XVII. Taboo Poems (riddles & avoidance poems). You write a poem using a card from the game Taboo. You cannot use any of the words on one side of the card. Then, depending on your restrictions, you may or may not have to use all of the words on the other side of the card. 9/25/97
1.
They run around in cars.
He can shoot you.
You can shoot him.
2.
The second letter of the alphabet
Becomes the first letter of this word
Whose letters form half of a human pair
3.
The secretary’s miilk jugs are comprised of four units.
She’s taking dictation from hefty plastic bottles.
Milk jugs, sitting by the phones. Each clerk has four assistants.
The volume of the typewriter can be determined
by water displacement. Clark left his clerk’s clipboard
in his car. You can put a cell phone in your car.
What else can you put in your car?
4.
Oh when you were seven years my junior
(i had just reached twenty-one)
we drove secretly to the mossy forest
and kissed before your sisters could see.
By the time that we had spent our furtive moments
the mosquitos had kissed you, too --
less tenderly, and left their mark.
The can of repellent lay dormant on the car seat.
5.
I have this vision, see, and every month it comes out, and it’s full, full! it’s pages are worn, wear them out more, see, put on your glasses, not the ones you wear for away (and big) but for the tiny things, see, and wear them out with theh contact of your thumbs, see the world every month, see, every week or every month through the lenses that I wear, I will send it to you in the mail, you can buy it on the corner or at the drugstore and when the new one comes out, see, you will see through my eyes
6.
it is not a pink word
and is not from a pink-lips world.
It runs in blue circles much like our goodnight kisses
without anyone tied down to its road.
It goes by means of a pucker-up of kites and keys and lightning
and may bear advertisements on ist insides, like "Hershey’s"
or "1-800-SMOOCH-ME"
In the end, I played with them, not on them, like the little boys on the box,
and when it kissed the goodnight station
and ran out of proverbial steam,
all the passengers abandoned it
to its yards and yards of conductors.