Five D’Oh-Raymese Poems

By Ken Gosse

The End of the Beginning of D’oh-Raymese 

There once was a royal musician
whose life reached a dreadful transition.
Entombed with remorse
(with his pharaoh, of course),
he was placed in an awkward position.

He first wrote a powerful curse,
but then he wrote many a verse.
His best isn’t long:
it’s a well-favored song
which the von Trapps would one day rehearse.

We don’t know the scale that he used;
gin and tonic were often abused.
Do through Fa he’d oft’ skip
to begin with a nip
of a fifth, so some songs sound confused.

Sometimes he wrote visions of doom—
future ravages spawned from Hell’s womb.
On these subway-like walls
you can read silent scrawls
where he wrote in the gloom of his tomb.

He also took arduous pains
to compose many four-line refrains.
Quatrains, one and all,
but when on a tomb wall,
they are reverently known as soultrains.

Although he felt most ill-at-ease
(being left there in spite of his pleas),
he etched out his name,
his escape to great fame:
he is “Maestro: The Great D’oh-Raymese.”

D’oh! A Beer! (by D’oh-Raymese)

D’oh! A beer, I need a beer to
raise my spirits from the Earth.
Me? I want it now, my dear. Help
father understand his worth.
Solo drinking is just fine,
lamenting when I am low;
tea is not as good as wine,
so I’ll drink while I have dough.

Don’t You Do, Do, Do What We Did, Did, Did to the Do-Do-De-Oh Dodos (by D’oh-Raymese)

Dodos used to roam the Earth,
raiding beaches for their lunch.
Meager pickings, when a dearth,
farmers’ fields they’d raid and munch,
so, the farmers ate their eggs
lots of dodo wings and legs,
teaching us we need more regs,
but it’s too late for dodos.

The Sourdough Man or The Djinn from Lactobacillaceae (by D’oh-Raymese)

Dough you kneaded thoroughly,
raised by yeasty gas within:
mean lacto-base-ee-lacy-ee,
far from sweet, began to sin.
So, with sour-looking grin,
lots of terror—evil djinn!
Teens would lose their spleen and skin
to the beast called Sour Dough!

Jeepers Reapers, They Give Me the Creepers! (by D’oh-Raymese)

D’oh-Raymese would like to please
raiders of his pharaoh’s tomb.
Meager pay, but none today—
fodder in a reverse womb
so the pharaoh may proceed
(largess never was his creed),
teeming victims were decreed
to be his eternal dough!