Dog Poet
It all started when I came across this ad in the Sunday paper…
Yes! Not only is The National Library of Poetry is searching for undiscovered poetic talent, there’s cold, hard cash at stake. Let’s see, $48,000 in prize money, 250 awards… that makes an average award of a whopping $192.00. But a very sincere looking Carolyn Johnson was staring back at me from the page, and I could detect that confident, smug aire someone who had beaten the odds and taken the granddaddy of all prizes, a cool grand.
I now knew that deep inside of me there was a poet aching to get out. A greedy, money-grubbing poet. Thus began my journey.
To be a famous poet, I apparently needed to write a poem. So I sat down at the computer and began typing whatever came into my mind. No filtering. No safety net. Just pure words streaming from my mind, through my fingers, on to the screen. Surely the judges would see the purity of my artform and award me extra points… perhaps enough points for me to cinch the top prize!
After what must have been minutes of pure frenzied typing, I took a deep breath and prepared to read what I had produced. I felt an odd tingling sensation as I began…
| Arrogance FoundI’ve never been a romantic Yet still I’ve seen the mocking image in the reflection of the dull fixtures And the incessant talk talk silence of those around me It gets old I get older still A pale light shares comfort with the tired back and cracked skin A distant siren calls my name Who am I to intrude? Who am I to answer? Tomorrow will be the same as today only once removed Perhaps I really have found it after all these years Perhaps it never left in the first place |
Yes, I had done it. I had created an atrociously bad poem. But not so blatantly bad that the judges would immediately toss it aside. Still, I had a hard time putting my own name on something this wretched, so I signed the dog’s name and mailed it off.
It did not take long for the National Library of Poetry to respond to my – whoops, I mean the dog’s – entry. Hey, they’re experts, right? Surely they can spot pure genius even before they open the envelope.
So was I trembling as I read their reply? Oh yeah.
Shaka was now a semi-finalist! This is too good to be true! I could hardly contain my excitement as I turned the page and continued reading…
Semi-finalist, semi-finalist, semi-finalist…
The first line in the P.S. pretty much sums it all up: “Shaka, you should be genuinely proud of your poetic artistry.” Trust me, he was.
Published. Yes, Shaka can be a published poet. Because of his unique poetic talent, the National Library of Poetry is eager to include Shaka’s landmark poem, Arrogance Found in their newest compilation. And for only $49.95 we can pre-order our very own copy.
Shaka was never able to scrape together fifty bucks, so he never got to see the hardbound result of his hard work. Rather, he had to make do with publishing just to the web.
I guess this is the end of our poetic journey. If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s this: follow your dreams… even if you’re a bad poetry writing dog.
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