Poetry: Robert Hogg

Amber Alert – after W.H. Auden

It was a day like any 
other you know 
the kind the poet 
wrote about 
people 
going about their business
maiming and killing
each other the usual
stuff and today I wake
up groggy as usual
repeating myself
chug down a cuppa 
java take a 
shower dry off
and pat my balls
with baby powder used
to be talc you know
the scandal but that’s
neither here nor 
there just another
thing of the past 
to put you off track
when the real calamity
is down past my belly
now oversized and no
damned business being there
and my dong’s gone 
I kid you not 
I’m looking 
everywhere
hard as I can
put on my glasses feel
around and so help me
it’s nowhere to be found 
I begin to panic
wouldn’t you
but then remember 
this isn’t the first dick’s
gone missing but hey
those were all cool
Trickster myths from Sandy
Lake and other
Indigenous tales 
I don’t dare reach
for anymore so what
am I to do I put out
an S.O.S. to the local 
police It’s at least
an Amber Alert
I say What’s your name
she says and that’s when
I hang up Another crank 
call I hear her say
under her breath 
which smells like tulips
but I don’t expect
you’ll believe that 
impossible thought
so naturally I do
what any lop-sided 
bopper wd do and hop 
on Facebook 
post my plight 
but O God the story
goes viral people all over
the world are writing in
to say they’ve found 
a missing prick one
wch is probably fake reads

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1560. Oil on canvas. Wikimedia.

Charles E. Burchfield, The Tree, 1946. Watercolor on paper. Burchfield Penney Art Center.

DOWNTOWN HONG KONG

MIRACULOUS DONG
FOUND GROWING
FROM GROUND BELOW
ATTEMPTS TO PENETRATE
PENTHOUSE BALCONY 

DWELLER THREATENS 
TO CHOP DOWN IF NOT
CLAIMED IMMEDIATELY

but no phone number it must be
mine I think
intuitively but what 
can I do trapped 
on my farm middle 
of nowhere Canada 
planning to go
cut wood 
a day like any other 
people 
going about their business
axe in hand 
just like the poet said

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1565-7. Oil on canvas. Wikimedia.

Your iPhone is saving your pictures to the iCloud library. This could take some time. 

Siri when I
die you can
beam me up 
to that Library
in the Sky
if that’s allowed

And don’t forget 
those 44 virgins
you promised 
to upload 

Not much fun
living in a cloud 
that might explode

Unpredictable Forecast

Hey Siri what’s
the weather

Minus 23 
and snow

squalls
better

put on
some pants

or freeze
your balls

I think
she said

Edvard Munch, Workers in Snow: Five Fragments, 1931-33. Oil on unprimed transparent canvas. PubHist.