Conduct a correspondence in verse.
Any subject, provided it's entertaining.

Examples:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000460.html

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000874.html

Well first of all, I'd like to ask, if by a word like 'verse',
you are inferring we should use strict metre to converse?


[This message has been edited by Luigi Coppola (edited May 29, 2004).]

Here's a little scrap of verse
...to pass an idle hour
written earlier today
...as I stood in the shower.
It's certainly not good enough
...to cause much delectation,
but maybe there's a topic here
...for rhyming conversation:


FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I once saw
a lobster claw
...against a lobster trap

and I have seen
a farm machine
... make a cow’s neck snap

so I don’t eat
those kinds of meat
... lest my stomach sicken.

Thank goodness I
saw no bird die
... so I can still eat chicken.

Bob, I've killed bird and beast alike,
and creatures marine —
and must confess that nonetheless
my appetite's still keen.

In truth, I take great satisfaction
from doing the deed myself;
I'd rather compete to get my meat
than buy it off the shelf.

(robt)

You and I are different, Ward.
When I feast on a pullet,
I enjoy the stuffing more
if I can't taste the bullet.

Whacking a pullet with a bullet
would be pure overkill:
a pellet is enough to fell it,
and takes a lot less skill.

We didn’t have no chickens where I grew up in the Bronx.
We didn’t have no Peking ducks making Peking honks.
We didn’t have no abbatoirs where cows would have been slain.
We didn’t have no lobster traps to cause crustacean pain.

We didn’t have real butcher shops with pig heads hanging high.
The meat aisle at the A&P is where we’d have to buy
our Easter lambsy-divey and our rump roast and our ham
not to mention New York steaks and cans of bright pink spam.

But mother made a ritual of mourning for our beasts.
“Poor chick, poor lamb, poor clam, poor pig”—she’d moan at all our feasts.
And then we’d take a moment to lament the beasty’s fate
and didn’t take for granted what was piled upon the plate.

And though I’m not a vegan or a macro-bio geek
And could not live on bread alone or bean or nut or leek,
I do not think’s it’s going to extremely haughty heights
to honor sentient creatures and cede them basic rights.

Let them graze and let them range and let them not be crammed
or fed a hormone-laden feed, and let no ram be rammed.
Yea, let the cows low cowily and let the pigs oink free.
Kill them kindly when you kill them; until then, let them be.

Kate, I think you said it all in your amazing ode.
If everybody were like you, no chicken would cross the road
to escape the squalid coops so common on a farm.
Instead they'd stay at home, lay eggs, content and safe from harm...

until one day some butcher man would sneak up with an ax
and make like Lizzie Borden when she gave out forty whacks.
The end would be so sudden that the chickens would not cluck.
They'd die before they realized they had run out of luck.

(Kate, your contribution to this thread was more than clever.
I'll write something just as good... if you can wait till never.
I'm proud my little ditty that began this conversation
might have served to trigger yours by way of inspiration.)

Robt, how long were you filleting
that humungous tuna?
If you'd bought it sliced and packed
you'd have eaten sooner.

We cooked a pot of lobsters yesterday,
entombing them with onion, broth and corn.
The looked indignant sprinkled with Old Bay,
and cursed the day that they and we were born.
(I know they’re hatched. I need a rhyme – OK?)
Thus they died, despairing and forlorn.
The dinner guests seemed suitably upset,
as they inquired, “aren't they finished yet?"



[This message has been edited by Stephen Scaer (edited May 31, 2004).]