Looney-ku
[Note: The Wall Street Journal of June 28-29 features an article with some free verse by Billy Collins, former U.S. poet laureate. The poems are about Looney Tunes characters. Since I’ve been writing drivel my entire life, and also since I identify closely with Daffy Duck, I feel as if I have the authority to challenge Collins at his own game. However, I thought I’d add some rules: all poems must be haiku. That is: they must have three lines of, respectively, 5-syllables, 7-syllables, and 5-syllables.
So, come on, Billy Collins: Let's slam.]
Bugs:
Just wanting carrots,
but the hunter is stalking
so you must crack wise.
Daffy:
Lisping and zany,
you may be irrational,
but so is the world.
Elmer Fudd:
Armed with a shotgun,
always dreaming of success;
creatures know better.
Yosemite Sam:
Big mouth on small guy,
guns drawn, ready for varmints,
you can't beat the hare.
The Roadrunner:
Racing through your life,
overcoming obstacles
produced by Acme.
Wile E. Coyote:
Life is too cruel
when all that careful planning
ends with a big boom.
Tweety:
You thought you saw what?
Don’t worry about the puss:
You can outsmart him.
Sylvester:
He looks so tasty
swinging blithely in his cage,
but eat something else.
Pepe Le Pew:
Sorry, mon ami,
you may think you’re a lover
but your technique stinks.
Three words -- “That’s all, folks” --
it comes rolling off one’s tongue:
but never for you.
Hey, Exterminator, I enjoyed reading this.
9 comments:
Pepe Le Pew and Porky were good. They were all good, but I liked those the best.
Foghorn Leghorn
Some smart rooster, huh?
Your answers often backfire
Oh de do dah day
Tasmanian Devil
Twirling Tornado
Cutting a swath through Disney
Oops! Wrong Company!
tina:
Your comment reminds me of an old Jewish mother joke.
A Jewish mother gives her adult son two ties for his birthday. The next time he visits her, he makes certain to wear one. She greets him at her door, looks at his tie, and frowns. "So? You didn't like the other one?"
Evo and SI:
My wife urged me to stop before I exhausted all the characters, just in case some of my pals would want to write their own Looney-ku. I'm glad I took her advice. Your poems made me laugh. (Matching the character to the writer made me laugh, too.)
Very interesting to note that you read Billy's poems on the Looney Tunes characters (poems which he wrote 30 years ago, no joke) and then played off them, sometimes taking a line, and copying the "form" of his free verse by ending the poems with a one-line pronouncement like Billy did (at least your the poems based on the characters he wrote poems about). So your challenge to Billy falls a little flat, I'd say, since you yourself were answering the challenge you must have felt Billy posed to you, and then you used some of his own words rather than starting fresh with your own. And remember, his poems are thirty years old, so you're thirty years behind the curve anyway.
Perhaps others should read Billy's spread in the Journal. It's brilliant.
It might interest you to know that Billy has a book of haiku published, called SHE WAS JUST SEVENTEEN, and, slim volume though it is, it retails for $40. You should order a copy. Billy is the clear winner, if a winner should exist.
But this is all too competitive. Where has the Zen of Porky Pig gone?
Sassafras:
I'm afraid the Zen of Porky Pig is rooted in the th-th-th-thirties and forties.
Yes, Ex, I was hoping someone would appreciate the character I picked... so me.
Evo:
...so me.
Yeah, you sing the same song with the same accent.
It might interest you to know that Billy has a book of haiku published, called SHE WAS JUST SEVENTEEN, and, slim volume though it is, it retails for $40. You should order a copy. Billy is the clear winner, if a winner should exist
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