Poetic License
(As per Lewis Carroll)
BP was drilling in the Gulf
Drilling with all its might:
It did its very worst to make
Its profits big and bright —
This was not odd, because they thought
It was their corporate right.
The Greens were pouting sulkily
Because they thought BP
Had got no business to be there
In such a fragile sea —
“It’s dangerous,” they said,
To wildlife, you and me.”
The Gulf was blue as blue could be
Its beaches white as white,
And suddenly there rose black clouds
To turn the day to night —
Weighed down by toxic spill
There were no birds in flight.
The Walrus on the Gulf beach
Had no one to hold his hand.
He wept like anything to see
Tar balls on the sand.
“If this were only cleared away,”
He said, “It would be grand.”
“If a million maids with a million mops
Swept them for half a year
Do you suppose” the Walrus asked,
“That they could get them clear?”
“I doubt it,” said BP’s Hayward,
“What are you doing here?”
“This time I’ve come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things,
Of skimmers, shrimp and pelicans
With crude oil on their wings,
And with the Gulf still boiling hot,
Each day disaster brings.”
“You swore I’d be protected
From environmental fears,
Though I haven’t fished these waters
For at least three million years.
You owe me at least some oysters
And non-alcoholic beers.”
“Your BP spill’s the worst disaster
Ever known to God or Man,
And worse, you have included me
In your false protection plan,
Without a word or warning
Before the spill began.”
“I’ll be swimming back to Alaska
Where thank God, it’s ten below,
Hauling out with my old harem
On a brand new icy floe,
The only walrus who’s ever been
To the Gulf of Mexico.”
Poetic License
They thought the name would do it.
“Let’s call him Joseph, not José,
the first Americano in the family,
he will speak, read and write in English,
he will be one of them.”
So after my home delivery,
as my father stood at my mother’s bedside
cradling me in his arms,
they both said “Joseph” at once
when the doctor asked for the newborn’s name.
But never once in their entire lives
did they ever come close to calling me
by the name they thought would do it.
I was still “José” to them or “Joselito,”
“Pepe” or “Pepito,”
and even as the years passed
and their English improved,
and cousins with first names
like “Nelson” and “Wilson” and “Shirley”
began to appear in the family —
they still could not even manage one “Joe”.
However, in his ninety-fifth year of life
and sixty-fourth in this country,
as my father lay in Metropolitan Hospital,
having been found semi-delirious
and dehydrated on the floor
of his tiny apartment in Corsi Houses,
I stood at his bedside with an intern
who in trying to gather patient family data
asked me my first name:
“Joseph,” whispered my father proudly.
Poetic License
I have to yawn, Dear,
You’ve told me that story
At least a hundred times before,
And it doesn’t get better
Each time I hear it.
From your lips to my ears
Is a road much traveled,
With potholes that get worse
Each time you brag about
How you avoided
Or ran over them.
Tell me instead
A tale or two
You’ve not dared tell me before,
And maybe I’ll reward you
With a few of my own.