Yellow Opera
poem
Steven Cerio
Happy Homeland
I'm running up to tell ya, there's buffalo in the weeds.
Apple pie is wonderbread and the sun is full of bees,
and fat across the grass from eating lunchbags full of starch.
Your patience is a tonka truck. Your June is half past March.
Your goose was only half open when you curdled in the waves.
You never call a fishing man by the pocket change he saves.
Soda rode up to barley, swinging chocolate cake.
"I wish you had a ginger ale and frosting in the lake."
row
row, row
oar
oar home
This isn't a meadow,
but from a napoleon's shoulder you can see where the icing melts off into the lake.
It's one hundred degrees for good heavens sake.
You curled up in your cotton sock and Barley had a fit... Barley was very mad.
Barley could multiply fractions, but Barley couldn't add.
Barley knew many math words, but Barley couldn't speak,
drank soda from the seat of his bike, washed the bottle in the creek.
Grandma spilled from smokestacks and the month yelled "afternoon!"
The petted cats drank lampshades and kept the yellow moon.
The laughing squirrels fixed lunchbags with a thermos full of tea.
Made fun of the rhyming fisherman that threw away the sea.
The roadmap took the steering wheel and sputtered in the lane.
It crossed bumble bee with porch and sled and smelled of sugar cane.
Your lucky climbing trees, I said you're lucky, wet and deep.
The elephant is an ocean tall, his face looks like a sheep.
He dreams at night of masking tape and sleeps inside a dove,
that's twice the size of a baseball field and calls distemper love.
The library was the cause of harm when it came full circle through the gills.
Drank the streams, whistled to pets and the drying hills.
Blessed are the candy apples, sleeping in the waves.
The macaroons are spilled fruit juice with breakfast food for slaves.
You're at the ant hill to beg for sugar, your as lucky as you feel.
You'll play just like a champion today and beg yellow from banana peel.
Yellow Opera COPYRIGHT 2005 Steven Cerio.
Reproduction prohibited without permission from the author.
08/26/05
