This is just poetry. It won't save you, but it may locate you so that a rescue party can be sent out. — Dean Blehert

Sunday, July 13, 2014

O Let Us Get an Owlet of Our Own



A tiny owl, that’s all it is, an owlet,
A tiny owl whose hoot’s a tiny howlet.
Let’s get an owlet at an owlet outlet!
We’ll pay in cash. Be sure to bring your wallet.
One mustn’t owe an outlet for an owlet!
We’ll call it Paulette: She’s our only owlet.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Grand Entrancement



The entrances and exits
are religious rites. Once
the kitten was invited in,
found food. Now, refused more food,
she begs to go out so that,
a moment later, by entering,
she can make food be there,

and if the magic fails her
once,  twice, ten times,
such is her faith, she tries again,
and at last
there is food.

It isn’t the need to go out
or to come in. One must go out
in order to come in, a magic act
that makes food appear.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

A SELECTION OF DEAN’S RECENT SHORT POEMS


Note: I continue to write a poem now and then. This is probably unconstitutional, since I consider my poems to be of value, and I think only the Government is supposed to put out pieces of paper imprinted with significant images that are to be considered valuable. But my friends do their best to keep  my printing activity a secret, so I’m safe. However, with the price of oil going so high, the fact that my poems are printed on highly inflammable paper may create a demand for them, since fuels enter in where poets fear to tread. I look forward to the day when my poems will be legal tinder.

Smoking Afterwards

The beast with two-back—O!

Carnivore Bad Breath

Before you kiss an ocelot,
Be sure to have him floss a lot.

A Lot of Ocelot

A tawny ghost, more gas than mass,
Seen winding through wind-rippled grass--
With lots of spots, the ocelot
Will seem to oscillate a lot.
An otter ought to, but will not,
For outer spots he has not got,
And if he spots an ocelot,
The otter freezes on the spot.
Nearing a road, the ocelot
Foresees a chicken in his pot
And waits, his breath both sour and hot
(For ocelots don’t floss a lot)
Where silly chickens cross a lot,
For chickens are a vacant lot,
Foredoomed to fill an ocelot.
He, too, is doomed one day to rot,
Poached for his pelt in glade and grot.
Nearly extinct, the oscelot –
How sad! – becomes a fossil lot.

Aghast

A young man with his head up his ass
Was quite horribly troubled with gas,
And began to balloon!
As he rose toward the moon,
He was heard to cry, “This, too, shall pass!”

Flushes

Indecent
In-can descents.

Poetry

Ink and essence,
incandescence.

Complete

Recumbent,
we, come-bent,
recombine.
We caress,
we chorus
our longing,
in long vowels,
co-sonant,
convolute.
We convulse,
convalesce,
weak, unbent,
vowel-less,
bowel-loose,
unlonging,
lapless,
co-lapsed,
elapsed,
placid,
placed,
interlaced.
Replete,
we sleep.

Icles and Acles

You extend tender tentacles
to tease me with ten tickles.
Your tentative test tickles
Tighten my teeming testicles,
extending  my tense tackle
toward  its holy tabernacle,
as with my own tenacious tentacles,
I grapple you close, intent
on tenuous miracle.

Liberated Love

They shack up, shedding
the shackles
of the shackless.

Rainy Night in Manhattan

He pushes past the others
and leaps into the only cab in sight,
raising the hackles
of the hackless.

Haikus From Last Winter

Snowfall –
the sides of the road
huddle nearer.

Snowfall –
bundled neighbors – what’s their name? –
wave through clouds of breath.

Snowfall –
such dazzle from a sky
so gray

Snow – the burden
of too much beauty cracks
our old pear tree.

Whiteness dull beneath
Pewter sky until the sun
shows its true colors.

Feet crack condensed wet,
but dry air rasps our throats.
Far sounds are clear.

Snow settles in curves.
Nothing remains pointed,
even headlights dulled.

Squeal of car tires
spinning in the silent
silent snow

Roar, squeal…silence…
roar, squeal…silence. SLAM…
crunch crunch crunch…silence.

