[Tim Murphy]

Forget the Deep End. This is where it's at, the action I mean. Many of these are a scream. Closest to my bones, Quincy's hilarious Short Shots. I am amazed at how this thread has taken off and stolen all the thunder and with from the Sphere. Too much brilliance to acknowledge, to bow to, to make genuflections to. But I am very glad Rose and Michael are jerking off here and not patrolling the streets of Southie with AK-47's. I wrote a poem about the spring migrations of songbirds to our former orchard. Only recently did Maryann Corbett tell me it is in fact a poem about the Eratosphere:

Envy

The cock oriole perches
atop a catkinned limb,
whistling as he searches
for hens to mate with him.

Deep in the woods a veery
puffs up his creamy breast
to serenade his dearie,
outsinging all the rest.

Contestants in our orchard,
ambitious warblers throng,
tiny poets tortured
by one another’s song.

Slipp, I confused you with Martin Rocek. Sorry.

[Mark Allinson]

Do you remember this one, Timmy, from a few years back?

You posted the following poem on TDE, but I felt there was another side to issue.


Doggerel

A bitch is born to suffer—
get stuffed, get big, and whelp;
eat shit, and raise a litter
without the top dog’s help.

She loathes her concrete kennel,
the scrum between her paws,
the shrieks, the stench—infernal!—
two hundred scrabbling claws.

And him? A weekend hunting
grouse with the yapping pack,
while she collapses panting
from his progeny’s attack.

They’ll bite the teats right off her!
Feeding time again?
Just let her find a feather
stuck to his muzzle. Men!

Emperors


Some birds are built for pleasure,
while some are made to wait;
but she gets all the leisure
when Emperors come to mate.

She drops her bundle quickly
passing it to her man,
who stands there looking sickly
because he knows she can.

And then she’s off to frolic
and eat her fill at sea,
while starved and melancholic
he wishes he were she.

He shuffles ‘round in darkness,
near-frozen while she’s swimmin’,
and in his wintry starkness
you can hear him mumblin’ - “women!”

[Shaun J. Russell]

To continue in the same vein as Tim and Mark...

Husbandry

Some are not meant for mating:
No progeny deserves
Its parents compensating
For angst and fraying nerves

By eying other cattle
Or straying from the flock
To escalate the battle
In sexing other stock.

No, husbandry's a science
That has its kinks and flaws--
A masculine defiance
Can compromise its cause.

So why then do they do it?
Why wreck a happy house?
Just 'cause you want to screw it
You needn't call it "spouse."



[This message has been edited by E. Shaun Russell (edited July 05, 2008).]

[Tim Murphy]

Marky, that was Alan's poem, and I remember it and your riposte very well.

[John Griffin]

Neophyte getting into the spirit here. This sonnet is best declaimed by an in-heat Rottweiler afflicted with a very slight bark-impediment, thus rendering the rising intonations of his wuff a little comical.

DOGGEREL ~ A SONNET

~ In Classical Dogalese ~

Bow-wow bow-wow wuff-wuff bow-wuff wuff-bow
Wuff-wow bow-wuff wuff-wuff bow-wuff wuff-wuff
Bow-wow wuff-wow wuff-wuff bow-wow wuff-bow
Wuff-wow bow-wuff wow-wow bow-wuff bow-wuff
Bow-wow wuff-wuff bow-wuff bow-wow wuff-wiff
Wuff-wiff bow-bow wuff-bow bow-wuff wuff-grrrr
Grrr-wow bow-wuff wuff-grrr bow-wuff bow-wiff
Bow-grrr wiff-wow wuff-wow bow-wuff wow-grrrr
Bow-wow bow-wow wuff-wuff bow-wuff wuff-bow
Wuff-wooo bow-woooo wuff-bow bow-bow wuff-wooo
Wooo-grrr bow-wow wuff-wiff bow-wuff wuff-bow
Bow-wooo booow-wuff wuff-waff bow-wiff bow-wooo
Bow-wow bow-wow wuff-wuff bow-wuff wuff-waaaf
How-bow bow-how wuff-when bow-iff iff-laaaf.

[Michael Cantor]

The Shakespearean rhyme scheme is well handled, John, but the meter is doggedly metronomic (a few substitutions, or at least a caesura or two, would have helped), there's no real turn, and I can't follow your syntax in L14; so that the poem strays badly, and - despite some good use of repetitions - ends up sounding like so much dogma.

[John Griffin]

Michael,

Excellent advice. I was hoping to have concealed the dogma, but you very astutely exposed it. I'll work on the meter more, maybe muzzle my enthusiasm, and of course try to infuse more grit into it.

Cheers,

John

[John Whitworth]

This is for Quincy and definitive:

Bard with Beard

Thoughts re beard:
Short beard fine
Beard like mine
Long beard weird
Short beard right
Short beard tough
Weird beard rough
Weird beard shite

[Frank Hubeny]

How Much Time Does It Take To Write a Poem Anyway?

His poems need a week of strain
Before they're lovely verse.
In twenty seconds, with less pain,
Most others don't do worse.

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Frank,

Your poem reminds me of a funny article I read:

Poetry By the Numbers http://www.poetryfoundation.org/jour...html?id=181684

***Not a bad idea - it's like 'Paint by Numbers', carrying the idea of Cantor's recent poem about poetry software, sort of.