A Proclamation

Hello lovely friends and fellow Bloggers, and good day to you all!  I, Denny, a tiny fish in a really freakin’ big pond, happy and fortunate prince of my own minuscule domain, do hereby declare and bestow upon you all the freedom to have an awesome day of peace, joy, and relative ease and heap upon each and every one of you an abundance of praise, love, and boundless good will!

Have y’all ever heard of Joshua Abraham Norton?  I hadn’t either ’til I read about him in one of Neil Gaiman’s awesome Sandman comics years and years ago.  You’d think he’s the kind of guy we should’ve learned about in high school, a humorous historical oddity.  But no, I had to learn about him from a comic book.  This irrepressible gentleman, after suffering financial ruin, bestew bestowed upon himself the title of Emperor Norton I of the United States and did not spend the rest of his life in an insane asylum.  You can read his interesting story at history.com if you’re interested.  But I highly recommend instead that you seek out that old Sandman comic, Three Septembers and a January, which is much more entertaining than any other account I’ve read.  If I remember when I get home, I’ll check its issue number then update this post.  But I’m betting one of you geeks out there (you know who you are Michael and Jim, help a Blogger out!) may be able to save me the effort by listing it in the comments below.

And finally, just because I can, I bestow upon you all the gift of this somewhat absurd poem I wrote long, long ago.  Enjoy, and please let me know what you think.

Good Rum, Bad Fish

You won’t believe this.
I haven’t told anyone yet.
You’ll see why in a minute.
I’m not ready to be locked up.
Give me a few more years,
lots of easy conquests,
maybe a failure or two.
Then I’ll go willingly.
Oh–I almost forgot.

As I walked through the forest the other day,
shortcut from Pete’s Place to home, you see,
I noticed an approaching form on the path ahead.

Thinking it must be Bob, I waved, smiled, was
about to holler hello when I realized
Bob’s grin wouldn’t be that toothy
if he’d had both our dentures in.

I noticed then it was a shark,
and as it shimmied nearer I saw
hunger in its eyes, heard it whisper “sssushiii…”
I got as close as I could given its
fetid, briny breath, then bellowed,

“You don’t scare me! I eat your kind for lunch!”

Now that’s an example of a truly bad poem trying to live up to a pretty good title.  You should’ve seen the much longer original.  It was so bad, I swear it smelled like a shark that’d been 5 days beached!

via Daily Prompt: Bestow