Ken Gosse generally writes light poetry using simple language, meter, and rhyme in verses filled with whimsy and humor. First published in The First Literary Review–East in November, 2016, his poetry is also online with Academy of the Heart and Mind, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Home Planet News, Spillwords, and others. He is also in print anthologies from Pure Slush, The Coil, Truth Serum Press, Peking Cat, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, he and his wife have lived in Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Germany, Virginia, and now in Mesa, Arizona over twenty years with two or more rescue dogs and cats always underfoot. Their four children and their grandchildren are scattered around the county, mostly at long distances.

The View from the Top

When you scale huge boulders
en route to the shoulders
of giants to get the best view,
don’t tread on their toes,
for as everyone knows
giving credit where credit is due
is the way to achieve
the great fame you’ll receive
in pursuit of a quest for what’s true.

Many Titans, now bone,
their thoughts written in stone
which you’ve borrowed,
don’t claim as your own!
Even those extant few
must be honored by you:
offer credit, for none think alone.
Then climb on without fear
and we’ll cheer when we hear
some new wonder which you have made known.

Spiraling Thoughts on a Dark and Stormy Night

It
was
a dark
and stormy
night. There before me,
far from trite, the book “Paul Clifford,”
whose opening line Edward Bulwer-Lytton would write
so melodramatically, “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—”
thirty-seven more words like sheep in herds, oft’ parodied as “purple prose,” which perhaps, “except at occasional intervals,” it warrants.

One Night’s Naughts

A mother taught her daughter ought
not toy the boy her brother brought.

Her father fought with features fraught,
in vain to ’splain the things he thought.

Her sister sought to help and bought
a thing to bring their night to naught.

But he was there: the anxious pair,
their game aflame in loveseat’s chair

to keep them where they could but stare—
one touch too much for this affair!

Beneath his glare she chanced to dare
one move to prove her tender care—

her gift to bare, a sight most rare
so he could see her precious ware—

and that slight flair and wave of hair
would wake him, take him to her lair.

It seemed unfair, the price of err;
one night’s delights beyond compare!

But they were caught, and now, distraught,
both heard the word the preacher praught.