All Hallows Eve

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The Great Pumpkin, that kingliest gourd,
Rises up! – becomes fully unmoored.
Quickly floats yard-to-yard
And attempts to retard
The predations of over-age horde.
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The Demonic Duo

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Mr. Brinton and my poor ex-wife
Got together - they’re stropping a knife!
Stinging sulphurous smell–
It’s a match made in Hell!
Not much left of her mis’rable life…
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Eyes and Ears

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At the opera, Mame started to fret
That she may have misplaced her lorgnette,
But the music she heard
Sounded really absurd!
Was that 8-track or maybe cassette?
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How This Ends

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The air– it shimmers, then grows thick
And darkens. Time drags by.
Black storm clouds gather on the marge
‘Tween earth and leaden sky.

With sizzling Crack! the air reverbs,
Yet still it’s hot and dry;
The tears of Nature fail to drop–
She’s no more tears to cry.

Old shovels stir dust into clouds
And, choking, you and I
With slow and steady patience dig
The hole in which we’ll lie.

Too bad but one will shovel o’er
The box to which we vie;
The other stays through empty days
And hopes to God to die.
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Slack Times

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Now THAT was a most hurtful crack…
…And the reason you called me a quack?
I’m not God, don’t you know;
I can’t make your thing grow –
Have your wife help you take up the thwack!
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Trimming It To The Core

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Her body was svelte, sleek and trim,
For herself (and to look good for him),
Lest her frame become dense
And he stray o’er the fence–
Such domestic noblesse that we limn!
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Phil's Catalina Sail - 2014

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Entry made in the Guest Book aboard "Dutch Courage," owned by van den Bosch
(one week prior to Catalina’s Buccaneer Days at Two Harbors)

Where to spend all our pillage and plunder?-
On an island that's almost split sunder.
Every day we find more
Of its harbors galore-
But to pick just one spot would be blunder.

Both the rails of Dutch Courage got washed
(And the crew of said boat mostly sloshed!)-
Not a reef would stay pinned
In the 20-knot wind-
Marv'lous week was fair spent van den Bosch'd.

Grand adventure lived day after day-
Dinghy fun, moonstone sands, dolphins play,
Fragrant sizzling stove,
Awesome reefs that we dove-
It was sad to slip moorings away.
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