April is National Poetry Month, but before you stop reading, just hear me out. A lot of poetry is actually interesting. Or, barring that, here are some recent news events in our area that I’ve turned into verse in an homage to National Poetry Month:
In the Hall of the Scrap King
The scrap king Weitsman, he knows a deal.
He cast his gaze upon Roth Steel.
Just as he redid The Krebs,
he’d rid Roth Steel of spider webs
And sunder land from scrapyard yore,
decontaminate, and build some stores!
And if pray tell, there was no smell,
perchance would rise a fine hotel,
with fountains, views and lithe valets,
saying, “Welcome to our Super 8!”
Then down it came like crashing thunder:
A consultant’s warning of grave blunder.
To purchase Roth would be to err.
’Twas filled with woe, like Satan’s lair.
Burbling, bubbling, a witch’s stew.
How far it oozed, no one knew.
Why buy this cauldron in the soil
of imponderable expense and toil?
The report surpassed his greatest fears.
Hark! The scrap king did shift gears.
’Tis why he’s king and not a pauper.
Will someone else make an offer?
Hiakramtha
By the shores of Onondaga,
Of the Shining Neon Water,
Stood the fugitive, Corey Redmond,
Pointing his gun and lacrosse stick skyward,
O’er the first responders.
O’er the first responders pointing skyward,
As the abandoned trailer burned.
And when the fugitive was not relinquished to the Palefaces, the great Clan Mother spake:
“We’re working through it.”
And still the fugitive was not relinquished to the the Palefaces.
So it was that the fugitive was said to be undergoing “spiritual healing,” although the great Clan Mother did not specify what that was. Hot yoga, some theorized.
And The Palefaces were deeply displeased, but many of them went to Turning Stone to gamble anyway, although it must be said that the Turning Stones are an entirely different tribe.
I Never Liked the Name Gertrude, Anyway
Go, you fickle temptress! Be gone with you.
Your milky beauty turned to darkness,
The rancid goo of your insides a quicksand of betrayal.
You are nuts, and probably always were.
The chocolate-covered pretzel rod of my ardor long gone stale.
What if I told you I left you long before you left me?
That your brittle embrace flung me into the arms of another. Sweet on Chocolate.
Yet such sweet regret.
All those holidays — did they mean anything to you?
Leave! Leave now, before the Smidgen of respect I have for you melts like a Caramel Apple on the hot dashboard of life.
Shoppingtown and I grow weary of you truffling with our emotions.
Just leave the Peanut Butter Smidgens and don’t let the door hit you in the Lil’ Sassy Gift basket.
e.e. coming to terms with orangeness
i wear my orange gear like a crown of thorns (i wear it in defiance), in part because i just bought a lot of it on marshall street right before the ncaa sanctions were handed down, and it wasn’t cheap (ok, some of it was) and i am loyal (to a point) even though they (meaning he) screwed up. maybe not as bad as some coaches, but just saying you didn’t know is lame. i use that excuse at home and it doesn’t work there either.
i wish the football secretary at western washington university had helped me get a better grade in middle east studies. i should have paid more attention to doctor ziegler but it seems everyone in the middle east still hates everybody so maybe i didn’t miss much.
several years ago the president (of western, not the middle east) killed the football program so whenever they call to ask for money i hang up. i hope they don’t kill football in syracuse too. i like football despite the (obvious) brane damage.
i hope next season that i can wear my orange gear (with pride) to the uncle reuben’s reconditioned cell phone mart bowl in lloydminster, saskatchawan. if anyone gives me crap about the ncaa sanctions i will tell them to go lowercase f themselves (but in a nice way, of course).
