Poetry Thursday

This week's Poetry Thursday assignment was humor in poetry. I do have a sense of humor but it rarely finds voice in my poetry so I had to "cheat" and dig way back into an old yellowed notebook(and I don't mean a computer) to find an example.

In a previous life, I was a researcher at the Menninger Clinic and one day while my computer (An IBM AT) was crunching some spreadsheets for me I was talking to a friend about poetry, and somehow she challenged me to write a poem on the spot for her, which I did and e-mailed it to her in a about five minutes.

This poem was written well before the recent proliferation of those greeting cards with sappy verses for every occasion. They were around back then, but they have gotten much worse and more abundant and literally for every occasion such as condolences to your ex wife on the loss of her pet ferret...Stuff like that...

So here it is: enjoy...Or not.

Written while the computer is hard at work.

I pity those poor souls who write
Poetry on demand.
Their lives hunched upon a Teflon coated desk,
And experience reduced to a cursor's blink,
They create a trillion permutations
On themes of love and death,
Or of friendship and condolences.

Poor souls who do their making on demand!
Their only fear is lack of liability insurance
Should someone discompose or take offense
Upon the reading of one too hurried gem.
Their only rush is triggered by a glance
At their diploma on the wall
Which brings fond memories back to them
Of writing real poems beneath the gun
In creative writing class.

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