The Pun Also Rises

"Headline Muse"

    Last weekend I was at Papyri Books for one of their Wordplay events, and it was brought to my attention that April is National Poetry Month. I was surprised; April seems like sort of a bad month for it, because it's very hard to rhyme with.

One dozen months for poetry,
So why did they choose April?
When hoping lines will end in rhyme,
It seems none in good shape will.

    If they'd just waited one month, they could have had May, which is really a much better choice all around.

An array of words may rhyme with May,
Which today I essay to display.
From a sleigh, to gray clay,
To berets made of hay;
Everyday they obey rhyming sway.

    Nonetheless, instead of May, or June, or even March, National Poetry Month is still celebrated in April. Well, celebrated may be too strong a word. Most people don't celebrate it much. Heck, I'm a poet, and I didn't even realize it was poetry month until halfway through. But having survived Friday the 13th and the even more terrifying April the 15th, now it's time for poetry.

    Some people might think that newspapers should just print news instead of poetry. However, I've never believed in submitting to the tyranny of the "or". So if you thought the news you read so far this month was bad, this is verse:

We've lost a great author with the death of Kurt,
If you Vonnegut writer, then he was your guy.
The fact that he's no longer writing will hurt,
Gone to see Mother Night, in life's slaughterhouse (Five?)
Yet he would not want weeping about his demise.
No, he'd want us to say, as he said, "So it goes."
While Don Imus sees death of his radio prize
For his ill-chosen phrasing, "nappy-headed hos".
Are we really surprised when an airwave shock jock
Makes insensitive comments that leave people vexed?
After all, they were hired for that shocking talk,
So what kind of language did we think we'd hear next?
Michael Richards has also irked those who are black,
Micheal Richardson and Mel Gibson irked the Jews,
They have all gotten flak for their verbal attack;
Now celebs may have learned to hide bigoted views.
But nobody can hide from the feared NSA,
Director Mike McConnell is seeking a bill
That will let them hear and record all that you say,
Without asking the courts for permission, until
We all get off our butts, and stand up for our rights.
Even Lee Iacocca has written a book
Telling everyone not just to give up the fight,
That we'd be mad at Bush if we bothered to look.
With the fired attorneys, the outing of Plame,
All the deficit spending and ill-chosen war,
It's the current administration that's to blame;
Let's not do in '08 what we did in '04.
Yet an Internet poll showed that one thing is certain:
Out of all the groups that we're mad at today,
Worse than Sony, or Comcast, even Halliburton,
Noone at all likes the RIAA.
They'll sue aged grandmothers or 12-year old kids,
And more recently, hundreds of students in school.
Claiming thousands in damage per song, as they did,
Is a punishment some say's unusually cruel.
When a song is a buck to download it online,
Then assessing a hundred-fifty thousand fee
Seems an out-of-proportion preposterous fine.
And the artists themselves are just left with debris.

So in summary: Kurt is dead, bigotry's bad,
Wiretaps are in place to bug all of your phones,
Record labels and Bush should both make people mad,
And go celebrate April by writing some poems.

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Seth Brown's an award-winning writer of humor, he writes for the Transcript on Fridays each week. RisingPun is his website, according to rumor, where you can read more pieces writ by this geek.

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