Saturday 19 June 2010

A Poem For The Plain English Society

I'm a huge fan of the Plain English Campaign, and their stated goal to eliminate all verbosity, gobbledegook, beauty, creativity, versatility and wit from the English Language. So here's a poem for them. You may notice that hand of at least one other author as you go through this:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
Which means I was walking on my own,
When all at once I saw a crowd
Of daffodils, which are yellow.
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Is where they were.

Continuous as the stars that shine,
Until they consume all their hydrogen and either collapse or explode, 
They stretched in never-ending line
Around the edge of the lake I mentioned earlier.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
But that is, of course, just a guess.

The waves behind them danced, but they
Just blew around a little bit, in the wind.
A poet could not but be gay -
By which I mean fun and frolicsome, not homosexual.
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
That I'd ever have to explain myself when I used the word 'gay', I mean, I'm a poet for fuck's sake.

For oft, when on my couch I lie,
Watching television, or perhaps just stoned,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is a common symptom of heavy marijuana use.
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
So I wrote this poem about daffodils.

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