Poetry.Com. It was the online adjunct of the International Library of Poetry, which is perhaps the most famous writing scam in the biz. (Note to ILP's lawyers: by "scam," I mean "fabulous win-win opportunity." Thank you.) You submit a poem to their perpetual contest, and they invariably inform you that you're a finalist, and that your poem will be included in their next book. And would you like to buy an expensive copy and attend the awards banquet?
Dave Barry, bless his twisted little heart, decided to have some fun with this, inviting Alert Readers of his weblog to post poems on the site. They were to use the first name "Freemont," and incorporate the line "The dog ate mother's toes." Hundreds of such poems were submitted over the following few days, including a bunch by Yours Truly. With a nod towards my last name, I went with "Freemont Perot."
Poetry.Com has since taken down all but the first of my efforts, but, fortunately, they were all still in my browser cache. (You'd think I'd have saved them in the first place, but nooooo.) Anyway, they're not great poetry. I made 'em up as I went along, and, especially in the later ones, I was mainly just trying to find approaches that hadn't already been taken in the hundreds of poems already written. With that said, they were a lot of fun to write, and people seemed to like 'em. So here goes:
- Not that ladyfingers would've been better (a villanelle)
- Capital Undertaking, Rhymeless
- After the Poet Ate His Words
- The Carnivorous Cloak
- Autobiographical Reflection
- Passive Aggressive
- Conjugations
- Stopping by Poetry.Com on a Sunny Afternoon
- Breaking It Down
- Cross Canine
- Down on a Lesurely Afternoon
New! Check out a list of poems by many more Freemonts on the Web.