The Story of Mary Molly the Guacamole, And Other Nonsense Poems

"I loved a guacamole named Mary Molly,  

She went on adventures all over the city.  

She was clever as Kissinger & cute as a kitty,  

And as guacamoles go, she was tasty as gee golly."

Proudly announcing the self-publishing of our illustrated poetry book The Story of Mary Molly the Guacamole, And Other Nonsense Poems on the Amazon marketplace. You can read it on any Kindle app, and members of Amazon Prime can check it out for free from the Kindle Lending Library.

“The Story of Mary Molly the Guacamole And Other Nonsense Poems” is a beautiful illustrated book of strange, rhyming nonsense verse in the vein of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. The stories herein are sure to delight and appall readers of all ages. Romance! Adventure! Cross-Species Love Affairs! This collection contains “The Story of Mary Molly the Guacamole,” “The Story of Omega’s Rampage,” “The Story of the Long Distance Relationship,” “The Story of Barbara Ann and Barbara Allen,” “The Story of the Lizard Wizard of North Northumberland,” and “The Story of Meghan & the Mini Megatherium.” With more than thirty original full-color illustrations by Grainne Proinseas and Maymo Mary.

Department of Five Word Poems: "My five word poems total hundreds" -Hanshan, ancient Chinese poet

Our five word poems blog fivewordpoems.tumblr.com is galumphing forth at the speed of nonsense. I just happened upon this beautiful ancient Chinese poem whilst googlying the subject, by Tang dynasty poet Hanshan:

My five word poems total hundreds
Seven word seventy-nine
Three word twenty-one
Altogether maybe 600 poems
All written on ancient rocks
Boasting, my brushwork is strong
Who understands my poems
Is the mother of Buddha.

I found it on the poet's wikipedia page, "translated by Wandering Poet." The name "Hanshan" means "cold mountain," so I assume it should have a soundtrack by T-Bone Burnett. Both F. Keith Wahle & I have written hundreds each of five word poems, so we have fulfilled the first line of Hanshan, but now there is a new challenge to write 79 seven-word poems and 21 three-word poems. Our Five Word Poems Tumblr is now accepting submissions.

Today I came home to Cold Mountain
To be a hermit and forget the affairs of the world.
-Hanshan 

Mmmbop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du bop, ba duba dop
Ba du
Yeah
-Hanson

Two Tumblr Blogs: The Manna Tease & Five Word Poems

Hello. You may have noticed that itwaslost.org is updated much less frequently than in the golden era. We're not dead, and we will continue to use this ole blogger bloggity blog to log-roll and blog-roll, and occasionally post some new writing, art, or music.

However, our energies in the blogosphere are more concentrated right now at certain other projects: there's two tumblr blogs you should follow if you are a tumblererer. The first centers on music projects related to our folk duo The Manna Tease. (We've also been posting Spotify mixtapes and other delicacies in addition to our music videos, et cetera.) The address is themannatease.tumblr.com.

The second brand new tumblr blog is exclusively devoted to FIVE WORD POEMS. We published some five word poems here two years ago, inspired by the Five Word Poems of F. Keith Wahle. The new tumblr blog will post the entire series of Wahle's and mine own daily for the next year, and hopefully more to come. There is also a way to SUBMIT your own directly to the blog. Please do, if you are an aspiring five word poet. Add these new blogs to your feeds!

Malaysians in Love: A Cave Scene; Or, “Is that a good thing?”

Liam Golden, from If You See Something, Say Something

Malaysians in Love: A Cave Scene; Or, “Is that a good thing?” 

She sucked on my stalagmite. 

I sucked on her stalactite.

A Poem in Poetry Magazine & Elsewhere, 2012

A Poem in Poetry Magazine & Elsewhere, 2012
“κολεός” -Dante

The sun on the waves, in my
garden. The autumn and the spring
sometimes summer. Winter,
nature contains birds and flowers.

My grandmother’s photograph, lusterless
between pages in an old
eBook in my attic, sienna, reminds me
of the
future. I use a sesquipedalian, look it up.
Vagina.

I grow old, I grow old,
I should shop for shorter trousers.
It’s time to rhyme. The line breaks

in the mid-
dle. So much white space. Vagina.

