Acrostics!

Since no one ever reads this blog, I'm sure no one will mind my saying that I used to hate acrostics: sappy, campy, cheap, what have you-- I didn't want anything to do with them. Perhaps this was due to the use of acrostics by former teachers to create things truly horrendous and grade school. I can't remember any of them now, but the trauma remains. However, after scanning a book in the library about poetry, I realized they are quite fun after all, when written in a whimsical, satirical, or creative fashion. For instance, the author/compiler of the book, a Mr. Ron Padget, used the letters of his name to create a poem with humor like that of Caroll's "Jabberwocky". I can't remember the poem exactly, but it spoke of a "delicious God" and provisions for the termites. I thought that it was just so much fun, too good to pass up. If you're ever bored with nothing to do think of any word or phrase, like "Tantalus", or "Xanthosis", or let's say "Fourth Avenue Cafe". Make that into an acrostic poem and you'll have something to laugh at. I found that it's better to finish an acrostic poem in less than 3 minutes, because the spontaneity with which you wrote it makes it ring truer. Of course it depends on how long the acrostic is. Earlier, while waiting, I found time to write a few acrostic poems. I'll show you some.(Then again, there's no one to show this to. Oh, well. Let me be. >=)) )

Kalashnikov*

Kites
Alight on branches,
Laughingly
Alert,
Scanning the
Horizon
Nearby
In
Kite hopes
Of
Victuals

(*A kalashnikov was a kind of gun used by the Russians.)

In Honor of Ron Padget

Ripopee* of
Obnoxious
Naughty
Perverse
Animalistic
Delightful
Gorgeous
Endearing
Tots

(*Ripopee is a Cajun word for a "gang of obnoxious children", according to Rebecca Wells in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood. See? You get to use words you normally wouldn't use in normal life! What a mind-opener acrostics can be!)

On Bella Akhmadulina

Your
Eve
Vacated that
Garden of
Eden,
Now
Your desolate
Your silent
Emporium of
Vast wonders
Teasingly
Ubiquitous
Sinfully
Hellish--
Eden
Now looks like
Kiev
On death row.

(This poem is referring to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, one of my favorite poets, and the poetess Bella Akhmadulina, his first wife. Thank providence I was able to think of Kiev, or I would have been stuck. As it is, it fits in very nicely.)