White flakes – not ice,
not water. How is this done?
Suspended breath?

Snow drifts dazzling
in the sun. I walk on clouds.
Where’s my harp?

Snow, more snow,
our little houses warmed
by what we can burn.

Wood, coal, oil, gas –
sullen spies in snow country
sent by a distant sun.

Wood, coal, oil, laughter,
each house an island of warmth,
a buried seed.

Carefully stepping
where others have stepped before,
wading through show drifts.

after snowfall, blue sky
but on earth millions
of breath clouds.

Brrr!
We meet and kiss,
exchanging clouds.

Too cold to risk
sweat or tears.
Be steady like the cold.

Sticky snow,
long white leeches
cling to each branch.

It’s cold out.
Merciful snow comes down
to thicken our roofs.

True Clouds
Clouds far above, brilliant,
solid. When close around us,
mere mist, disappointing.
a truer closeness of tangible cloud
is the deep, settling swellings
of snow, turning the world to cloud.

Finally Clear Skies

The blizzard is over,
bright blue sky. We won’t get lost
on our way to the mailbox, but…
where is the mailbox?

A Lessoning

You rulers who secretly sneer,
“The people? What is ‘the people’?” –
see how tiny a thing is
one snowflake.

Resolve Into Adieu

“What’s a little snow to me?
I’m from Minnesota.”
No, my body’s from Minnesota.
I’m a bit of sunlight
frozen in my body,  rippling through it
like the twinkle in an icicle,
freeing myself from it as,
drip by drip, I melt it.

Neville Chamberlain Sums Up Munich

I came,
I saw,
I concurred.

If Only He’d Lain in his Chamber

That pathetic Prime Minister, Neville,
Hoped the Fuhrer was quite on the level,
So he caved in at Munich,
Diplomatic, suave eunuch…
“Peace,” thought Hitler,”can go to the Devil!”

Measure Me Assures

Of old our poems were neater.
Where have they gone, those masters?
Perhaps to greener pastures
They’ve gone to make their meter.

A La Recherche de Kitty Perdu

The narrow, penetrating whine
of our cat, just hungry, but she seems to cry
“ALL IS LOST! ALL IS LOST!” Oh, Kitty, PURR,
do!

…And the Weiner Is…

Flash: Horny adolescent male
wins Oscar for Animated Shorts!

Bye, Bay?

Large dead areas in the Chesapeake Bay…
Crappy dearth, Bay.

And Never Sleeps: Napless

Ancient statues of goddesses
lack genital hair. I suppose it suits
lunar Goddess, Diana/Artemis:
After all, the moon waxes.

Pun Gently

Too much wit, too little matter
is soporific. Razzle Dazzle breaks down
anagrammatically into real deal and
ZZZZ…

An Enigma

Ignorance, a form of the word “ignore.”
Stupidity is a failure or inability
to pay attention. Pay no attention
to the causes, and medicate the symptoms
(and  pay no attention to the results).
And since what we are thus failing to treat
is a deficit of attention, we become
more and  more ignorant.

Sun Come, Wan Go

In the Southern sun they tango,
Then slake thirst with fresh-squeezed mango.
Winter—soon she sees her man go,
then, far worse, her summer tan go.

It’s Bad Luck…

to slap a fly
about to land on a porcupine.

No man is an island…

or perhaps a lonely man
is a densely populated island.

Boredom

Al Gore
Galore.

Celebrity Roast…

selects a ham
for prime ribbing.

Haiku…NOT

Reception—
on the brie, a fly…
briefly.     [brie-fly]

Democracy

Sages say you are our own worst enemy.
Politicians say your government represents
you.

The Cat

surrounds us, pure
periphery,
purry,
furry.

The Sun’s Admiration,

even at this distance,
is too fierce.

We receive it
cooled and reflected
as eye-twinkle, dew-twinkle,
the flashes of a million puddles
in sunset-slanting rays
and the glitter of fresh snowflakes,
in their first infusion of sunshine.

