And So We Begin ...

For the past several years I've been posting to Facebook each day some little ditties that, collectively, I've been calling "Daily Doggerel." Initially, I called them "Daily Quatrains," but I soon found I needed, at times, to be more ... expansive. Four lines just were insufficient to communicate the range of my--what?--insubstantiality? My superficiality?

Anyway, I soon was adding other little daily ditties, too. From my word-of-the-day calendar I would compose a little couplet (or more) about the word from the day before; I also began summarizing the plays of Shakespeare in rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter (hmmm ... wonder where I got that idea?).

It was not long before the whole thing was out of control. I had accumulated so many of the ditties that I decided to collect, then publish them on Kindle Direct. On June 6, 2013, I uploaded the first of what has now grown to be six volumes (each about 100 pp long); the seventh will appear at the end of November/beginning of December.  Here's a link to my Amazon Author Page where you can see these volumes--and others of more legitimate stature (an annotated edition of The Call of the Wild, a YA bio of Jack London, and numerous others).

So what are these "poems" about? In the e-published volumes, I arrange the pieces by categories--such as the following: Family; Films, Movies, Books; Quotidian Quandaries & Quibbles; Rants; Nature and Animals; Seasons and Celebrations; etc.

In order to repel a wider audience, I'm no longer going to post the doggerel on Facebook; instead, I'll put them on this site (with a link on FB) so that legions (!) of other readers can take a look and wonder in the basements of their souls what on earth is wrong with this man?

So ... welcome to Post #1 ... and today's installment of Daily Doggerel:

Saturday, 13 September 2014

TMI 

King Bladder calls in darkest night,

And I attend (I’m kinda bright)

And totter toward that special place—

Avoid nocturnal damp disgrace.

King Bladder’s been the Boss of Me

Since I had prostate surgery

On June 14, 2005.

(But I’m still here, yes, still alive!)

Since then—I get two hours’ sleep;

The King will call, and I will creep

Toward the throne room in the dark.

Obeisance done, I can’t remark

Or otherwise defy this King

Who’s now in charge of everything.

Instead, I crawl back into bed,

Await that Voice within my head,

And stumble off at His command—

O, Bladder King! O, ruthless hand!

O, King, what precious stones you’ve got,

But I am full of regal rot,

And I am sick of shock and awe—

I say, “Let’s stage a coup d’état!”

Vocab.

I knew the stars must all be crossed

When Bob, cartographer, got lost.

[cartographer = one that makes maps]

Shakespeare Couplet: A Midsummer Night's Dream (40):

“Methought I was enamor’d of an ass,”

Titania says, so glad her “dream” has passed.  (4.1)