And I did not.

Girlfriend Doggerel: II. Dolly the Doll

Dolly the Doll

My girlfriend Dolly was a doll,
I dated her on & off for a decade.
She wasn’t petite, but she was small,
She was in season in the late fall
When color from the aspens starts to fade.

She wouldn’t blow mine, but I could sure blow hers.
She was as temperamental as the temperature.
She was especially slippery in the showers:
I could lather her up for hours,
And she would wash away with soapy water.

My girlfriend Dolly was chaste as a box of crayons,
And she was as queenly as a royal mustard.
As arm candy, I would take her to St Johns,
Where the vicar told me she looked like Beyoncé.
Afterward, she let me lick her all over covered in custard.

She wouldn’t show me on a map where she was born,
So I never told her my real first name.
We had a relationship of trust & scorn,
She came as early as songbirds in the morn,
And she could flee as fleetingly as celebrity’s fame.

My girlfriend Dolly was a duck in the pond:
She could be monogamous but was also a bit wet on the bottom.
The roots of her hair were sometimes blond,
But her split-ends stretched to the great beyond.
She was all-in-one a John, a whore & a madam.

She wouldn’t blow me, but I could blow her up.
She was as temperamental as chocolate’s temper.
Like an overproduced musical, she flopped,
And last month when I poked her, she popped,
And they don’t make them anymore like her.

Art by Olaf Mary from www.liamgolden.com

Girlfriend Doggerel: I. Fontelyn Brotemy

Fontelyn Brotemy

A girl called Fontelyn Brotemy was my lover in 2010,

She had legs that went all the way down to the floor,

She was easy to please, but she was also easy to bore,

And she knew me as well as she had known plenty men.

I would rather have Fontelyn Brotemy than none at all.

I once asked her if she dreamt in color when she dozed,

And she told me she couldn’t see anything with her eyes closed,

And then she tied me down & did naughty things with a snake's rattle.

I took Fontelyn Brotemy to Ohio to meet my parents.

They asked her why she had dropped out of nursing school,

And she told them she believed in the golden rule,

And since no one had ever nursed her, she couldn't be bothered to care for patients.

I would rather have Fontelyn Brotemy than an open flesh-wound.

She brushed her teeth five times a day to fight off plaque,

And she had curves like an ATV race track.

She liked to role-play as Ahab & Moby Dick, & be repeatedly harpooned.

I took Fontelyn Brotemy to Rome to meet the Pope.

He asked her if she always met the leaders of world religions wearing a bikini,

And she told the Pope, I wanted you to fully see me.

She left Rome with a decent tan & a purse full of the hotel’s complementary soap.

I would rather have Fontelyn Brotemy than a bottle of Fernet.

When she left me for a Republican Congressman from Utah,

I asked her if she had used me for my oom-pah-pah,

And she told me keep my tuba in tune: I hadn’t heard the last of her yet.

Art by Olaf Mary from www.liamgolden.com

Soon to be Erin-bound, I offer you this exciting Irish poem by J.M Synge, illustrated by yours truly.

Danny

Langston Hughes' "A Dream Deferred" Parody: "A Poop Deterred"

Sacred Mother-in-Law

Here's a new short narrative poem, part of my Sacred Songs series. I put it in a scribd pdf because blogger won't let me do indents & hanging indents. The illustrations are by Olaf Mary.
Sacred Mother-in-Law - S. Sandrigon

Sacred Crèche

Happy Christmas, world! While I cook chinese food with some jewish friends, I'll offer you a new "sacred song" poem:

Sacred Crèche

A half dozen young geese clumped behind their mother,
Out in the duck pond behind the watering trough.
It’s cold, but they haven’t flown North:
Certain meteorological events have kept them from flying off,
So they cuddle in the dark, bodies close to each other.

Maureen Dowd announces it in the New York Times:
Her brother Kevin owns about seventeen Christmas crèches,
Hundreds less than some collectors’ collections, & for what it’s worth,
A child is born, the wings of a swallow, the little wishing fishes,
And all the other animals for which the rappers know no rhymes.