Even at night the sun admires us,
hiding in the cool green eyes
of cats, adding more distance
than we choose to know.

Don’t “Honey” ME!

Killer bees—
do their faceted eyes glare?
Are they Hun-eyed?

Cee?

Why are the bees disappearing?
Because in this age where Self-Esteem
is everybody’s honey,
professors give only A’s.

Totally

I have ten toes,
like, Toe tally!

How Goth Is She?

A cadaver
Could have her.

Organic Punctuation

A colon is potential, promising possible excitement:
A penis is the culmination, an exclamation point!
After words it curls up, perhaps a question mark?
I don't know what a rectum is, but surely our farts
punctuate the early morning hours.

Time is a Serious Subject  (a palindrome)

Emit no pun upon time.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Why We're Here

We were designed by the wind, frustrated
with its inability to inflate a balloon.

We were invented by dogs because after aeons
of licking only each other, they yearned for love
without hairballs.

We evolved from birds, who wanted to be able
to talk with their hands without being carried away.

We were invented by cats to tend door knobs.

We were invented by stones who wanted to reproduce
themselves, but could not set one stone
upon another.

We were invented by the night, grown tired
of having nothing to hide.

We were invented by the flowers, sick and tired
of color-blind bees who only wanted them
for one thing.

We were thought up by the fish, trying to imagine
dreaming with their eyes closed.

We were invented by the snow, dreaming of hugging angels.

We were invented by the fire to reflect it in eyes and cheeks,
for every other creature, fearing it, could not admire it.

We were invented by the sand to make fine distinctions.

We were created by the sun when he discovered
that, alone, he could light up only one side
of the earth at a time.

We were created by the rain, which could not
spell its name in the sand.

The earth made us in hopes we would enable it
to see where it's going.

We were made by the ocean to package its
salty elixir and distribute it to high ground
beyond the reach of surf.

We were made by mountains grown tired of crushing
everything they tried to embrace.

We were made by the full moon because,
though it could reflect endlessly,
it could not smile.

We were made by the trees, because they couldn't
hear themselves fall.

We were made by the grass to graze with our eyes
and gobble up the excess green.

We were made by the cockroaches because their faith
forbids suicide.

by Dean Blehert

copyright (c) 2010 by Dean Blehert
Posted by Pam Blehert


Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Old

by Dean Blehert

"Don't get old like me." (Grimacing
to steady her shakey scrawl on
the check.) "Not much choice,"
I said. "Funny--I thought
I'd have a lot of choices,
but my mother and father are dead,
all my family, all my friends
are dead, and I'm..." (Hears
her own voice, looks up,
astonished, young) "...I'm still
here--I'm 89--that's OLD! Not
many people get to be 89.
Why me? I don't understand
why I'm still here! I keep thinking:
I won't be here for THIS,
I won't be here for THAT,
but look at me, I'm
still here! I don't understand
why I'm still here." Shrinking back
into herself, she says something
about leaving it up to God, but
that wasn't what she had to say.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Our Children

Almost five years we've been married,
but have no children. The oldest
of the children we haven't had
(a boy, I think) is nearly five,
a good kid, tough, bright, cute,
though already his tow-head darkens.
Whoever had him instead of us,
I'm sure he's loved and in good hands.
The other two (a girl and a boy,
I think) are also thriving. All feel
tucked in among the toys, easy chairs
and faces they have known forever.

Later, perhaps, each will wonder
if there is not a truer home
than they know, a presence calling
faintly in the hush of wind moving away
through tall grass on the hillside,
a sense of something just out of
reach...which may have nothing to do
with their being the children we never had

We, too, are doing very well:
My wife's smile never fails to charm me
and I always say the cutest things.

by Dean Blehert

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The Makers

We are the makers.
When there is nothing left to say,
we make something to say.
When there is no language left
to say it in, we make a language.
When none will listen,
we make them listen.
When there is no one left to listen,
we make listeners.

by Dean Blehert