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Contests : Wergle Flomp Free Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2008 : Andrew Periale
MAD PERSONAL ASSISTANT'S SONG
(after a poem by Lewis Carroll)
He thought he saw a horse's ass,
A-buzz with little flies:
He looked again and found it was
Dick Cheney in disguise,
Wearing a Ronald Reagan mask
And eating Freedom Fries.
He thought he saw a woodpecker
Spontaneously combust:
He found it was the New York Times
All caked in blood and rust.
"This is the best and worst of Times,"
He theorized, nonplussed.
He thought he saw a pink giraffe
Constructed of balloons:
He looked again and saw some addicts
Heating silver spoons.
"What they need is a daily dose
Of castor oil and prunes!"
He thought he saw a cloud of locusts
Eat a field of roses:
He looked again and saw a man
The Surgeon General knows is
Carrying a resistant strain
Of rare tuberculosis.
He thought he saw a monkey who was
Sucking on a cod.
But no, 'twas Paris Hilton having
Sex on his I-Pod.
He said, "That is, like so mature.
I mean, like, OHMYGOD!!"
He thought he saw a dragonfly
Big as a hippogriff:
He looked again, it was a Beamer
Falling off a cliff.
It's better to live poor, he thought,
Than be a lucky stiff.
He thought he saw a flock of sparrows
Pecking at bread crumbs:
He looked again, it was a bunch
Of unwashed railroad bums
"The wealthy laid low by their health
Insurance premiums!"
He thought he saw a humpback whale
Leap clear out of the sea.
In fact, it was Will Shakespeare's
So-called "Scottish Tragedy".
"At last, he said, "I understand our
Foreign policy!"
He thought he saw a bulldog chewing
Holes in my left shoe:
He looked again, it was Bob Dylan
Playing didgeridoo,
A hummy, wah-wah, hoo-ah hoo-ah
"Tangled Up In Blue."
He thought he saw the living dead
Burst forth from out their tombs:
He looked again, it was the prisons
Adding extra rooms.
"The future's bleak," he said, "yet still and still
The teeming wombs."
He thought he saw a three-toed sloth
A-quacking like a duck
Instead, it was Charles Simic
Selling poems for a buck.
"If it has come to this, then boys
We are shit-out-of-luck."
Sent as a joke to The League of American Poets, this poem won an honorable mention in the 2008 Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Author Andrew Periale received a cash prize of $72.95.
About Andrew Periale
Andrew Periale is a puppeteer, playwright, poet and polyglot. He is the current poet laureate of Rochester, NH, as well as the longtime founding editor of Puppetry International magazine. With his wife, Bonnie, he founded the Emmy-nominated Perry Alley Theatre, which has toured all over the country and in Europe. He was awarded an UNIMA Citation for excellence in the art of puppetry for his solo show Chinese Take-Out Theatre, in which the audience orders off a Chinese menu, and sketches have been created based on food names from actual menus ("Wanton Soup"—very spicy!).
He sometimes performs as his cowboy alter-ego, Woody-Boy Johnson, and has produced a CD of his original and twisted songs (Woody-Boy Johnson: 3 Easy Chords and a Hard One). Check out his website at http://www.perryalley.com
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