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Five Small Poems on the Secret Lives of Creatures
About a week ago, I posted a poem of mine about a toad. It landed with a thud on the Ricochet Member Feed. It was soon a lonely and pathetic thing as it moved inexorably down the morning posts with hardly even a Pity Like.
But that was a week ago. I’ve discovered that my poetic Muse won’t leave me alone, even at the risk of ridicule and shame.
Frankenstein
Scarred refuse
of yesterday’s men:
Finds pain in being alive.
Would rather
lie in pieces again.
[OK, I know that wasn’t much, but it’s so short that readers who never make it to the end of a poem can now boast that they made it to the end of a poem.]
The Vampire
White-faced Transylvanian,
with a recessive gene
that urges nightly sips of blood.
But believes it a sin
To have vulgar tastes:
Drinks young virgins
instead of old men.
[Well who wouldn’t?]
Wolf-man
Periodic beast:
When the full moon
floods the landscape,
our pajama-sleeper
feels tendons tighten,
coarse hair grow,
and eyes evil-brighten.
Then our hairy fellow
runs naked across the dark heath,
Ripping up humus and moss
With red nails and sharp teeth.
In the morning, belly filled,
he wakes up man again:
Prompt at office,
politic and quiet,
a gentleman
with modest tie,
eyes bright.
[This is my favorite. I’ve always like the wolf man]
Old Scratch
By custom obliged
to dress in a red
woolen onesie suit.
Forced by divine decree
To sport on his breech
a foul-smelling tail
that swishes the black flies
that buzz on his bung
(that reeks when it’s hot
of sulphur and dung).
Hoofs on his heels,
horns on his head
fire for his bed.
Hates it,
takes it
out on
mankind.
[The real origin of evil.]
The Witch
Anne Jefferies
Is bored, her lace stitchery
by her side, as she
looks around her
stuffed Victorian room.
So Anne sneaks out at night
to dance with Cornwall fairies
in a clearing in dark woods
till the coming of the light.
I think, my Victorian lass,
there were far worse ways
of using up your share of days
than to dance with fairies
in the pale moonlight.
[Anne Jefferies was an actual 17th-century witch, though I’ve modified her story somewhat.]
One more poem:
Bob the dog thinks it a treat/to watch the cat across the street.
Published in General
Best I ever encountered was a weredog.
I’ve never heard of a weredog. I guess a weredog was once a werepuppy.
Have you heard of a were-leopard?
There once was a weredog named Sydney
With a particular fondness for kidney.
He raided a butcher
But needed a suture
When the butcher got through, now, didn’t he?
The Nessie’s life is submarine,
And, despite sightings, quite unseen.
For the teeming Nessie colony
Lives in one craft, submersibly.
To gain the main feed
The safe road is screed
But you took another road
To immortalize a toad
Though poems tinged melancholy
Might be seen as pure folly
But please throw Ken a bone
And like his toady poem
And here we thought you had learned your lesson…
Gossamer, love it! You’re a poet! Bone and poem! A beautiful off rhyme.
EJ, I’m slow. Everyone on Ricochet knows that.
Dear Ricochet member, I plead
Vote Kent’s damn poem to the main feed
Else he’ll whine and moan
Till the toads do come home
And that’s aggravation I just don’t need.
The link is here: http://ricochet.com/658916/my-poem-about-a-toad/#comment-4554615
Arahant, have you been waiting for me to post a poem so that you could post the limerick that you’ve been working on for months?
What in the world, Ms. Rattlesnake? Have you been saving this just for the occasion? “Colony” and “submersibly”? You’re stretching it, Rattlesnake.
Nope, he’s just had his claws sharpened by many a limerick flyting hosted on Ricochet over the years.
I’ve been away from Ricochet quite a bit lately. Have we had any limerick wars lately?
Oh, you should have seen the first draft, which was up a minute or so before I thought better of it. It was much worse!
But I like the idea of Nessies not being large lake-dwelling monsters, but tiny monsters inhabiting a larger, monster-shaped submersible boat.
Haha, Mrs. She. You and the ever bounteous Mrs. Forrester are just alike. She also says that I whine too much, in an oblique sort of way, on Ricochet.
Pretty good poem on the spur of the moment.
That’s just weird, Midge.
Trying to formulate a defense for Midge. Here’s what I’ve got so far.
(I’m thinking the Rattler would be better off pleading guilty to a reduced charge.)
I dunno. I think Jules Verne would approve.
Final Answer: First place goes to Frankenstein, with Honorable Mention to The Witch.
I dunno either. I like the tiny sub-borne monster idea too, and it is just weird, Midge, and I think Jules Verne would approve.
She, mine goes like this: First place goes to Werewolf, with honorable mention to Vampire. I’m terribly fond of the last stanza of Werewolf.
You meant “Wolfman“, rather than “Werewolf“, yes?
That unfairly-maligned textbook, Sound and Sense, points out somewhere that the limerick
works in part as light, frivolous verse because the abdominal/phenomenal rhyme is a bad-enough one to be comic.
Light verse doesn’t equal badly-written verse, but I stand with Sound and Sense, and guys like Ogden Nash, in calling ridiculous-sounding near-rhymes an important technique in light verse ;-P
(I’ve never been more than a rank amateur as a poet, but I loved reading poetry, both serious and comic, in my youth. I wrote an analysis of Wilfred Owen’s pararhyme that was nominated for a literary prize, once. On a computer which I left, for the summer, along with the paper copies, in the basement of a playwright who never proposed to me, and who didn’t offer to return my stuff until too late. Which anecdote sounds far more glamorous and bohemian than it actually was.)
Had I been working on it for months, it would be a crown of sonnets or something similar, a double sestina, perhaps. It would also be much better than that limerick. 😜
No. 😔☹
Agreed.
Agreed
–(Anon.)
There was an old poet named Nash
With whose ideas it would seem we’ve a match
Our whole lot are Agreed,
It’s a truth not Denied
It would seem that great minds always mesh.
* * * * * * * *
[EDIT: This Comment contains a Conundrum*. See if you can spot it.]
*Maybe a Dilemma. Or an Enigma, or a Paradox. If it’s none of those, then I am sure that it’s a use of Red Imagery. Or a Classical Allusion, maybe. It’s been a long time. I’m sorry, Miss Taylor, the whole English class, we’re all sorry. And we are sorry about that time when you walked into the classroom and we pretended that Rich Stanley was hanging outside the window, suspended by the pull-string for the blackout shades. We knew about your phobia about open windows, and we are sincerely sorry.
Any poem that gets me to read “denied” as “dun-need” is a winner in my book!
It seems our own Kent Forrester
Has run afoul a barrister.
We can but pine
For more bad rhymes
And poems of good character.