Arachnid Blues
I.
Fee, fie, fo, fum, I got bit by a scorpion not once, but twice. It wasn’t nice, but I didn’t die, though I did cry “Corpsman!” loudly enough to convey to every Viet Cong and NVA from the DMZ to Hanoi that I was a boy in pain.
II.
Years later, a scorpion walks into a bar and orders a beer. The bartender, who happened to be an ex-Marine who had once been bitten by a scorpion —twice— grabbed an entrenching tool from under the bar and smashed the little bastard.
Billboards, Trees, Poems, Asses & a Mystery
My pal Don recently sent me this little ditty: I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I shall not see a tree at all.
To which I replied: I think that I shall never see a poem as stupid as Kilmer’s “Trees.” With five children and a wife, he volunteered for Great War strife and, killed in action, came home even dumber than his poem. Stupid poems by fools like him can make a billboard truly seem inspired by God. This has class: “Jesus said, Bring me that ass.”*
Exodus 20:17: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”
When Jesus said, “Bring me that ass,” whose ass was he referring to?
*This is an actual church billboard posting of the New Olivet Baptist Church prefaced with “Sunday’s Message.”
W.D. Ehrhart’s newest collection of poetry, Smart Fish Don’t Bite, is forthcoming shortly from Moonstone Arts, and may even be out by the time you’re reading this.