Hi everyone!  Please welcome, guest blogger, Mark Walters for our Poetics today!

A funny thing happened on the way to the… Often the most humorous tales I know, arise from real life situations. Hi, this is Mark Walters. I will be your guest bartender tonight. We are going to tickle our fancy and try to gobsmack your funny bone. Humor has been a resource for me in hard times, to drive away the stresses of life. Writing lighthearted poetry can encourage me during stressful times. Lots of it comes from life events that happened to me.

Tonight I would like you to draw from real life to find your inspiration. Mark Twain said, “Truth is stranger than fiction because we don’t meet it as often.” Feel free to use both truth and fiction in your ,”real life adventure”. You must however, center the core of your story on an actual event that you experienced personally. Keep embellishment to a minimum, (as few bold faced lies as possible). You’re on your honor here! Humor is serious business, lol!

Mark Twain drew heavily on his adventurous life to provide fodder for his works. His name is actually taken from his riverboat work. It refers to a depth sounding of two fathoms; deep enough for the riverboat to pass. Though he didn’t write many humorous poems, he was rich with wild tales that fathom the imagination.

Jack Prelutsky, the first children’s poet laureate, hated poetry most of his young life. He went to college for two years and flunked English three times. He worked several menial jobs after that. In his spare time, he tried his hand at drawing cartoon animals. He spent six months crafting the images, and wrote a few poems within about two hours to go with them. The publisher rejected the cartoons entirely, but published his poetry. His first anthology was based on that experience. Much of his inspiration came from events he journaled in real life. His site is http://jackprelutsky.com .

There’s a Gopher in the Garden
by Jack Prelutsky

There’s a gopher in the garden, and he’s
eating all the onions,
and he’s eating all the carrots, all the corn and
cauliflower,
all the parsley, peas and pumpkins, all the
radishes and greens.

At breakfast, lunch or dinner time the gopher is
no loafer
and he quickly will devour everything
before his eyes.
He does not even hesitate to eat a cabbage twice
his weight,
or a watermelon five or six or seven
times his size.

What about that gopher? I don’t know if he was real or not. So also to some extent, your work may contain certain artistic license, (fabrications). But please reference the real life event of your stretched and varnished tale, so that we may see where it intersects with reality.

So let’s workout those funny bones. Tell a real life story in verse. Augment it here or there as needed. Just offer some detail of how it relates to a real life event that you, (or a fictional hypothetical character, if it’s too embarrassing to admit, e.g. Uncle John), have actually participated in.

We all have humorous adventures that beg to be shared. They form the basis for most folklore used today. However, if the statute of limitations has not expired yet on your particular anecdote, later or less truth would be better.

New to dVerse?  Here’s how to join us! 

• • Write a poem as the prompt suggests, and post it to your blog.
  • Click on Mr. Linky below the post, to add your name and enter the direct URL to your poem
  • On your blog, please provide a link back to dVerse. This enables others to enjoy our prompts, multiples our readers and thus the responses to everyone’s poem, including yours.
  • If you promote your poem on social media, please use the tag #dverse poets
  • And most importantly, please do read some of the other responses to the prompt and add a short comment or reaction. Everyone likes to be appreciated!
  • Have fun!!!

About the guest blogger:  Mark Walters has always enjoyed reading and writing poetry. His favorite poets are Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein.  Their poetry is always humorous. “Humorous poetry is my favorite. And the dVerse poetry lounge – the prompts, bartenders and writers, are always great.”