Member Poem

These are poems about animals by Michael R. Burch.

Ballade of the Bicameral Camel
by Michael R. Burch

There once was a camel who loved to hump.
Please get your lewd minds out of their slump!
He loved to give RIDES on his large, lordly lump!

***

Don’t ever hug a lobster!
by Michael R. Burch

Don’t ever hug a lobster, if you meet one on the street!
If you hug a lobster to your breast, you’re apt to lose a teat!
If you hug a lobster lower down, it’ll snip away your privates!
If you hug a lobster higher up, it’ll leave your cheeks with wide vents!
So don’t ever hug a lobster, if you meet one on the street,
But run away and hope your frenzied feet are very fleet!

***

The Blobfish
by Michael R. Burch

You can call me a "blob"
with your oversized gob,
but what's your excuse,
great gargantuan Zeus
whose once-chiseled abs
are now marbleized flab?

But what really alarms me
(how I wish you'd abstain)
is when you start using
that oversized "brain."
Consider the planet! Refrain!

***

Springtime Prayer
by Michael R. Burch

They’ll have to grow like crazy,
the springtime baby geese,
if they’re to fly to balmier climes
when autumn dismembers the leaves ...

And so I toss them loaves of bread,
then whisper an urgent prayer:
“Watch over these, my Angels,
if there’s anyone kind, up there.”

***

A much-needed screed against licentious insects
by Michael R. Burch

after and apologies to Robert Schechter

Army ants? ARMY ants?
Yet so undisciplined to not wear pants?
How incredibly rude
to wage war in the nude!
We moralists call them SMARMY ants!

***

The Octopi Jars
by Michael R. Burch

Long-vacant eyes
now lodged in clear glass,
a-swim with pale arms
as delicate as angels’ . . .

you are beyond all hope
of salvage now . . .
and yet I would pause,
no,  fear!,
to once touch
your arcane beaks . . .

I, more alien than you
to this imprismed world,
notice, most of all,
the scratches on the inside surfaces
of your hermetic cells  . . .

and I remember documentaries of albino Houdinis
slipping like wraiths over walls of shipboard aquariums,
slipping down decks’ brine-lubricated planks,
spilling jubilantly into the dark sea,
parachuting down down down through clouds of pallid ammonia . . .

and I now know this: you were unlike me ...
your imprisonment was never voluntary.

Keywords/Tags: poems about animals, animal, animals, nature, lobster, geese, ants, insects, octopus, octopi, angels