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, Impspired, 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.

Four 100 word poems

The Silent Partner

I have a little mind.

Very often I will find

there’s a game it likes to play

where my thoughts all gang agley.

That’s because they like to hide,

buried somewhere deep inside

(in a very special place

in that dark and empty space)

and if found, they’ll self-erase

at an accelerating pace,

crawling forward on my tongue

to its tip, where they get hung

for a moment or a day,

stopping me from what I’d say—

as if I knew what’s on my mind.

Alas, I’m often left behind.



But perhaps it’s wiser, too,

letting silence have its due.

The Old Gray Hair

I don’t waste money on my hair—

shampoo and rinse, but without flair.

I don’t repeat. It’s still replete

(except a spot back there).



I get it cut just now and then

because it still grows back again.

Perhaps less often—age will soften—

but there’s still a yen.



The color’s blurred from black to white:

it took some time—not overnight.

The fading blacks let gray reach max

(my chin has lost that fight).



Someday I’ll have my final trim,

a wash and rinse without the vim.

When that time comes let’s hope my sums

have overfilled the brim.

Pas de Don’t

A sonnet’s dance embraces measured feet

(unless, of course, it shouldn’t bear that name,

for sonnetry is sometimes put to shame),

unlike erratic terseness of a tweet.



Petrarchan or Shakespearean in form,

Spenserian is also tried and true,

but some who think form’s far too much ado

will often choose to disregard its norm.



Although the stalwarts of established styles

may rant and rave about what sonnets aren’t,

it seems some modern poets claim they’ve larnt

that poetry must bend to each one’s wiles.



The coup de grâce, a couplet without flaw,

is often tossed aside—a sad faux pas.

Tying the Olive Branch

My father was a handy man, a woodworker by trade,

but didn’t use a hammer, saw, or nails for what he made.

He teased a lot of grownups, saying every day he played

in trees that fed the panda-bears within their bamboo glade.



In spite of blistered fingers, his demeanor, very staid,

within a smock just like a doc, its cleanliness displayed

attention to sterility, their work benches surveyed

every hour on the hour for hygiene unallayed.



At last, when I was older, over cocktails he conveyed,

“I tie knots in bamboo skewers all day long—that’s why I’m paid.”