There’s two rats in my nursery,
So much incense, & other useless gifts for a baby,
Several unexpected human guests, uninvited, and others missing:
My midwife is imprisoned at the airport in St. Louis,
And the bridegroom & his beloved are in Vegas for their millennial anniversary.

The geese stretch their pinions to the four winds,
Take to the night, & fly into the east star.
Their take-off ripple in the duck pond freezes like an old man reminiscing.
Take to the night in Phaethon’s stolen car:
Just six friends on a sacred joyride, six friends, a means & no ends.

Maureen Dowd calls me on a two-way radio.
We rent out billboard space in Times Square
To advertise the the dawn with the world’s largest ultrasound.
Meanwhile, in a cave owned by an exiled billionaire,
In relative anonymity, a booby bird makes a nest out of guano.

There’s two rats in my nursery,
Joined by the widowed mother goose,
While bankers watch their stocks, all seated on the ground.
Since antiquity, the rats have had nothing to lose.
Their story is a universal story, a cursory, unmiraculous story.

The Proud Beggar

ever wonder what the hell I am thinking about? ever wonder what the hell James Joyce was thinking about? ever wonder what Helene Cixous was thinking about James Joyce? ever wonder what it means to be human? ever wonder of you're the only person in the universe who thinks the whole getting married and having kids thing is a little suspect? ever wonder what word pisses me off more than any other word?......NOW IS YOUR TIME TO FIND OUT.

(tip: I think this one reads best fullscreen in "book" viewing mode)




The Proud Beggar

Three Years Ago: The Seven Deaths of Mrs Hallam's Seven Sons

This ongoing series celebrating this blog's longevity, THREE YEARS AGO, reposting posts from exactly THREE YEARS AGO, continues now with a nonsense poem - The Seven Deaths of Mrs Hallam's Seven Sons:

______________________________________________________________

My dog rolled over on his other ear when an infant yell shook up the night,
And ambulance sirens, a roller coaster,
Or was it the Cosa Noster?
Michael was scheming vengeance gainst the professor who rusticated him for plagiarism.
The men in the hummer understood
That usually it was a pretty safe neighborhood.
What the devils thought was God defenestrating a bastard baby was just a meteorite.
Luckily, Mr Hallam was able to return to work six weeks after his New Age Aneurysm.

The girl in brown who walked into the coffee shop on Thursday Morning had the eyes of an octogenarian.
In memoriam, it was her royal belief
That nature & nonsense could console grief.
She sat way over in the fifth corner & wrote hurriedly a novel about shiteater bunnies & testicles.
Robert's rhymed dissertation was tit-for-tat,
So why do the gay young men have to dress like that?
A father of such potency should have, quintessentially, been a Mormon, not a hippy, you know,
For every December there had to be screaming arguments about iconography & revolution & tinsel icicles.

Governor Schwarzenegger was sitting across the aisle at the afternoon baseball game;
Henry had brought his antique Daguerreotype,
But overexposed the governor amid the hype,
And a question materialized from the tainted folds about the longevity of ancient mammals.
When the tumor squeezed the trigger,
Where in hell was this sad figure?
Ah, Mrs Hallam, your late nights in the confessional have become the vicar's nostalgic shame:
Henry's Roman nose was among his final thoughts when he cast off their earthly shackles.

In the basement bathroom, she blew him like desert dust.
Joseph's immortal ill will be
Never finishing his Third "Lost" Symphony.
He was reanimated like Erasmus Darwin's electric rocks on the steps of city hall.
And the newt's tail in her cauldron
She might never feed to her great-grandchildren.
The judge was a welder of finite proportions, preserved as a marble bust,
But I cannot be expected to remember the details of an artistic perjury trial that pitiful.

I hear George hearing a megaphone announcing Mr Hallam missing in the circle of Willis.
I never meant to be mean,
But I ended that relationship in the Oligocene
When six ton ground sloths swatted down magnolia trees like horseflies.
A naked newborn problem
Is no reason for a pogrom!
His youngest sister Phyllis had diatribed seven reasons not to kill us.
You see, George has waited his whole life to find the woman with the largest sagging breasts to demonize.

