Two Poems
Steven Kent

In Other Words

Utter not a cri de cœur if

You don’t mean to call the shuriff.

Choose instead a word like foible—

On the tongue it’s more enjoy’ble.

Though it lacks a raison d’êtra,

None I know sounds any bettra.

Here’s a good one, too: kerfuffle.

(Really, that should be enuffle.)

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Here’s Mud

I went out to buy a new bicycle

And found one on sale; now it’s mycycle.

Reporter Rick rides on a guycycle,

A who and what, when, where, and whycycle.

James Bond gets around on a spycycle,

The introvert goes for a shycycle,

The Deadhead just wants a good highcycle,

The senator favors a liecycle,

The baker prefers marble ryecycle.

A motor? You won’t have to trycycle.

Propeller? That makes it a flycycle.

Circumference? We’re now talking picycle.

Sorority? Pi Alpha Chicycle.

Shakespearean curse? ‘Tis a fiecycle.

We’re even? Let’s call it a tiecycle.

A toast? Well, here’s mud in your eyecycle!

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Steven’s notes: “I thoroughly enjoy tweaking words to produce new (and, with a bit of luck, absurd) rhymes. This was one of the first challenges that attracted me to light verse, in fact. ‘Here’s Mud’ appears in my second collection, Home at Last, while ‘In Other Words’ is previously unpublished.“

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Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside (www.kentburnside.com). His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

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Hop to…

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Two Poems Steven Kent

Two Poems
Steven Kent