"New Year's Say"

NEW YEAR'S SAY
(spoofing Robert Lowell's "New Year's Day")


Again in a vat of gin, the year is born
In lace and turpentine, and it will never do
To squat behind the wood-stove in leather chaps
To hear the French maid blowing my pulsing horn
When my thin conduit of spermicidal ice flows through.
Who can understand one who, from this, gets the clap?
One with another, each to all fails the test
Of abstaining while staring at the double-barrelled chest.

To steal Flintstone vitamins from the victims, ha!
The kitten heaved a furball -- face of Henry Kissinger --
Then died. We put her remains in a cigar box
And prayed all night, then danced the cha-cha-cha
Until the snake-coiled sea-winds said, "I'm missing her--
The one who keeps her box shut tight in double locks".
Wait for St. Peter, and give him a cauliflower ear
So's he can howl while getting me a wheat-based beer.

Swell! The swells thrum like vertigo'd bric-a-brac
Where Joseph plucks his dentures from their parapets
And hears the fateful Champs d'Elysses prick
(A circumcision). O take me off the rack!
And wear me while Jesus howls. We met
In a five-and-dime while lawyers wept. Sick,
They upchucked debentures and last year's bonds
While, sly and subtle, I peeked from mushrooming fronds.