SPEECH COACH

There was a certain lisping cockroach

Who  got himself a speech coach.

     His diphthongs

     Were always wrong

But his vowels were above reproach.

 

DUDE

There was a young organ student name Jude

Whose major professor called him “dude.”

     As pop culture proper;

     For classicists a cropper,

For Jude admired only Dietrich Buxtehude

 

THE APT FREUD APP LIMERICK

There once was a bearded shrink named Sigmund Freud

Who, having reduced everything to hormones malemployed

Whether psychosis or cirrhosis,

Halitosis or seborrheic keratosis,

Reduced himself to just an app on a smartphone Android.

 

LIMERICK TO A TRANYGENDERITA

There once was a tranyGen from Albaquirka

Who remained withdrawn within a big black burqa.

Wherein he, it, she,

Or whatever it be

Drove all pollsters, preachers, potential partners berserka.

 

HIDE AND SEEK

Shall we, you and me, play hide and seek?

While I take a clearly leering peek

At your physique,

You play meek

And try to hide your genuine pique.

 

There was once a pirate piranha

Who was supposed to nibble Anna's fanna.

      He just nuzzled her derriere

      Here and there.

Sorry, old boy; close but no banana.

 

Once there was a person who played the kazoo

And dreamed of awards and caboodles of kudos.

      But, boohoo,

      The poor yahoo!

As welcome and wanted his kazoo as kudzu.

 

An anomalously long, attenuated, gangling youth,

Was known as Moses ("the Dribbler") Muth.

      Basketball

      Is for the tall

But he was born out of bounds, so tall was Muth!

 

As is not uncommon among old geezers

He became obese, obese-er and obese-er,

      By her attributed

      To not being food inhibited

(As per wifey's notes affixed to oven and freezer.)

 

LEVI'S NEVI

There was a young spy named Levi

Whose dermis was peppered with nevi.

     Spots

     And dots

From sigh to thigh to high five to Sinai.

 

 

BUDGETING

Your budget works OK with curds and whey.

But if you want some vintage Chardonnay,

Your question ought to be, “How much are they?”

 

If you’re contemplating cabernet sauvignon,

You’re in for daunting gallivanting hither and yon,

Vintage Chateau Saskatchewan.

 

 

GRADUATION POETRY

A long time ago, when I was Program Director of a Pathology Residency in Dayton Ohio, there was a large influx of FMGs (foreign medical graduates), mostly from the Middle East.  In those happy days before 9/11, Poems were created, odes, not IEDs or Surges.  These odes to two of our graduating FMGs were presented at the residency graduation of 1988.  Period pieces from a forgotten era, forgotten allusions.  Who's Vanna White?

 

FOR MAHER

Maher, As you leave our basement nest

For research fellowship out farther west,

We your teachers, Bylsma, Kime and Meng,

Linda, Paul and Pat, our heads with sorrow hung,

Release you now from our protection

And send you off to be, alas, a Texan

 

Ah yes!  Now as much American as pizza Hut's soft drinks with fizz,

Maher hails from the land of pharaoh, pyramid and Sue-iz

 

From the land of the long, long shaft called an obelisk,

To where the IRS while shafting coos politely tisk-tisk.

 

From the land where Horus was the hope

To land of presidential horoscope.

From the land where Joseph was an honorable chief of staff,

To where Donald Regan gets the last and marketable laugh.

 

From the land of the unending Nile

To the land of the endless palimony trial.

 

From where the Sphinx is the momumental sight

To the land of Madonna and Vanna White.

 

From the land of hieroglyphics, papyrus and lotsa lotus

To the land of journalistic generally liberal hocus-pocus

 

From the land of mummy and King Tut

To the land of yummy-yummy and the tummy tuck.

 

From the land of Nefertiti

To the World of a mouse named Minnie.

 

From where the Rameses was a pharaoh and not a condom,

To the land of hot dogs with mustard on'dem.

 

From the land of canopic jars to ours with pulltop cans

Engines with cams, Uncle Sams.

From Red Sea to  Sea to Shining Sea.

All this, the odyssey of our heroic FMG.

 

O, MidEast is MidEast, MidWest is MidWest, the poet cried,

Adding, ne'r the twain shall meet,

Sorry, Rudyard, your words, well, slightly modified,

Along with manicotti also modified you'll have to eat.

So what shall we say here?

We say cheers for Maher,

Whom we now declare is honed to professional perfection,

And three cheers, hear-hear-hear, for the Ohio-Cairo Connection.

 

BASHAR

With a head overgrown with black curly hair he came to ask us

To make him wise in Pathology, this fine young man from Damascus

           All hair and ears,

       He stayed five years,

And now he knows it all and is as bald as an asterisk.

 

OFFENDED

 

Like every modern egg Humpty Dumpty was offended,

Or so he from atop his wall contended

Alas alack, he tumbled unsuspended, fractured, upended,

Too late his offendedness he then rescinded.

 

IPHONE ON THE RANGE

 

IPhone iPhone on the range,

Where never is heard

An intelligent word.