When I consider how my shit is flushed,
   Ere half my days on this sad seat and wide,
   And that foul stench that smells like something died
Filled me with disgust, and high ideals crushed
To wipe therewith my butthole, and present
   My true account, lest bathroom-users chide;
   “Doth God review the toilet-paper side?”
I grimly ask. The vent-fan, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
   Either tissue or a new roll. Who best
   Clean their smeared ass, their slate is clean. To think
Is one thing, nature’s urgent call to heed
   Is quite another; Milton said it best:
   They also serve who only sit and stink.”

after all, it’s Excremental Health Awareness Month!

John Milton (1608-1674) Sonnet XIX

PROMPT 14:

take a favorite (or unfavorite) poem of the past, and see if you can’t re-write it on humorous, mocking, or sharp-witted lines.

  Limerick of Illumination

Though darkness will claim I offend,
I’ll use verse as my means toward an end:
It’s OK to see light . . .
It’s OK to to be right
(If there’s anything left to defend).

Random Couplets

Devise a revision to revise the division–
let them tremble at this lying vision:
and, like some Antinomian libertine
abuse the grace of Christ and cause a scene
in Jewsalem, capitol of the Gentile world;
the rainbow flag is soon to be unfurled.

Messianic foreskin cast away;
God’s own body must illuminate the way.
Tautology thought: theology taught:
Mufti and the atheists all distraught.
Pre-formed references yield
to reformed preferences.

Rapture

When Christ returns (with the men in white)
to take me away in the dead of night
to my celestial padded cell
I’ll then be far from the noise of hell.

His men in white will check me in
and fix my doses—dull the din;
His angels will restrain my madness
Filling my heart with Christian gladness.

PROMPT 13:

write a short poem (or a few, if you’re inspired) that follows the beats of a *classic joke.

(*Well this should be easy, since ALL true Poetry follows the beats of a classic joke…)

Don’t it always seem to go/That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot…

Joni Mitchell

Fighting their wars in business suits
Blowing up peasant villages
Lying, While the Pentagon loots
Our failing empire pillages.

The wonder boys from Ivy Leagues
Look good on paper, making war
Their covert actions and intrigues
Exhibit what they tax us for.

Patriot boogey-man Ho Chi Minh
Was armed by US in forty-five;
Then made the foe as we sent in
Our troops. And some returned alive.

The Dulles brothers, with their spooks
Testing strategies, had a ball
Dropping napalm on the gooks;
Earth turned into a shopping mall.

And now, some puppet in Ukraine
(a Chinese laundry for their cash),
Requests more arms. So please explain
Before Crimea burns to ash.

That’s all. Their only long-term vision:
Body-counts— first bomb, then Starbucks.
Spectacles on television;
Do not question Daddy Warbucks.