National Poetry Month Day #28 The Myth of Conception

We are the result of a hero’s quest

The biology books seem to tell us

The product of one single conqueror sperm

Leaving millions of also-rans jealous

An alpha-male gamete that outran the rest

Stormed the castle, and brought things to term.

It’s a well crafted hero myth--still, it’s a myth

And the actual story is more strange:

Gametes that collaborate get to be born

(Versed in the language of protein exchange);

Swap ions to activate each other with,

Sharing all things in order to spawn.

It was working together that made me and you--

Well, that, and a few trillion bacteria too

 

National Poetry Month Day #18: Biochemistry Haiku

I shall wear my benzene ring:
It resonates with
Antici - say it! - pation

National Poetry Month Day #17: Subtitled Movie Night

The arms wave in slow motion
As the bucket-headed victim bumps the lake bed,
Head first,
In the underwater garden of the bucket heads.

National Poetry Month Day 16: Logical Limerick

I'm a logical man blowing smoke

And giving some brain cells a poke

What you get's metaphorical

When you take a rhetorical

Question and cross with a joke.

National Poetry Month Day #15: Pleased to Meet You

I’m the saboteur who slipped the fly into your ointment

I was the man on the grassy knoll

I’m the engineer of your every disappointment

I’m the chunk of grit inside your breakfast roll

Every time you slip up on the steps to your apartment

I’m the one who placed that patch of black ice for your shoe

When your promotion went to that young dunce in your department

I’m the one who shredded all the paperwork from you.

Every time you lose your purse, your keys, or peace of mind

Look no further for a culprit: I’m the one you’ll find

I helped out the Nazis during World War Two in Sweden

You’ll never see the Antichrist and me in the same room

I was the serpent in the Garden of Eden

In the Land of Oz, you’ve seen my flying monkeys, and my broom

Every time your miss your bus on a cold and dismal day

I’m the one who hacked the weather app on your smartphone

And wound the driver’s clock ahead to speed him on his way

And you thought it was sunny and you left your coat at home.

I do research all day long and lie awake at night to scheme

Of yet more ways to make your waking hours a bad dream.

Please allow me to introduce myself

I’m a man of cruel taste and growing wealth

I’m the man who sold the world the Elf on the Shelf

And a billion other ways to ruin your health:

I designed the DMV

The IRS, CCTV,

Those leaky cups that spill your tea

Deficiencies in Vitamin B

Each ozone-pounding CFC

Billy Ray Cyrus (and Miley)

That car ahead doing 23

Your own car’s lowest MPG

The pundits on Fox News TV

Star Wars (Episodes I through III)

Who’s behind all that? It’s me!

Every time you feel like balling up an angry fist

Direct your punch at me ‘cause it’s the reason I exist.

National Poetry Month Day 14: Big words are sexy

Big words are sexy

I called her callipygian today
It gobsmacked her; she didn't know what to say
She showed decolletage
That was awfully large
To thank me in an ostrobogulous way

National Poetry Month - Day 13: Name Dropping

Name Dropping
A game of two truths and a lie

1.
Fifteen years--no, more--ago, I Googled Roger Ebert.
I found his email link, so I wrote to him
To ask him what his favorite search site was.
He replied that Metacrawler did the trick for him.

Oh, and please don't use this email link to contact me again.

2.
Quincy Jones once looked me right in the eyes.
This was not a good thing to happen.
I was standing in his way, and he has always been a man on the move.
And so, I got a look.
And not any kind of look.
If looks could kill, the look that Quincy Jones gave me that day
Could have sliced me into strips
Stamped on them
And sliced them up some more.
And this was Quincy Jones.

I kept a weather eye about me all that day, but no long knives disturbed me.

3.
My friends and I gave Neil Gaiman a book that we had written;
He sold us six copies of his latest;
He didn't have to pay for ours.
All four of us inscribed our books
Four names on several fly leaves.
Of course, we three were under no comforting illusion that our gesture changed his world
But Neil Gaiman gave a gift: A story of our own to tell.

But I still think that he read our book.
And liked my story best.


Note from the author:
If you want to know which of these three stories is the lie, seek me out and ask me. I promise I will tell the truth. Twice. And tell you what the lie is. 

National Poetry Month Day #12: I Hate Ken Jennings

I Hate Ken Jennings

Ken Jennings: Hate his guts!
There's no way you can stop me.
I hate it when I hear his name
There's no way this could not be!

Ken Jennings: What a putz!
I mean it! This is personal!
I don't resent his brains or style,
But still: Ken Jennings? Cursable!

Ken Jennings: Standing there
With insults I regale you!
I want to shave your sandy hair
And black your eyes of pale blue!

You spent four months on Jeopardy
That's almost eighty shows.
And every time I'd see you,
I'd want to break your nose!

Contestants vie behind the scenes
To get a place on Jeopardy
There's a wait list, and, when Ken was on,
The fifth name down was me.

The wait list has a use-by date
And yes, you must have guessed it
My time came up while Ken was on,
And up was how Ken messed it.

Ken Jennings: Watch your step
And never cross my path.
I got all your answers right
And you earned...do the math.

National Poetry Month Day #11: Little Known Epistles

St. Paul's Letter to the Grammarians
Dear Grammarians,
Have you ever noticed that you never see a homophone by itself? They always occur in groups of two or more.
Yours sincerely,
St. Paul

PS: You asked for an example of apostrophes in action, to form a contraction, using the future tense. I'll follow up in a separate letter.

