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In Memory of Leslie Nielsen, or Awdl Gywydd!

Beauty’s red on cheek and chest,
But with pedestrian blood
In your keen, green delivery,
You sling a silvery mud.

In the wilting twilight, pine
Siskins divine to flummox
The splendidly spindly hour.
Each couloir loves a lummox

When he’s shot with a Dutch tilt.
You made time’s guilt wear hair gel.
(For a tidy sum, heaven
Beat up Beethoven as well.)

When the gatekeepers are prim
And too-too primitive, you
Act a schlemiel. To placate
All the playacting we do,

You point out that people look
Like what they forsook. That ‘Art’s
For man what air’s for dolphins’
You draw elfin private parts

On. Like Botox for the soul
When time’s wheel won’t heal: the films
You made with ZAZ. No buffoon
From Saskatoon could a Wilms’

Tumor make think twice. Recline
On your heart’s red line. More times
Than I care to admit, death
Held its last breath and my rhymes

Hostage. The weight and burden
Of a curtain call’s too much
For the dead and not enough
For the laugh that’s out of reach…

You tell my shadow’s key grip,
‘Let ‘er rip!’

Address to a Salad Dressing

After Robert Burns

Is every ablactation black?
From a momentous woman’s rack
Of spices, buttermilk took back
Its olive branch
To make a separate peace with flak
And call it ‘Ranch.’

From Hidden Valley, blithely flows
What Betty Crocker fed her beaus
When misery on tippy toes
Ate goodness out
Of house and home. From Caesar’s nose,
Let progress sprout!

I let you drown each vinaigrette
In stubborn and robust regret.
Your creamy crown and garlic threat
Invite my chip
To dance, and when you start to sweat,
It’s me you’ll dip!

Like cruelty sans cutlery,
You wound me by how savory
You are. At Cobb’s fecundity,
We laugh. You touch up
The days when dawn’s senility
Has spoiled my ketchup.

Your heart’s my sticky stomping ground
(A symptom loved by hearts profound).
Of nineties niceties, you sound
The most like white.
If hunger’s Thousand Island bound,
That’s not my bite.

The blue cheese looks browbeaten by
Your radiance. When tacos cry,
Your ectoplasmic psalm is why.
‘Good riddance, frown,’
I say, as you give each French fry
A dressing-down.

The honey mustard never blondes
My blade. My commissary fronds
Wear evening’s youth, which corresponds
With you. The forks
That ugly golden dream absconds
Upon are dorks’.

Balsamic hates the government,
Its alabaster covenant
With galaxies of excrement
And stuff. But you’re
As sober as a trout in Lent,
And so much more!

What the Mohel Said: A duplex

From a bris on April 8, 2024, (Adar II 29, 5784,) before the solar eclipse that day

It’s not a pound of flesh, but a pound of doubt
That we pay to perfect our faith. Everything’s

A duplex; with fear, let’s circumcise these walls.
In every telltale, beating thing, a purlieu

Of purity awaits. Let’s reject wholesale,
Like eyes without borders, this natural

Impasse. (The sun, to the indigo bunting,
Says, ‘It’s not rocket science, or Gordius

Double-knotted by Shakespeare.’) We know that tribe;
The poets: they’d circumcise a shell to

Visit hell and write it off! When you’re worth what
You give birth to, angels bring trauma-informed

Kisses for the boy next door. They say with joy,
‘It’s not a pound of flesh, but a pound of doubt.’

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and US Air Force veteran. He’s published a full-length collection of formal poetry, “A Kiss to Betray the Universe” (White Violet Press), along with three chapbooks: “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing), “The Rites of Tires” (SurVision) and “The Seagull’s First One Hundred Seguidillas” (Alien Buddha Press).

Image generated on Magic Studio