[Jayne Osborn]

I can't find it anywhere now (there are many others, incidentally) but I once saw an excellent, really funny parody of Henry Reed's 'Naming of Parts', changed to doing laundry. I guess that one is just too obvious to use.

Don't forget that Lucy says 'please specify' which poet's style you're using - I have to admit that not all of the ones here are instantly familiar to me. Lucy is no doubt better informed... but she did ask!

[basil ransome-davies]

By me, if it involves a household pet it's a household task. Don't be shamefaced. Send it in anyway. Lucy can be quite elastic where quality is concerned.

[John Whitworth]

I agree with Bazza, shovelling kittenshit is CERTAINLY one of my household tasks. And Jayne, I think Don's poem is a G.M. Hopkins, but I agree he needs to say so.

[Ann Drysdale]

Household waste needn't stop at kittens. Potty humour is here taken to extremes. Sorry if you're eating...

I couldn't get Chesterton to work for me after all, but someone else stepped in - so to speak:

Robert Frost Tackles the Blockage

I have been one acquainted with the shite
That gathers in the gloom of septic tanks
And shoulders-up the lid with foetid might.

I was the one selected from the ranks
To face the faeces, armed with only hope
And rubber gloves, a pair of scaffold planks,

A good stout stick, a bucket on a rope
And a technique passed down the family.
Human shadoof, I bent to dip and grope;

A thrusting-under and a hauling-free
Dropping the dollops from a dizzy height
Until I won my Pyrrhic victory.

No-one will stand downwind of me tonight.
I have been one acquainted with the shite.

[Don Jones]

***************

[Jayne Osborn]

More household pets.
My younger daughter is Nina, and she used to have hamsters - otherwise, not much difference here.

From Hilaire Belloc's Tarantella (I know you know already!)

Why must I do it again, Miranda?
Why must I do it again?
All that shredding of bedding,
And the bite that I'm dreading:
The "Ouch!" when they crouch with an over-stuffed pouch,
And the sawdust all over the floor.
And it makes me go, "Ugh!", the blur of their fur,
When they spin on that wheel, while you're a by-stander.
Why must I clean out your gerbils, Miranda?
Why must I do it again?

[Roger Slater]

Turning and turning in a widening gyre,
My clothes will soon be ready for the dryer.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Cycle is at hand.
But what rough stain, the final cycle spun,
Slouches towards my laundry to be born?
.
.

[Jayne Osborn]

Confessing my ignorance once more.
Where's that one from, Bob? See post #21 - you can't just assume we're all literary giants; even Lucy has asked for a clue!

[Roger Slater]

Sorry, Jayne. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html

[John Whitworth]

Not at all, Don. I like it. And of courseI know it's Hopkins for the reason you state. Did you suppose I was doing BRITISH IRONY? Absolutely not. If I thought it stank I woud use BRITISH RESERVE and say nothing. You know what that old Brit Thumper says. 'if you can't say nothing nice, don't say nothing at all.'

To do Hopkins right you have to make him say something he wouldn't have said. You have done that.