St. Paul's Letter to the Physicians
Dear Physicians,
Heal!
Yours sincerely,
St. Paul

St Paul's Letter to the Dalmatians
Dear Dalmatians,
Heel!
Yours sincerely,
St. Paul

St. Paul's Second Letter to the Grammarians
Dear Grammarians,
He'll.
Your sincerely,
St. Paul

The Grammarians' Letter to St. Paul
Dear St. Paul,
Sentence fragments? Bad idea!
Sincerely,
The Grammarians

Nationsl Poetry Month Day #10: Make a mistake

Make a mistake
An excerpt from the unpublished self-help book 
Lessons for Windows, the Mac, and Life

Make a mistake.
We all make mistakes
But we can often undo them with ease.
Here's how:
Hold down the Control key.
And press Z.

If that doesn't fix your mistake,
You're probably using a Mac.
Hold down the Command key.
And press Z.

If that doesn't fix your mistake
You're probably making your mistakes in real life
Among living things and solid objects, with real consequences.
So you're probably screwed, at least for a while.

Hold down your feelings of frustration.
And press on.

We all make mistakes.

National Poetry Month Day #9: Reflections on cars

A TOYOTA'S A TOYOTA

BUT

SUBARU .... U R A BUS

National Poetry Month Day #8: Virginia's Not In Sheep's Clothing

What's my alter ego? Can you guess?
Off to the lighthouse every day I ran
The full moon changed me--Oh my dear Lord, yes!
By night, I am Virginia Wolff Man

Then a man--or a woman--breaks down like a child
Changes gender, and ages, and size
Claims, somewhat later, she's born to be wild
Virginia Steppen-Wolff, arise!

A feminist icon with full metal claws
The only mutant that Bloomsbury's seen
A heavy growth of sideburns around the jaws
Don't mess with Virginia Wolfferine!

Yes, Virginia was as strange as you could ever get
The hero-monster-tragedy of the Bloomsbury Set

National Poetry Month Day #7 A Sweet Treat

A Sweet Treat

First you ionize acid from coal tar
Orthosulphobenzoic, by name
And depending upon what your goals are
The powder you'll have is your aim
Three hundred times sweeter than smack--you win!
You just synthesized yourself saccharine!

National Poetry Month: Day 6 - ALL THAT

This is the most sincere and abject love poem I could conceive of: One in which the lover reduces himself to the level of a mere commodity for the benefit of the object of his desire. The narrator places the beloved first in all the world, and squarely relegates his own self to the role of subservient. And yet by catering to the every desire or need of the object of his affection, the narrator has an ulterior motice: If he is in the center of her world, she can hardly get away from him, now can she?

In short, this poem described a mental illness that can only be described as romantic love. And it's called "All That."

I’m glad we decided to write our own vows

So I can pledge to you, my almost-wife:

I want to be your sewer line

’Cause of what it takes out of your life

I’ll be your ark of gopher wood

And save you from the Flood

I’ll be your healthy liver

And purify your blood

I want to be your Chapstick

And soften up your lips

You know what I want to be: All that, and a bag of chips

I want to be your escalator

Not some lousy stair

I want to be enlightenment

So you can be aware.

I want to be the mortgage

That lifts you out of the gutter

I want to be the margarine

You can’t believe isn’t butter

I want to be the hybrid car

That takes you down your road

You know what I want to be: All that, served a la mode.

I want to be the scrubbing bubbles

Cleaning up your tub

I want to be the Cheese Wiz

In your Philly cheesesteak sub

I want to be your Aquanet

Solidify your hair

I want to be the chloroplasts

That freshen up your air.

I want to crack perpetual motion

I would never stop.

You know what I want to be: Can’t buy it in a shop.

You know what I want to be: The penny has to drop.

You know what I want to be: The cream of that damn’ crop

You know what I want to be: All that, with a cherry on top.

National Poetry Month: Day 5 - A sonnet in Shakespearean format

CLOTHES MAKETH THE MAN

In strides the mighty hero Hercules
His lion skin coat is famed throughout all lands
For like the snakes he fashioned into sleeves
He strangled the beast he wears with his bare hands.

The skins of buffalo, and deer, and bear
That gave their lives that humankind may live
The tribes of north America would wear
Acknowledging their sacrifice, and hoping they forgive.

Enter now a priest of Dionysus
A leopard skin all draped across his back
The creature's former strength daily arises
And grants the priest the power he may lack.

In this spirit I shall bring Goodwill to readers great and small
For Goodwill's where my garments come from, shoes and socks and all

National Poetry Month - Day 4

The best of three collaborations with Julia, with occasional rhymes supplied by Paul.


Forty pounds of confections in hand
Conceptual art is so grand
You can take a piece now
So you'll understand how
It's like drawing your life in the sand

National Poetry Month - Day 3

#1

The three-day weekend starts today

It's not as long as people say

The company provides my phone

My nights, weekends, and Easter aren't my own

#2

Of course I'm a mere poetaster

But I don't think that that's a disaster

I shoot for a rhyme

And I hit, half the time,

And my meter is that of a master

National Poetry Month. Day 2: A NIGHT AT THE SYMPHONY

The symphony: Beethoven's Third.
The sublimest rendition I've heard.
The crowd screamed "Bravo!"
Except me, you know:
It was me that called out for Freebird.

National Poetry Month: Day 1

To commemorate National Poetry Month, Questionable.info author Matt Lake has undertaken to write a new poem every day and slap it online on our forum. Because he's primarily a nonfiction writer, don't expect much. But expect something. Probably in limerick form. Like this, the inaugural outing--

DEATH BECOMES A LIMERICK

"KNOCK KNOCK" came a voice with no face.
"Who's there?" I enquired into space.
"DEATH" he replied.
"Death wh-?" Then I died,
Thinking, "Damn! But that joke's in poor taste."