Lenora

At age seven, my sister Lenora
Developed an obsession with ants.
If you accidentally stepped on one
She would scold you for a week.
When my parents bought me an
Ant Farm one joyous Christmas,
As soon as I received the ants
Through the postal service,
I remember the stormy day,
Lenora went maniacally psycho
And smashed the farm to bits,
And set all the bewildered ants free
When a teenager, her obsession worsened;
She vowed to set all the ants free
At what she called the ant gulag,
The ant farm factory in Pittsburg, PA.
I worried she’d become a loopy
My suspicions confirmed when
She broke into the factory,
Somehow set numberless ants free
And tried to burn the factory down.
Now she’s spent fifty years
In a psychiatric hospital composing
Crazy paeans to ants while I write
Weird poems about stink bugs
Obsessively and dream about
Inventing a Stink Bug Farm
And selling it to the world.

Bob Boyd

Ode To A Stink Bug

He sneaks into my apartment somehow
He’s a weird-looking critter I must say
And he’s sitting here looking at me now
I could end his life in a flash, but hey
He’s just sitting there not causing trouble
Were he a mosquito, I’d be bitten
And that bug would be dead on the double 
Unlike the stink bug with whom I’m smitten
Because of his odd look and gentle ways
I’m sure he’s not gentle with smaller prey
But it is not his fault in nature’s maze
We all eat smaller things; it’s nature’s way.
Poor stink bug saddled with a name that stinks
When named, if only he could have said nay
And gotten a cooler name like The Sphinx.

Bob Boyd

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