Poetry Week, Day 1, Small Poem: "Randy and Rhonda"

Randy and Rhonda

Randy Biddle was hidden
His acquittal
Forbidden

Rhonda Smittle was smitten
By the spittle
On his mitten

And a little yellow kitten
Who told a riddle
Was bitten!

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Most, but not all, poetry considered "small" or "little poems" are written for small or little people - that is, children. One definition is a poem of nine or less lines, and this one qualifies, although a bit too strange to be in a Little Golden Book.

In the '00s, my business was repairing rural folks' satellite TV systems, almost anywhere and everywhere throughout Oregon. In the same day, I had a pair of customers with rather poetically complimentary names: Randy Biddle and Rhonda Smittle. One of them lived in the wild woods near Elmira, and the other just off the scenic highway between Cottage Grove and Lake Dorena that runs alongside the now-defunct Skunk Line railroad which played a prominent role in two classic films, Buster Keaton's "The General", and Rob Reiner's "Stand By Me".

Besides trying not to run off the road while gawping at the scenery, or avoiding head on collisions with drivers high on legal psychotropic medication, there wasn't much to do between jobs besides drive while mentally writing odd bits of poetry and snatches of song lyrics or melody. A normal person would have listened to the radio and absorbed other people's hallucinations, whether in song or rant. I instead would make up my own.

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It's been almost a year since there's been a new post on this blog, and it seemed like a good way to celebrate an entire year of inactivity by having an event. Especially since although spring hasn't yet sprung, at least here in western Oregon it's definitely springing. Also it's the final week of Time As We Know It, and in just a few days most of us in this otherwise fine country get to engage in our yearly mass societal delusional temporal displacement known as Daylight Savings Time.

So I'll hereby declare a blog-wide Poetry Week, with a daily posting of verse in various styles, starting with the bit of absurdism above. And then, being up to my ears in projects both household and personal, there probably won't be another post for another year.