Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really dislike Christmas, but I certainly dislike the never-ending and relentless commercialization of what is supposed to be a religious celebration. I have to credit Amazon for doubling down on the holidays like never before because they’ve made it entirely too easy for people to overspend which in turn requires me to discipline myself like never before. Just too many gadgets, too many commercials and an endless supply of scammers who may be the hardest workers of all during the holidays. For every email I get from friends and family members, I get 100 from scammers and spammers. I’ve slowly been turned into a paranoid person like never before. It feels good to have the holiday over so I can get back to what I call normal (and I use that term loosely).
The post today will be taking a sharp left turn from the holidays to celebrate three things I love: poetry, young children, and Winter. Here are a few samples of great poetry by a few up-and-coming young poets.
I’m a fan of some poetry. That being said I prefer short poetry like haikus or limericks. What I like even more is poetry written by younger children because it seems they write what they’re feeling and that makes it special. In the past I’ve posted poems from younger children collected from English-speaking countries around the world and today I offer four more excellent examples of their work. Their poetry is alarmingly good for their young ages and today’s topic will be Feelings. Enjoy!
Well, it’s Sunday and the Steeler game has been canceled until Monday due to weather concerns. It’s a little annoying but not all that surprising for anyone who’s ever been in Buffalo during the winter. In my previous life as a regional manager for a national chain I was assigned stores in Buffalo and Niagara Falls. I swear to God that every time I made a trip there during the winter, I ended up getting snowed in and spending an extra day or two in order to give the citizens time to clean up the snow, open the roads, and allow me to fly the hell out of there. Buffalo is a nice town (sarcasm) but not a place I’d like to spend any extra time in. I’ve been to Niagara Falls and unfortunately if you’ve seen one waterfall you’ve seen them all. With that being said and since my day has been interrupted, I thought I’d get a little silly. Everyone seems to love the limericks I post so I offer you a few odd ball limericks today. These are tongue twister limericks written by a gentleman named Lou Brooks in 2009 in a book of the same name. Enjoy . . .
❄️❄️❄️
Nosy Rose got closed in a closet of clothes,
The clothes closet closed on Rose’s red rosy nose,
She tweaked on her beak,
For over a week,
Rose’s nosy red nose now hangs close to her toes.
🌨️🌨️🌨️
Walt walked and talked on his wife’s walkie-talkie,
Walt’s wife’s walkie-talkie made Walt’s talky-talk squawky.
Wide awake while Walt walked,
Was what Walt was while he talked,
While Walt’s wife walked her way to Milwaukee.
Two of these should be sufficient. Trying to get a computer program to type these as I speak is ridiculous. Here’s a description of my day in a nutshell.
As I worked my way slowly through the public school system back in the 1960’s I received little or no information or exposure to poetry. It was mentioned in passing in some classes but there never was any serious time devoted to it. It just seems to me that making some poetry (not just the classics) available to younger students might just motivate them to either read more poetry or to write their own. A gentlemen named Richard Lewis, a lecturer on children’s literature and creative writing, apparently agreed with me. In cooperation with UNESCO, he traveled through eighteen English speaking countries around the world collecting poetry written by children between the ages of five and thirteen. Three thousand poems were collected with the best 200 published in his book, “Miracles” published in 1966. I’ve picked out two samples to give you some idea of just how talented many of the youngsters can be when expressing their thoughts in a poetic fashion.
THUNDER
by Glenys Van Every, Age 9, Australia
I hear
the drummers
strike
the sky.
***
SUMMER
by Margaret Bendig, Age 10, United States
Inviting, rippling waters
Waiting for little toes
Hurry, go get changed!
***
After reading a few pages of these poems I had a minor epiphany. These children were not trained in poetry but as they wrote their poems many of them began to look very much like free-verse haiku’s. Having no set restrictions on the length of lines and syllable counting allows the young poets freedom to truly express themselves.
Of course, being the irreverent SOB that I am I decided to write this haiku of mine and take it down a road not normally traveled. It contains some reference to nature but also just a touch of my humor. It’s a poetic mortal sin to write them this way and I’m sure it will tweak the noses of a few people. It’s always fun at times to make some people a little crazy.
‘The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps . . . so that something
that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in.”