There were no towels left in the closet in Autumn 2006 when Mrs Hallam finished taking her last shower,
That moment the twelve-part crowing of Chanticleer
Marked the beginning of the getting filthier.
Is it unprofitable to put her in your bonds & use her remaining labor?
James has eaten elephant slugs & slumber slugs
And wallaroo slugs & cucumber slugs.
And the fallen leaves know more about higher powers than any higher power.
Chastise me, heretics! for the watchers grasp the invisible agony of the Stellar's Jay roar.

It was James who mistook his brother Daniel for a tasty underground network of mycelium,
A brigade of saviors will balloon us
Out of a lifetime of boredom in Khan Yunis.
Overpopulation & underpopulation are twin issues to be discussed at next year's global summit.
Daniel has become allergic
To the mosquitoes bred in the oil slick.
His antepenultimate act of indecency was attacking his mother with an Ego Paintball Gun loaded with Berkelium.
So they chose art & science over procreation, they all sold off the family stock before it was going to plummet.

______________________________________________________________

That poem is included in my 2009 illuminated nonsense poetry collection, Prophecy & Doggerel, for sale for $2.15 at scribd:
S. Sandrigon - Prophecy and Doggerel 2009

the benevolent otherhood vol. 1, summer 2010 - Read it online here!

The Benevolent Otherhood is a secret writing society in Oakland and Berkeley, California. Founded in 1899, its current members include Alisa Dodge, Cathlin Goulding, Corinna Lefkowitz, Pepper Luboff, and S. Sandrigon.

Cover art is by Mario Zamarripa. Other illuminations by Olaf Mary, Chris Rae, & Minnie Molly Mary.

We had our zine release party Monday night at Mama Buzz in Oakland, to a crowd hungry for new poetry. We also had musical guests: Stas Feldman, members of the Avatar ensemble, & Friends Around the Campfire. A limited 50 physical copies were made, so I'm proud to present a free digital version:

the benevolent otherhood - vol. 1, summer 2010

#Shakespalin folio

While I was warning not to be too hard on Palin for comparing herself to Shakespeare, I didn't realize that twitter was exploring a hatchtag called #Shakespalin, here are some highlights:

But soft, what light from yonder window breaks? It is the East, and I can see Russia from my front porch.
-@freehawk

To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous liberals, or to quit halfterm, and by opposing, rake in speaking fees
-@normative

Henry VI, part you know, well, all of them.
-@acoyne

I came, I saw, I refudiated.
-@homescribe

Neither a thinker nor a reader be / for thought oft loses both itself and friend / and reading dulls the edge of Fox TV
-@djsamk

"How's all that bein' and not bein' workin' out for ya?"
-@jon_ames

All the perfume in Arabia shall not sweeten this ink-stained, crib-noted hand.
-@spskenski

All the world's a stage, and I can see all of it from my house.
-@paulandstorm

Friends, Real Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to play "gotcha" journalism
-@paulandstorm

More on Sarah Palin poetry here. My essay on Palin & the English language here.

Scribd Illumination: Consideration Song

And now (after several unreadable copies with bad fonts) I present an illuminated digital book for the nonsense poem Consideration Song. The photographs were taken by Miss Minnie Molly Mary at the Belgum Sanitarium in the hills above Richmond, California, and the cover photo was photoshopped by my brother.

Consideration Song

With these scribd books, I recommend F11 to fullscreen your browser, and then fullscreening the scribd document (there's a button). The original text of the poem was published here. My epic 163-pg 2009 illuminated poetry book Prophecy & Doggerel has been up for sale for $2.15 at scribd, after being on the market for twelve months, you can still be the first person to ever buy it!

Ballad of the Three Old Black Men with White Asses

Three old black men were sitting in the corner pub

Watching racquetball on a huge television. I turned to my wife and questioned her,

"When did old black men start watching that game? not to mention their

"Hefeweisens & their strange manner

"Of singing along to 'Tiny Dancer?'"

She told me not to be racist, & all blood is ancient blood.

Your peccadilloes are showing--, as you ride into the sunset

On your albino donkeys. I'll forget your peccadilloes

If you'll forgive me what I've done to the rhythms in the easier Jazzes.

