People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them up was a bite from a sheep.

Retreat

Before she can deliver
the cruncher,
I stride away backwards

My car door opens,
I fall in
as the engine fires.

I speed home in reverse,
unshave, unshower,
plop down in my easy chair

where, picturing what a good
night it’s going to be,
I slowly spit up

a manhattan – dry –
just the way
I like it.

I Have No Gun, But I Can Spit

Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.

In the whole village
The husband alone
Does not know of it

18th Century Japanese poem

For hunger is a sauce, well blended and prepared, for any food.

Peano Axioms of the Natural Numbers

1. 0 is a number.
2. The immediate successor of a number is also a number.
3. 0 is not the immediate successor of any number.
4. No two numbers have the same immediate successor.
5. Any property belonging to 0 and to the immediate successor of any number that also has that property belongs to all numbers.

The Sleepy Giant

My age is three hundred and seventy-two,
And I think, with the deepest regret,
How I used to pick up and voraciously chew
The dear little boys whom I met.
I’ve eaten them raw, in their holiday suits;
I’ve eaten them curried with rice;
I’ve eaten them baked, in their jackets and boots,
And found them exceedingly nice.
But now that my jaws are too weak for such fare,
I think it exceedingly rude
To do such a thing, when I’m quite well aware
Little boys do not like being chewed.

And so I contentedly live upon eels,
And try to do nothing amiss,
And I pass all the time I can spare from my meals
In innocent slumber — like this.

Alone (in bad company).