Grex Poetry Conference

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Grex Poetry Item 125: You Are an Ick But Are My Brother Too
Entered by czara on Wed Sep 1 18:30:02 UTC 1999:

        You Are an Ick But Are My Brother Too

            by Sara Aloofus Plunket


        I really get to feeling sick
        When you are being such an ick.
        You act as if you do not care
        How I feel when you pull my hair.
        You laugh and tease and call me names,
        And say I'm stupid like all "dames,"
        You short my sheets and stuff my shoes
        With Crisco, which gives me the blues!

        But sometimes you are very sweet,
        You smile and say I'm really neat,
        You share your candy and your gum
        And then I feel really dumb
        That I could get so ticked at you.
        You are an ick, but are my brother too.

11 responses total.

#1 of 11 by toking on Wed Sep 1 18:48:42 1999:

welcome to the poetry conf czara

#2 of 11 by russ on Thu Sep 2 05:59:43 1999:

My goodness, czara is here.  She is a very old M-Netter.  I
didn't think she had come over to Grex, though in retrospect
I suppose it was inevitable. (I think czara has been 14 years
old for the last 15 years, and I see her brother hasn't changed
a bit either.)

#3 of 11 by flem on Sun Sep 5 06:21:17 1999:

Okay, tired or not, this question has been sifting around in the back of 
my head unanswered for *far* too long:  exactly what does it mean to 
short someone's sheets?  I mean, I have a good imagination, I can take a 
pretty good guess, but how exactly does one go about doing it?  What 
exactly are the symptoms?  

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, the poem itself was kind of 
neat.  I can see it as the text of a children's book, complete with cute 
illustrations.  You might go so far as to say that it speaks to the 
child in me.  At least, you might if you were as tired as I am. :)

#4 of 11 by brighn on Sun Sep 5 16:11:35 1999:

usually, when a bed is made, the sheet is folded back a certain distance
(about six inches or so) so the pillows, etc., are visible. "shorting sheets"
involves, instead, tucking eight inches or so of the sheet under the foot of
the mattress, so it looks (from a casual glance, which is all most people give
these things) like the bed has been made properly. the potentially sleeper
gets into the bed, yanks on the "fold", then discovers (hardyharhar) that they
don'thavenearly enough sheet to cover them. If they tug hard enough, they
could damage their muscles or the sheet, but usually, it's just a major
nuissance, because they have to get out of bed to fix the problem

#5 of 11 by lumen on Wed Sep 29 22:32:45 1999:

Welcome to the poetry conference, czara.  I like this poem.  I generally 
shy away from rhyme, but this is cute, witty, and in a classic style.

Get this published!!  This would be an awesome selection in some 
collection of poems.

#6 of 11 by flem on Wed Oct 20 17:49:22 1999:

Is that all?  I had imagined much more interesting things than that.

#7 of 11 by lumen on Wed Oct 20 23:33:14 1999:

*sigh*  I try to be a good critic.. but some days I am SO tired.  
More and more those days are when I'm here at the cf.

#8 of 11 by czara on Fri Dec 10 02:40:36 1999:

Hi! Sorry I've been gone so long, but school started and then
I forgot my password and then I guess my account got put away.
So I did newuser and here I am! Thank you for your comments,
I appreciate them. I think somebody might have me mixed up with
somebody else though! Anyway I am 13 not 14.

Anyway, I showed my poem to my English teacher and he liked it
but he said since we are studying Shakespeare why don't you try
to write it in iambic pentameter? That is where there are five
beats in a line. I don't know why Shakespeare wrote that way but
it sounds nice I think. So I took my poem and put in some extra
words to make it five beats in every line. And it is fourteen lines
too. Does that make it a sonnet? Well here it is. Tell me what
you think!

        I get to feeling so incredibly sick
        When you are being such an awful ick.
        You act as if you do not really care
        How I feel when you pull my hair.
        You laugh and tease and call me nasty names,
        And say I'm stupid like all other "dames,"
        You short my sheets and even stuff my shoes
        With Crisco, which gives me a case of the blues!

        But sometimes you are really very sweet,
        You smile and say I'm really really neat,
        You share your candy and your bubble gum
        And then I feel really really dumb
        That I could get so awfully ticked at you.
        You are an ick, but are my brother too.

Bye for now!

#9 of 11 by flem on Fri Dec 10 18:13:05 1999:

14 lines of iambic pentameter doesn't *quite* qualify as a sonnet, but 
this is, sho'nuff, a genuine sonnet.  It could use some polish, but I 
really kinda like it.  :)

#10 of 11 by lumen on Wed Jan 12 02:11:14 2000:

I liked the original.

#11 of 11 by ponder on Wed Jan 12 02:23:54 2000:

Interesting.

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