At File 770, some delightful parodies of poems that I’m sure you’ll recognize.
This Is Just To Say
I have consumed
the pixels
that were in
the scroll
And also
Once upon a laptop blurry, while I pondered, weak and bleary,
Over many a quaint and curious pixel of forgotten scroll—
While I nodded, nearly Skyping, suddenly there came a typing,
As of some one faintly sniping, sniping at the pixel scroll.
“’Tis some commenter,” I muttered, “sniping at my pixel scroll—
Only this and nothing mo’.”
And this one:
pity this busy monster, fanunfandom,
not. Blogging is a comfortable disease:
your victim (news and comfort safely beyond)
This is something I have no talent for. Shoot, I think I have anti-talent for this. I can’t believe how good at it so many other people are. Click through to read each one in its entirety, plus many others.
Please Feel Free to Share:
Maureen Johnson had a “insert a zombie, win a prize” contest a while back, and someone had a great entry based on that peaches poem. Can’t find it right now, but here’s Cherie Priest’s contribution (she used a Dickinson poem):
http://www.cheriepriest.com/2008/02/13/insert-a-zombie-win-a-prize/comment-page-1/
Oh, and here’s Cassandra Clare’s entry:
To be, or not to be: a zombie.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
Having your brains munched by a walking corpse,
Or to take arms against the ravening undead,
And by opposing end them? To die: to get right back up;
and eat your way through the employees of the local Costco;
To come eventually to the realization
That flesh is pretty tasty, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to be dined *on*;
Possibly by a neighbor: perchance even your own mom; aye, there’s the rub;
For once the toxic zombie virus has taken over
And you have shuffled off to the local mall
You’d better hope those plate glass windows hold.
Thanks, Sarah! That’s pretty impressive, too.
Back in high school my friends and I used to do this kind of thing for fun, though more often with songs than poetry, the point being to make them metrically accurate, but also as ridiculous as possible.
In Latin class my friends and I noticed that ‘diutissime’ had the same number of syllables as its translation, ‘for the longest time,’ which lead to us singing ‘diutissime’ to the Billy Joel song of the same name anytime it came on. So ultimately we worked out a complete metric replacement in Latin. It was appropriately ridiculous, and glorious, but alas, now lost to time and space. I no longer remember what it was about, but it might have been about cheese withdrawal…
Cheese withdrawal! It’s too bad you lost that! It sounds really funny — and I’m familiar with the Billy Joel song, which would make it even better.