Untitled Limerick

A message arrives via media,
Inducing immediate tedia.
Don’t take it as such,
For who knows how much
Subliminal media fedia?

Poetry Deadline

You’ve a deadline to meet but your mind is replete
with all manner of secular notions,
And your editor swears that there’s no one who dares
to reject all his love and devotions.
So you’re trapped by your job, and, although you’re no slob,
you must dream up some hasty excuses;
But you can’t even think, so you’re driven to drink,
still before the man even refuses.
You can claim you were beaten and send him a greetin’
from Mayo (explaining you’re rabid),
But with the assurance that you had insurance,
your editor won’t bat an eyelid.
So, while the fiend gloats, you scrounge up some notes
from your high-school days, stealing ideas
But who would now read an “Ode to Sam Snead”
or a eulogy for your pet rheas?
You faint in despair when you’ve pulled all the hair
from your head so you look like a Hindu.
Then he calls to inquire, “What kind of a liar . . .
and you’re wondering what you can then do.
Your heart fills with sorrow at thinking to borrow
a previous limerick or sonnet:
A little-known Shelley?
His spite would be helly.
A stanza from Browning?
He’d think you were clowning.
A paraphrased “Raven”
would not be behavin’.
To tamper with Dryden
would merit deridin’.
A ditty Shakespearely
would test your wits dearly,
and lifting some Goethe
is just plain dirty.
You’d like to try cussing but, new to such fussing,
your strongest swear-word is “Doggonit.”
So you act like a rat, and just throw in the hat
and are wondering where you can run to.
Then you write a bereaving note telling you’re leaving,
and find that the poem is done, too!

Labels

I peeled off one of those little apple labels
(Granny Smith #4139 Produce of USA Washington)
and stuck it over the third eye on my forehead.
Hardly anyone commented,
despite the fact that I am clearly not Granny Smith.
However, one person did mistake me
for a banana.

————

Tom Noe is not now, and never has been, the Ohio Republican Party’s misguided fundraiser, found guilty of money laundering on behalf of the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign and of theft and corruption in Coingate. Tom Noe hates Tom Noe with livid ire for besmirching and bedraggling his name, begorrah.