Light Verse

Dr. Seuss meets Prufrock ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 2 Comments

Do I dare to eat a peach?
Why yes, I ate one on the beach!
(You know that beach, my little squirt:
The one where mermaids come to flirt.)

I liked that peach so much, I swear
I’d eat a peach most anywhere.
I’d eat one on a sawdust floor,
I’d eat one standing at your door.

I’d eat one in the golden glow
Of rooms where women come and go.
I’d eat one any chance I got,
I’d eat a peck—that’s quite a lot!

This Prufrock is a silly man
To wonder if he truly can.
He can, I know. I’m sure he could,
If he just told himself he would.

The best things come to those who dare—
Unless they choose to eat a pear.
For that, I make no guarantee.
A pear can’t match a peach, you see!

 

My darling clementine ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 2 Comments

My clementine’s reddish and not very fine.
It looks like a pumpkin that came off the vine
To embrace a tomato lasciviously
And make a new hybrid that just shouldn’t be.
Since I’m a beginner, though, I’m free to say
That it looked just like this on my table today.

 

Doggerel no. 4: Dating sites ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 3 Comments

Over the past four years or so I’ve become an old pro at dating sites. I’ve tried OkCupid, Match.com, OurTime, and eHarmony (the worst!). I recently gave Match another half-hearted try because of a half-price deal. But I’ve become aware that dating sites have a dark underbelly that I can no longer stomach.

It isn’t the danger of encountering sexual predators or other psychopaths. You can protect yourself pretty easily if you heed the recommended precautions. No, the danger is psychological: if you aren’t popular, you must be thick-skinned enough to cope with rejection every single day.

You must be especially thick-skinned if you’re thick-bodied. I garnered considerably more interest on dating sites when I was considerably thinner. Now, after six years of depression and relative immobility, I’m nowhere close to the body type or fitness level desired by 95 percent of the men out there. Over and over I read “Slender; Athletic and toned.” Sometimes a generous guy will include “About average,” whatever that is these days. Let’s just say I fall much closer to the other end of the spectrum.

I’ve passed by many interesting profiles because of this phenomenon. As for my own current profile (which does not specify “Slender” or “Athletic and toned”), it seems to be floating in an unpopulated sector of cyberspace. Occasionally I wonder if it has in fact been rendered somehow invisible to everyone but me.

When you experience rejection every day, you begin to hear the echoes of a hundred No’s in your head. Over time those echoes grow louder, until your self-esteem is shot and you yank your profile from the dating site in disgust. Nothing much to do about this humiliating experience other than write some doggerel.

Zip, Nada, Zilch; or Those Dating Site Blues

“Slender, average, athletic and toned”
Is all that the guys on the dating sites seek.
Even the chubby men, even the grubby men
Don’t want an overweight woman in reach.
What about intellect? What about heart?
I can make sweet conversation an art.
Yet most of the time, a fleshier gal
Is completely rejected as even a pal.

I try to be patient and just let things be,
But all of the silence discourages me.
Is this natural selection at work in my case
To keep my potential from reaching first base?
I’m still on the field, but I’m pretty done in.
Might be time to give up and leave love to the slim.

Doggerel ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 1 Comment

I’ve decided to delete my Doggerel page. Since it doesn’t allow posts, no one ever knows if I’ve added anything there. So I’ll just incorporate poems as posts on my Home page. Here are the three poems I had on the Doggerel page. I shouldn’t call it doggerel; it’s really light verse. Both share an emphasis on regular meter and rhyme schemes, but doggerel is clichéd and usually saccharine. Light verse, at its best, is exemplified by Lewis Carroll and Ogden Nash and Dorothy Parker, masters whom I could not begin to approach but whose cleverness I greatly admire.

––––– Aug. 28, 2013
I posted a link on Facebook to an article about pufferfish and the beautiful circular patterns they make in the sand. After a friend admitted having eaten fugu (pufferfish), I wrote this.

On Fugu

I understand the pufferfish
Will make a most delicious dish.
But if your chef is none too swell
And cuts that fish up none too well,
You’ll soon find that your lovely lunch
Will pack a fatal-istic punch.

––––– Aug. 28, 2013
This poem was written for a plant biology professor after his return from a research trip to Romania.

On Romania

Romania’s a lovely place
With Vlad so long deceased.
But Hollywood, with sex in mind,
Won’t let Drac rest in peace.
A vampire here, a vampire there,
And soon you’ve got a coven.
The things they do sure seem to be
Some bloody twisted lovin’.

––––– Aug. 28, 2013
I originally posted this poem to my Facebook page; hence the title and the jargon.

Facebook Fantasia

Some knight on a quest may encounter my wall.
He’ll scale to the top, though it be very tall.
He’ll sure-foot each solid and each wobbly brick,
Take note of each petroglyph, cranny, and nick.
Oh my, he may think, even at my ripe age
I must friend the woman who fosters this page.
We’ll happily share all our ones and our zeros
And pledge to be each other’s sweet cyber-heroes.
I’ll let my fantasies take me this far,
For love at its core is a binary star.