Once there was a mean old felon
Who stole our ripe watermelon.
He said it had zing.
He ate the whole thing.
Now he is achy-bellowin'.
This form poem is a limerick. I made up that last word. Can you guess the meaning? It is a play/reversal on bellyaching. I like making up words and discovering new ones. Do you? When I was in school I used to get into a lot of trouble for this behavior. My papers often would be returned with red ink marking them and a note from my teacher, "This isn't a word." Perhaps this is why I am a poet, so I can make up words. It is also probably why I love dictionaries. Here is today's challenge. Make up your own word and leave it and its definition in the comments section below. Today is the birthday of my birthday poet Theodore Roethke. He's probably most famous for his poem MY PAPA'S WALTZ. But he wrote a lot of other great poems too. I love the line a congress of stinks, from THE ROOT CELLAR. and try reading NIGHT CROW, to see if you get the same eerie feeling I do every time I read that poem. I look at Roethke's line breaks, his word choice and I'm still wondering how he gets me to the point I'm at when I reach the end of the poem. (Sorry, You'll have to page down to find NIGHT CROW but there is an audio version too.) So I'm off to have fun playing with words, hope you have a fun day too.
