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Neha D Jun 2014
An unintelligible verse,
Is worse than a curse.
A badly worded rhyme,
is a literary crime.

Instead of rhyming ‘bird',
With a word like curd,
Some people are plain absurd,
And will  use lacquered.

Poetry is emotion,
Expressed through lines,
Not word commotion,
Going off like mines.

The rules of grammar,
Have to be in place.
So please don't anger,
The grammarian populace,

By confusing their and there,
And misusing you're and your,
And using any word anywhere,
And thinking your poetry is pure.

Big words make not a poet,
Hyperboles won't add to the meaning,
So when you poeticise please know it,
Short stanzas are more appealing.
The man gets old,
as he has been told.
The woman is older still, and though looking so young,
She is in pain a lot and knows that.

The man is just an old, silly linguist, not even real
Just a computational linguist.
The woman is a sexto-grammarian and an expert and teacher,
She loves it, and still teaches people everything.

And although their love is unquestionably strong and true,
Their time together is all too short,
Their all too short "conjugal visits" are
More about "conjugation" than anything else.
Jenna  Apr 2016
Found Poem
Jenna Apr 2016
Each mind has its own method.
You go to be teachers,
to become physicians, lawyers, divines.
Statesmen, naturalists, philanthropists.
I hope, some of you, to be the men of letters,
Those whose minds have not been subdued
by the drill of school education.
How wearisome the grammarian,
the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic,
or indeed any possessed mortal.
The fears and agitations of men who watch the markets,
the crops, the plenty or scarcity of money,
or other superficial events, are not for him.
I wish him to live by his strength, not by his weakness.
Our people have this fear to offend,
do not wish to be misunderstood.
Do not wish, of all things, to be in the minority.
Rely on yourself.
Every thought is a prison.
The rare gift of poetry already sparkles, and may yet burn.
The world has a million writers,
But the constructive powers are rare,
it is given to few men to be poets.
The writer restores.
Speak, whether there be any who understand it or not.
An AP English assignment that I actually found to be quite interesting. This found poem was composed via phrases from two essays written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Intellect" and "Man of Letters."
Upon (die) re rhea ding previous poem
     All In The Name Of "Progress" zen
a glaring, leering,
     and twittering left par wren
     dared to a right (i.e. bribe)
     corrective punctuation measure
     slyly slipping Special Ops symbol ")"
     for so many yen,

thus see slipped thru my excellent
     proof reading, when
lo and behold consternation,
     inconsideration, and perturbation
I thought to take a page
     from playbook of Sylvia Plath,
     and stick my head in the oven
but lo, a sardine recipe

     (though a bit fishy),
     could be found necessitating cauldron
     only available for purchase in Turin
thus donned with a shrouded cape,
     aye didst make whoosh,
     hence, went there and came back
     and frankly tubby earnest,
     thence began stir'n

a bubbling concoction brew
though duration for perfect consistency
     aye lacked any clue
thus, needed to contact
     Hannibal the cannibal
     asper what to do
in order (I explained)
     to sever livingsocial,

     and forever hang my head in shame
     cuz, accidentally omitting
     one right parenthesis too few
hence, esteemed flawless glory,
     (sans error free grammarian
     reputation pitched downward
     where careless evinced
     Kamikaze nosedive, where

     matter of fact gross humiliation
     instantaneously grew
and the only viable option
     forced me to hew
admitting to egregious, fatuous, abhorent
and readily confesses
     compunction viz, grievously
     blatant Anglo Saxon

     Horrifying transgression
involving backward curved "C" sin bent
a most execrable,
     incorrigible, and unforgivable
     literary faux pas incurring
     major cosmic event
stripped of title special
     Das Scribe double bubble "A" gent!

