Raise the standard

[Leanne]

Where are the lepers a-leaping and dropping their
various bits on the floor?
Where are the jugglers and jug-smuggling uglies?
Give me a jester or four.
Come, entertain me with feudal frivolity,
fire-breathing fart-lighting friends,
end this ennui with new days of elder ways,
buck all these tedious trends
(Yes, I said buck, I’m aware there’s a rhyme there
I’m not always vulgar, you know)
Ponderous poems of ego are eulogies
written to kill me to sleep;
don’t follow blindly the Plath path emotional,
I’ve better uses for sheep.
(Yes, I am stooping, but groupies are useless
unless it’s for cleaning your arse)
Come, entertain with inventive insanity:
finish this versical farce
(No, not my poem, you rude nasty beastie --
all of the crap that I’ve read;
oh, yes, I see – it is shit that I’ve written,
bugger it – off with my head.)

[Truerenigma]

A very funny bit of satirical humor. A sort of ironically annoyed ballad.

I realize that there is no attempt here to actually raise the standard, but I really like this line on many levels beyond just "fun":

Where are the lepers a-leaping and dropping their
various bits on the floor?

Not too sure about "A-leaping" but it's a nice little bit, a metaphor that's not necessarily general, but could serve nicely for other purposes as well.

[Leanne]

hey, if lords can be a-leaping, so can the lepers :p

[billy]

i think it really does raise a standard, there's meaning behind the thing, and it actually stirs something emotionally instead of leaving me flat like a lot of poetry...(it made me laugh) love the reversal of farcical verse

[Leanne]

Cheers billy -- in that case I shall call it a reversical.

[billy]

i look out for it in next years dictionary

[Keith]

A truth behind every line very well done and tell how you resisted the buck ?

[abu nuwas]

Hmmm.........Now, Mrs Whipsicle, I do declare! As king --being reader -- I take so much from this: chiefly, one supposes, the subtext and layers of meaning . Undoubtedly one of the finest pieces of the past 100 hundred years. I doff my stove-pipe hat to you!

I was struck dumb by the metrical virtuosity -yes! Dumb, indeed I was! I began counting the dactyls, and marvelling at how many could be got into a cohesive line -- but weariness overcame me, especially after I concluded that you had not stuck to any fixed number per line; but then, that is where the grace and virtuosity come into play. So now, I have no care as to whether it was a dactylic arse, or an anapaestic one, or the American Trochaick Arse. It all blends into one.

Furthermore, and I should say as much to any man: one or two may try harder, to be funnier -- though even very recent history gainsays the chances of striving being the father of success.

As you may guess, I am still ploughing my way through Dickens, the Father of Prolixity. My lap-top got fucked, and now I'm trying to make sense of a new one. Gah! ><[/i]

[Leanne]

Well hello there, Edward. I saw a subtext once -- I'm sure it was Japanese, and completely innocent. No penguins were harmed.

I do hope your new laptop is suitably protected.

[billy]

lucky laptop...oh, he meant fucked

i totally agree with the fun thing abu.

[Erthona]

Sylvia always left me Plath. Nice word-play on "leapers" and "lepers", I thought this was going to be a "Twelve Days of Christmas" thing, but this seems more a finch on amphetamines, as it never alights anywhere for long. For a second I thought it had a point, but then I forgot what it was, as I kept going back to "lepers a-leaping and dropping their various bits on the floor". All I could think of was hot tubs and stew, prostitutes and keeping the tip and so on, until I was completely overwhelmed by various bits from my own mind, as it seems quite leprous, and I fear I've caught Leanne's disease! Of course "I’ve better uses for sheep" pulled me back from the brink, as I began to ponder such uses, certainly not the ones that would first come to mind for Billy, but then he is such a goat. Yet then, the whole had such a wonderland ending, it's made me dozy and I think it's time for my bed.

Dale

[abu nuwas]

Well hello there, Edward. I saw a subtext once -- I'm sure it was Japanese, and completely innocent. No penguins were harmed.

I do hope your new laptop is suitably protected.

My lap-top certainly is! It demands the most sensitive protection possible, and gets it. Otherwise, it gets covered in sticky white stuff, or sometimes pink, and strawberry flavoured, like yoghurt. Or actual yoghurt. It has a very bad response if I have been eating asparagus, and hates it when I tell it that will just have to suck it up.

[heslopian]

Poor Plath... She was a good poet, I think, but she's become one, in esteem, with her groupies. Then again, I would say that, because I'm a groupie Great poem, Leanne, very Dahl-like in its sarcasm and haughty language ("you rude nasty beastie"). The opening leper image slays me!

[Leanne]

You get away with it because you're such a pretty groupie ><

[NobodyNothing]

What I loved about this poem was that it was but an interlude, interstice, a brief moment in-between (between what?...does it really matter?); yet it was so chock-full, intense, clever, ironic and fun. How'd you do that? Reading it kind of felt like when I was a kid and lit a whole pack of small firecrackers at once.

Lines 1 through 4 and 11 through 14 were great, as others have mentioned already. That one line...

Come, entertain me with inventive insanity

...I thought to myself, "you just did."

Bravo!

[Leanne]

Reading it kind of felt like when I was a kid and lit a whole pack of small firecrackers at once.

I think this may be my favourite compliment of the year. If it's a compliment, of course -- I hope you don't mean that it felt like you'd just blown off your hand and sustained third degree burns to a quarter of your body

[rayheinrich]

best floundering my wit's had all year

[ChristopherSea]

Quite the tapestry of alliteration, image and wordplay. Alas, for that Plath path and the lepers a-limping...