Click on the Play Button below to hear a reading of this poem:
The Man with Catarrh
The man with catarrh
Who strums a guitar
Sneezes, and evens
The score with Stevens.
Abiding in stone—a
Girl—one of your Mona
Lisas, that old floozy
Who embraced Brancusi.
A chap with no salary
Now framed in the gallery
Wheezes: gutturals basso
Profundo chez Picasso.
The blind mole . . . —featly quilled ere a
Player fluffed that line of Peri-
Cles’s—undermines the fresco
Engineered by Ionesco.
Hearken, yes—but don’t get mellow. De-
Mur when the too tuneful melody
Teases—unless as sagely batty
As . . . nightingales of Erik Satie.