How to get along with an enemy
This is an entry for the Yuwie Blogger Idol week three (a very unofficial thing that I expect to lose this week).
How to get along with an enemy? As a magazine, I have to advocate the gentleman's response--poetry!
No, don't write them love sonnets, you dolt! I mean the blessed catharsis of the imaginative insult, death, dismemberment, or torture. "I'll carve your heart out with a spoon!" Why a spoon? "It's dull, you idiot! It hurts more!" (The Sheriff to Robin, in the movie Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves). But you shouldn't be telling your poems (or dearest wishes however they're formed) to your enemy--we'll get to that part later.
Start off with something simple, like a limerick. The beautiful thing to "hate poems" is you don't have to "get them right"--that's not the point. But putting them into some semblance of a form is a great way to accentuate the virulent bile spilling forth from your fingers.
From Wikipedia, "a limerick is a five-line poem with a strict form, originally popularized in English by Edward Lear. Limericks are frequently witty or humorous, and sometimes obscene with humorous intent." Or sometimes obscene with bloody intent, am I right?*
*Interestingly enough, "Gershon Legman, who compiles the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick, as a folk form, is _always_ obscene, and describes the clean limerick as a periodic fad [...] rarely rising above mediocrity."
There once was a phallus from Maine
Whose enemy drenched him in flames
no one knew the zealot
though he tried to tell it
Goo spouted when he shouted the name
No, it's not a good poem. That's part of the game. You might even have to explain it to your friends, who will: admire your rhyming of "zealot" and "tell it"; ask you what a "zealot" is; and then ask you what it means. They might even ask if you're writing about them--and if they're from Maine, by the end of this questioning, you may well be thinking it was!
Your enemy's not worth a good poem (unless you're really in the mood--and the game can fuel the mood, as it were).
Let's move on to a more rarified poem form, the haiku. This one will let you really hone your seething hatred, and the great thing (for our purposes) is they're so short you can rattle off a couple dozen rather quickly, like tabloid photographs, and later see if you've got anything worth keeping.
Haiku is a mode of Japanese poetry, usually combining three different lines, with a distinct grammatical break at either the end of the first or second line. The traditional haiku consists of a pattern of 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second, and 5 in the third, and would generally be about a season or a reference to the natural world (and originally the _opening_ lines to a longer form, the renga).
Now that your heart's stilled
by the grasp of my right hand--
I can live in peace
or perhaps...
the delicate lines
of your musculature lay
in blood before me
or why not....
my brightest moment--
your fears and failures displayed
for the world to see
"So wait," you ask. "What do I do with these poems? How do they help me get along with my enemy?"
They'll help you keep the high road. Any time you feel like lashing out, just remember the warm glow of one of your hate poems and remember, you're better than them. And that's good enough. ;)
Just be sure you never try to actually publish these poems. Please! You might make more enemies than you intend when we innocent, blushing editors have to carve out our eyeballs with our bare claws. And we really don't want to have to write bad poetry about you. But we will if we have to!
If you found this interesting, though, check out poem ranker (also often referred to as "poem rancor"). It's the perfect place for you to post your hate poems, learn about more forms of poetry, and make lots of new enemies to write about!
And if you liked it and want to click through an annoying interstitial ad, I'd love it if you voted for me. :) Voting here: Blog Idol week 3 VOTE HERE!!!
How to get along with an enemy? As a magazine, I have to advocate the gentleman's response--poetry!
No, don't write them love sonnets, you dolt! I mean the blessed catharsis of the imaginative insult, death, dismemberment, or torture. "I'll carve your heart out with a spoon!" Why a spoon? "It's dull, you idiot! It hurts more!" (The Sheriff to Robin, in the movie Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves). But you shouldn't be telling your poems (or dearest wishes however they're formed) to your enemy--we'll get to that part later.
Start off with something simple, like a limerick. The beautiful thing to "hate poems" is you don't have to "get them right"--that's not the point. But putting them into some semblance of a form is a great way to accentuate the virulent bile spilling forth from your fingers.
From Wikipedia, "a limerick is a five-line poem with a strict form, originally popularized in English by Edward Lear. Limericks are frequently witty or humorous, and sometimes obscene with humorous intent." Or sometimes obscene with bloody intent, am I right?*
*Interestingly enough, "Gershon Legman, who compiles the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick, as a folk form, is _always_ obscene, and describes the clean limerick as a periodic fad [...] rarely rising above mediocrity."
There once was a phallus from Maine
Whose enemy drenched him in flames
no one knew the zealot
though he tried to tell it
Goo spouted when he shouted the name
No, it's not a good poem. That's part of the game. You might even have to explain it to your friends, who will: admire your rhyming of "zealot" and "tell it"; ask you what a "zealot" is; and then ask you what it means. They might even ask if you're writing about them--and if they're from Maine, by the end of this questioning, you may well be thinking it was!
Your enemy's not worth a good poem (unless you're really in the mood--and the game can fuel the mood, as it were).
Let's move on to a more rarified poem form, the haiku. This one will let you really hone your seething hatred, and the great thing (for our purposes) is they're so short you can rattle off a couple dozen rather quickly, like tabloid photographs, and later see if you've got anything worth keeping.
Haiku is a mode of Japanese poetry, usually combining three different lines, with a distinct grammatical break at either the end of the first or second line. The traditional haiku consists of a pattern of 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second, and 5 in the third, and would generally be about a season or a reference to the natural world (and originally the _opening_ lines to a longer form, the renga).
Now that your heart's stilled
by the grasp of my right hand--
I can live in peace
or perhaps...
the delicate lines
of your musculature lay
in blood before me
or why not....
my brightest moment--
your fears and failures displayed
for the world to see
"So wait," you ask. "What do I do with these poems? How do they help me get along with my enemy?"
They'll help you keep the high road. Any time you feel like lashing out, just remember the warm glow of one of your hate poems and remember, you're better than them. And that's good enough. ;)
Just be sure you never try to actually publish these poems. Please! You might make more enemies than you intend when we innocent, blushing editors have to carve out our eyeballs with our bare claws. And we really don't want to have to write bad poetry about you. But we will if we have to!
If you found this interesting, though, check out poem ranker (also often referred to as "poem rancor"). It's the perfect place for you to post your hate poems, learn about more forms of poetry, and make lots of new enemies to write about!
And if you liked it and want to click through an annoying interstitial ad, I'd love it if you voted for me. :) Voting here: Blog Idol week 3 VOTE HERE!!!