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

Upon complying never to err again
Matthew Scott Harris since
     accepted plea bargain
accepting sentence resting his chin
til indelible necklaced "U" lettered grin
forever visible to kith and kin.
Top notch legal scholar Erin Go Braw
     (less concerned about being fair versus
     abominable, irrevocable, and execrable
     unforgivable oversight most holy "M" & *****)

cabinet of high priests,
     sans spelling chieftains ready to claw
your person to bits,
     and they presage remote clemency

     which decision told, when Jeff Sessions
     decides final punishment to draw
now, (see excerpted lines
     visited with glaring flaw

"Benediction For Lord Apple Macintosh"
     where ...bot sized wetbacks, setbacks,
     and drawbacks, required a secret char),...
     intimates a "hee haw"

and rock'm n sock'm pull no punches
     square at yar triangular jaw
YES, on account misspelling,
     whence Grammarian Jude Law

at the least aims (to topple a prospective
     title of eminence grise), banning access
     to such undeserved
     catbird seat, sans Rhetorical perch

laughing while ja plaintively call for maw
**** Oxford English Dictionary - but naw
can do, and hence paw
mister trumpeting

     "FAKE" wordsmith raw
flesh will turn into....
unreadable print until closing text
that elaborates how holiness felt vexed.

To ye (a freshly minted scalawag),
     these 20/20 eyes bulged agog
while steaming with invective
     at what attempted

     to pass as sacred poetic blog
when thee (Matthew Scott Harris),
     now pronounced, an illiterate,
     immoderate, and inveterate å!@#$%∑

with a severe cerebral clog
(meaning prefrontal lobotomy
     not out of the question),
      you m~r mangy whelp of a she dog
     (my humble apologies to canines),

less deserving than being
     whipped near death's doorstep flog
after henchmen (strongly
     resembling Alaskan BullWorms
     guarding this royal hutch,
     herein Cupertino, California.
Ken Pepiton Apr 2019
Startle response! Wake--

When danger is ante
cipated,0h
--0n
lego-h-overedge aver
age
verbage re sighin'

clinging vines from debunked strings and
threads twisted wit'em.

Assume, if ye may or plea or will as
ye wont, pray means ask.

That's all.
Here, wit'afewmisstook aitches and spaces:
here is what we got,

a fresh secret story, un concerning anything you
believed you believed of/from/about idea ifify ie able ity ness

Reason requires response, Will Robinson.
Hidden persuaded, almost,
but lost...

Really,
what sacrifice bought
young John Carson to sublimnal
top 0'the mind status,
for the first two tv
generations?

Who do you trust? Carson's tv game
show debut, aimed at after school,
junior high, latch key,
wait staff on swing shift or graveyard,
the entire set of doin' nuttin'
'round Tea, fancy goin'

head t' head wit' Mickey Mouse Club,
on all the UHF stations out west.

It's 1957, who do you trust?
Time's man o'the year,
The Hungarian Freedom Fighter Idea,
the first stiffed
equal-value re
belicose cold war victim
of the famine for the grammar
of kindness and good sense
associated with DNA,
little green apples, puppy dogs,the
straight up command to love them that hate ye,
enemies and other words for folk
who would just as soon **** you
as hear one more word
about peace.

VOG,
words were scrambled,
christic crypt vacuum
tube
signal to noise ratio, caliber calculater pro
jection on to the rerewall o'yeardamnedbrain,

VOG Cancel
Bozo. This ad will **** for us. We can own the
'earts and minds of every grammar 'ater ever.

Since Babel, since Eber 'is 'ebrew ef-
fective, fervent...strainer at jots and tittlishit
self.

This ad makes mistook rules po'man laughable,
punch'n'judy'ishit:

Whom
do you trust, the grammarian so like so many
Deweyish proguess
edumacated teachers, you had this teacher,

squint, wrinkle nose, tight jibbs
frameless wire rimmed specs, a greying bun,

flower print dress wit' the weest bit o'lace,
lipless snide corrector's face. A trope archetype,
heroes re
bel
on demand, that was the plan. It
started with

AN AD. Who do you trust? Black and white,
Here's Johnny standing under the billboard,
y'know,
for the show, standin' like *******, shoulders
shrugged, palms up, elbo's bent

(contenintal suit, note the skinny tie, why?)
Who do you trust? Innocent grin, wordless
"Who knows?" or "knew"?

