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An excerpt from the unpublished self-help book 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.