View from the Philosopher's Cot

Get up!  Get up, Xanthippe!
Off your knees, girl.
Take that crying child away,
that mewling half-cat of a creature
cradled in your arms,
that unfeathered little bird.
Why, look,
these men record my words!
Noses long to be led by this finger!
The gold I have, I leave to you:
follow Pythagoras: abstain from beans:
women should not pass gas.
That's all you really need to know.
Now, take your puking child and go.


(Poems by Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, 1986; Sou'wester, Southern Illinois Univ, Fall, 1988)