Sonnet: Riddle of the Sphinx on My 65th Birthday
by John Kendall Hawkins
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What is it got a big black moustache, smoke a very big cigar, and is a real big pain in the neck?
Chico Marx, Duck Soup (1933)
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I crawled on four legs through a black-and-white world
highlighted by EBS Russkie scares
Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, heart broke daily
my family all Barnum & Bailey
early childhood ed the sum of all fears
JFKed, Lawrence Welked, and Milton Berled
Up on my own two feet, adventures roared
I took learning by the horns, both of them
composed symphonies in my head, lost chords
I switched to isms and highfalutin words
then my heart got bushwhacked by a golem
Hegel showed how history gets obscured
Three legs now, a Taoist late for Mao's March,
tender in the night, all Achilles arch
(Article changed on Oct 16, 2021 at 7:41 PM EDT)