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Well, welcome back to 2024. I hope you enjoyed the last post concerning Mr. Poe because I certainly did. I thought today I would begin talking about haikus. The current requirements for haikus are a first line with five syllables, a second line with seven syllables, and a third line of five syllables. When I first discovered the haiku I thought the rigidity of this design didn’t make a lot of sense. The more I learned about haikus the wiser I thought I became. Here are two examples of haiku’s written by a gentleman from Japan who is considered the father of haikus, Matsuo Kinsaku (1644-1694). He began writing haikus under the name of Basho in 1672. In Basho’s humble opinion a haiku should be created using a minimum of words to paint a mental picture for the reader. Basho included descriptions of nature in most of his haikus but wasn’t limited to a fixed syllable count. I’m all for free-verse haiku’s but I still find the nature requirement of Basho a bit restrictive. Here are couple of samples of Basho’s haikus published in the 1680’s. See what you think.
Spring rain –
under trees
a crystal stream.
***
On the dead limb
squats a crow –
autumn night.
The structure of haikus as mentioned above were created by two poets, Sokan (1458-1546) and Moritake (1472-1549). In Basho’s opinion their works were terse but failed to adequately evoke nature. Three hundred years later a haiku school, the Soun, was opened celebrating Basho’s free-verse approach. The haiku should be based on content not on the number of syllables in each line. With this I whole heartedly agree.
Here is a little something I discovered recently. It’s shows the form of a free-verse haiku but was simply published as a standard poem. References to nature are gone offering a more interesting take on life, love, and people.
we are the dreamers
we are the dancers
life is the music
love is the song.
For all of you Star Trek fans out there, this was written some years ago by Leonard Nimoy and was included in his book of poetry “A Lifetime of Love” published in 2002.
“Resolution in a bad cause is called stubbornness; stubbornness in a good cause is called resolution.”
Anonymous
Well, here I quietly sit trying to decompress from another Christmas season. I just completed my two and a half months’ worth of humor primarily to see if the response to the humor posts was as good or equal to my standard blogging techniques. The increase was minor which tells me many things but that will have to wait for another day. Just so you know, it would probably bore you to tears.
My plan going forward for 2024 is to do a few weeks of poetry. Some of you will enjoy that thoroughly and others will say “what the hell are you doing?” I get that poetry is not something everyone likes, and I understand that completely. I’ve tried to read as much poetry as I could over the years and truthfully the great majority of it was disappointing. It’s not that poetry isn’t interesting; it just wasn’t interesting to me. I’ve come to realize that my favorite poems are short, sweet, and something that forces the reader to use their imagination. That eventually led me to haikus. For me to enjoy poetry it has to be less than three stanzas long. Even that’s a little much for me that’s why I find haiku’s so interesting. So, I suppose January is going to consist of short and meaningful poetry taken from many famous poets, some of my own, and some of yours if you choose to offer it up to be posted. I’ll also throw in a host of limericks of all flavors just for fun. I hope you’ll enjoy what I’m trying to do here, maybe you will and maybe you won’t.
But before we start January, I need to deal with some other business relating to 2024. That is my New Year’s resolutions. In the past I’ve usually listed ten and completed at most six or seven. I try to make them humorous because most people don’t take them all that serious anyway. This year I’ll list just five, maybe that will motivate me to complete a higher percentage. Here they are:
READ MORE THAN 100 BOOKS
TRY TO BE A LITTLE FRIENDLIER TOWARDS THE REST OF THE WORLD
KEEP DUNKIN’ EXPENDITURES TO LESS THAN $40.00 A MONTH
COMPLETE EIGHT PAINTINGS OR PRINTS
LEARN AT LEAST FOUR NEW CUSS WORDS FROM MY GRANDSONS
***
“Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”
Ben Franklin
***
There you have it. Maybe I’ll accomplish them all for a change (chances are slim and none) but I’ll keep trying. It’s always fun to look back at previous years to confirm just how bad you are about being successful.
With September already over and cold temperatures beginning, it’s time to have some fun before the snow starts flying. With the holidays approaching I thought I’d publish a revised version of the Worker’s Prayer. This is posted for all of those people (my better-half included) that are stuck in thankless retail jobs across the country.
The Worker’s Prayer
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I cannot accept and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill today because they pissed me off, and also help me to be careful of the toes I step on today, as they may be connected to the ass I may have to kiss tomorrow.”
And just for the hell of it I decided to author a haiku as requested by a friend. Here it is.
everyuselessthing.com 