first attempts at creative writing in a foreign language...

for many, many years now i have been guilty of writing really bad poems. so bad, in fact, that i've not been able to call them poems and instead coined the term "pome". they are a great vehicle for dealing with otherwise difficult writings, like birthday cards, love letters, and funereal speeches. to wit:

roses are red
violets are purple
i like my pancakes
with maple syruple

there are probably some rules that govern potery, but they're all implicit and since no one has asked what my secret is, i've never bothered to write them down. suffice it to say that an absence of originality, rhyme, or meter, along with a bit of humour is all that it takes.

my real passion became haiku, but not in the traditional 5-7-5 metering because that's too easy. the japanese use 5-7-5 in their haiku, but given the complexities of their language it is necessary to switch to a 6-4-6 or 3-5-3 to gain the same elegant simplicity in english. i write a lot of haiku, mostly for my own enjoyment, but sometimes send them out as instant messages or sms'es to friend and, occasionally, people i dislike.

anyway, i commented to my friend b that i wanted to try writing pomes in dutch, so he challenged me to express myself using that greatest of all poetic stylings, the limerick. in fact, he offered to compose a haiku in italian if i was able to complete my dutch limerick before 11:00EDT... leggerlo e piangere

er was eens een man uit amsterdam
hij speelde al de dag met zijn fonogram
hij zong en hij zong
tot zijn vrouw afgekapt zijn tong
en gooide hij uit van het raam

i choose... eyebrows. buona fortuna!