Dr. Seuss on Breakups
One sheet, two sheet, three sheet, four.
Slam that paper to the floor.
Rip it, tear it, burn it good.
Light it up as though it’s wood.
As you hear the crackling flames,
As you feel the warm remains,
Eyes reflect the flickering embers,
Spleen and liver scarce remember…
What he did to break your heart,
How you swooned back at the start,
How you cried o’er these letters,
Before he ripped your heart to fetters.
Now kiss all the gifts he gave.
Rub your cheek and feel his shave.
Toss this bear into the fire.
Hear it roar like your desire.
You may feel crick in your neck,
Weighty eyes as though you’ve wept
Tickling soft palate above your tongue,
Ringing ears as you’ve been wrung.
All these wants, stuffed in your mind,
Salty-sweet of love unkind,
Prickling poke of lover’s yoke,
Brilliant blaze, gone up in smoke.
A Humorous Happening
“I did not knot the naughty Norwegian nurse, nay!” I say to the barrister as she lifts her haughty head higher, sliding her specs down her protruberant and bulbous nose. I wish to honk that nose and I know that she knows that I know she knows it!
“But sir,” the barrister bellows in a reedy, sinewy snarl, “You were locked in her chambers, the only one!”
I snort and hock a particularly phlegm-filled hunk of malevolent mucus into the bin.
“And I’ll have some decorum in my courtroom!”
“Awright,” I relent, congealing into the visage of an upstanding citizen. “I’ll take you there: see, the shipmate and I had spied a trifle of glinting gold in that there stowhole not two days prior to her nursehood’s ‘napping. An’ we, ‘aving ‘eard of ‘er reluctance to part with treasures, either internal or ex-, went a-sniffing our way ‘round the floorboards above, where the bilge’d been spilt and reeking and rotting salty sea water only a few days prior. So the mate, ‘e says to me, ‘why don’t ye stick yer wooden leg under that there board and heave to with yer hips and cascade it over, lettin’ us shimmy downward into Her Highness’s quarters and ransacking her all good ’n’ proper?’ Only that cankered, leprosy-ridden, flea-infested mate sneaks down ‘imself and grabs the gold and hoists ‘imself back up, only to push me down into the hole myeself, to be caught by yer most High and Honorable lawmen!”
Julian Wise 