yakety-yak

yakety-yak

---

[t]hose that
merely talk
and
never think ...
              ---Ben Jonson

I cannot
talk
with civet
in the room ....
               ---W. Cowper

[l]et's talk ...
          ---Shakespeare

---

outside's
overcast
this morning

with somber,
frowning
clouds.

a moody
start.

no schemisty
crows
about ...

or even
to be
heard;

West Nile's
killed
most of them
off
in these
here parts.

left them dead
and not buried.

a woman
says
her dog
saved
her life.

didn't
explain
just how.

no pochotes
grow in
the backyard;

not ever,
in fact.

a perceptive
man
buys an Obama
look-alike
a meal
in an Indonesian
airport.

police
implicate
a goat
in an attempted
car theft.

no lamias
haunt
the streamside
woods
behind
my home.

or do they?

though of
a sudden
the deer've

come oddly
absent.

pathologists
puzzle over
a heart
found at
a Michigan
car wash
not far
from where
I live.

Lou
rescues
Jolene

by

braying
to warn

of

an attic
fire.

Fannie Mae
hunts
my pockets
for
peanuts;
finding one,
she sits
on
my knee
to eat,
her flaring
tail
bouncing---

but then
she
leaves
a wet spot,

her
gift
to
me,

before
departing.

I'm credibly
informed
gastrointestinal
hemorrhage

occurs

80 percent
more in persons

consuming

low-dose
aspirin;

that small
doses of aspirin
can hurt kidneys
and
increase
stroke incidence---

something
I think
we diabetics

do
not
want.

an ungrateful
Virginian
Komodo dragon,
Sanchez,
bites
his keeper's hand.

by the way,
Emer's
now been
found
safe.

and yup,
it's Emer,
not Elmer,
as you
might think.

Muntazer
al-Zaidi's

now been
offered

an Egyptian's
20-year-old
daughter---

a proffer
in fact
thus
tendered
by her
dear old
dad---

for to
engage

in Muslim
bonded
matrimony

with the same
al-Zaidi.

Milliken
cannot find
her missing
water.

Debra buys
a box of
crackers

and finds,
to her surprise,

gobs of
trans fats---

and ten
thousand
dollars

cash in
an envelope---
in it.

I look to see no
hootamaganzies
frequent
out back.

and no elephants
flap
their ears,
either,
for to keep

themselves
warm.

a cardinal---

not the bird;
a Catholic
clergyman---

claims
Madonna's
antics
lustful,

as if somehow
such prelate
holds
a position
so to make
that call.

a 17-year-old
girl
reports, by cell,

"Hello 911?
I'm drinking
and driving---
drunk."

one brown pelican,
wings spread wide
pterodactyl-like,
drifts over
fringing sands of
palmed, sun-drenched
Isla Verde;

momently she will
dive for fish.

I recognize her.

but the fish she'll catch?
I won't.

I glimpse
a shadow;

the bird
sees
a snack
and
a challenge.

I think.

an
unidentified
Wal-Mart
customer

finds
ten human
teeth

inside

a hidden
compartment

inside

a new billfold
for sale.

a surgeon
cuts
a tumor
from
the brain of
an infant---

and finds
within
the tumor
a foot ...
and other
body parts.

---

how mysterious!
that when we 
speak 
of other things, we
reveal
at most ourselves.
                        ---barbsdad