[Matt Q]

Since the rubric seems to be shifting a little, here's an old and, so it turned out, unprophetic, one of mine. It doesn't fit the original brief, but there's definitely homonyms involved.



A million, billion trumpets

At first he had only heard the sound of a single trumpet
that blew as he entered a room. Not some plastic trumpet
playing cheap, wobbly notes, and certainly not a trumpet
in the scatological sense, no, the very best kind of trumpet,
the kind that presaged the presence of a king, or a trumpet
made of gold and blown in fanfare by an angel trumpeting

the arrival of the Lord. But when he’d looked for a trumpet,
he couldn’t find one; the room was empty, with no trumpet-
blower in sight. Could it be that he was hearing trumpets
as others heard voices? Might this be the first wild trumpet-
call of madness? And yet, even if it were, the trumpeting
had felt good, and it had seemed so fitting to be trumpeted

into a room. So he was pleased when later the trumpeting
recurred. He quickly grew accustomed to being trumpeted,
and soon it was as if he had always heard the blast of a trumpet
heralding his entries and exits, and before long the solo trumpet
became two, then three, then a whole platoon of trumpets
proclaimed his every action. Now there were trumpets

to herald his first movements of morning, there were trumpets
to undress to in the evening, and even when he trumpeted
in the scatological sense, there was a crescendo of trumpets
to celebrate his achievement. He learned from the trumpets
that everything he did was laudable, praiseworthy, trumpetable,
something he had long suspected even before the trumpets

had arrived to confirm it. Such was the volume of the trumpets
that sometimes when others spoke all he heard was trumpets,
and even his own thoughts were replaced by the sound of trumpets;
yet he saw no real disadvantage in this – often the trumpets
made more sense to him, and besides when the trumpets
erupted within he felt invincible: as long he had those trumpets

blowing, whatever the adversity, he felt sure he could trump it.
Elevation to high office only strengthened this feeling, and trumpets
began to blow continuously in an unending fanfare of trumpetry:
every breath, every word, every thought, triumphantly trumpeted.
Now he knew there was no challenge, no enemy he couldn’t trump. It
occurred to him he was the best leader ever. Yes! sang the trumpets.

It looked a bit like a trumpet. A big red button-shaped trumpet.
Shall we, my trumpets? he asked. You the man! blasted the trumpets.
He pushed the big red trumpet to an orgasmic explosion of trumpets.

[Roger Slater]

My favorite patch of monorhyme in any poem comes at the end of Lewis Carroll's "The Aged Aged Man." The final stanza has 12 rhymes in a row beginning with "I weep . . . " And somehow the 12 lines of monorhyme don't stop you from hearing the weight/gate rhyme that brackets the 12 lines:

And now, if e'er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
Of that old man I used to know—
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo—
That summer evening long ago
A-sitting on a gate.

[RCL]

Matt,
I heard trumpets all night! This sorta reminds me of a goofy joke my father liked to say (it was funny to a toddler):

I bought a wooden whistle, but it wouldn't whistle,
so then I bought a steel whistle, but it still wouldn't whistle,
then I bought a tin whistle, and now I tin whistle.

[Julie Steiner]

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

[Allen Tice]

Yikes!!! What a linguistic furbelow. I want to include a Bigalow.

[RCL]

Maybe influenced by the heading “Sitting on a corn flake” by Jim Moonan over on Art Museum.

Little Things

Sat on a bee
slept on a pea
it tickled me

Choked on dog hair
shaved Rover
thought it fair

Splashed by a puddle
and bit an eggshell
I could still yodel

Chewing meat gristle
and stung by a thistle
I happily whistle

Learning my lover
eloped to Dover
I cried, Where’s Rover?

[RCL]

Sorry, 'twas a hiccup?

[RCL]

I see that back in '22 I ended this with a whimper. Sorry. This is, I hope, better than those.

In the Dark

While wandering in the dark
Through an oak-tree park
Surrounding blackness stark
I whistle for a lark
Shrink at a nearby bark

But often in the dark
And like a sea-lost barque
I'm shadowed by a shark
Yet know without the dark
There’d never be a spark

[Glenn Wright]

Right

Put a “W” in front of right
to spell my surname right.
I’m over here, on the right.
I think I have the right
to stand where I want—right
here is a good place, right?