There's time for redheads to experience my prurience,

And time to fast & fence in your densest penance.

You have sinned against Warren Buffet's family, in ways you can't even know yet.

Three old black men were disembarking a U.F.O. wearing white hot pants,

I watched them from my home on a huge television, & turned to my wife & asked her,

If their menthol cigarettes make the shuttle go faster?

She told me there's no place for racists

In an age of face-lifts & space-ships,

And she reminded me that all grafted plants are fancy transplants.

Your peccadilloes are showing--, as you fly towards Uranus

Faster than light-speed on your albino space-donkeys. I'll forget your pecadilloes,

If you'll forgive the time I painted pink your daughter's pussy willows.

This planet is feeling a general malaise,

And in these times we turn to outerspace

To ignite our spirits--, you struggle, but you also have sinned in tiny ways most heinous.

Three old black men were hanging out in the gardens of Babylon--,

I am going home today in the narrow gospel way. Like an alternate life,

As they lay their harps down & lament upon demand, I comment to my wife,

"If their song would be so beautiful,

"If their lot were not so pitiful?"

She told me not to be racist, & all spawn is ancient spawn.

Your peccadilloes are showing--, & so are your designer boxers.

Let my tongue stick to roof of my mouth when I eat peanut butter sandwiches,

And I'll forget your pecadilloes if you let me scratch my last lost racist itches.

Gird up your loins & pull up your pants,

All grafted plants are fancy transplants.

You might as well disappear into the setting sun on your albino donkeys: we're at the mercies of God's reimbursers.

New Odyssey (Young woman, Go West)

New Odyssey (Young Woman, Go West)

Ballad of Joe "The Rat" (or, "Fart of Darkness") Singer, and setting the stage for rampage.

What a panic's in Joe the Rat's breast: He's first at being worst,
The little coward, cute in spite of his acute cussedness,
His iron smile's a magnet for fists,
His FBI file's filed in the slits in his wrists,
He's lost his sandals--, it's like he's lost in Jesus' hearse--,
But with a cup of splenda-sweetened coffee, he feels quite reimbursed.

I met Joe the Rat at the Princeton Graduation Parade,
Dressed in a Paisley orange-and-black sports jacket,
His silhouette was like Mohammad,
His brunette girlfriend drinking anisette
In the Jersey sunshine. I asked him if he was afraid
Of the Pine Barrens, and he asked me if I was getting paid.

In Late May before the beaches are cleaned up--,
(I'm a robot on a planet of toe mold and plastic bottles) --,
A plastic detector can detect synthetic turtles.
She leaves her egg on Neptune, and waddles
Into the Atlantic Ocean: And Joe the Rat, too crooked to be corrupt,
Like a Panjandrum of the filth, makes an omelet out of her abandoned pup.

I met Joe the Rat at a nasty bar literally underneath the turn-pipe.
Splendor! Splenetic and waspish, there wasn't one free bar stool,
So I sat on the floor in a pool of someone's drool,
He splenda-sweetened voice was measured but cruel,
When he asked me if I would like his seat, his squinty glance like a sniper's snipe,
And in wafted odors from the Natural Flavoring factories which smelled exactly like pickled honeycomb tripe.

What a panic's in Joe the Rat's breast: now the scandal's broken, too,
The little coward blames the gossip industry
For shopping for more than it can stir-fry,
And petty fogs more ostentatious than actually costly.
Now the scandal's broken--, he's lost his bus token, too--,
It's like he's lost beneath Jesus' noose, among the choken few.

I met Joe the Rat nude in an antique store,
And asked him if the conspiracy goes all the way to the top, and fast:
What do you want? his brunette girlfriend asked,
And told me that the first shall be the last:
Every valley shall be exalted, but wait, there's more,
And then she grabbed onto Joe's tail and they scurried into a hole in the floor.

Once again, the Saga of Jenny

In honor of Earth Day, Hitler & Mohammad's birthdays, L. Ron Howard Exhibition Day, & Four-Twenty, here's the scribd book of my two-part poem Saga of Jenny:

(I recommend F11 for fullscreen and then fullscreen again on the scibd book)

Saga of Jenny - S. Sandrigon