Real Poetry

Is a Sperm Like a Whale?
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a sperm whale, sperm?
Thou art more tiny and more resolute:
Rough tides may sway a sea-bound endotherm,
But naught diverts thy uterine commute.
Sometime too fierce the eye of squid may glint
And make a stout cetacean hunter quail;
Methinks 'twould take much more than bilious squint
To shake thee off the cunning ovum's trail.
Yet still thou art not so unlike, thou two,
Both coursing through a dark uncharted brine
While fore and aft there swims thy fellow crew;
And note this echo, little gamete mine:
As whales spray salty water from their spout,
So with a salty spray dost thou come out.


Hen Gonads
by Ogden Nash

I thought running a chicken breeding farm would
be a simple matter,
Just pipe some romantic music into the chicken
coop and chill some champagne and sit back
and wait for the proverbial little feet's pitter-patter,
But it's turned out to be trickier than that to
affect a chicken's libido,
Because I just don't know what chickens find attractive,
I mean, when I go out on the town I dress to the
nines, but does a chicken prefer a rooster in an
opera hat and tuxedo?
Well, I can say definitively that she does not,
And if anyone has been considering the purchase of
a rooster-sized tuxedo and opera hat you should
come down here and take a look at this reasonably
priced used set I've got.
Neither did my backup plan of spiking the chicken feed
with Spanish fly produce results,
Nor the screening of nature documentaries intended for adults,
Nor threats of arroz con pollo,
Nor...well, I don't want to give all the embarrassing details,
but let's just say there's nothing quite like asking a
salesman if he has a vibrator specifically designed to
stimulate hen gonads to make one feel like a total yo-yo.
Yes, I'm distinctly subpar at stirring romantic longings
in the loins of a chicken, and when it comes to setting up
blind dates in the poultry world, I make a pretty poor yenta,
So as for breeding chickens, perhaps I wasn't menta.


nice smug me
by e.e. cummings

this here verse's
disjunct
i used to
stick to regular metered
poetry
now i write onetwothreefourfive poemsjustlikethat
Jesus

but this is simple work
and what i want to know is
how much am i going to get paid for this
mister editor