The RIME of the ANCIENT MARINER: a review

Attention Deficit University
presents

The TOME of the ANCIENT MARINER:
A NEVER-ENDING STORY by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Reviewed in a Single Quatrain

In Freshman English Lit'rature
there assigned once to me,
by a long dead bard, a twittering rime,
which never stoppest doth he.


[Note: My propensity for picking on poets
with depression and addiction
is coincidence with a cause.
It seems that it's awfully hard to avoid them. ]

EDGAR ALLAN POETRY

RAVING

Once when I was feeling cheery, I found a poem, bleak and dreary
by a man who died at fortyish, more than a hundred years before.
While I started fairly happy, suddenly I felt real crappy
and soon I got plenty sappy, sappy as his metaphor.
"This is pitiful," I muttered, "to be sappy as a metaphor."
I read this verse, and nothing more:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more."

REQUIEM for an ANNELID

The day was not yet dawning.
The birds weren't even yawning.
They hadn't peeped a single little peep.
It was oh-dark-hundred a.m.
Life would surely become mayhem
Just as soon as they awakened from their sleep.

Sherman was a humble worm
Out for the daily morning squirm
That he took before he had to go to work.
An earthworm has to be alert
To make soil out of dirt
And be careful to avoid a sudden jerk.

When the worm on guard that morning
Blew his bugle as a warning
To run like hell and hide beneath a leaf,
The warning sadly was not heard
And Sherm got turned into a turd.
Unfortunately, all worms are dumb and deaf.

In ENGLISH CLASS

My English teacher is The Lord of Nerds.
He claims he knows a lot of words
that rhyme with no other.
"Try me", I muttered.
This heated exchange then occurred.

"Surely you can't rhyme 'elephant'."
"Professor", I touted, "the Hell I can't!"
"Nice try", he told me,
He gave me a 'C'.
At least it was better than 'pelican'.

"You won't even come close with 'month'."
"Oh yeth", I lisped, "I'm no dunth".
"Well, how about 'orange'?"
"Will you thettle for 'porridge'?
He anthered with groanth and thum grunth.