April 14, 2008

K is for Karla who drank the wrong brew

K is for Karla who drank the wrong brew
04/14/2008 - National Poetry Month post #16, part of The Unlucky Twenty-Six

Fastidious Karla Delilah DeLeen
kept the house spotlessly, spotlessly clean,
It made her feel calm and sublimely serene
with everything polished a high, glossy sheen.

Her parents and friends thought she might be insane
dusting chandelier chains and each windowpane,
and the cover atop the emergency drain
and the tip of the copper antique weathervane.

She wiped every book in the library's case,
the leaves on each plant, and every clock face,
and hand washed and dried every boot and shoelace,
removed every ash from the old fireplace.

She cleaned under cushions and under each chair
polished each apple, banana, and pear
and picked the lint out of each underwear pair
and saw her reflection in the silverware.

Her parents were not really sure what to do.
They bought her a pet kangaroo from the zoo
and offered a trip to Kalamazoo
and hosted her friends at a big barbecue.

They tuned the TV to the New Zoo Revue
and bought two new oars and a brand new canoe
and a hand-made titanium-nickel kazoo
and promised that she could get a tattoo.

It got to the point where she wouldn't eat lunch
unless they would just bring her something to munch
like some crackers and grapes clustered up in a bunch
and some chips and a big glass of strawberry punch.

But she cleaned so intensely she never let up.
When they brought her the food on which she would sup,
she mumbled her thanks but she never looked up,
and when she got thirsty, she grabbed the wrong cup.

It tasted so bad that she wanted to cry,
and she stopped all her cleaning, and saw with a sigh
that she'd drunk a solution of chlorine and lye,
and she curled in a ball and she lay down to die.

One of my writing goals for 2008 is to write at least one light verse or poem every week in addition to my haiku wednesday and fiction friday posts. I will try to do this on Mondays.

9 comments:

Precie said...

precie gets distracted by New Zoo Revue.

can't explain why, but I think this one is my favorite so far.

PJD said...

Favorite so far? Really? What a nice thing to say! I didn't feel terribly inspired by this one, so I'm very glad someone likes it. The New Zoo Revue line is definitely a keeper, though. For a walk down memory lane, YouTube apparently has some NZR video...

Blogless Troll said...

Okay, I'll admit, after "E" or "F" I thought: there's no way he can do better. I was wrong. I'm with Precie. This one's my favorite.

And yeah, bonus points for New Zoo Review. But they might be rescinded if I can't get that song outta my head in the next thirty minutes.

PJD said...

Interesting. I still like Charlie the guitar hero best, I think. But I still have [counts on fingers] 15 left to go. Egads.

JaneyV said...

This was great too! Charlie still remains my favourite character but I haven't a clue which poem I like best. They're all so good. But seriously though could you just have sent Karla around to my house before you killed her off. I could really do with an obsessive cleaner around here.

Precie said...

I take another look at Charlie, but I think this one appealed to me most because of its irony, particularly its irony in this rhyme scheme.

And yay for real irony, not the Alanis Morrissette kind. :)

WriterKat said...

Nice job. The death was smooth and perfectly suited. I like the rhyming sequence, the 4 line rhymes made it easy to read.

writtenwyrdd said...

These are great! I haven't been by in a while and sat to read all of them at once. They remind me of old style fairy tales that scared the piss out of little kids. I think with cool illustrations you might have something there.

PJD said...

WW, the illustrations scare the piss out of me... I can't really draw, but I'll give it a shot at some point.

Kat, thanks--I also felt the death was perfectly suited, but it bothered me that I felt that way. Not sure why.

precie, maybe Charlie is a guy thing (uh oh, I hope I didn't just anger the feminists among us by accidentally implying that Karla (the clean house girl) is a woman thing!)

Oh, wait, Jane liked Charlie, too!