After a Minor Oratory

Keep the glossy on your voice, little man.
Hark! Your patrons to the East,
    fancy-pantsing on cloudbanks over the Lake.
Hooray for the Alphabet Song!
    Your version booming around a steely-sheik
    café like a ship's hull.
For the moment you're dry, all spindly & awkward
    & juvenile in your expression-
less preening. Say it plain, silly boy.
Plain as pancakes, or flat as flapjacks (saying
    the latter being more pleasing in the mouth).
Like flowers in your mouth, grown somewhere else
    but their scent not suffering that fact.
Come over rover. There's room 'round the campfire,
    beneath luxurious clouds, at that elegant
far-off powwow There, no one sleeps under powerlines.

Copyright © 2007 Ryan Collins All rights reserved
from Cranky
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission