We all know someone like this

“For today’s [poetry] prompt,” writes Robert Lee Brewer at Writer’s Digest, “write an auto poem. Auto could mean automobile, automatic, automaton, or any number of possibilities.”

My offering today is a senryu. A senryu, as Brewer defines it, is like a haiku with fewer restrictions and different subject matter. It’s a 3-line poem with a traditional 5/7/5 syllable (or sound) pattern, and the poem typically deals with the human condition. “In fact,” Brewer observes, “many people who claim to write haiku are already writing senryu.”

Guilty as charged.

Autocracy

In his rule of one

No one else has any say.

“My way or highway.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Poem for April 23

Today’s poetry prompt from Robert Lee Brewer at Writer’s Digest is a Two-for-Tuesday prompt. “In fact,” he writes, “this is one I include with every challenge.” Here are the options he offers:

• Write a love poem.
• Write an anti-love poem.

And mine is a single poem that does both.

’Twas The Beast Killed Beauty

Last night she dreamed she was in love with King Kong.

A big hulking brute of a beast he was,

Who petted and scorned her by turns.

He built her a shelter of sorts in the air,

Perched high on his haunches where no one could reach her.

He made it of sticks and mud and promises,

The ephemeral flora of the forest.

And from the outside

And from the ground

And from a distance

It looked solid enough.

 

Inside was all she needed:

A bed, a mop, a stove,

And one tiny window to let some outside light filter in,

But none of hers out.

And although he often squeezed her too tight,

And, truth be told, it did scare her some

When he pounded his chest or threw things,

She was

 

Happy.

 

No, really.

 

‘Till one day he lowered his great hairy hindquarters

To reach for some low-lying fruit,

Where, finding her feet on solid earth,

She tremblingly crept toward the palm-shaded window

And leaning her elbows upon the sill,

Stood looking and looking out.

 

 

You can’t make this stuff up

In today’s headlines, we have this little gem from The Huffington Post:

New Hampshire Republican lawmaker Peter Hansen drew outrage from his own party when he sent out an email to his colleagues on the official legislative electronic mailing list earlier this month in which he referred to women as (and here I am quoting him directly) “vagina’s.”

Here’s the direct quote:

What could possibly be missing from those factual tales of successful retreat in VT, Germany, and the bowels of Amsterdam? Why children and vagina’s of course. While the tales relate the actions of a solitary male the outcome cannot relate to similar situations where children and women and mothers are the potential victims.

Am I outraged too? You’d better believe it. I am shocked and appalled. Everyone knows you don’t form a plural by adding apostrophe “s.”

On the other hand, it does sort of figure. After all, this is probably only one of the countless ways in which he daily proves himself to be an utter ignoramus.

A modest proposal

In which we address the problem of yet another misogynistic loudmouth

In the latest instance of a male troglodyte holding forth on the finer social implications of rape, University of Rochester economics professor Steven Landsburg recently penned a brief manifesto on the rape convictions of two high school football players in Steubenville, Ohio, that would make any self-respecting woman-hater’s heart swell with testosterone-laden pride.

In his blog,  Landsburg  asked whether the law should rightfully discourage acts of rape in which the person is unconscious and suffers no direct physical harm.  “As long as I’m safely unconscious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault,” Landsburg reasons, “why shouldn’t the rest of the world (or more specifically my attackers) be allowed to reap the benefits?”

Groups such as Binders Full of Women and WORD (Women Organized to Resist and Defend) — as well as many students at the university — are outraged and have called for Landsburg’s ouster. The university, in true let’s-protect-the-macho-s*@theads-among-us fashion, has taken a self-righteous stand in support of its  professor and his right to academic autonomy and free speech.

So I have a another solution to propose — and it’s one of which I am certain Landsburg himself would approve, since I am literally taking him at his own word.

So the good U of R doesn’t want to fire him outright? Fine. Then how about we invite Landsburg to the next dorm party, ply him with sufficient drugs and alcohol to render him safely unconscious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault, and then surgically remove his man parts? After all, why shouldn’t the rest of the world be allowed to reap the benefits?

We won’t even need any sophisticated equipment. A magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers should do just fine.