsily under the rear wheel.
        A nitwit was standing in the subway watching a train come in. Thinking that he would have a little fun, the nitwit said, "I'll jump in front of this train!"
        The conductor was explaining to one of the mothers of the two boys how he works too hard for little money. The conductor felt the brake with his hand and said the name of the station over the radio.
        The nitwit jumped in front of the train.
        A subway worker with a hangover kept falling down near the third rail.
        The mother kept looking around all the time at the other mother, who in her turn kept looking around all the time at the first mother.
        Then the nitwit was hosed off the track and the train started moving again.
        The subway worker with the hangover kept on falling down for a long time, but in the end, feeling he might never get rid of his hangover, simply put his hand on the third rail. At that moment a man was thinking about his upcoming vacation.
        A numskull came by; again somebody jumped in front of the train, and the train stopped. The man with his hand on the third rail burned his sleeves. Then, about seven or eight cars behind the conductor came one loaded with long heavy railroad ties.

Links:

Email: mike_topp@hotmail.com

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