I've just been reading Garrison Keillor on regular Salon (or, should I say "Closed Salon"?). After all, no one is offering me a paid column, despite my initial hopes that Open Salon would be the Schraft's Drug Store to my literary Lana Turner curves.  This blog was supposed to be my Metaphorical Sweater. But anyway... 

Back to Garrison, who informs Salon readers that April is Poetry Month. I'm so embarrassed that I didn't know about it! I'm supposed to have Real Poet cred. After all, I've been published (and even paid on occasion) as a poet. I have written sonnets, haiku, villanelles, cinquains and even terza rima.  I've even taught workshops, in which I presumed to show others how to write poetry. In other words, I kick poetic BUTT. And my birthday is in April. Shakespeare's too (just a couple of days prior to mine). I didn't know until today, though, so now I have to make up for lost time.

When I need to crank out a poem really fast, I go into Ogden Nash mode. Nashian poems are easy to write because they are supposed to be lacking in scansion.  The idea is to use rhyme (occasionally rhyme that's so forced it begs for mercy) in run-on sentences that have an inner beat, but nothing that's obvious at the casual glance. When I write them, I also enjoy using truly excessive amounts of internal rhyme. This means that pretty much anything goes. So, here goes!

The Lady Thinks April Is (Not) Poetry Month

Unwittingly, our Eva wakes on this wet, windy April day,
only to discover that other poetic mice have been playing while the Terpsichorean cat was away.
While she'd been dancing to the flaming fiddles of New York City's burnt-out Wall Street financiers,
productive poets were reducing rent-poor recessionisti to tears.
How sad it is when one realizes the Literary Lions have all passed one by
and left one sitting here with tears (in beers) despite the fact that there's now no one near to hear one cry!
O, miserable, maudlin meanderings of a Piteous Poet who has passed her sell-by date.
Misled and so misread (too lost, too little and too late).
While April showers are still falling,
may there yet be May flowers answering the calling
of a garrulous gardener who hopes she's not completely gone to seed.
At this Eleventh Hour, may her own poetic power, wielded wisely, catch the Muse within Her bower,
that her needy readers be bemused, indeed.