Whodjewtrust, in 1957? Cronkite, nicht wahr?
See the USA in the USA

in yo' Chevrolet, ole!
Yew should try Ritalin, for pep.

Take Serutan tonight, and sleep, safe and restful,
sleep, sleep sleep

VOG (Scourby) and, remember Serutan is Natures,
spelled backwards. Cue the choir,

safe and restful, sleep, sleep fade away

----
Where were you in 1962? Off t'college,
watchin' Johnny of Johnnies,

Johhny Quest, Johnny Lighting, Johnny Carson on

Tonight, there's more...
after the news, the dayroom in the dorm,

this is whence the quips in the quad were to be
sharpened wit'

fashion able ible tips, to fit the Esquire *** Hef
uniform dress code of mutual hidden

persuadeds.

Some souls were spared the spread of the
original tv virus, VHF, couldn't penetrate
the canyon...never subjected
to Howdy Doody,
our brains were spared the
complexes planted via the sit
com cowboy war subplot
phase of novus ordo
secluremishitistcal
experiments in
alientated
mind control.
We lived in the desert, in a place

a lot like Oscar's Oasis,
a wordless Korean Cartoon
set in a desert much like mine. On Netflix, 2019.

I did not watch the mandated ten thousand hours,
even when the deadline for party affiliation

mental ascent was ex
tended, circa 1985, pre-
tending to be a measure of de
fencing public universities from the
effect of rock and roll,

since about 1964

with folk like Dylan and Baez and Hallelujah
Jubilee and Jambalaya on d'Baya,
Herb's brass on the Baja, where all the girls
work it,
like 'otel Kali phornia, sticky,

sweet, like a taste of Honey. Mr.Bond,
meet Miss
Galore. OH GOD, in the car from the speaker
she heard the idea the meaning

in the name, oh god, she squeezed my hand.

Honor Blackman plays that role, she whispered.

Trust me. It's a good plan. We got these kids!

Mom and dad just won the war, had six kids in five years,

Levittown di'n't work out, couldn't go home,
mixed marriage, from the war.

Things hap, cajun catholic wannabe aerospace engineer spy guy,
lands in Alamagordo and environs,
Summer 1944.

Here we are, Equinox, loosing season, 2019,

so some prayers were for real.

Red somthin'r'other butterflies are riding a rare breeze
from the south to the north through my
makepeace home. My peace I give,
he said,
all that passed is unexplored, take all the time

you can imagine.

My wife knows the names of those butterflies,
that's part o'm'peace. Knowin' she cares to remember
such improbably beautiful things;

soul possessed in patience, is she.

footnote 1: Despite Ciba’s efforts to market Ritalin as a ‘pep pill’, the stimulant failed to become a best-seller.  But that was not the end of Ritalin’s story.  As early as the 1930s, psychiatrists working at a children’s psychiatric institution in Rhode Island, USA had noticed that stimulant drugs could have a positive effect on the academic performance and behaviour of troubled children.  Although few psychiatrists took notice of these observations at the time, by the late 1950s, escalating concern about the educational abilities of American children during the height of the Cold War encouraged Ciba to consider a new application for their drug: underachieving schoolchildren.  They received approval from the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market Ritalin to children in 1962 and, almost immediately, it became a best-selling drug (google it I didn't write the footnote pard but I forget where I got it.)
Forgive the flood, but my dear reader, I rode this wave when I noticed you on the page, in life's book. I did not know your name.
Brainstorm cometh, damning frontal hemisphere
jamming lookout, noggin perched, roiling thinking
uber wayfaring zealot, drills legendary phalanx.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Writer's block afflicts Das scribe,
     who **** now stricken supine
     adept dull livery sub par excellence
     his gold standard worse

thus, another day
     to slog thru arduous process
     crafting admirable verse
wrestling behemoth loosed ******
     dodging enfilade broadcast sos terse.

N'er easy chore to fashion
     acceptable word worth poem to whit
staring at flickering
     accursed cursor doth blank stare visit

flash flooding warning saturated
     gray matter fist sized unit
groundswell burgeoning leveed banks
     barging signals transmit

urgent army corps of engineers
     to reroute via sluice, sans surfeit
apprentice longshoreman
     doth double duty

     as grammarian sought to retrofit
arduous struggle ensues, where drowning
     affects consummation
     strong temptation quit

ditch ching progress made,
     thus far in hot pursuit
mind comfortably numb
     stream of consciousness

     submerges concentration
     entrenched deep posit
craftiness sentenced to punctuate
     disequilibrium doth outwit

venerably beaded trademark
     Scottish matted flair
     abandoned unfinished poem
     left forever stranded orbit
     zero escape velocity

zinging, unsprung,
     pinging mindscape nonprofit
able endeavor reflecting zeitgeist
     bombarding Messerschmitt
undermining, strafing, disabling
     cutting crew rescue outer limit
faint feint blinking in the twilight zone.
Chandy Sep 2021
Politicians
Deal with politics
Once dealt a hand with linguistics
Watch them close
To prevent future obstruction
Yours truly just a fluke of the universe
worming his way hook, line and sinker
thru the meandering time stream,
which current speeds up the older I get.

A garden variety (generic) agrarian wannabe
antiauthoritarian, bookish antiquarian bloke,
antitotalitarian, well mannered barbarian
disestablishmentarian, egalitarian, futilitarian,
grammarian, quasi hereditarian, latitudinarian,
libertarian, majoritarian, nonsectarian,
nonvegetarian, proletarian, sexagenarian,
Unitarian.

Yours truly amazingly
chronologically, enigmatically,
gracefully, interminably weathered
despite malevolent mental maelstrom,
linkedin with extinction of **** sapiens
in tandem with many flora and fauna
populating planet Earth
courtesy Manhattan Project
when Ernest Rutherford split the atom.

Fiendish and gruesome
phantasmagoric denizens
dwell deep inside subterranean vault
perform an evil dance
haunt psychic landscape
with imaginary (yet realistic)
gargoyle visitations cast macabre trance
nocturnal unconscious invaders
cavort and gallivant
disturb quiescent sleep with
devilish and sinister prance.

Apparitions crept stealthily
into peaceful slumber receptacle
repository whence illusory
landscape of dreams
take place to rejuvenate exhausted
body, mind and spirit triage
rent asunder blissful sleep
with a startled fright
cold sweat drenched
nighttime garments and bedding
teeth chattered uncontrollably
heart pounded loudly inside chest
nightmarish phantoms wrought
an awful ghoulish sight.

Mushroom cloud anniversary
triggered frenzied gargantuan hallucination
since 6 August 1945, at 08:15
inauguration into atomic age took place
one country after another sought
to acquire demonic and destruction devices
maintain self-preservation in
surreal atomic weapons race
impossible to escape the dark threat
that looms and threatens life on Earth
one launched missile spells extermination
across entire global space.

No escape from humankind military machines
munitions march mean madness
and guaranteed demise to all life
**** Sapiens violent history of
bias, intolerance and/or prejudice
characterizes vicious warfare
and chronic species strife
unaffordable legacy for future,
(and perhaps alien) archeologists
who will sift thru civilization debris
with delicate knife.

Artifacts buried in heap of pulverized
and radioactive ash
civilization monuments
and hedonistic symbols
gone in a blinding brilliant flash
irksome flotsam and jetsam
spewed into outer space
alien nations light years distant
collect miniscule bits and pieces
offer object lesson as extinction
for beings that become excessively brash.

— The End —